How the Bard Discovered His Method into Halls of Torment

Halls of Torment is out on Xbox and we’re tremendous excited to share some perception in regards to the content material we’ve added to the sport for this special day. For fairly a while in the course of the growth we’ve deliberate to reward our gamers with a particular deal with as soon as they handle to beat the ultimate Lord within the base recreation – the bottom recreation being the sport with out further DLCs. However initially we struggled to find out what this particular reward ought to be. Gamers all the time bought excited once we added new playable characters to the sport, since this opened up new playstyles and new character builds to discover.

Each time a brand new determine appeared in entrance of the camp fireplace, the joy was excessive and the urge to present the Halls of Torment one other spin rekindled. So it grew to become clear to us what could be an enough response to our gamers’ remaining achievement: a singular and enjoyable character for doing victory laps.

And we knew simply the correct fantasy archetype that may match completely on this place: the Bard. Contrasting the in any other case darkish and grim world of Halls of Torment with a cheerful trickster that didn’t combat with lightning or metal however with music appeared like the right send-off to us. The Bard ought to stand out each thematically and mechanically from all different playable characters. From there our concepts ran wild and an more and more clear imaginative and prescient for the Bard shaped in our heads.

Halls of Torment is a really metallic recreation. The environments, characters, and themes are all issues you may hear an influence metallic band make songs about. Even the important thing artwork would make a convincing metallic album cowl or band shirt print. Therefore, designing the Bard within the picture of a medieval metalhead made excellent sense: lengthy hair, a gold and silver studded lute, a swaggering stance and our medieval musical prodigy was born. The battlefield could be his stage and the armies of the underworld could be his (unintentional) crowd. This in fact would even have implications for what talents the Bard would use whereas combating in opposition to the hordes of the Halls.

Having a music-based character created one other requirement for the sport: new music. It will’ve been a missed alternative to have a metalhead character with none correct electrical guitars within the recreation’s rating. The Halls of Torment soundtrack is moody and orchestral, and it serves the aim of underlining the atmosphere of every world within the recreation. Nevertheless it isn’t precisely metallic. So we determined so as to add new tracks particularly for the Bard. We employed a workforce {of professional} music producers who helped us out and created a set of three tracks that don’t put on out too rapidly even after repeated and extended listening. To spice issues up just a little bit we determined to supply every of the three tracks in three depth variations. As soon as you’ll attain a sure character degree, the sport would fade to a higher-intensity variation of the at the moment performed observe.

Understanding that the Bard could be an outlier within the forged of participant characters, we determined to present him his personal unique set of talents. Normally, all talents are shared and interchangeable between all characters. That is the place we’ve made an exception. The Bard wouldn’t use any of the usual talents, and all different characters wouldn’t be capable of use the Bard’s music-themed talents; at the very least not below regular circumstances. All talents for the Bard are impressed by rock live performance tropes: mosh pits, pyrotechnics, killer riffs, you title it. And since they’re dropped at you alongside a set of superior metallic tracks, why not have some extra enjoyable with it? We applied the Bard talents in a method in order that they’d match the totally different instrumental rhythms of the music. That is how we wound up implementing a music cue system that may sync all Bard capability triggers with instrumental occasions in every of the tracks. For causes of balancing and aesthetics we needed to creator these music cues manually nevertheless it was value all the hassle. Now, once you enter the Halls with the Bard, all combos of his talents will end in a wonderful mild present that can put most stage engineers to disgrace.

To high off all of this, we’ve added a bunch of recent Bard-themed artifacts that create new challenges through the Shrine of Torment. You’ll additionally be capable of equip the Bard’s Mark with all the opposite characters – when you’ve unlocked it – which is able to permit you to choose one of many Bard’s talents at the beginning of your run.

General, we’re fairly pleased with how this addition to our group of heroes has turned out. Bringing the Bard to the campfire felt like discovering a lacking piece for a jigsaw puzzle. Halls of Torment is offered now on Xbox. Alongside the bottom recreation you’ll additionally be capable of seize the Boglands DLC which incorporates two further characters, an additional swamp stage, and a slew of recent objects and skills. We hope you’ll get pleasure from it!