Interview with Lead Concept Artist for Wayward Realms. Unseen art reveal!

Welcome back to the Necron Nut channel. By the way, you should subscribe now. I was looking at the numbers and it looks like no one has subscribed to this channel and that means over 3 million of you haven't clicked the button. I'm not good at math or probably words, but that means clicking the button anyway. I had the opportunity to sit down with Arc ban from the team once lost. Turns out he's a real person and I'd like to do it after I've had a chance to sit down. him today I would like to sit down with everyone to get ready, I'm going to start asking, of course now that no one has done it, everyone will do it, so anyway, leave room on your dance card for me, kids and girls.

I really don't want to spoil anything, I just want to let Mr. Arvan speak for himself, so I'm going to shut up and move on, but anyway like and subscribe, leave a comment, tell me how bad. My edit is because I'm still practicing, but if you have suggestions, tricks or tips, I'll accept them too. Who are you and what do you do? My name is David Simons. I go by Arcane in online spaces. I'm the

lead

concept

artist

for the latest games and also an avid fan of Cuban sandwiches. I love a good Cubano, man, it's like my favorite sandwich, it's delicious, yeah, you don't take out the pickles, right? pickle man and I like small fries, tiny crispy potatoes.

I don't even care if they come with the sandwich. I'm ordering a handful of them mhm oh I need a big ol' basket of greasy fries to go with them. like french fries or home fries, none of that like none of that frozen crinkle cut that's just been refried or whatever, yeah, actually earlier, when we were talking before we started recording, you mentioned restaurants and greasy spoon trailers with visible butt cracks and there is a place in my hometown that was literally in what used to be a mobile home and their meat freezers were out the back door so they had to leave the building and go around to get there to their meat freezers, which they kept locked, and sell you five cheeseburgers that were so small they called them Kitty Burgers.

Most places would call them a slider. Did they put spray cheese instead of sliced ​​cheese? No, they would take a slice of American cheese that they would unwrap and then fold. in quarters, oh yeah, those people are doing it right, yeah, and they didn't have crinkle cut fries, they had home fries and you could pay 59 cents extra to have them put sausage gravy on the home fries, oh man, yeah and There was room there for about 11 people and it was packed all day, people like dude you've been here an hour come out now to my next question, secondly when you agreed to this

interview

I went into Discord to check on the Arc ban. and I'm calling you right now because a Midwestern cinnamon roll with my chili scares me and I know you're from the Midwest too, but what's that cinnamon roll thing?

We dip half a peanut butter sandwich into our chili and that's how we like it. Dude, that's a Midwestern standard, it was as standard as the chili cinnamon roll is as standard as it was served in my elementary and high school lunches at least once a week along with goulash and meatloaf. . I won't stop you on delicious those who like chili, a good cinnamon roll, better prepared in the same meal, it's hard to argue, who makes everything better if you want, even if you have your favorite pizza if it comes with a cinnamon roll like that? the food is 1,000% better, that's a fair point, I can't take it away.

I'm going to try the bun with my chili. I make good homemade cinnamon, but don't make that weird Cincinnati chili where they put chili on top. of spaghetti, that's disgusting chili, 5 ways, yeah, don't do that, they don't count as the Midwest, yeah, yeah, they're Rust Belt people, that's a different kind of animal, yeah, very true, so my next question is I named myself necron n to imply that I'm crazy about old, dusty, underrated Underdog stuff, like the real old gray-bearded hipster. I am, can you explain the name Lord Arban in a few words? He's not as cool as you, like people make him out to be.

It turned out to be so it was literally just my Xbox Live name like 20 years ago, almost 20 years ago now, so there's a little bit more to it than that when I was a kid. I used to do a lot of world building like I had a laptop and like I wrote stories and came up with backstories for the world and all kinds of story, no wonder this is my chosen profession. Period, yeah, anyway, I liked that there's nothing worse than when you want to have a real It's good like you're in the zone when you're writing something and then you need to think of a name and then that bottle next to you and you pass a I would spend forever trying to think of names, so I would do sessions where I would just make up lists of names that I thought were cool or that made sense for the worlds I was developing and one of my processes for coming up with names would be like it's going to take two seemingly unrelated words and mix them up. together and Arc vain is literally one of those words that was on one of those lists.

I just mixed the word Arc and the word vain together. I think that sounds cool, uh, so I was on X. I had an Xbox and you know. It was the 360 ​​and I didn't have it connected to the internet and my brother and I had different usernames and my original username was tip the scales because my middle name is Tipton and I played basketball in high school and a lot. of people used to call me tip as a nickname and when I connected to the Internet, when I connected my Xbox to the Internet, I went to Xbox Live, officially tip, the balance was already taken, so I pulled out this book from when it was.

I'm a kid and I'm like I need an arcane name that looks cool and I picked it and it's like, oh I need to create a profile for this new platform, okay, cool, I don't have to think of just an AR fan, that's it. easy. enough and it's kind of a duck, it's good, I mean, that's where it comes from, there's nothing special about it, it really still has a story, the story is the story I guess, but like you were saying about how you liked to build the world, that It

lead

s me to a beautiful segue into my next question on a deeper level, what drives you creatively?

I don't know, this might be okay, I know how to answer this, but it will start from here and it will seem like I'm avoiding the question, but I'm actually not being fair, it's a very abstract question so this might offend some religious people. I don't care, as far as we know, we are the first and only species on this planet that evolving an ego that is a self-awareness of our own existence and served us evolutionarily well, is advantageous because it has allowed us to recognize that there is a system or a series of systems that govern how life and nature evolve and function over time and we recognize that allows us to obtain that system to our advantage and that is what has allowed us to become the dominant species on this planet.

The trade-off for that evolutionary advantage is that we are now acutely aware of our own mortality, and that scares the ever-loving ones. It is very true, that is the metaphor in the Bible of eating from the Tree of Knowledge in the Garden of Eden. That's what that metaphor is referring to and that's why we invent religion or, you know, we do drugs and things like that to help us deal with this. made so that we are not paralyzed by the threat of existential fear and can continue with our daily lives be productive survive procreate and ensure the survival of our species but also enjoy our relatively short lives and so yes We are very lucky that we can make a great work of art that survives us and then becomes part of this entire Collective Human Experience.

To me, that's what it means to be an

artist

, right? is to contribute to this AU of what it means to be human and that together with my wife she is a great um you know, driving as a motivator for me um you know also that those two things are the meaning of my existence, that's what drives me creatively. The abstract question deserves an abstract answer, but it was exceptional. answer, could it be, could it be that I could be completely full of you know, I don't know, I could be talking my ass off about it, yeah, I mean, I'm so full of my eyes are brown, is there anywhere else in games ? we can find your fingerprints, um, not in video games per se.

I guess I worked on Beyond Skyrim for a while. I contributed some

concept

art to the marind and where's the Argonian place? I forget what the hell it's called. I did something for those, yes. I don't know if those expansions to that mod will ever see the light of day, but some of my concept art is on their website, where you're probably more likely to see my work on indie tabletop RPGs and RPGs. playing supplemental um in the last few years uh I've done a lot of work for the Spicy Tuna RPG specifically uh I did art for the Constant Downpour and Knights of Lazarus those are complementary to the horror RPG by Mothership Games um I did all the art for Turbulence by Green Games Moon, which is another one, I think it's another complementary Mothership game.

I did some artwork for Mythic Space, which I think is by Peter Lara, who is independent and more recently and still on Kickstarter. Shout out to Bill it's Neon Skies from wocks Armory uh. That's a cyberpunk RPG that's heavily inspired by the Neuromancer series, which is basically where cyberpunk begins, so if you're interested in that, uh, that's on Kickstarter right now, shout out, say hello to Bill Buchanan, who is an amazing guy and wow. Armory, that's his YouTube channel, um, he's a tabletop craftsman, so am I. I have all kinds of junk here, like here's a 40K model that I'm beating up and destroying like a kid to make my own, oh that's cool, although yeah, he is.

He's a YouTuber who makes moderately sized tabletop crafts, uh, but he's actually pretty decent. I think he now has like 200,000 subscribers. Well, yes, yes. He helped found the Tabletop Crafters Guild, of which I am a member. It's a Facebook group dedicated to creating dumb, stupid to put on your table to put on your D and D and war gaming tables, you know, uh, yeah, anyway, he's a good guy, go support his Kickstarter, go watch his YouTube videos, uh, I love him with all my heart, yeah, I love the response. uh the guy who has to edit this later hates how much stuff he had to search for, but I can send you links for him too, don't worry, oh yeah, no, no, it's me.

I'm still really enjoying this conversation if you go. On my art station page, I have separate tabs for everyone except Neon Skies, which was so big that I actually made separate posts for a lot of the different artwork, but since Mythic Space is all in one post, you can just Click on it and scroll. through all the art I made for that same thing with Knights of Lazarus turbulence and constant downpour and I think I put links I think I put links to the affiliate kickstarters or the actual company websites, not everyone has websites because like Green Moon games is like one guy Peter Lara is just one guy who wrote All of Mythic space.

He definitely he already had his website up before starting the

interview

, so I'll leave the link to that and many others below and of course, we. We'll have a lot of things flashing on the screen behind us because I have some editing work to do. Sorry, sorry, it's okay. I was already done, so maybe this is more of a Daydream fantasy question, but if you could go back in time and be. On the team that made Daggerfall, what artistic choices would you maybe change? This might be sacrilege, but as an artist, that game lacks artistic direction.

No offense to Don Nitti, who is the art director of that game and he was a he. our art director for a while and due to the pandemic he had to leave, which you know, that happens in a team of volunteers. I think the art in Daggerfall adds charm because it's so minimalist that it allows the player to fill in all those big gaps with theater of the mind, which is cool, I think it's amazing, but it's a little bittersweet because it works for that game, but the artist in me knows that if I was there and there was more time because I think the game was made in about a year of development, which is crazy, there was more time and I was there, I think we could have prepared those images so that were something else if that made sense, yes, yes, I completely agree, especially when I started talking about the game lacking consistency in our direction.

That's actually where it does quite well: its creatures and enemies, those are great. Your environments are what you need. I think much more is needed. um and unit. Unity allows it, so we'll actually do it. you'll probably see some really cool, uh, visual mods for Daggerfall Unity, in fact, I think there are some that make it look pretty decent. I want to see someone do something wild with it, although like, um, I don't know, the houses are pink and and green and um, yeah, and there's like, I don't know, I'm going to start being like there are giant mushroom towers or something. so, itthey did in maroon, I don't know, I just want to see someone, see someone like they're basically blank. canvas now for people to play with right and I want to see some cool artistic expression come out of there yeah that would be awesome on a side note before we move on to the next question I actually wrote is Is there anyone on the team that he was once lost and that he once worked on the DF workshops project, DF Unity, or that he once made a mod for it. or something like that, no, not directly, I know that Julian was in contact with some people from Daggerfall Unity to try to get the source code but I don't know if it was successful or not and in fact I think maybe the source code really was lost and I was just trying to help remember what the hell he wrote back then oh, It's okay, it's okay.

I was just curious if there was any cross-play between teams, like if there was anyone who worked on DF Unity who came and talked to you guys. about anything we've talked to with the Daggerfall Unity guy, but uh, like me, you know, just because we're operating in a similar space, that happens naturally, of course. of course, uh, actually I think we used to have a Daggerfall section on our Discord that we've had since it retired, but like there's a lot of Daggerfall modders on there, yeah, we have a thread that's still great, great, yeah. Me on Discord, if you need to invite me to the basement, we have a thread that we're hiding there, it's a crawl space, so aside from the natural process of iteration when you were developing the Wayward Realms art style, how did you and the team? deciding well what to keep and what to throw away because the pre-production of the game lasted several years and I mean we were effectively bottlenecked for a lot of it, like there was a significant portion of the time where we basically just had artists and writers are working, so we had a lot of time to let our game cook and boil down to what you see currently and ultimately it's what Ted wants, sure, um, but he often doesn't know what he wants, you know, he its like me.

I have a general feeling here is as if this is the field on which we are going to play this football game. I'm going to paint the out of bounds markers, you know, for you guys to operate within, you have to operate within the bounds, but you can do whatever you want as long as it's within the right bounds, that's pretty much what it is. we discovered for the Wayward Realms visual direction, that's how we discovered it in this blue sky phase, um, however, it's definitely the sum of its parts too, so Victor is a big stickler for historically accurate weapons and prefers You don't need to be as rigorous with the armor, but you definitely want it to be plausible and the same with the clothing as well, um.

I had to learn how to do that myself when I first joined, I was still doing D and D commissions for people you know, let me paint your DD character for you, stuff like that, so it went as well as, you know , Warhammer. Paldrones from Warcraft right where, if you really turned your head, you couldn't see left or right and like incredibly big swords and hammers and stuff like that that just didn't make any sense, huh, so, um, I had to learn, I had to really learn. Really fast and I adapt, but I've learned to love trying to make things realistic, believable, more natural, uh, and it's definitely consumed by my personal style a little bit too, um, so that's Victor, I bring the romanticism to the table and that's the emotional thing. qualities of things I, personally, believe that the emotional qualities of things, above all, are the most important aspect of everything we create for this world, as if it doesn't emotionally connect with the audience, it somehow doesn't likes what's the point Nick and Ben are our language nerds, those guys like to get them together in a room and they like to always talk about the origins of different languages ​​and you know the atmosphere of words and things, that's why We currently have three.

Separately, they're not actually true languages, but they are pseudo-languages ​​in the game that have fully developed scripts, as I think we've shown some of the orcish scripts those two guys came up with. I think Nick very much created that. only one. I have the font in my copy of Photoshop, so I can type something and it will type it in Orc for me. Yes, that's because of those two. I think the most important thing may not be the most important thing. The important thing is that we are all history buffs, so we all read and study a lot of real-world history and constantly reference and draw from our world, which is really why we have a plausible chance. and the strong setup for Wayward Realms is because, yes, we're pulling from history from everywhere.

Like, this is kind of an aside. From time to time I like to post thought experiment questions on our private server for work uh like, for example, I think the last one I did was, uh, what would have happened if Carthage had finally defeated Rome in the Punic Wars and then always I like to continue with questions like what are the short-term consequences, what are the medium-term consequences. what are the long term consequences and then because we have so many other people who say, yeah, I know the history of the Punic Wars, like we have these long, long conversations, they're always civilized too, that's the best part that no one understands. . crazy or something, it's always very objective, a lot of what we do in Wayward Realms comes from these stupid questions and hangouts like that where we just have these thought experiments like that.

I love that kind of thinking. That flow. of Consciousness and then refinement, sharpening the pencil afterwards, the most important thing and this is not only for the visual art direction of the game but for everything we do, it is important that each of us put a small part of ourselves in this game. Nick and Ben, well actually, Nick is a PhD student in physics the way he's completing his PhD, I think he's in the last year of his PhD in quantum mechanics. Yes, the type is not an easy genre. Ben is also those two guys. Ben too. incredibly smart those two guys are I'm relatively smart, like I have a college degree.

I am quite well read. I am quite complete. I understand the basics of physics, biology, chemistry, all the difficult stuff. Science, right, those two guys. You make me look like an idiot all the time. It's crazy how smart they are and then you put them in a room together and it's like, wow, I don't belong here! These two are almost like a different species, they are so different. smarter than the rest of us, but allowing everyone to share those small parts of what matters to them when it comes to roleplaying and storytelling is very important because those small parts are almost always done with love and, in my opinion, experience, it's when you let your creatives put love into what they are doing, it always shines before the audience and makes a connection with the audience, yes you forgot, you also asked about my personal style.

I was just about to add that, actually, so I was going. Also, I want to ask you the same question now on a personal level, so this will be a little less satisfactory answer, so I think identifying your own personal style is something that is up to your audience, humans, this is this. that is why humans can never know the real truth of reality, we always have our own personal interpretation of it, yes, essentially it is our own personal truth that we experience correctly, but it is different from person to person, very slightly, as if you had 10 people as witnesses. the same thing and everyone tells you a slightly different story as to what they think they experienced, right mhm, and an artist's style is just that personal truth expressed visually, that's why I think the artist is such a beautiful thing, like that It's how we get to experience. other people's idiosyncratic and often authentic personal truths, that's how you can experience their realities in some way.

I'm satisfied with that answer again. It's an abstract question. I wouldn't expect anything less, so I'm active in, you know, smaller online art communities. and you know there are a lot more people trying to become artists than there are people working as artists, and a lot of times working artists don't have a lot of time to try to communicate and advise these ones that are starting out, uh, and so I try to help on some of these smaller servers and I like how many times you like it every day. I see that I'm having trouble developing my own style and I just want to shake them up, but I don't.

Worry about developing your own style, just try to represent what you want to represent, whether it is real in the real world and you are observing it, or whether it is from a photograph, or you are copying another artist's work, or you have invented it all. in your head there is a certain level of Truth in what that thing is and you just need to try to represent it as truthfully as possible because your truth is idiosyncratic and personal to you, that is your style, don't try to force yourself to do it. painting in a certain way that is not natural to the way you see the world, that's where my opinion on the similar style comes from.

I liked your answer enough to make me forget that I had another question next, uh, for just a second because I wanted to mention that I distracted you. I wanted to mention something you might appreciate knowing and I'm going to have to figure out how to word this correctly so I don't have to work too hard on the Editing later, my logo was drawn by an artist who works in a community extremely specialized in commissioned art and saw my original logo and asked almost disgusted, what is that? And I thought it was a skull with an acorn, freshly made from a pair. of clipart pieces it was like someone else saw my name and said this is the first thing I thought of and said it was my logo so it was just a friend who said skull clipart acorn clipart cut them in half , copy and paste Ms paint sends it to necro and says that's what I thought and I circle it, copy and paste that's my logo, so one day I meet this guy in another Discord and we have what is that conversation.

I explain it to him and listen to the tapping. almost like the sound of a keyboard, I don't realize what's going on, he'll fix this like you know, I'm going to do it and like 10 minutes go by and he sends me this logo that I now use, uh, he did it out of disgust so was doing this guy whose only source of income is commissioned work, his swamp explosions, if you want to see what he does he also has a sfw account, yeah he's not used to streamers coming to him for logo works, so I sent him some.

I don't know if commissions have come and gone because I think maybe there are some streamers who would look at a guy like that and say, I don't want a logo of a guy who draws what but he's drawing and I'm like, but he's funny and he's a being. awesome human, talk to him for 5 minutes on Discord, you'd be happy to give him 50 bucks for a couple of logos, dude, that's on the market. value for what the logos cost like a real professional logo, so yes, it's because he is an amazing human being, the best cartoonist of this era of art, he just passed away was it last year or two years ago, Kim Junge, the most brilliant artist of this generation.

That guy also loved to draw pornographic and NSFW art all the time and he wasn't ashamed of it at all and no one cared because he was so good, so yeah, B's B is a good guy too, but I'm going to stop. blowing smoke up my friends asses and I'll move on to my next question for you. My last question was about the iteration process and what to keep and what to throw away and I'd like to touch on iterations again and talk about character change. How many have you passed and approximately how many asses and girls have you seen lately?

I mean, I'm an artist, so I do studies of naked people every day in my sketchbook, so that's uncountable right now, uh, I don't know if. it's in the shot, but like my you know art book, my bookshelf book of art books and comics and you know other things, it also has a bunch of my sketchbooks, it's full of genitals, so hey, man . Let's do, let's do the math here, so the male female F change for the eight playable races is 32 total, but you also have three different subcategories for elves and then we're planning three different body types for all of them, which will be the The book ends in the middle of a sliding spectrum, man, I don't even know how many I'll have to do in total, but I've done about probably a dozen of them so far and then I make changes. because anytime we're okay, this concept is approved, we need a model like I'm okay, cool, I'll make the change, you know, here's the front, side and back view and then any similar call if you need detailed work, like they have a very complex necklace and, yes, you can see how it looks on themin the full body view, but let me do a detailed painting of that so we know how to sculpt it and make it look. appropriate and all of that is uncountable at this point that's just that's like the day job of a conceptual artist certain non-quantifiable asses yes, there they've drawn so many butts is yes, Ted is about that too, yes, he's about him it's like the more nudity you can fit in there, the better I'm like, okay, fair enough, I'm starting to love this guy Ted more and more for a real G, let me tell you, so let me ask you now if you can say hello. a magic wand over the games industry, what would you change without a second's hesitation?

Well, the obvious answer is funding, but I also think that the magic wand answers, while fun, aren't particularly helpful because they are only ever possible in the ideal world we live in, we actually need realistic options. There is no feasible way to take money from those who have it and redistribute it to those who believe. That said, I think we need to approach this more realistically, so I think a realistic answer is to find a way to make education and resources on how to be an entrepreneur more accessible to people and we also need to find a way to encourage more people to be entrepreneurs because honestly, that's The hardest part of starting a game studio is like learning how to run a game studio, that's it, it's a chore on top of being okay, we need art resources, we need to write In history, we need to write all this down. programming language and actually designing the game, but it's also like no, we need to learn how to operate the company like an entrepreneur.

Yes, more people, we need to teach more people how to be entrepreneurs and you know how to do it. how to take those risks, you know, minimize, minimize, you know, the probability of failure and try to maximize success, so that's what I would change about the gaming industry, right, mhm, no, I couldn't agree more , but I also appreciate your perspective. Can you give us a tip or an underrated gaming gem that you personally think more people should play? I don't know how to answer this. Should I list my favorite games because some of them are popular and some of them are not quite right? give us give us your Mount Rushmore your darkest not not necessarily not attractive like bungee Halo games like I, when I was 12, I played Halo Combat Evolved when it first came out, it absolutely put me on the path to being a concept Artist like that game blew my mind, that's what made games feel like an art form to me, it was that first Halo Combat Evolved game, uh, but Perfect Dark is like, I don't know if that qualifies as underrated, I think could be younger people I feel like people your age and my age played the perfect dart, oh, shout out to the laptop sentry guns, hell yeah, or the far sight, the rail gun with the that you can shoot through walls, like, oh come on, that game's on The multiplayer in that game is one of the strongest first-person shooters I've played to date, and like I made Counter Strike, I've done all the Halo games, I've done Call of Duty that I've done in Battlefield, none of them can compare to the complexity that's in Perfect Dark, especially the AI ​​in Perfect AR, but if you're home alone, keep going. being fun at the time, you get all your friends. and you play with four players, you know, uh, multiplayer and it's like that's one of the best experiences in a first-person shooter, yeah, um, yeah, and I think Pizza still had Bigfoot Pizza when Perfect AR was alive and spawning and you could get That Giant Rectangular Pizza in a Two Story Hell yeah well buddy we had the golden eye and I thought this game is great but the multiplayer isn't the best as the campaign is where shine the golden eye and multiplayer mode.

It's kind of fun when you come with your friends and then you like Perfect Dark like the campaign, it's like an afterthought, it's still fun some of the challenges, but the multiplayer is like gold and I dialed 211, right, it's amazing , Yeah. Until that moment, the only way to make gold, it was better to leave, it was a single hit, kill, slap, alone, without trellions, without strange Jobe. We liked to play uh multiplayer Perfect Dark where it was like it was the tranquilizer gun but you can only use the sedative you can't use instant death on the tranquilizer gun it's the crossbow but you can only use the sedative not instant death and uh unarmed but you can only use the disarm feature of unarmed combat no the damage would be like who can get dizzier who can get dizzier more um uh yeah yeah I don't know I don't know games that do that anymore where every weapon in that game had two different modes and they were almost always unique as they would be allowing for two different types of play styles I remember, um, there were some that were like, huh, was it the ar34 assault rifle?

That one was cool because its secondary mode was that it was the only weapon you could walk around with while you had the scope. in the case of the sniper rifle and the Falcon 2 pistol, like they had scopes, but you couldn't move while you had the scope, you had to stay stationary and that was the benefit of the R34 assault rifle, um, I don't. I know how well that game would do in a competitive online multiplayer space, it would probably become unbalanced to the point of being neutered and not being fun overall. The joy of that game is that it's not balanced, it's chaotic. and every new game is a completely new and wild experience if you want to talk about an old school N64 multiplayer game that was so well balanced it was boring and overshadowed and no one remembers it turac rage wars yeah I vaguely remember that one uh By the way, my little brother still has our N64 and the giant stack of N64 cartridges, so there are still things in the family including Majora's golden mask and we also had the horrible Superman 64 game.

I still never got past the first level. Listen, that game is an underrated gem and I'll fight everyone here. Fair enough, um, so some other gems, so let's say N64 Jet Force Gemini from rareware, it's awesome, we played. the multiplayer for that game wasn't that robust it's perfect dark but it was a lot of fun it was a lot of fun um and then since I played that CU campaign you could replay levels and find new hidden things like the replayability of that campaign was amazing um or another N64 title. I don't know if anyone knows this game, but it's my favorite racing game of all time.

It's called Extreme G. I remember, yeah, I think the plot is like the plot doesn't matter. a racing game, but I think the plot is like it's a post-apocalyptic Earth that humans left, they live on another planet and the Earth is like this Wasteland, but they rise like motorcycles, like robotic motorcycles, from computers in stations space or whatever. to have fun on old Earth roads or whatever and it has some of the most unlikely but coolest tracks where you do these ridiculous loops and big jumps like, yeah, it's still my favorite race. today's game, have you ever heard of vanders v n g RS is actually not Bell?

No, there are enough YouTube videos to edit me. I'll put it back here. It's an incredibly strange, strange-looking and very strange experience, and the first puzzle to solve is how. even starting a game with that confusing UI. I'm not, it's one of those games. I'm not even exaggerating, it's a game where without the manual you'll be lost forever, but it's also amazing. I can't recommend it enough, it's so weird huh. I'll have to look, I'll check it out, I'll check it out for sure, but uh um, so I guess I would like it. I have many more gems.

Do you want more gems? Oh, of course, I'm always ready. I was. I was about to ask you earlier, but I didn't want to get carried away with the gems. Speaking of the N64 hybrid for Sega Genesis, it was my first game that I fell in love with as a kid. We had a Sega Genesis in the house that my two older brothers played and I was only allowed to watch because I think it was like three, three and four. By the way, I love chameleon boy, yes, yes, I would like to see them play chameleon boy and preser zerker was my favorite cousin. he was like he was like a rhinoceros man like why would you want to change to uh what's the name of the samurai?

Is it called red steel or something? I can't remember it, but I remember exactly what it looked like, yeah, I was like there's only two, there's only two, but obviously the ops are like the guy in the tornado and then the guy on the hoverboard. I don't know, I think it's called Sky Cutter and I don't remember, but I wasn't like those. Doesn't look good compared to Berserker and Juggernaut. Juggernaut was like the skull head with the helmet sticking out of the tank and the skulls shooting out of the tank. Turns out I discovered later in life that it was actually the worst helmet you could get. game because it always got stuck apparently I didn't know but yeah I played that game again as an adult it's an amazing platformer and I don't feel like there's another platformer that really does what a kid does. chameleon did it too or even in some kind of similar, the closest thing I can think of is like the raccoon hat for Mario or whatever, yeah, Alex's childish games trying to get close, but I mean, you're right.

Didn't I completely forget about those? Yeah, there are a couple, there are a couple of Alex Kid games that come a little bit close to that Vibe Chameleon Kid, but you have to get there pretty late, you know, there are so many iterations of Alex Kid. you have to, you know, do research to try to find the good ones, um, let's see, okay, uh, there are more games that influence me, like why I became such an original Starcraft concept artist, you'll laugh at me because my first experience with Starcraft was that we had the Nintendo 64 Port of Starcraft and that was my first experience with it and I fell in love.

I didn't know anything about the PC version, we didn't have a computer at the time. By the way, I still bought the N64 version. you mention Starcraft, I just have to say this real quick, my life to GO, man, I can quote all those, I can quote all those units, man, like it was, I was playing it at such an impressionable time in my life, yeah, like um SCV ready to go. sir operational battlecruiser in the room to equip my favorite is all the same, I like it, if we get in a car, my wife does not fasten her seat belt, I always do it, we are not equipped with shields, so you better Let's fasten our seatbelts.

Um, yeah, so, it was like we had a computer at home a couple of years after that and that's when I knew there was a PC version that was much better, right? And then, yeah, I love the release of Starcraft and Starcraft. Breed Wars uh and then we got Warcraft 3 for PC and it was like the light went out man, that was a gateway drug for me because then that opened me up to DOTA and still well, I had to give up on DOTA. recently because I get too addicted to playing that game. I love it so much and I received a message.

I got a message just now for bongore b o n g r uncore on Twitch you mentioned DOTA. I have to mention my favorite DOTA streamer. on Twitch. In fact, I know that maybe if I shout out his name in this little interview, I'll get him to go and return to Kickstarter. I'm not very well connected in the DOTA scene, but I do know some of the personalities, so I used to work on some mods for the Suns fan I used to be. I don't know if it's still part of DOTA Cinema, but it used to be, and it did.

He made a couple of really cool mods for DOTA. and I did some concept art for it, so I thank the Suns fans and they actually just ran it, he and another DOTA personality, Jenkins, just ran a Kickstarter. I think it's called Relic Arena, it's very inspired by Auto Chess, so it's kind of an auto fighter, but it's its own spin, so yell, yell at all of them um and yeah, thank you, I wouldn't be here without you guys, that It's amazing, yeah, yeah dude, the DOTA scene is dismissed for being toxic. but it's not really like that, people who say it's toxic is because it's like it's a competitive game, of course people when it's in competition will be a little rude and cheeky, like you've never seen professional sports like that.

Look at Jordan like he's taking on a bird or Clyde Drexler or dunking on Matumbo and then you know, wagging his finger like it's just part of the competition, but when I started as an artist I used to post as a fan. The art on the subreddit and likes would always be upvoted and are so positive, like it's one of the most supportive places for creatives, if you make even the crappiest edit of likes fail and post it there, people . they'll eat it up, they love supporting creativity, so I think it has an unfair reputation for toxicity, like I just don't know, people like to tilt at windmills.

I think I agree, sorry, it was a DOTA tangent, it was a DOTA tangent for us. you can return it to underrated gems if you want. Well, I mean, when you were talking about DOTA and toxicity, I had to talk about the fact that Bonger is one of my streamersliterally a magic spell that knocks dragons out of the sky. I feel like the nine at the end of his journey are probably the most powerful, but I don't know if I'll get them at the end of his journey is right and it's like, oh no, no, Doak is like a divine being from the beginning of the game, like that. that the beginning of their journey is okay, okay, and they're like they're designed specifically to fight and control dragons, so yeah, yeah.

I would choose, I would choose the agent, but that's because I'm a man of principle. I understand your choice and I can't, but yes, so before I try to contact you about the project I have, I assume it will be my next one. The question for you is: Do you have any questions for me as an obsessed Daggerfall fan of almost 30 years who is equally obsessed with what you're doing now? Yes I actually do, when did you first play Daggerfall? What was your first version? Get out of the first dungeon without dying. I played it for a bit.

A couple of months after it was released, that's how I remember it, 3D FX Voodoo came out and that's when I got Daggerfall, when was I able to afford to upgrade my computer to get the game, it was definitely the same year because It was almost the day that Voodoo 3dfx hit the market because I remember buying it at Best Buy and then going to Toys R Us to get my copy of Dagger Fall. Shout out to Toys R Us may he rest in peace, but I used him. go there and beg my mom through Legos.

I remember, uh, on the way home and this is still like on the way home, memory unlocks every time I think of old video games in the old days, new video game manual, it always smells. It comes to mind when you open the box in the car on the way home and did you get the official Prima strategy guides along with it? I just didn't do it, good man, good man, additional purchases were never made. I can afford to upgrade my graphics card. a little more RAM and I get Daggerfall and then I go home and, pretty good, that sounds like a good day and I remember reading the book and not retaining anything and then opening the game, something blew me away, a kid with a Sega CD already knew and then created my first character and instead of customizing him like I do now, like everyone does, I was a fighter, I was a boring guy with boring, just normal, no, fighters are not boring.

Fighters are one of the most versatile classes in all RPGs ever so I feel like they are overlooked because their name is just generic fighter yeah I better name them all not so epic like Paladin, right, he's not a master, yes, yes, but I remember I didn't make them. He came out of the dungeon many times. Did the imp kill you? You're how can I beat this imp yeah, yeah, that was my experience because, uh, I started with Marind on the Xbox and like we were It wasn't like a house with one console, that's how it was, I think, and that's how it was in the past, like when your friends would like to unplug their console and bring it all over to your house and set it up and they were like, buddy, have you played the PlayStation? games yet no buddy let's play some cool edges and like you we also had our home PC at the time and of course it was just me and my brothers playing on it so I went back and got a copy . from Daggerfall and I played it that way and it was like wow, this is a very different game than Marwi and yes, I died a lot for the imp before I finally discovered it, but it was super satisfying when I did, it was like asking the internet beforehand and automatically he'll give you the answer and call you an idiot at the same time, you know, so it was like you have to realize that, yeah, no, my first year of adolescence as that imp's PTSD is the reason why I continue to this day.

As a man in his 40s, whenever I'm asked if there are any creatures I associate with, if any, it's always the mischievous imps because that's the type I'd rather have the chance to pacify. I hate that guy dude you gotta get like you gotta get like a cell phone case that's literally like the ebony dagger it's like it's because of that stupid little imp that traumatized me I always have to have an e dagger with me at all times that e dagger is a crutch as the game now plays 30 years later, that ebony dagger is 100% a crutch so I have to ask if there is anything interesting that you can show us that no one has seen yet oh yeah, totally yeah, um um yeah we can totally show it uh here's an image uh and this is for Raven Harbor this is a key art image so these are some Salty Sea Dogs that hopefully you can find in the early access version , Raven Harbor, has been shown, is on the iar map, to the right, and so it will be. one of the main locations is a port city, there aren't actually any cities in RAR because it's more of a back right, there's no sprawling metropolis or anything like that, but it's going to be a pretty major hub, and these are some dwarves and merchants unloading their loot, uh. the guy front and center who would be like your Captain uh now look, this is where occasionally the rule of cool overrides plausibility, his hull wouldn't work on a sailboat that would get caught in the portcullis, right, that's true , don't we think? about that and Victor and I were like no, that's great, you have to do it right because if you've seen our other midgets like the one we called that's what a prototypical midget looks like. their helmets have these little wings on them, uh and it's like we designed them after asdic and Obelix, like um, old french, uh, is it a french comic, yeah, yeah, yeah, those old characters, yeah, um, we're good , but let's take this? and we tried to take it seriously and that was the starting point, right?

Do that, we're going to get mustaches, so some of them have beards, but the mustache is always more prominent. Which is ironic because I have a mustache and we didn't decide that because I have a handlebar mustache, that was purely coincidental. um, so that's uh, I guess I should explain how Wayward is right, that that's the general guiding principle of art direction and writing, and everything we do as Wayward is Shakespearean to say weird and the only way What I really like is that we have a complete document that explains what it is, but the best way I know how to describe it is when everyone else is zig zagging and that's one of those cases of yeah, we're not going to make beards, we're going to zag and make mustaches, look, French, uh, is it a French comic, yeah, yeah, those old characters, yeah, um, we're like, okay, let's take this and try to take it seriously and that was like the point starting right, uh, that's why and then we also said okay, so the typical fantasy approach um for dwarves is beards, right, we thought, let's not do that, let's do mustaches instead, so some of them have beards, but the mustache is always more prominent, which is ironic. because I have a mustache and we didn't decide that because I have a handlebar mustache, that was purely coincidental, um, so I guess I should explain how Wayward is right, that's the general guiding principle of art direction. and writing and everything we do as Wayward is a Shakespearean thing that means weird and the only way I really like it is if we have a whole document that explains what it is, but the best way I know how to describe it is when everyone else zigs and zags us they like.

That is one of those cases in which yes, we are not going to make beards, but we are going to make zags and mustaches. That's Wayward's approach to art and design for Wayward Realms, also for you for Keen Eye, there's a crab. hidden somewhere in this image, so enjoy it, uh, yeah, do you have any questions about that? Want? I can talk a little about our door floor if you want. I found that crab. Oh, you did good, okay, don't ruin it for everyone. otherwise, oh, I pointed it out, I put my finger right on it, so that's the uh, I think we've shown the dwarf and sea witches, so they'll be a pretty common sight on the more expensive dwarf ships. they're not necessarily magicians it's more like folk medicine more or less like they are like I'm like you remember in Willow, I fish for the bones and then in private he's like the bones don't tell me anything it's kind of like I like it a little bit, ya You know what I mean because magic is relatively rare in this setting, so it's actually more like popular superstitions, but like you're the captain of a dwarf and a sailboat and you know you're worth it?

You're going to have a sea witch on your ship because they do. There's some wisdom in that they're kind of like oh, it seems like they are. Like there's going to be a storm up ahead, we need to anchor or whatever, or go this way to avoid bad weather or whatever, so they keep an eye out for that, so is there any practical use for them, um, like that? that they are dwarfs. Raven Harbor, uh, it's a port town, but it's also a logging town, so you'll see, you'll see a lot of, actually, heavily wooded on the roads outside of Raven Harbor on the land that's not directly around it because they've got it cleared right, but in the surrounding area, yes, I actually did a concept for a sawmill that I assume will be displayed somewhere down the line specifically for Raven Harbor and since I did it, you wouldn't believe how difficult it is.

To like the current age of the Internet, it's like a medieval sawmill and everything is like building a medieval sawmill in Minecraft. I think I don't think this is how they really looked or it's like a medieval sawmill mod for Skyrim. and I think I don't think that's what they actually looked like, so I found this sawmill that's been in operation since the 1800s in Maine and I guess the idea of ​​the water-powered sawmill, that technology has been basically the same for everyone. the times. lasts from 1500 years ago until we started using, as you know, oil-powered, you know, oil-powered things are right, so it is indeed historically accurate, obviously, it was built in the United States and it's main, but as I.

I actually used that as the basis for our wood bill, which will be shown later, but sorry, that's a random tangent. Yeah, anyway, do you have any questions about the picture or about Raven Harbor or the dwarves so we know about the sawmill and uh actually, I personally have a question about the dwarves. I noticed you guys chose and this may be a question for language guys, but you guys chose dwarf instead of traditional dwarf, that's just more rebellious, we decided on Zig when everyone else zagged that makes a lot of sense to me that's our orc we write orc with a K instead of a c you're right it's the same it's the same as an author as if there isn't there is no specific reason for it it's just that it makes us different, you know what I'm going to say , dwarf is dwarf with his little finger.

I think if you listen to half of Ted's developers, we stand up and say midget instead of midget all the damn time, that makes sense. um and you know what the thing is if you end up interviewing Nick or Ben they're two language nerds, they probably have a real explanation for why we did that and I like that I'm not going to pay attention to this conversation. I know what I mean because that's who I am. Ultimately it doesn't affect me when I'm creating concepts for dwarves, yeah it's like I often say that eventually I'd like to have a conversation with Ted because he did something I've been playing for so long, but I don't want to ask Ted too many questions about games.

I'd just like to talk to him because one of my favorite old sayings is, "If you like sausages." I shouldn't talk too much to the butcher, that's, uh, that's pretty good wisdom, that's some solid wisdom, friend Ted I don't want to speak for him, but I would posit that Ted would be more than happy to do an interview with You, my interview with Ted would just be me chewing fat with him, really CU, there are so many questions about Daggerfall and stuff, but the thing is, a lot of other people have already done that, so he would just be, uh, but as a friend, he was. and he worked on Bones, ask him about that if you want, he was on Bones for a long time, the show, yeah, check out his imv page, check out all the other games he worked on and other creatives. projects of which he was part.

Sorry, I've been in a Daggerfall hole for 30 years. You know the story. There are all kinds of things you can talk to him about. You know the story about that Japanese guy that came up. a hole in the 80s and found out that World War II was over, yeah, yeah, I'm that guy. I have been in a hole since 1996 and only came out of it when the light of the

wayward

Kingdoms shone on you, you are not lost. Don't worry, so the only question I really have left for you, I guess, is: Is it done yet?

No, what happens now? No, no, how about now? Definitely not, damn it. Thanks for your time. follow NEC on Twitch for stupidity y'all who's crazy about necrons?