Asura Cinematic Intro

[Balandar]

From ArenaNet:

Opening cinematics are designed to educate a player as to the world background, the racial background, and the impact of the choices they made for their character. But, packed in amid all that lore is the hope that the cinematic will be inspiring. In an ideal world, we want the player to be so busy yelling “AWESOME!” at the end of the cinematic that it takes them a minute to find their keyboard and mouse again.

But what is “inspiration?”

During our creative process, these cinematics go back and forth between lore writers and artists; a wonderful succession of “one-upsmanship” where both sides are trying to contribute more and more amazing into the work. The cinematic has to grab the player and show them — through imagery and words —things that strike close to the heart.

We have a certain advantage on our side; the player chose this race, and that specific biography answer, because the player was already interested in those things. So we build them up. We write the asura with an attitude of complete intellectual dominance. By doing so, we encourage the player to see those traits in their character —and get excited about it.

Asura

Although the asura played a modest role in Guild Wars: Eye of the North, it’s only in Guild Wars 2 that we’ve been able to really establish them.

From their magical cities to their high-minded philosophy of the Eternal Alchemy, the asura have a marvelous depth to their culture that we wanted to showcase—all in a minute and a half of cinematic. Wshoo! We needed this cinematic to do more than many others: define the asura colleges and mindset as well as establish the race’s place in the world. When dealing with concepts like “synergetics,” it’s important that we have clear writing and striking visuals. With the asura cinematic, we wanted to show the different colleges, their experiment styles, and their studies to really concretely illustrate how each one was distinct from the others.

Thanks for reading about the asura and their portrayal in cinematics! Last but not least, the cinematics for the sylvari — coming soon in an upcoming blog! Stay tuned.