Ethyrial: making quests and storylines for a fantastic game!

I love working on multiple projects, and when I get the chance to help develop a game like Ethyrial: Echoes of Yore, then I’m all in!

Ethyrial: Echoes of Yore has a fantastic concept when it comes to the world, to truly let players feel like they’ve stepped into a breathing, living universe. Choices you make will impact your character and the world around it. Because GellyBerry studios have created all their tools themselves for the past eight years, they’ve made it incredibly easy to push out quality content quickly. Because of this, if you’re the first player to find a secret passage, you might end up being the only player on the server with an item, or a title. Maybe there’s a boss for only three days, and at the end of those days, its gone forever. Those who killed it got the rewards, and the rest will have to wait until a new boss or mystery is introduced.

But, let’s talk about the conversation system!

You actually talk to the NPCs in the game. If you need an amulet, you better make damn sure you write it. NPCs respond differently to whatever the player writes. Saying “Sup” and “Greetings” have different responses, and if you walk up to an innkeeper saying “I will kill you,” you better make sure you can.

NPCs react to different keywords and it opens up to new interactive gameplay, where if you meet a strange woman as you enter a town, and ask the blacksmith about his daughter, you might find out the two are connected. Or perhaps you find a note in a house, and when you ask a city guard about it, it starts a quest. Stuff like this is why I’m so excited for Ethyrial! Especially because I get to make it. I will help develop everything that has to do with story and lore in Ethyrial; from simple quest lines to huge story arcs, and I can’t wait to get started.

An actual breathing world that doesn’t care about you

I’ve played World of Warcraft (WoW) since I was twelve (and now I’m twenty-eight), and it’s been a huge part of my life, like Star Wars and Lord of the Rings. What was so amazing about WoW was the feeling of stepping into something greater, something so grand it would be a true adventure. You were allowed passage into this world where you started out as a nobody in a world so rich and so uncaring. You started out in level 1, a simple, new, adventurer, and the world felt like it breathed without you in it, as if it kept existing when you logged off. You had to claim your spot, just like everyone else. If you saw someone with cool gear, you would have to go through the same trials to get it. When you entered a new place with quests, they weren’t dependant on each other; one asked you to go to the northeast to deal with the undead, while another to the other side of the map. It was your responsibility to figure out the most effective way to do the quests. Sometimes you were lucky, other times it just sucked and you had to travel the whole zone to do two quests. But that made it all feel so worth it at the end when you’d actually done the work.

World of Warcraft today is so different

When you get to a new place with quests, you might see two available. You take them, and they also happen to require you to go to places right next to each other, and be about the same thing. It’s convenient and goes quickly. “How nice,” you might be thinking. You deliver them and get three new ones. These three are also all bundled together at another location. You complete these too and this is how it goes on forever.

I don’t feel like I’m making any decisions. It feels like I’m being told how to play the game, and much more: the world feels like it’s made for just me, constructed to my convenience. I’ve grown to dislike this a lot. I feel like the road is prepared for me, instead of me having to prepare for the road.

That is not what Ethyrial will be!

In Ethyrial, you have to make your own way. There are main quests, but you won’t have an arrow showing you where to find them. You have to immerse yourself in the world.

The world is not built for you and doesn’t revolve around the player, instead, you get to partake in a living, breathing world full of mysteries waiting to be solved.

This is exactly what I miss in WoW and in so many other games today: real challenge and a chance to make yourself out to be who you want to be. Growing from zero to hero feels amazing. In WoW today, you’re called “Champion” every quest, and you’re treated as if you’re some sort of key for Azeroth’s continuation. While I played, whenever I was told I was the key I kept thinking “I bet you tell that to all the other boys and girls too.” And I wasn’t wrong.

In Ethyrial, if you’re the first to do something that grants a badass title, it’s yours. There are no name-changes, or realm transfers. If you’re known for being evil, you will be known for that, until you turn for reputation around. Your choices matter for your character, your spells, your skills, your renown. It’s amazing, and I can’t wait to create a great storyline for it.

At the end of qeusts, you might be celebrated as a hero at the end, or despised by the local guard. Maybe you chose to aid the bad person and therefore another quest is banned for you, but aligning with him opens more doors later because of his influence.

Who knows? Who do you want to be?

You progress through different paths in the quest by saying different sentences and words to the NPCs, meaning you have to actually think about what you say. You have to be engaged and active.

In Ethyrial yon won’t always be punished for acting sinister. That’s not how the real world works. Sometimes being the hero is fantastic, yet sometimes it pays off way better to act heinously. It can really go both ways, you just gotta decide if you’re looking out for number one or wants to be a savior.

There’s so much more I can say about the game, but showing a video is often easier. The game enters a closed alpha soon, and you can get to play by following the links in the video.

If you want to know more about how the game works, check it out here:

The people aboard this game are amazing, and I’m privileged to work with them. To see more of their content, check out their channel here.