Road to E3
Matt Amenda: First off, it says on the Ashen homepage that this is Aurora44’s first game. And now it’s one of the featured indie titles of E3 2015. How did that happen? How was your game chosen to be featured?
MA: How has being featured at E3 affected the studio? Are things more chaotic now?
Now that we are back in the office its business as usual.
Inspirations
MA: A lot of your studio, yourself included, came from Weta Digital. That’s a lot of VFX experience! With those kind of high-budget graphical chops, what made you decide on the low-poly art style?
Characters and Story
MA: Now, in most of the promo images and gifs we see what looks like a brown-haired male with a wooden shield doing everything. But in the E3 video we saw him get a spear in the guts and left to die, ending with a different character kneeling on a hill. Does this mean that there is no single protagonist?
MA: I’m curious about how the story works. You describe the game as all about building relationships and exploring huge, iconic environments, and featuring “passive multiplayer” with other players you meet in the world. Is all of that part of a single story with an ending? Or is it ongoing like an MMO?
In the case of the trailer, two players meet up and explore ancient ruins together, one of them dies and the other just barely escapes with her life.
Building a an Iconic World
MA: You describe the world as “hand crafted environments as far as the eye can see,” and you also describe it as “a world that moves on without you.” What does that mean? Do the environments change even if you’re not playing?
MA: Can you tell us how big the world is?
MA: Can you give us a rough release window on the game?
Understandably, Mr. Bradley is keeping the details of the story under wraps for now. But after showing off one of the most artistically distinctive indie games of E3, Aurora44 seems well on their way to creating something “iconic.”
For further reading, you can visit their Ashen website or their devlog on Tumblr.
