Creating the Darkness Event in New World was probably the most difficult aspect of the project for me. Pitching to get new tech built while working with new design tech and trying to establish a whole new visual look for the game was very challenging for me. My coworkers and I joke that we really went into Darkness to create the event. In the end I think we created something pretty awesome and now it’s one of the main pillars of our game.
The Darkness Visual: The Art director asked me to see if I could R&D a new visual that would put players into a different dimension. Something like Stranger Things when they go to the Upside Down. I remembered creating this suffocating look years ago for what is now the “Corrupted”. It was green and had a ton of fog to create this creepy feeling. Inspired by that, I wanted to make players feel uncomfortable and suffocating when they were inside the zone. So I started playing with the fog settings and started to really push it. Then played with the colors to help match the corrupted look. After getting the fog right, it was all about adding the icing on the cake with bright portals, magic aura pushing out, red and black embers flying in front of your face. I just kept playing with it and in the end is what you see now. Was a very cool process for me to learn how much fog married with proper VFX can really turn it into a different world.
The Darkness In Game Cinematic: Captain Thorpe you meet at the beginning of the game needed a cool introduction and I was asked to put together the VFX for it. This was our first cinematic attempt for the game and it was pretty fun. The tight deadline really put the pressure while creating it but overall turned out pretty cool and a lot of these shots got into the marketing videos.
The Darkness In Game Fights: Sample of gameplay video that happens inside the darkness with it’s corrupted creatures castings spells. Hope everyone enjoys this experience if you’re playing!
The Darkness Study: Just quick captures of myself studying where to take the visuals of Darkness.
All media are from the game New World and Amazon Game Studios owns all the rights. For more about the game:http://www.newworld.com
