New World: Fellowship & Fire Season – Balance and Music

Amazon Game Studios’ MMORPG New World recently got its first progression season in Fellowship & Fire. Not merely a way to introduce a Season Pass to the game, this update also added some fresh content and adjusted the combat balance.

As such, we can now check out a new episode of the Forged in Aeternum video series where the game’s creative director Dave Verfaillie “dives deep into combat and takes a hard, honest look at the state of balance in New World.”

Check it out:

Then, you might also be interested in this article where audio director Jean-Edouard Miclot talks about the season’s new soundtrack and audio design in general. Here’s an excerpt:

COMMANDER MARIUS

“I saw an early look of Commander Marius,” said Jean-Edouard (Jed) Miclot. “There was a lot of fire everywhere and I was worried that he’d end up sounding too noisy. He had a metallic helmet with two big horns and held a large axe that kind of looked like he was from an 80’s heavy metal band. His animations almost mimicked someone playing an electric guitar so I think I swore at this point and said, why not in New World?”

“I ran all sorts of metallic sounds through a bunch of guitar distortion units and recorded an hour’s worth of electro-acoustic screams and slides that I used for his movements. It had a lot of attitude but Marius was still missing a voice. I looked at him closely and saw a face in fusion so I searched for metaphors from the real world. What could breath and evoke fire? I ended up using a Firefighter SCBA recording for his breathing which was kind of a cool nod to my favorite villain Darth Vader.”

“For his grunts and efforts, I used lion roars processed through a granular patch that I made in Kyma just because it sounded like a vicious beast trapped in a resonating metal cabinet. That did the trick!”