Star Citizen Live: Narrative History

2 August 202400:57:041,498 linesWatch on YouTube ↗

Transcript — every row opens the video at that moment

00:00:00
like they were the ones who put in the tangerin dream score that had to be done very quickly I guess yeah oh what what what year was Legend 86 85 Tom Cruz yeah I think it was 80 85 maybe I don't know my instinct was 89 but that feels way too late that's way too late I think it was around it was before Top Gun are you thinking of Legends of the Fall no no Legend was not a legend was not 82 Legend did not come before risky business no it was definitely I mean he was very young so I think it was it was pre Legend was not 1982 I think it was 83 or 84 welcome to Star Citizen Law uh uh uh Legend soring Tom Hardy and Tom Hardy 2015 that's not the right one 1985 85 okay 1985 yeah it's basically that and Back to Future
00:00:49
they're pretty much the same movie CU When was topcon was what ' 86 top was 86 yeah no whatever else anybody ever wants to say about Tom Cruz his choice of directors like like like he hooks up with just his his list of directors as a murderer's roow oh yeah you hear that there's an edge of tomorrow two in development now it's been in development does it take place on the same day I hope so here they here they called it live finally tomorrow they call it Live Die Repeat here it's just it should just should be twice like be juice Be Live Die Repeat Live Die Repeat like that should just be what it they in the US they changed it to live I repeat did they yeah it was sort of a post release like even after it came out on DVD I think they changed it yeah movie weird Choice hi everybody I have no idea if that's GNA
00:01:39
any of that's going to be in the uh the YouTube version if you're watching this on YouTube later uh this is either a normal start or we just burn the first 90 seconds with a talk about Tom Cruz movies uh welcome to uh show Star Citizen live I'm your host Jared hucke if you've never seen Star Citizen live before it's where we take a a period of time at of the end of our week usually it's an hour um in days leading up to Citizen con with all of our different uh requirements sometimes it's going to be a little less sometimes it's a little more I think we had an episode the other week that was like an hour 17 so it might be a little bit less might uh probably won't be a little bit more I got a tight five you got a tight five uh where we take up some time out at the end of our week we sit down with our developers we chat we we we find out a little bit about them we have a couple different formats uh within stars and
00:02:28
live there's the Game Dev format which we've been doing for the last couple weeks where we invite people we set up a computer and we actually watch them work for a while while I do some peanut gallery stuff on the side uh we've got the Q&A where we put up a thread on spectrum and invites you to submit your game related questions to the team uh uh we ignore like at least a third of them because they're not related to the team that's actually being interviewed and we ask the rest of them they answer them uh and then there's this week's show uh which is our interview format where uh we don't really we're not really going to talk about the game much at all uh not the pro not the not the game as you play it but the project and our our esteemed guests history how they came to the project what they do stuff like that so it's more a learn getting to know us kind of show and uh our particular likes like Tom Cruz movies and the the the over of Ridley Scott and uh there will
00:03:17
definitely be some Michael Keaton before we're done uh so joining us on the show this week are two folks I would hope need no introduction but you know there's always somebody new who's joined some project so we're going to do it anyway um Dave and will Dave will how you doing guys hello hey how's it going I I'm I'm good you're you're both finally here like I think this is my first time filming anything on this on the set yeah because but yes you came for the one visit last year well now this is your first time visit uh what do you think it's nice huh it it's do you want it's okay it's okay do you want to wear do you want to wear one of the helmets no I'm good thank you you sure yeah I'm sure you can wear can you actually wear the parasite helmet uh you can't wear the parasite helmet but you can wear the the Marine helmet and you can wear the uh uh uh the the the jimmy hat and you can wear that's not the
00:04:05
appropriate term for or the they're beautifully made it's an impressive collection I have an oddly shaped head so I feel like you want to try one I don't like [Laughter] helmets uh there there's a button on there that says this is going to be one of those shows we're learning so much Tom Cruz helmets that's right uh um so uh will because you're in the you're you're in the hot sea here uh tell everybody who you are what you do for Star Citizen hi I'm will Weiss bomb I am the associate narrative D oh man associate narrative director here for squadron 42 and Star Citizen projects uh I've been with the company and just celebrated my 10y year anniversary so it been a clear decade developing narrative
00:04:56
lore stories writing dialogue writing backstory pieces writing design guides to help branding and art and the mission team create what they can create and yeah it's a heck of a lot of fun I feel really honored to be part of the project and hopefully making stuff that you all out there are excited about 10 years do you remember what month did you start uh it was my start date was I think it was May May 2014 yeah that would be yeah 10 years I nobody's ever looked at Jared Huck and said that guy knows math so okay so so ten so yeah you're just you're just ahead of me there as far as your your your uh your your your I was going to say terminology that's not the right word your tenure tenure nobody ever looked at that guy and said he's vocabul
00:05:44
yeah I do have tenure now so I can't be fired so that's great all right so look at this camera and see and on to uh uh uh Dave tell everybody who you are and what you do uh I'm Dave heck I'm the narrative director here at Cloud emperium so yeah work on Squad 42 Star Citizen uh basically what will does as well better uh and in high heels yeah uh yeah backwards yeah and and I dance uh but yeah just been working on basically like building the the the fictional Universe uh writing the scripts you know obviously we both of us were very very very in heavily involved with the Squadron 42 like production when we actually shot in London uh we were down there for that um but yeah otherwise
00:06:32
helping to build out SC and the Pu and uh content for the planets and we're starting to kind of tackle out some of the sort of social dynamics now in the the persistent universe and the social areas and stuff like that um but yeah just basically you know neck deep in story and character and dialogue and scripts and you're one of the you you're one of the first five or six people who joined the company you're you're you're up there yeah um yeah probably yeah five or six five or six yeah I mean it's just Chris Sandy ortwin yeah uh Ben was on force was doing some stuff uh and then there were some people who were kind of helping on the side Hest was doing stuff Paul was doing stuff yeah a couple people on the side
00:07:21
Sean Tracy was there in those side he wasn't technically employee yet but yeah but yeah they were they were kind of volunteering their skills and free time and stuff like that so so I asked that because that's a lot of what I want to talk about here uh uh Sean Tracy Sean Tracy basically uh he's not here to defend himself that's fair so um in in for inside Star Citizen we just hit our 500th episode wow congratulations yeah you know carrying that Legacy back through around the verse and through wingman's hanger and what as there's this concept there's this concept of of companies as these static unchanging un evolving UNG growing entities um I don't think it's I don't think it's absurd to say that the
00:08:10
blizzard of 1998 is not the blizzard of 2004 when I worked there it's not the same as the blizzard of 2024 you know it's it's the the Microsoft the same thing Google the same thing we're no immune to that we have grown we have evolved uh we have changed over yeah we're just like Microsoft and Google gole you know that's not what I meant uh this change is inevitable so one of one of my big interests is is in is in not maintaining that history but at least not losing it it it's it's it's those old days are are always really important to me because that's when I you know I started I discovered the project and stuff you know old old names like you mentioned Ben Lesnik just a just a few minutes ago and stuff wean hanger created by Eric wean Peterson
00:08:59
stuff so part of what I want to talk to you about this episode we is called narrative history and I it's I want to talk to you about your history and your time with the project and stuff and coming to it so Dave because you were here first if you don't mind will I'm going to start with Dave how did you connect with Chris Roberts and cig uh Dave if it's okay can I take this yeah yeah go for it check it out uh if you know go uh so um yeah it was sort of a weird a weird path uh I my background was in film so I worked in production uh and I did sound I did some editing I did a bunch of stort writing on the side trying to get something off the ground with very very very very little success um but I had actually was a intern at Chris's production company in La so uh
00:09:50
uh Adam Weezer who was also on the narrative team was there as well that's how I know him uh John shimel uh and uh so basically I I kind of met Chris through that I ended up working on a a movie he was producing called Outlander uh and worked on that for about two years two and a half years and was part got to go up while they were filming it up in in Nova Scotia and shoot behind the scenes stuff and basically was kind of just hovering around I was a kind of a good good gopher dude to do a bunch of stuff so was a PA director's assistant VFX coordinator stuff whatever needed to be done basically but I got to know that's how I got to know Chris and so in the aftermath of that um we we ended up kind of collaborating he had an idea that he was thinking of of developing that uh I ended up helping kind of flesh out and we would just sort
00:10:40
of work every day for a couple months and try to try to build a story and an outline and stuff like that and then you know it's kind of what happens with a lot of film projects like he got busy you know other things took priority and stuff like that and sort of kind of fizzled um but it was a really fun Dynamic like you know it was a very kind of open and free flowing ideas and kind of throw stuff out and it was you know no one was precious about anything it was always a very collaborative kind of creative environment uh and then I actually honestly didn't you know kind of kept in sporadic touch but you know I was uh off doing other stuff and you know also SL unemployed for a really long time uh but still trying to get writing off the ground with very little success and then Chris basically reached out to me and and asked like you know hey I've you know got this thing I'm putting together uh you know would you
00:11:28
be willing to to talk about it and so I went over to his house and he showed me kind of the early prototype of the what ended up being the GDC demo uh and I got to fly a hornet and I crashed into the Bengal a couple times uh and stuff like that and so he basically kind of pitched what he was sort of conceiving and uh thinking about trying to put together and interestingly enough so we went out and had lunch and kind of talked about it a bit and I had a job interview literally right after that so I left there and went to a job interview at a a VFX house uh that I did not get uh and uh but basically you know he asked if I want to come on board and I was like are you sure uh because I don't know games uh and um but you know so we started building the the lore and the fiction uh you know in the buildup to the GDC
00:12:17
announcement then we started doing the the kind of the framework for the fictional history of the game became what became known as the time capsules which were you know uh the 30-day leading up to his announcement of what would be Star Citizen we would do a drop every day basically to like kind of Flash Forward throughout kind of key historical moments in the game's fiction uh and it ended with you know the LA the final post was just today and then Chris gave his presentation are those time capsules still available they still are still a foundational part of the lore we do like yeah I still reference them to this day when writing historical thing to get grounded in like okay where in our history is this taking place or when
00:13:04
we've been flushing in more and more of that timeline it's it's impressive yeah they hold up which was like because again it was that thing of like it was 900 years of History so it was like what are the the main kind of landmarks and yeah thankfully they've still kind of held up and we're able to still kind of you know to them and if you're interested in checking out those time capsules you can go to Robert space and is.com uh after you get through all the thing after you ask it to log you in you're like why don't you remember me uh you can then go to commlink and then uh there's a series pull down and it's it's it's not alphabetical uh that would be too easy uh but somewhere in the middle there you'll see Time Capsule and you can find all those comics and then I would sort it by old to new so you start basically with present day and then
00:13:51
it'll take you all the way up to but it it's a great crash course I always kind of we had to do kind of an onboarding lore primer thing and that's my first recommendation is like if you want a real highlevel overview of what the kind of Crux of the universe is start with the old and go to the modern day and you'll be kind of conversational uh before we go forward I want to step back a little bit you met Chris before Star Citizen MH what what was he like what what what did you what was your impression of Chris when you first met him and remember you have 10 years so you can't be fired I didn't know you did an impression of Chris uh well I mean the irony was that I like I played wi Commander growing up and actually sold uh wi Commander 2 and three when I worked at babbit's in high
00:14:38
school uh so that was why when I saw the job posting at his production company I was like oh cool like I I knew so I knew his games uh going into it um but it was cool you know I mean again it was it an office so it was like you know I was working front desk and reading scripts and you know getting coffee and you know doing the usual stuff uh but um but yeah it was a cool Dynamic you know it was like like I said you know Adam Weezer was with the company was was there at the time and he was and John shimel was the president of production there and stuff like that so you know it was a really fun group of people and you you you you mentioned Chris isn't precious about some of those things I I found that in my time it's it's he's he's not afraid of the better idea if some if a better idea enters the
00:15:29
conversation it doesn't really matter where it comes from it's there's no like oh well you shouldn't have an opinion on this or whatever if if if if if a better idea is introduced like it's like well let's can we do that yeah good and that's actually it's one of the things that is both you're just going to be completely candid here it can be a source of frustration but also tremendous freedom and and and capability how we yeah that's Pete okay um and that's that want sometimes the better idea H comes and it's like oh you're still six months out so there's lots of times to Pivot so sometimes the better idea shows up three days before something's supposed to go public and you're like oh do we have time and it's like well is it really the better idea it's like everybody's like yeah it is it's like well let's do
00:16:17
everything we can to make it happen because you know we deserve to do what's the you know we deserve it and the people who support the project deserve to encounter the better idea now does it always end up being the better idea ideas that's Up For Debate but at the time we always think it's a better idea I always I always really like that when when people ask me about what it's like to work here I always cite that that that that Chris's uh Chris's acceptance of the better idea no matter who it comes from where it comes from and when it comes from and how that tends to filter down to the directors and everybody yeah it's about making the the best game that we can make and so or the best video the best trailer the best post the best whatever yeah it's it's it's affects everything now yeah I I mean we're we're always blazing new trails I think in a lot of what we do
00:17:05
and we don't we don't tend to hold the course just because it's the course we're on right um now of course you know deadlines and production discussions and costs and all that kind of stuff still factor in still factor into discussions I've been there where it's like well we can't do this now or we're working on this so let's wait but that vision gets set and we're always moving towards it so I think yeah it's it's interesting there there there's there's a lot of there's a lot of I mentioned the the frustration that come to us there's also frustration that that our players can sometimes feel when the course isn't held when it's like okay we've had a better idea we're going to change this you know we we we thought it was going to be this and then when we got there somebody had a better idea we really think this other direction is somewhere uh better to go uh there are many instances of that
00:17:54
happening over the course of star citizens 12 years I also think simultaneously that it there's been a Bedrock foundational element to the project from day one that like we can keep pointing back to and being like no we said this is this is what it is like we we drift away but we come back to like are we addressing what we want to make what is the core of Star Citizen and how do we get there so yeah of course I'm sure if you asked 100 star citizens you get 95 different answers about what star set is supposed to be we've all got this idea and stuff like this and and that's part of the unique thing of you know five studios around the world it's synthesizing everybody's idea into into into a hole and like that so how long were you here before will was here two years two years so so what were
00:18:44
those I'm going to try to I'm trying to go the days the glor the obviously the better days uh what do you remember of those of of those first days who do you remember what what was cig like uh I do know Dave ate at the same restaurant every day before I came on board that is true yeah I'm a very lazy eater it's more about just needing sustenance so uh I just would I found like like that place is good I'll just go there and so I just went to literally the same place was it that sandwich shop on Santa Monica no it was Tender Greens oh okay which you could do a lot worse but uh uh uh but no it was it was a lot sparser I mean again it was you know the the the reaction to the initial announcement was kind of overwhelming uh you know I mean it crashed the site while it was Chris
00:19:33
was giving the presentation uh but um uh but yeah so it was like I mean a lot of it you know once it was like oh okay so this is this is happening you know it became a you know I was doing three dispatches a week I had the Cal Mason Story the kid Crimson story and a news dispatch so it was like Monday was Cal Mason Wednesday was news dispatch and Friday was kid Crimson installments uh so it was a lot and then we started doing jump point on top of that so I was doing short stories for that and fiction uh but it was it was like kind of solidifying like oh okay so we you know we need to figure out all the things that we sort of glazed over in our initial conversations of like well what's in the Vandal really like and stuff like that like starting to dive into that starting to kind of test out
00:20:23
um story lines and outlines for squadron 42 what's the story going to be you you know uh talking with Chris about that and kind of getting his his download of like where he'd like to see the story go and and starting to sketch out ideas for that characters um yeah it was sort of I mean it was an interesting it was an interesting time because it was very like oh wow you know we're doing this thing and again like at the time you know I was you know I was hoping it was going to do well uh you know as I was working on it I was getting excited about the project but again you know you work on you have projects that start up especially in you know you know working at films where it's like oh you there's a lot of interest and then it wanes and something comes together it seems like it's going to happen then it falls apart you know so you get kind of kind of guarded about you know getting too excited about stuff because so you don't get too Crest
00:21:11
Fallen uh but you know when it's actually starts to kind of kick off it's like oh okay well where where do we start what do I do now you know so you mentioned the kid Crimson those were we I've talked to you about the kid Crimson a number of times that that that was my favorite series that's Tales of kid crimson what were the Cal Mason stories called Cassandra's tears I don't know why that association with there so so canders te Cal Mason Cal Mason this isn't a secret but Cal Mason's a character in Star in Squadron 42 well now it's not a secret spoilers check IMDb it's there Al also also there's like form Up Gal you know in in the in the in the the video the whole line last year so so so these short stories aren't just random stories that not all any random stories that just
00:22:01
also exist in the universe you know some of them actually feature characters that the that the eventual players will encounter yeah yeah I mean the C it's it's always been I mean it's been an ongoing discussion about it as over the years you know people have consistently sort of asked like you know are these actual events that are happening are they fictionalized events and we always kind of skirt the line of like there's sort of fictionalized accounts of real people uh who do exist so yeah I think for the most part it shakes out that the those Story series are stories in Star Citizen yeah so some of them are may be based on true things but the way they're told in the details it's still like you can imagine someone in SC reading a book called Cassandra's tears yeah well and I think the the early comparisons too were always the kind of like you know oh we want to ultimately do like this you know the sky are we going to do the Skyrim
00:22:49
books that you can find and stuff like that and it was like oh maybe we take these and they can just be be those stories that you find uh throughout the Universe yeah I remembered my my very first Squadron shirt said Cal is my wingman yeah on the back it's like that so that that that was always my confirmation that oh he's actually in the game you know even before I you know I came to work here um all right so at this point we're in May two uh 20124 or 2014 2014 yeah uh uh how did Will how did you get hooked up with the project uh I was actually previously i' been working at Sony Santa Monica um and on what huh on what it was an unannounced project that ended up not going forward and so there was a bit of a reduction in Workforce caught up a
00:23:38
whole bunch of people and you allowed to say what you allowed to say what it was no okay tell me later I mean previously i' had been working on the God of War titles but they were trying to develop a new IP and it didn't end up happening um and so Sony as kind of a consolation prize held a job fair with all the local game studios and invited them out to be like hey unfortunately we're letting a bunch of talented people go come and meet them which was a really ni thing and I had like done all my research before about who was hiring narrative and blah blah blah and um I hadn't even planned to go to the cloud Imperium Booth because they weren't hiring narrative and I was just having a a soda at a table and I started chatting with someone and they're like oh you know we might be looking for writers soon you
00:24:25
should give me your information and so ended up talking to Dave and John and we ended up clicking really well and so started working on the project and it was funny like at a time in our small smaller office in Santa Monica I would be sitting on like a little chair like this with my laptop on my keyboard with Dave and John in the office well the wasn't it the irony when you the day you started I was out of town yeah I think something like that I was over I think I was over here uh they also gave me a desk and then the next week when I came in it was gone and I was like whatever and apparently they had moved all my stuff without telling me and I was like I just got fired well CU they put you across the office and then I think cuz that was we were in this sort of like ice box corner office thing which is the coldest place on Earth uh which is you know but uh but yeah they had for some
00:25:14
reason put will across the office and then we were like move them I mean it it was great I I mean one of the first things that I got a chance to write on was the commercial for the M50 was coming out and before that uh Dave had done a bunch of really cool commercials that were all very much like car commercials in Vibe so it was kind of a challenge at that point of like okay could we do one of the ship commercials that wasn't in tone and that's kind of how the idea of Jax came about yeah that was the first Galactic gear yeah of like yeah yeah so so who created J yeah so totally original idea not based on anything um he like leg distinct so it was kind of mindblowing
00:26:02
too because like like I was used to working on video game projects that were like you did something and then worked on it for four or five years in secret and then it came out but I wrote that script and I think like within two months or something like that they had produced this amazing cinematic and it was out there and people were reacting to it and that's kind of like I fell in love with the project for the mediacy of writing a lore post and going and reading what people were saying about it and being like oh they're right about that or like oh they didn't understand what I was going for I got to get better at doing that and it was a really interesting way to write I've never had that experience before I I I very much relate to that uh before the pandemic I was approached by another uh game to basically hey you want to come over and
00:26:51
do what you do but for us and you know I wasn't interested but I was like you know I took the I took the conversation who was and and it's I don't know it's a big field full of stars and and the thing I the first question I asked was how often do I get to publish how often you know how many videos and they're like well it won't be for a few years you just kind of film for a couple years and then there'll be a couple a handful of stuff towards release and I'm just like no I'm addicted to the immediacy I'm addicted to the I'm addicted to the I can I can have an idea for a show put all the pieces in motion film it edit put it out and in in in just under seven days and stuff like that uh yes we try to have ideas more sooner I think last week I gave up the
00:27:38
entire schedule for the rest of the season so you know it's not always like that but sometimes but sometimes there have been a number of occasions when the show that we had intended to go out with the next week can't like the feature just doesn't work like the the G the gamec cap guys who are Saints they're just like this it does not work we cannot capture any footage that just it's just not there and I'm like oh so we've lost next week's show okay and I have to invent an entirely new show from scratch you know with in in seven days uh and and that was that's actually how Sprint reports were born way back in the day uh you know piece of my history there but um but yeah that immediacy is a big is a big project I and before we go to on I wantan to I want to shout out I want to make sure we didn't we
00:28:27
didn't bury that Sony layoffs this year and last year have been brutal just effing brutal I didn't use my one swear uh Ju Just Just brutal for the game industry and to hear a story like that where it's like sometimes these things are unavoidable it's it's you know economic downturns whatever the project didn't work out not going to make it not every Titan can be pivoted to OverWatch you know uh that that they realized they had to let people go and they set up a job fair and they invited a whole bunch of other game studios and said come meet these people they're fantastic we just can't keep them yeah that is mindblowing to me yeah yeah it was pretty awesome so Sony S Monica good job now I know at the
00:29:16
beginning we said no company is a monolith and they change over time I have no idea if that's how they still they still are but at least at that point uh that's just I have big respect for that I have big respect for that for them all right so your first thing was Jack yeah pretty pretty up there I'm sure I did some stuff on the website before that stuck in my head and then like a year later we were shooting Squadron already so like there was like just a flurry of activity on getting all of that short up for our first big performance capture shoot and getting to go over here to the UK and travel and stuff yeah that's exactly where I want to go next so so this is about a year out from the from the from the shoot when you start you start and about a year later there's going to Big yeah so may to April you're going to have that
00:30:03
big shoot of Imaginarium Andy circuses uh performance capture stage down in where was it Pine eing eing um tell me about the runup to that because I'm sure you had drafts I'm sure you had bits and pieces and like bullet points stuff but now you've got to yeah we had I mean drafts is putting it mildly I mean chapter one had 82 drafts chapter one of squad 2 had 82 drafts 82 drafts I mean again some of those are minor changes some were heavier changes but it was it was a lot of rewriting but we we ended up doing a uh just to better overlap with the UK had it was what like two months where we were going into the office in Santa Monica at like uh 4:00 in the morning basically was like we would work from 4 and La is you know as
00:30:53
you know like the traffic there is awful uh and so we ended up kind of screwing ourselves because the idea was like all right well we'll go super early so that gives us more time to work with or be online the same time as like the s42 design team so we can ask questions if on the fly as we're writing churning out these this content and working with them on like what's the latest flow and all this stuff um but yeah we ended up kind of screwing ourselves because the idea was like well if we start at 4 in the morning like we kick off at like 2 in the afternoon but LA traffic is so bad that it would take 2 and a half hours for me to get home so I would end up staying till 6 anyway so it was just yeah it was a dumb idea but um but yeah so we we we did that and we were like kicking out a lot of drafts and just basically hammering out scripts for a
00:31:41
couple months leading up to the shoot just and and and how does that process work did did do I mean okay does one is one of you at the keyboard where the other one is over your shoulder saying you know do this do this this is do you divide and conquer and then and then hand each other the stuff kind of that yeah it was a lot of divide and conquer it was cuz usually it would just be like hey you grabb this chapter I'll grab this chapter you know whatever uh and then yeah do a draft swap give notes and but yeah we don't usually like sit and Hammer stuff out at the same time so did you ever I I've heard some stories about uh writing groups or writing tandems where they'll kind of assign characters to each one so
00:32:29
that so that the character voice is always consistent like this like after after the thing is done they'll go through a pass and this person will take all this person's dialogue and this person will take all that person's dialogue is that no I don't think so I mean it was there would be types of moments where it be like cuz will did a lot of the um a lot of the interstitial stuff is mostly his stuff like a lot of the inner character Dynamic stuff with like the crew I think he took I think he took kind of initial pass on a lot of that stuff but if I ended up having to do one like I would sort of ask if I had questions of like kind of what's your hook into this character what's their voice but a lot of times I mean again it's good we just try to keep the characters wildly inconsistent at all that's absolutely frenic but it's again like you know as you start reading stuff
00:33:17
we also I think we're kind of working sequentially so it was like if I read an earlier draft I could kind of get a sense of how we how he was writing the character and then just kind of pick that up and go with it and when we got close to final we were doing reading together and making notes because I think a lot of things got smoothed out as like we did our final reads and polishing and like you know we'd be talking about oh we're going to shoot these 10 pages tomorrow sitting at the production was we're about we're about to get into the production this is this is still there let's just do it since you introduced it so the production uh you guys were involved in the casting process as well working with John crew you got you had some feed back John shim John what I say John crew yeah I mean shout I mean John crew is vital to the project
00:34:06
yeah I but I guess just to go back about writing Squadron coming on the project and I cannot wait for everyone to get to experience this but like as far as the direction on Chris and just like wanting these really allowing us to give these very hopefully like meaningful small moments that I think is a little bit it's it's not completely unique in games but I think it is still special when you can come across it where it's just people kind of being people in these small little things for the player to discover and that he was excited about that and wanted more of that so well and also I mean one of the big uh kind of rules that we were given When approaching this stuff was that he intentionally did not want to you know and again I understand the methodology
00:34:54
behind it but what kind of falls into a sort of a a general video game Trope of you know you walk up to a character you you poke the button and they just kind of vomit their life story out to you so you understand you know why you need to go get those 20 wolf hearts or whatever like my family's dead and oh I'm so sad and I it's tough you got like five lines to do like have the player be able to understand everything about this person and so you end up being so it it but he was like I don't want that I want this to kind of onion skin it so like you know the players need to kind of spend time around these people they want to learn what's going on so it was like it was it opened up a lot of fun doors of and again the fact that we had to kind of accommodate for a full functioning crew that like you could just place these little vignettes and moments scattered around the ship of just people
00:35:43
being people and and we don't force it on like hopefully the players if if they're not interested in diving deeper into the narrative then they can just run past it and it's fine you know there are going to be those streamers when the time comes who just like straight line doesn't interact with just go from one mission to the next mission just fight finish well and I also like the fact that we we we accommodate for that like that to me is kind of a nice thing that you'll still have a deep hopefully meaningful experience even if you're like screw all these NPCs I don't care about them I'm here to shoot stuff yeah I just want to do mission to Mission to Mission you know so at the production you guys are down you guys spend three months down in eing it see it seemed like it was broken up a little more at the beginning we were there a lot four it was a while I was here with the project at that point and and it was
00:36:30
April through July mid July so it's almost I think it was just over four months so uh what was that what was that shoot like uh I asked John shimel this question and he just it was Vietnam flashback kind of just we had one day off yeah yeah that was that was it one day off one day off in four months mhm literally like seven days a week no literally one day off uh I mean I I loved it it was wonderful it was chaotic it was you know I mean like with any production movie or you know obvious with this game like you know there's a there's an energy of like we got to do this we got to do this we got to do this which is is kind of adrenaline fueled uh but you know it was a a really great crew that was down there among Imaginarium among the production team
00:37:18
there uh shout out Philippa uh and Iona uh and that team uh you know the Imaginarium crew was awesome they had this amazing Workshop where they were fabricating props for us on the Fly you know and the team down there as well as the team up here who was supporting everybody it was like everybody really pulled together and of like because we had to shoot it like we had to get it done so it was kind of a a nice Focus uh you know Philip and IA helped get this made I know Philip's name's on the little plaque right there oh nice you can't see I own it didn't come until after the plaque was Comm so she wasn't on there unfortunately um so post so post that you know obviously a big Focus later in 2015 the persistent Universe you you know launches with with the Stanton system and so like this you got to start um I know there was a lot of discussion about
00:38:08
what should be the first system I remember from you know from my time that the the original thought was that the first system should be Tera like it just seemed like it was the center of everything it's like what like we you have to pick somewhere to start start in the middle kind of thing and then uh in an example a great example of that never afraid of the better idea kind of thing realizing Stanton is essentially the vertical slice of everything in the Pu Tera is locked down and pristine and Paradise or whatever but Stanton allows for just about every single gameplay Loop that Star Citizen will ever have so it was a good place to start and get and and get this stuff developed um talk to me about having to make lower design backgrounds for 100 star systems like
00:38:56
was that was that just a really busy afternoon uh I I think like with a lot of star syti because it's such an expansive game experience in it there's so much going on that we've talked about this before that we tend to cast a wide net and then we hone the parts that need honing and polishing not only does that save our sanity and allow us to accomplish the work we need to do it also gives the project the breathing room needs to to change and grow um because every patch every patch we're learning and things are changing and a lot of our lore has been written in a way that makes it flexible enough that it can grow and accommodate with the project and then sometimes
00:39:43
unfortunately you know we have to do retcons we have to change stuff like pyro has been like the first big example of that of we had I'm totally not answering your question I'm just but like pyro was like a really big learning experience when we brought it to life because we had this idea of like I think some people remember from the original Galactic guides like a much harsher unhospitable world and that was also coming back from a lot of our early nuggets of planning where there weren't going to be that many planets to touch down we wanted reasons to make stuff don't go zones because we didn't think we could handle it so it was all blocked off but then coming in it's like no we want players to be able to EXP explore more of these planets we building these planets let's get them down there and
00:40:30
then it's like well if everything is super uncomfortable and inhospitable then it doesn't make sense to have Outpost there and then we don't have the gameplay that we want so it's like all right maybe some of the continents are inhospitable maybe one of the planets is closed off but then let's open up the other ones and have them be much bigger play spaces and I think that's the Pyro that you're seeing today which makes a lot more sense for the game play sight loops and experience that we want to have I I I love this example specifically um one of my recurring phrases that I'm sure people are absolutely tired of hearing me say is that it's not game construction it's game development it's it's there's this idea that you start a game with every answer figured out that you start a game with it like like the full blueprint every piece of engineering has already
00:41:18
been worked out it's been approved by the city you know by the city you and you just build it and that's not how games are made at all you know over the years you grow you grow I grow David not so much uh you have better ideas you you have experiences that change your perspective you hire new people in you have these new people come with new ideas and come with experiences that you don't have and how boring would it be if you hired into a company and like no we we set everything we were ever going to do back in 2012 and there's no room for Innovation there's no room for creativity there's no room for ideation any of that any of that stuff so so it's all all of that stuff gets factored in and yeah you call it a retcon I call it just a Natural Evolution it is game development this is how it happens and
00:42:06
the Pyro system that we are that we're working on right now uh I think is far more engaging and far more interesting than what was in the original Galactic guide not not not slight to you guys wow but it sure feels like one CH shots fir I mean I just I thought the original one was [ __ ] there I used my one no so how is that process is is there ever a moment where you resist those changes where where there's push back to those changes where where it's have you ever had a can you think of a moment where you're like no I feel really strongly you can't change this that this undermines the entire idea behind this yes yeah want to throw somebody under the bus remember
00:42:54
you have tenure it's cool uh no I mean with pyro I think there was a lot of that back and forth conversations about like okay yeah we're adding in more places for the player to explore but how do we hold on to that those core elements of what pyro is all about um I guess it's not as drastic it's never as drastic because I pride ourselves on being part of the team well a lot of stuff is pretty malleable I mean and again it's a creative Endeavor I mean that's part of the thing of working in any creative Industries it's also I mean a thing too of like you know there I I always kind of have a a general approach to things that there's like a change gets presented and I'm like I'm not quite sure if that's really going to line up with what we've been saying in the past I'll voice that and
00:43:42
then if you know a game director says well we really need it okay we'll figure out how to make it work like it's it's ultimately like not up to me like for me as myself like so I'm I'm here to help support the so if I think something's really important I'll voice that but if it gets shot down then I don't take it personally I just go okay well we'll figure out a way to make it happy and in my own head go all right I'll have to figure out a way to reconcile this and find a solution to it that I think is okay and that I'm okay with so but it's a collaborative medium you know you have to you have to be able to do that I think if you kind of dig in your feet and stomp your feet and go no no no no no I mean yeah J so while we're talking on pyro pyro is is is the next star system um it's we're
00:44:31
still we're still targeting this year it's I I see the comments in chat and I understand I understand it's the it's I'm not me Target saying targeting is not the same as saying it's going to we all know that these things come when they're ready that's the only answer to the one question but I can G howdy is everybody here working as hard as they can to to make this the year um give me some background on pyro not not how many Cy planets and stuff like this but but what was the sto what's the story behind pyro uh I mean the original story behind it was that basically it was a uh uh solar system discovered in I think it was 20 end of the 25th I was say I was say don't do a year Astro Pub will
00:45:19
be on you if you did get the year yeah uh that's fair uh but U but the idea was that basically at the at the core of it and the name the origin of the name which you know was also I think the pyrotechnic Amalgamated but it was also the fact that the the central star of it was a kind of a fluctuating pulsating solar flare so it didn't it wasn't ideal for habitation so basically the government was like well you know we might as well just grab what we can from here it's not going to be like that great for Mass development on a mass scale uh so we'll just kind of sell Mining rights to it and they can just kind of grab resources and call it and then kind of the adjustment while the planets may have been more like habitable traveling there was really dangerous at the time because of the flare star and we have it in lore that human shield technology really took off
00:46:09
post the Taran War like we learned a lot of things from them so all of a sudden you see in lur like another Resurgence of exploding the resources in the system yeah what used to be dangerous is not not as bad but still not good but and there was a big resource grab and depleted a lot of the stuff now on a player scale there's still a lot there A lot of times when we say depleted we mean on a massive industrial scale that can't support like thousands of workers in a unified way but someone who's out there with their pickaxe in a tunnel can still hit the motherload so um what caused The Exodus what what Whata you there was a period where everybody was like pyro is the next big thing kind of like a like a gold rush if you if you will and then that changed there's been repeated gold rushes throughout its
00:46:58
history as new Jump points have been discovered as new technology has allowed them to access more of the systems resources but then those money rushes keep falling away and there's no been kind of permanent infrastructure in a lot of reasons because it's still a dangerous system with the with the flare star at the heart of it just kind of makes it not not a nice place to live long term so you have people come take what they can and then get out and so oh go well and and then you know in those lapsed periods in between you have other elements moving into the system and setting up because it's again it's sort of an unmonitored area so you have the proliferation of kind of these squatters and these Outlaws and whatever who are sort of using the system which again is kind of increasing the danger to people who were just trying to fly through or trying to you know earn a living or
00:47:45
whatever so as the system becomes more value you said these repeated gold rushes they discover more jump points there's a jump point to Nyx there's a jump point to castra I don't remember all the Tera yeah like this it's like why hasn't why why did the uee never claim it uh a lot of the times when it's become oh should we claim and expand spend our resources on settling the system it's coming a bad time for the uee there's been Wars there's been like adjustments the fall of the mess Empire um and so the government has just kind of chosen not to take it on and take on that burden and this is a question that's still going on right now and players get to be a part of that conversation of should the uee take over
00:48:36
the system and make it safer because it's having consequences in the form of Xeno threat coming into Stanton and really messing stuff up repeatedly repeatedly so so I think that's kind of what we're setting up to for the players to take part in and there's several gangs in in pyat system uh next on next week's ISC is fire but on the week after that we're going to meet we're going to meet a bit of the citizens of for for prosperity and the Head Hunter so is it it's in like a really awesome episode like that episode about an awesome episode uh except for that audio bug that's currently dropping the frame rate down to one and all my gamec cap guys can't capture anything right now because of an audio bug told you those guys are Saints um so after fire we'll meet the citizens of prosperity and the
00:49:23
head hunters there so I don't want to go into too much of it here but the Rough and Ready uh we were we we met them officially we've had little Peaks to them we met them officially um Alex made a lovely little uh uh cinematic to your to your story I don't know if you had a chance to watch the episode yet but he animated your entire story of rook and was rise to power with the ref and ready and the founding the founding of it and everything so that that was Alex who was in here on the weekend to do that because he really wanted it to be good and we didn't have time in our normal schedule and he came in on the weekend I didn't ask for that no no nobody asked for that Alex is just a a pro and I give him a lot of crap and so this is my one Kudos so I can continue to give them a lot of crap for the next year and I'll feel like I'll balce um I don't remember where we were
00:50:11
oh Rough and Ready yeah obviously uh taking over that Xeno threat are there any we once did an we we once were we brainstormed other uh uh gangs for for the Pyro system um without being precise I mean I mean how many how many how many different factions how chaotic is the story and I'm only speaking to the story of this place the reality will be the reality but storyline wise H H how many people are vying over this of this is how many how many groups are there uh well we had yeah again this is just fictionally we had outlined uh Xeno threat uh fire rats uh Dark Side Rovers um Hollow
00:51:01
boys the uh who are the Vigilantes overlords overlords um I helped with that one grola I think you're doing great thank you got more than me um and then there was the I think it was like The Lost Ones or something like that it was like a human trafficking or sentient trafficking group that everyone hated um everyone hat Xeno threat I feel like Xeno threat's the one that no yeah they're pretty yeah I mean Head Hunters particularly but yeah I mean and to foreshadow a little bit right now we're exploring the idea that some of the gangs from neighboring systems are now pouring in and putting resources into pyro so that's hopefully something that'll be might be on the verge of another Gold Rush yeah yeah yeah no if uh if you're if you're curious if you're
00:51:51
a subscriber uh in the subscriber exclusive store you'll have access to uh six variant of Overlord armor uh that that were that were designed over six key characters within the overlord gang was one of the earliest things I did back when I ran that subscriber program and it was a really happy time with me and Adam shout out to Adam you know getting to flesh that out and he let me give them all my favorite G Joe names stuff for like no these guys need to have like GI Joe style code names and stuff so so you know little little miniature contribution I got to make to the thore cuz Zeno thought it's kind of well I guess I said shouldn't talk about much but like Xeno threer had a unique place in the Outlaws because they weren't financially driven they're politically driven and that's make them take risks that I think a lot of the
00:52:37
other Outlaw groups in pyro aren't happy about because there's been renewed attention on this system yeah they're Outlaws only because they're Vigilantes it's it's it's their you know they're out there trying to do their version terrorist basically they're trying to influence like political change through violence and you know I mean the textbook thing but again it's like it's like we said you know I mean Head Hunters hate the fact that they're attracting so much attention because now security forces are focused back on pyro and they're like just let us let us do our thing so um we're almost we're almost out a time oh no yeah we're almost out of time um we I I mentioned them earlier uh there there are there are lore narrative backstory is is not everybody's cup of tea there are we mentioned those people who will just run through Squadron there
00:53:25
are people who play Star Citizen they never read any of the the the logs the the the the the book where you canonized a my leak of 2015 which I still really appreciate that that's what got canonized thank you guys um uh but probably the the the person out front as far as the lore is astrub uh sometimes known as astroh historian depending on which YouTube thing um he always makes these great videos where he he dies de deep in the lore and everything um he's also kind of annoying would you change something right now Ju Ju Ju Just just think think of anything right now and just willfully
00:54:14
change it Recon it right now to just to drive him crazy it doesn't have to be big I'm abusing my power no oh my goodness Jared if you knew the amount of research that we have to do before every change because it's a our lore is a is a wicked web you pull on one strand have you seen the hit film Madam web it's a lot like that [ __ ] just make [ __ ] up oh that's three uh oh oh no I have to do the dance of Shame um all right folks uh that about
00:55:03
does it for this week's star szon live thank you for taking the time to sit here and watch us and hang out with two uh very dear friends or at least one dear friend and Dave uh just Dam I can I was I I was nice about Alex and that was like all the nice I had left um if you haven't uh check out this week's ISC it's a great look at uh some of the new space based game play coming to the pirate System including contested zones and asteroid bases uh you want to check that out next week's ISC is fire uh which we we haven't talked about in a while I think we went cool on it oh God uh but now we're back talking about fire as it's things are really heating up yeah things are heating up thank you thank you will um for the upcoming Alpha 4.0 uh check that out next Friday next Friday we've got uh assistant design
00:55:52
director Rick Porter and and uh Ed Fuller on uh they're going to take your questions uh you remember the jump Point episode we did for episode 500 we're going to take your questions about jump point and space Bas gameplay and stuff like that a followup of last week's show or this week's show and the one two weeks ago so you can look for a thread up on spectrum that usually usually goes up on Monday so you can submit your questions that's a standard Q&A episode where you'll be able to ask them all those questions about jump points and stuff um you will have to contact the ATC first before you can submit your question thankfully no one had any narrative questions about jump points so so we didn't have to talk uh thanks for watching I'm Jared that's will that's Dave uh that's a different Dave back there that's Pete on the cans uh thank you for watching we'll see you next week everybody bye

Transcript from YouTube’s automatic captions — punctuation and Star Citizen jargon are approximate. The video itself is hosted by CIG on the official channel.