Star Citizen Live: Navigating Narrative

17 February 202301:07:091,723 linesWatch on YouTube ↗

Transcript — every row opens the video at that moment

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hi oh over here I'm by myself in the studio come come closer come closer hi everybody welcome to another edition of Star Citizen live I'm your host Jared Huckabee and if you've never seen Star Citizen live before it's where we take about an hour to the end of our week and we chat with some of our developers uh for the first time since we moved into our lovely uh only constant spaceship every single one of our guests are remote uh they're calling from their homes from their offices um Mike is probably in a back alley somewhere we'll find out allow me to introduce you to uh many but not all members of the cig narrative team hi people now you're on now you're on
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the screen uh We've we've got Adam and we've got will and we've got Matt and we've got Mike and we've got David we've got Jeremy and that was in no order whatsoever and just to clarify we all could have been in the studio with you and chose not you have the canoe ready just they were like we'll fly all of you out for this no expenses spared and we were like no thank you yes because I won't talk about the the predisposition of airplane tickets it was a heart it was a polite but hard no it's it's it's it's it's it's it's one of those things it's one of those things here's a little inside baseball it's really hard to get approval for an airline ticket uh sometimes there's there's a lot of things but it's like
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you know if you're gonna travel like you need to you need to detail many many values and rules to do it I don't think appearing on the show is quiet enough unfortunately it's just me especially when they know we can do this so yeah that was this that was a start let's meet some of the members of The Narrative team now yes if you've watched every video from Star citizens illustrious Passover the last 10 years or just my last eight years uh some of these folks Are Gonna Know backwards and forwards and upsides and downsides and and in the back alley of a 7-Eleven but every show is somebody's first so we're going to take the time to I saw you raise your hand Mike I ever show somebody's first so we're gonna take the time to get to know some folks uh introduce you get to know who they are and what they do and how they work uh so we are going to start uh let's see Mike unfortunately got the whammy yep
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for you what do you do for Star Citizen uh well I am the resident copywriter uh I work um on the narrative team uh but a lot I work a lot with marketing I actually have to leave about halfway through this show I'm in a big time all of you and go to an audio mix for a upcoming spaceship commercial um so I work on a lot of the the commercials and the web copy and anything that has to do with like lore but also marketing stuff um and that's uh that's how I contribute and usually from behind a 7-Eleven as Jared said that's usually during the pandemic where I've been working for yeah I find the donuts are very cheap there the the the titles here I I'm fond of saying the titles are bright
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basically where you start they don't generally Define your overall scope and responsibilities a tie like the copywriter but you like I said you're on your way to sit in on the sound mix session uh For an upcoming uh a vehicle commercial that uh that's getting ready yeah basically our titles are meant to confuse uh civilians that's uh that's basically um you know it's very secretive right uh next let's go to Adam Adam who are you and what do you do uh I am a lucky member of The Narrative team I've been here just about as long as you Jared about eight years now which is crazy to think about so uh yeah I just uh tackle any and all writing tasks that uh that come my way whether it's uh Mission text or barks dialogue in-game item descriptions lore post jump Point
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post whatever I've done I've touched a lot of different things so uh yeah that's that's what I do do we have the big camera I'm not seeing Adam on the big camera you just see him in the small we don't the big camera's not working depending I'm wearing try hitting up uh on the on the keyboard that's behind you hit all depth too if there was any doubts that this was a live show okay and if all tip two doesn't work hit alt F1 they're all tough nope this is all scripted to make it nope you know Zoom is decided not to behave I also need some help with my Outlook mail rules Jared if you've got some time filtered all right so so today's show is going to be in the grid Brady Bunch
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style I guess since we can't do the pungent um Matt this is the first time you and I have ever interacted I don't think we've ever talked to each other they're like yeah you want Matt in here and I'm like sure who the heck is Matt tell me Tell the community who are you and what do you do uh okay so I'm a narrative designer here at Cloud Imperium games uh and what that means changes on the day and who's asking uh but to kind of keep it play a focus for the moment uh I am the mission givers guy uh I work with the mission feature team I work with AI content I work with animation I work with all the different people and my job is to take the mission givers and get them into the game so that you guys can interact with them and just to clarify there Matt Matt is a new addition to the team and it's
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working on future patches to be like you know oh this guy's been standing on a table for three years it's a new initiative to get that kind of sorted so don't send angry messages to Matt yeah he's joined us to help yeah he's still new give him some time but give him some time before you roast them in effigy and then okay thanks guys and then and then ask them where what what why Clem just stands there I'm doing uh Jeremy another relatively oh you've been here for a while now but I think this is your first show tell us who you are and what you do I'm Jeremy uh I'm the newest writer specifically on the narrative team I joined summer last year and I'm in kind of a similar role to Adam I do most of my work focuses on the Pu writing items and missions and working with different
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teams like Montreal and mft and all that to bring some more content to the Pu uh and uh will uh I'm going to ask you to tell folks who you are and what you do and I'm going to ask you to take a little bit of time because I'm going to see if I can fix the zoom while you talk I'm still there you go go ahead go ahead uh hi I'm will westbaum the lead writer for the narrative team uh I work with Dave on Squadron 42 and the persistent universe correct content creating uh documentation to help Inspire the other teams when they do their work uh writing scripts writing short stories all that kind of fun stuff um to jump ahead of it we have a few team members that I would like also to
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shout out who couldn't be with us here today but they are an important vital part of the team uh our wonderful producer play sherry our other writer who some of you know is the archivist but she's expanding it's more an exciting things that really you know might know her best these days for all her work in the galactopedia and we also have our other narrative designer Tung who who's joined our narrative design team who's been knocking out a lot of work on AI behaviors and getting them doing cool things in the game which we should hopefully in future patches start rolling out into the Pu so you see the NPC is doing more interesting things as they go about their day so yeah and a shout out to tongue he wanted to be here about Zoom was having some trouble with him he was locking him out of his account and he we were trying to get him into the call right up until the
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beginning of the show so a tongue our hearts go out to you and if you end up being able to join like if you're watching on stream and you end up the zoom lets you in halfway through jump in the call we're losing my calf weight so you know come in you'll be in the second half that's right come meet us behind us never eleven it'll be an upgrade I promise um and last but certainly not least a a a a narrative director what is your child these days Dave who are you and what do you do uh I'm Dave Haddock I'm narrative director and certainly least uh uh yeah you know obviously work with this whole crew to uh you know uh concept come up with missions and story lines and characters and work on Squadron and the Pu and uh and yeah do all sorts of do all sorts of stuff and also acting as a mule to bring some stuff over to Jared
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uh he's he's not joking he's not joking the the uh I won't get into it but the the vat import charges into this country are ridiculous so uh we we have a I basically have a series of suitcases and bags and stuff at the LA office and things get sent and whoever the next person is gets to be my mule bringing stuff over and yeah so I just finished taping it to my body uh to leave for the airport I wonder what's the Venn diagram of our players uh mtsa agents that are currently listening I don't think the TSA agents care that they're not they're not the problem it's it's what's the it's the Customs and Border Force here in the UK fascists sorry I might get in trouble
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um all right so that is uh brief introduction to many of the members of our narrative team uh let's talk a little bit about how you work an interface with development now uh Matt touched on it a little bit but I think one of the one of the big one of the big misconceptions one of the things that always kind of comes up in conversation is this kind of chicken in the egg sort of situation do things start with story do things start with an idea from The Narrative then that gets handed to the developers and they take it and run or do the or does a designer or an artist or whatever go and make a thing and then come to you and be like I need you to retroactively make this fit and work within our universe uh let's talk about that process I I'm willing to
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guess it's probably both but what can you say I'll kick it off yeah basically it's usually a little bit about um sometimes you know because we've been building the lore of the universe so expansively for for for the past 10 years you know there's a lot of stuff that we've already established so sometimes it's about taking something like that and you know the designers finally getting around to building it so they have kind of a they're working off of a loose narrative framework of what you know a planet was intended to be or conceived of or something like that and then they use that as a launching Place uh and then of course we work with them because one of the things that we've always been trying to do is is be very cryptic uh as far as not necessarily like trying to infer tone or characters
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as opposed to specifics so we give the artists uh the ability to be creative and apply their skills to it to make it even better so usually it'll be like hey we're going to build this planet here's the established lore for it you know uh here's what we were sort of thinking and then working with them and then sometimes it is you know hey we've got this new Mission idea that we want to do how can we incorporate it into the universe or location or or whatever what are some examples of of things that started from narrative like so in the early days you all were tasked with coming up with star systems and and plant planets and stuff like that but what were some of the things that players would have seen in the universe now and stuff
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like that that clearly started with narrative and then made their way to the verse uh I mean Stanton system yeah I mean what's what's interesting is like a lot of the location stuff on a high level begins with the seeds that we planted or you know Dave specifically planted a decade ago where you know what what is the system what does this feel of the system what are these four worlds and of course we do iterations on that and we go through once we plant that seed and we're like Art and Design get their hands on it and make it better and then we go back and we make sure that the narrative matches the final product but um so I think that's the kind of biggest impact of arriving on the cloud city
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Orson like that was a a narrative kind of idea of a cool location that would be fun to go visit it's pretty awesome getting to see those ideas realized and being able to experience them as a player in the game so oh and and then of course I'm sorry go ahead uh and then and then like you know Germany can talk about it like recently like WildStar racing the orc behind the racing was like there were I mean I guess it technically started as designer Quest because they're like well we'll need a racing org but like you know that what they are and what would they do that was all kind of Jeremy working on that yeah I mean there's there's like areas right where we're still trying to develop like a lot
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of the gameplay infrastructure right for things that people want to see in the game like Salvage is another great example but what I've found in my experience is the teams are just really collaborative and so though there might be a mandate that starts from design everyone's very open to talking about how that can be elaborated upon and I think the biggest constraint is less like where do the ideas start and more what do we have the ability to execute on in terms of like scope management and so Salvage and racing both had contributions where I think we got to work well on those missions in particular I was doing a lot of the writing and got to work really closely with those designers to integrate the lore and the design and make sure that they each supported each other let's talk about that process so so a designer comes to you or a director
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or whatever they say hey we want to develop uh uh well on the on the 319 roadmap for instance let's go and talk about that there are new Salvage missions Salvage specific missions so let's just keep on that thread that way we can keep this to stuff that's coming in 319. the request comes into you to we want to add some Salvage missions what do you have to do to support that from a narrative standpoint yeah I mean I think usually it starts off with a meeting of some kind which I know everyone in the community loves so much um but once we've had an opportunity to kind of think and see what they're thinking from a design standpoint it's about looking at the lore we have that's already established and seeing what exists that can support it and if there are opportunities within that then we
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try to kind of build upon that with either the mission premises that design has already come up with or by suggesting new Mission premises within the scope of that activity like Salvage which grew in that process give me some specifics we're weapons free on the Savage missions they're announced they're on the roadmap uh talk to me what was the thing you had to create yeah um so the introduction of like the mission Giver Mission into that we've been doing a lot of work to just be really on top of which Mission givers are could use additional content oh wow okay um well we're gonna get to do uh a lot of stuff with Salvage particularly in this case if someone else want to take
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it I feel I feel weird being in the in the spotlight I mean one interesting thing that was kind of like something that I think we worked between narrative and design on is this idea of these these early missions um as salvaging is maturing because it's still like you know tier zero newer system of it not being fully as robust as where we want it to go eventually we we were talking to them about all right what is the end of the mission like are the players returning the recycled material composite and now I was feeling sort of weird in that like why would this Mission Giver care about like collecting a big pile of scrap material and and so then it sort of evolved through our conversations with them into oh maybe they're selling you the rights to a location and so like the the
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missions themselves are more like buying the rights to the location of a ship for you to salvage whereas of course players can go out and find their own Salvage but sometimes it simplifies that if you're willing to drop some credits we'll give you an exact location to ship totally ripe for collecting materials and you get to keep all the profits after that so that was kind of something that had a little bit of back and forth that we helped influence of trying to figure out like why why is this organization offering this Mission what do they want out of it does this make sense and often we kind of tweak stuff with them where they have like multiple possible paths and we kind of hone in on what feels best and what makes the most sense in that process we ended up creating a new organization Adagio to handle more of the lawful Salvage and when we were figuring out
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new opportunities we assigned the new Mission Giver Salvage mission to Clovis darnelli who will be handling that and uh just kind of breaking down I know when mft was on here they talked about the three different kinds of Salvage missions that there are but there's going to be more than just those three that were kind of building and working towards and hopefully Salvage will continue to develop beyond that just because it's a really fun gameplay Loop and it has a ton of cool opportunities I mean just the introduction of the soft death mechanics I think like this fundamentally changed things in the verse and so seeing that supported with narrative like Mission content and procedural Mission content I think is uh is really exciting to me well I want to follow up on that oh God will you were talking oh it would also like the introduction of the new Outlaw group The the tar
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pitsu is coming in where they have kind of a fun little backstory Tara stands for like Tow and rescue which they they're known for kind of using fake toe ships to trick people and and attack them or steal their ship when they're pretending to be a tow company and so they're they're basically selling you Salvage right locations because they they have too much work on their hands they can't handle all themselves and so they're giving you an opportunity to buy one off them kind of thing for the more and there's more risk in the locations they sell and stuff like that so it's interesting so we so not only do we have uh players using service beacons to lure and trap people and now we we have NPC organizations they're like yeah we're coming to help you and we're not not in game play yet but thematically
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that's kind of the idea to keep you on your toes at least that's the way this gang operates so it's never easy um uh as far as other examples where where narrative can affect game uh stuff in the game Mike uh it was it wasn't this last year's I.E but it was the year before where uh Jax did the whole spray paint thing on the on the roof and everything that was that was the thing that originated you know with you with you guys and and putting together those Jax things and that ended up making it you know into the game uh are there other things like that where these where you've had ideas what started outside and somehow made their way in I mean yeah so that's a good example of um
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of something like that that was sort of like we wanted to get that into the game and you know that we that was originally pitched as like something that would be fun to put as just a a visual thing you could find that you know once it happened in the series and uh and they made it happen which was really cool and uh and that was that was super fun there's some other times that it's happened more accidentally which is like a funny kind of weird thing where So like um take for example the Banu Defender commercial um back a few a few years back um for the for that ship I wrote the script for that and and included in it a sort of MacGuffin piece of alien Tech that the the woman in it picks up and it's kind of like glows or whatever and it was really just meant to be like oh we're in an alien environment with things that they don't understand it was really and props came up with this weird
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little piece of tech this weird little Cube and um really just a throwaway thing in this convertible to like established tone and then they eventually made it like as a real prop in the game uh because people like loved it or something I don't know it was like people demanded that we'd be able to have the Banu Cube uh you know there they there it is in in real life it exists in real life now which is that's really crazy that it's like come full circle and something that was totally tossed off of the script um and similarly the uh in the tavar with the prowler commercial um in the original script it was there was supposed to be these mercenaries that had on their their face masks was like painted as sort of like vaguely avian you know bird-like thing sort of almost like skull-like and it was again
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just sort of supposed to be a flavor detail because the tavaran are like these you know bird type aliens and it was meant to just kind of be evocative of that but um characters came up with like a really cool looking helmet they kind of like took it and ran instead of just having like a decal it was like they kind of created an entirely new thing um that then like everybody was like oh well we want that like everybody's gonna want that so we actually made it as an armor and then had to come up with lore like retroactively for like why like why this third oh my God this is nothing planned this has not been bad thank you uh abandoned frozen Banu uh no but um full-size Frozen Banning no but uh so
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that's so there we go that is a great example of that and then we had to like literally come up with some lore for like what company put that out and why they did it and you know because again something that was met as just flavor in a commercial then became like a real life thing in the game and in the world of the game so it's kind of like like these things can come from accidents and then end up in the game or you know things that we generate as background details and then become like a fully fleshed out thing Adam was the one who figured out who made it and what was it called hmm yeah it's uh yeah exactly I'm just like Court armor yeah my giant gargantuan melon head doesn't fit well it's meant for a tavarian obviously apparently uh let's move on to talking about uh because I know we're gonna lose
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Mike here in a little bit um about how you you work as a team what's the walk me through a typical day or or maybe that's a little too granular a week in the narrative team uh do you do do you go off and work on your own and then come back for sinks do you pair off into tasks uh talk to me about how the Team Dynamics work and how you guys work together Blythe isn't here she would be able to walk you through it step by step that was a question for the producer and the producer in here so yeah we actually don't know how to do it ourselves yeah we're very excused uh I mean usually uh standard week you know we kick off on Monday mornings uh with a kind of a
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stand-up uh meeting with everybody kind of talk through like what are current tasks that have that are on the docket if there are any any major priorities um if anyone's been working on anything that has uh you know got blockers or there are issues that have come up with kind of talk about their goals for the week and stuff like that uh and then that ends with a Fight Club and uh but then but basically it's we kind of will assign tasks you know again we we have a lot of different requests coming in on covering a lot of different I mean as everyone's been sort of saying like uh covering a lot of different topics so it can be a bunch of item descriptions uh you know proposals for Mission types uh new organizations uh I mean rep charts uh scripts uh meetings
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with design to talk over uh you know level reviews stuff like that so it's it's kind of one of the fun things about this job is that we you can't really there's no such thing as a standard week uh you know you're always kind of getting uh weird curveballs and there's unusual things to be working on and kind of to switch up your mindset and stuff like that so which can be a blessing and a curse at times but uh you know it certainly doesn't doesn't get boring uh but but then we basically everyone just kind of goes off and and starts tackling the things that they were looking to tackle and you know we we will Source each other if we need to and and reviews kind of move up the chain uh and you know so do rewrites and iterations and if it requires things with the outside teams or dependents and stuff like that or
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stakeholders in it we'll have those meetings and then uh you know by the end of the week we usually we have a thing uh it's called our weekly uh narrative Jam uh where we uh basically it's it's an opportunity it's kind of a scheduled hour-long meeting where we can bring the entire Brain Trust together and so if people have questions that they want to kind of put to the entire group of like uh you know hey how does you know does mustard exist and if mustard does exist what kind of mustard is it you know have we finally kicked spicy mustard to the curb are we finally embracing yellow mustard for the great condiment that it is you know that type of thing and then talking it out or it just becomes an opportunity for everybody to kind of hang out and you know talk movies and you know
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exchange Maps uh stuff like that but we have finally cracked mustard 900 years procedure by the way just a spoiler alert but we have yeah I literally said if I just sit here quietly Mike's gonna follow up on the mustard and that's exactly what happened Jared you love me too well I miss you man um likewise red so uh again before we lose Mike so there's the stuffing game we've done a lot of focus about the stuff in the game we touched a little bit on the trailers and stuff mostly how they affect the game but but you ask you also do a lot of stuff outside of the game and we're gonna we're gonna curve back around into standing in a pyro here in a bit but before we get before we do personal poetry project yes I want to know about this is your chance to plug your
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personal poetry projects uh uh uh Mike I know you've got a band no but um that's my personal poetry project yeah yeah uh talking about the stuff that the narrative team does that surrounds Star Citizen the the lore post the galactopedia the star map so let's start with the Lord post the lore posts are the probably the oldest continuous content delivery that the project uh has it's the only thing that predates the stuff I do uh you know I go around bragging like I've been doing this forever and you guys are the only ones that are like you know been doing it even longer so let's start with that talk to me about the the the something every Tuesday uh the Lord posts not those ones specifically but the the lorpas
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yeah that was an initiative that was started that Dave started um with basically the Time Capsule series and the run-up to the uh to the initial kind of like crowdfunding campaign just as a way to bring people into the world to show them the type of world we were thinking of building and and kind of uh highlight some elements of it um and it just kept going for years and years and years as the game was being built because we found sometimes you know giving if there were certain aspects of the game that weren't ready to be experienced by being able to kind of like tell stories or kind of like you know show these different shows and these different viewpoints of the verse it would help kind of fill out the world for the players but also as we discussed earlier for designers for for artists for that we're also working on the game
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because to Circle back around your earlier question you know there's some times when you know a designer or a character artist would come to us and say like hey I'm about to work on this what have you established what can I read and then you would we'd have this kind of like backlog of material you'd be able to feed them which would then kind of help them do their job or at least kind of like put them in a certain direction so um we just found it was a it was a really fun way to kind of get people into the world to kind of introduce them for them and this this you know extended into jump Point into the lore pieces that we have there the the different ad you know adverts for some of the subscriber items or stuff that we're always in Jump point is like whenever we had a chance to just um make the world seem alive from different from angles we uh we decided to do it that way so yeah
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whether it's an SCT which is a which is a fake you know kind of like TV talk show that uh or the the TV talk show and you know in that current age or whether it's Parker Terrell and the plain truth you know spitting conspiracy theories about the future or or or uh news uh post it was always a really fun and interesting way to kind of like dip into the world and to to show people kind of like Our intention for it so yeah well it's uh while it's not kind of tactile in game it is something we you know will you know we'll hopefully bring some of those posts into the game it's a lot of work to be able to to deport all that stuff over and have it all around but it still exists in the framework of of the The Wider Star Citizen universe so it's just a part of our job to help fill it in and uh add that color where we can and like you said it it flashes it
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flashes the universe out not just for the players uh it but for the employees like that's one it's one of those things that is common with ISE and stuff like this it's it's very easy to think that those things are created just for uh the community but they're actually really good resources for people internally to learn about what's there in the verse learn about what's going on in other aspects of game development and stuff like that so um the last question before we move on uh you ever gonna bring kid Crimson back we're gonna do more kid crimson uh yes yes okay I think the answer to that if he never left I mean he is now teen crimson like teammate right there prepaid
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Crimson oh teen Crimson okay okay Crimson I gotcha sorry I'm sorry they can't all be mustard uh and then I know Sherry's not here but let's touch on this a little bit so she gets her Laurels there I don't really think of the galactopedia as an out of game project it's the first place it's showing up but that was 100 written because we want the collector pedias and in-game assets so that is still being actively pursued um so that that is their goal but what is it but in the means so the galactopedias are in lower encyclopedia and it's a collection of articles about a lot of different topics that you can
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imagine the universe from people to companies to locations um so it's all all kind of in there housed in lore at the arc which is a large um repository of knowledge created with the goal of kind of collecting not only Humanities knowledge but also the Banerjee on into our knowledge from Across the Universe um uh all right coffee gaming in the chat is like wants to has a suggestion for you what about kid mustard considered kid mustard good mustard it's not bad that goes then you could have a hot dog with crimson and mustard you know ketchup and mustard uh other thing other things the narrative Team Hot Dog
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Squad is it time to take off or crickets in the room tell me that I should probably ungracefully exit I'm done missing you thanks for having thanks for having me um glad to be here with the the rest of the team I gotta go make sure that uh spaceships sound cool in a commercial so uh I'll see you when I'm there I'll see when I'm there in October oh yeah Jared hi I miss you buddy hi bye what we were talking about uh uh Alien languages so that's another big one not every game has fully developed and fleshed or maybe not fully but incredibly fleshed out and developed
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alien languages and and we're working on several talking about that initiative uh [Music] making alien languages what somebody sorry sorry I just signed up my flight Scandal sorry I got distracted uh Alien languages yeah what about them they're fun why complicated why they're fun just because they're fun uh I think it was just that thing of like again you know with with a lot of this the the initiatives that we try to do like it wasn't just it didn't feel right to just have them be doing you know have aliens and they're just doing weird garble
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nonsense like we wanted that level of immersiveness of you know this is this is a civilization and you know one that you know players are going to have interactions with and stuff like that and wanting to again make it feel like it's real and believable and stuff like that and it just it you know again like as we started working with Britain our Xeno linguist uh to to kind of develop it like it you know it opens up a lot of really interesting possibilities uh from environmental storytelling uh to interactions uh and and as you know ultimately our environments of being able to have uh you know looking for opportunities where a player's understanding of a language you know might give them an edge like it won't
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you know again we're still trying to figure this stuff out so it's not necessarily like oh you know you have to learn a new language in order to you know benefit because I barely struggle with English but like you know opportunities were like it gives you just a little bit of insight or a little bit of more character or backstory or something like that because I can re I can understand xion or Rich xion and that type you know it just makes it feel like it's a it's a real living world if if we actually like spent the time and working with Britain has been amazing because you know he's so incredibly talented when it comes to constructing these things that and and really like insanely detailed ways of making them feel like from a linguist perspective not human which I think is I don't know for me was one of the things that one of
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the details that was really really exciting about it was the fact it's like if someone understands language and how language is constructed you know he was trying to build these in a way where they would look at it and they would be able to see fragments of human language is built into it but it didn't feel like a human language which I thought was a really cool and for folks who are just discovering this now like you've joined the project the last couple years you're like what you made any languages uh you check out the YouTube channel there's a there's a playlist of our Xi'an uh Alien languages primers uh then there's a section on the robertspaced institutions.com website with a bunch of comics uh about it and then there's a number of uh uh uh citizen resources uh folks out there who have really taken it upon themselves to even push it further and and to learn it and teach it even so if you're curious
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and you're interested in learning Xi'an uh there are many resources to get you started in addition to the xion we've also uh explored what band what other languages have we begun to flesh out have been released as guides to to the community um in the form of the rest Society guide to Danny which is a really wonderful document for diving into the culture and touching on what Dave said like being developing these languages is really allowed us to think about these species in ways that we wouldn't have just coming at it from our more gameplay mindset or even like creating a full verse and talking about politics and stuff like Brit a lot of times for his language development needs to know details that we wouldn't really dedicate
00:38:16
to time out of like you know how you know can Banu choke on something like like that was a question because he was going down like this word development and was wondering would he borrow humans work for choking or would they have their own word because they can choke on stuff all the time and like like okay sure like let's let's have a I have a fun 15-minute conversation about this so that's been great um and then you know kind of all not as public so far we we are developing additional languages for you know ancient Cabaret which you know in the lore was used pre first two tomorrow Wars have kind of fell out of favor and has recently been having a bit of a cultural Resurgence as
00:39:07
well as the Tomorrow there's been a growing movement to reconnect with their cultural past and then also of course the Vandal is being worked on um so I'm remembering or remembering young disco and his little thing on dictionary by Mark Oakland way back when it it's I I'm not asking to commit to anything now but I mean I mean it would be interesting to explore the idea of eventually like publishing a Xi'an dictionary or something to go along with it something you can take with you on vacation and Justin go through you know with all the spare time we have the the breast Society guide has a pretty extensive Banu language dictionary in there already um there's not it's not completely filled out but when it when it comes
00:39:56
down it's become a great resource for us because as we develop and release more brand new items like knives or weapons or ships will often refer to that dictionary as a source of inspiration for what a name might be or or things like that so it's uh yeah and that that document is is extremely long and a lot of it is cultural just to kind of give you an idea of who the species is like will was saying and then there are just pages and pages of the these are the literal translations and sometimes going through and just seeing and this is what the bridge Brilliance is like a word or what it's related to or how it ties into this that I think gives an insight to the species and stuff like that so it uh yeah it's it's very informative very interesting so let's move into the Pu now in in this current state so if somebody joins the
00:40:45
project now or recently you know IE Fleet Week whatever the 318 coming out uh and they're they're coming to the Stanton system for the very first time uh obviously we can't go through everything but give us give us a primer what what what is the standard system what's going on uh what's life like who's in charge uh brain dump us here give us a primer for an introduction to the standard system here from a story perspective you you just dived into all this Jeremy start us off what sure yeah so the Stanton uh system is kind of like a divided core protocracy uh where all the major planets are owned by Mega corporations
00:41:36
after having like purchased the rights to these planets and kicked out some illegal settlers and all that uh they've taken these planets and turned them into hq's for their companies that also work as you know full uh cities with governments and as you might expect a lot of these companies aren't great at being governments they're not necessarily doing the best job and So within that you have a lot of uh discontent Brewing amongst different parts of the populace for various reasons as well as a lot of criminals uh encroaching whether from nearby unlawful systems or just within Stanton itself where there's not yet a massive lawful presence as the companies are figuring all this out trying to take
00:42:23
advantage of the opportunities and the Commerce that's available to the pirated stolen Etc that's all transiting through that system hmm and uh Jeremy since you're new here I'm going to try something nobody else help them out what happened to Tessa banister where's Tessa banister I don't know maybe I could trick him into revealing something anybody else want to well you know every time you're on the show it's already happened a number of times in the chat see the chat's like Jared like who who is to who is Tessa Bannister who is Tessa Bannister and will she ever come back did you all just upset her in some ways
00:43:11
she doesn't want to talk to you anymore wait is it is is she not working was was it was there an issue Council report about this she's supposed to have been there this whole time what do you mean she's not there uh she she is still very much on our minds I I know Matt you you have some feelings there there have been conversations about Tessa um you know someone who played the game back in the two acts days I think it goes without saying I'm excited to see her back um we're talking with the other teams about what would be the best way to do that uh so I mean we don't have anything like concrete to tell you yet um but I think the you know we all know we want it back uh we know you guys want it back
00:44:01
um so uh I know it's not the answer everyone wants to hear but uh uh there there is there is a plan right I said at this point she's gonna have to be revealed to be the brain child behind Xeno threat or something you know just this you know the massive end boss at the end of everything like Ah that's where I disagree to him um I mean there was some technical things involved with the decision to remember from the first place and then uh it's always about that we have the same bucket of people working on a bunch of stuff and where does Tessa fall fall into their schedules because you know missions have come a long way since shoes introduced and having to refactor are kind of set and adding new stuff and really making her the character we want her to
00:44:48
be in the game it takes a little bit of elbow grease so it's not as simple as flipping a switch back on or to get in the game again so it's taking us some time we have it in the backlog and uh hopefully we'll be slowly moving it to the pipe till we get to her so Chad is asking what Tess's favorite mustard is I think obviously say that you're not going to tell people you're not going to show people in the end don't do that um besides the four big corporate uh Giants who own the four uh Mega planets there are also other organizations floating around there there's there's there's uh Grim hacks and and nine and and as a location and then there's nine tails and and Xeno threat roaming around
00:45:42
like this for folks again who are joining and whatnot they don't know the history or don't know who these people are uh somebody introduced us to nine tails who are they what do they do what do they want what the nine tails want is a bit uh unknown at this point they yeah there's there's a point yeah they've been working towards that tenth tale I think that's been uh um but yeah they there there's a portfolio on them where they started off as kind of like a four-hire kind of like uh gang that was out there pulling big jobs in other parts of the uh of the uee and for some reason decided to settle at Grim heck station and take it over and take full command of it and focus all
00:46:30
their efforts in and around the stamp system at this point so the the the reason behind that decision or what what's kind of going on with that is still up in the air but it they're they're causing a lot of headaches when it comes to the Stanton system in general because Grim hex is technically in the control of the Crusaders uh um planet and they don't necessarily have the best security protocols or desire to do it but with it obviously being a quick QT to to go to any other place in the system it's easy for them to go hit another planet hit their infrastructure hit their shipping lanes and then just duck Back To Grim hacks where Crusader doesn't seem to want to do a full-on assault on their own and the other corporate entities in the system don't seem to have the mustard to want to get
00:47:19
together to to try to take on the program and the uee is like hey man we we sold you guys this system it's your job to keep up keep it clean so the UE doesn't want to get involved so they're um they're sitting in this nice little like Gray Zone just uh causing causing trouble for uh for some reason and you know the in recent times the UE has been you know approving the CDF the civilian Defense Force to deputize people to help out with the details but that's always in kind of a reactionary measure of this is an immediate threat so we need all these hands on deck to help deal with that security situation whereas like the idea of like oh why don't we scale a massive assault on a full station full of people and victim is is a different matter entirely so it's kind of like how do you deal with this known encampment
00:48:06
that's at the grip hex or green Imperial hex station um we've seen the nine tails and and crusader you know a security you know Clash a bunch of times it what about the other corporations in Stanton the nine tails have a have a relationship or standing with art Corp or Hurston or Microtech they just stand a little bit the Crusaders the main sphere of influence there's other gangs that we're we're slowly hoping to introduce and see more of as we we expand content like you know we have the dusters who are a gang who specialize in kind of more of the high end or theft like raiding other people's claims doing legal processing that kind of stuff we just talked about the Tar
00:48:55
Pits earlier we have the the Nova writers there's also uh in Hurston we have the Kirsten Workers United who who are trying to struggle for labor rights but are deemed as Outlaws because you know Hurston doesn't like what their message is so so I I think we're we're trying to get a variety but nine tails definitely have one of the larger influence across the system even with their focus on crusader and uh before we let you know let's let's talk let's talk a bit about pyro now obviously uh we're working towards you know pyro it's part of 4.0 and server meshing and all that stuff um so we don't so there will be undoubtedly there will be more power information coming as the year goes on so we don't want to get too far into it
00:49:43
but as a as a general primer for pyro for people who again most of the show is for photos this week is for folks who are relatively new to the project who have never seen you guys heard you guys uh give me the nickel version what is pyro and why does pyro matter to to the story to the fiction of uh of the universe maybe we'll take a step so uh pyro is is going to be an interesting addition to the game in general basically the ideas with it at its core pyro is a lawless system so it isn't technically unclaimed by the uee which is our sort of reigning human government body uh and it got its name uh from basically the
00:50:36
idea that the star at the center of it is very unstable and uh so it it is a kind of unpleasant place to live that's why uh the uee basically kind of deemed it as we don't really care about it let people kind of mine it for a bit and exploit it uh but with no intention of kind of settling the planet so uh with that sort of vacuum of authority uh you know it became a place for uh criminals Outlaws people who were trying to live Off the Grid or away from either the uee ends up and sort of became just sort of a lawless place so uh so yeah the idea the that it's introducing to the game which is very exciting and the source of a lot of
00:51:24
meetings and conversations is you know this is a lawless place and Stanton is a lawful place so how do we you know it has massive gameplay implications you know for a lot of things as far as infrastructure and uh you know uh missions and who's there and what the reputations are and what carries over what doesn't stuff like that so it's going to be a really you know it gonna be an awesome place to to kind of wander around but yeah that's a lot to a lot to process uh yeah but yeah the idea the core of it is basically that because it's a lawless place too that it's sort of uh in constant Civil War among the reigning several of the reigning gangs uh in the system and the idea being that like you know the hope the ultimate dream of it was that there would be a point where we
00:52:12
would have that you would see that power struggle going on so it wasn't the place with a you know again as compared to Stanton this was a place that had a shifting power structure so Xeno threat might be in charge one month or six months or one year and then the Headhunters uh might be in charge because they they take control of it and so you see that kind of power Dynamic change uh and uh in in the system which I don't know for me has always been one of the most exciting is aspects of it so so so being Lawless and you know uh uncolonizing stuff I get why the criminal element and stuff would want to go there and operate is it all just bad people in pyro is there why would a is there a reason a good person would go there to live
00:52:59
uh yeah I mean that's actually that's been one of the conversations is what is what is the the draw for the lawful character is that when I go there I mean one of the things we've been talking about a new a new org that would be kind of trying to instill law in pyro but there's also the bigger one uh would be you know a group that I sort of nicknamed the survivors which are sort of a neutral faction within it that they're they're not Outlaws or criminals they're just trying to eke out a living and not bother anybody and and whatever and and the idea being that like if I'm going out there as a lawful player these would be sort of this would be sort of the faction that I would probably align myself closest with like they're they're not trying to cause trouble but they will have jobs for
00:53:46
people to do and and stuff like that but the idea happens they're sort of networked over a bunch of different worlds so you you can they have a person I mean yeah because there are members of humanity who don't want to live under the ue's rule and there's still opportunities and and money to be made in the pirate system you know we we've kind of identified on the narrative side of these kind of historical waves of interest in the Pyro systems like oh first discovery system and pyrotechnic Amalgamated moving out there trying to get as many resources and then like oh a big push when Shield technology improved and all of a sudden it was safer to fly in pyro closer to the Flair store that brought in more people and the discovery of new systems that connect to pyro have brought with it a new wave of interest of like you know people looking to get
00:54:36
the resources there make profits in that system and like when the Stanton system really kicked off all of a sudden there was another renewed interest because you know sand systems and economic Powerhouse in the universe and so how did that affect pyro and so I I think there's all these individuals who end up in pyro for various reasons who who do just want a life who want to be left alone who want to try to you know make their way as best they can so hopefully the players will be looking either to help them out or severely take advantage of them and make their lives a living hell so we'll see what they want to do now that's a good point I had I hadn't hadn't actually considered that that you know there's the there's intrinsic value in pyro and not wanting to live under UE and stuff like this but there's also what pyro helps you get to
00:55:26
you know the the other systems beyond the the things that you get access to by going through pyro so I I imagine there are lots of reasons for various organizations and folks to try to establish a safe foothold or as safe a foothold as possible within pyro to facilitate other Ventures and other connecting systems and stuff like that so it'll make it very interesting uh make a very interesting fertile you know ground for for conflict and uh uh Collision uh we touched on Xeno threat Xeno threat keeps coming into Stanton and and stirring up stuff uh uh we ever going to get to return the favor maybe the good people
00:56:16
yeah I mean they're they're they're a pyro based uh kind of political terrorist organization uh based out of pyro so you know the idea is that hopefully that you'll be able to kind of hit them they've been launching attacks in Stanton to kind of push their their anti-corporate uh anti-alien uh rhetoric uh in hoping of sparking a you know Revolution among the people against the uee but yeah hopefully there'll be a point where we can yeah hit him hit him hit him at home uh heartiest as why is there Federal ground in the system with a massive solar storm I was using a metaphor for the program but it does also uh beg a good point that I wanted to hit before we got here lore is that the stuff that you guys
00:57:05
have developed for the the the star map for the galactopedia for the you know the original uh what were the original the galactic guides and so like this they're they're very much like written Concepts you know it it's it's a starting point it's a kickoff it's a it's a it's a thing designed to to stir the imagination of of the artists and the designers and everybody who have to come uh and work this stuff but I think there's a um one of the things I want to touch on is that there there isn't in in Game Dev there isn't this we you come up with a plan in year zero or one and then you just stick to that plan wholeheartedly and without change without Evolution without ever having a
00:57:53
better idea uh as you continue to develop uh new people come online new people join the project and they with it they come they bring ideas and they bring interest and they bring you know their own agency and things they want to add so that can lead to a lot of these uh lore posts or these histories that you've written over the years to change uh and some would call that retcon but I think more more appropriately and you can tell me if I'm wrong it's more just the Natural Evolution of of a universe of game development uh am I right Am I Wrong am I barking up the wrong tree oh I mean that's that is how it goes I mean we don't want to be a team who digs in our feet and be like well we wrote this paragraph six years ago so it has to be
00:58:42
this way like especially because our goal just like a lot of the other teams is to have the most fun gameplay we can so our narrative is always in service to making the game fun and so you know with pyro we talked about this a little bit but it turns out that it's more fun for some of these worlds to be slightly less harsh than we had originally envisioned for them being a little more forgiving environmentally so that some of our other gameplay systems can exist there so you know we're looking at at adjusting those original write-ups like a lot of the how harsh the system was had to do with our very original idea that Landing zones were going to be fairly limited and of course over time is The Amazing planetary Tech team has come in and
00:59:31
created all these fun sandbox environments we want to be able to take advantage of those so we still want to have those harsh environments we still want worlds like that you go there and you have about 10 minutes before your health systems are going to kick in and start killing you but like we also want to scale back the other side of it and have areas where players can do missions more on the surface than we originally thought um and we're also coming with in between ways of how to have like are there ways for outposts to survive on these really harsh worlds and talking about that with the design teams and expanding those systems it and on the subject of retcon I guess we we always do try to avoid retconning when we can like for the regen Tech's a good example of where we introduced it
01:00:21
as a change that was happening for the characters in the universe but sometimes when it's like the temperature of the planet we weigh it like is this something that happened now is this a new development or is this something how it has always been and we need to do a retcon and have it be that the old facts never existed so we we try to avoid that when we can but a lot of times it's unavoidable and that's just the simplest solution to go forward well yeah that's why I'm prone to saying it's we call it game development not game construction it's the the there's this there's this idea a myth that a plan is put in place before a game has started and you just spend the next two years three years four years in our case ten years would not uh just executing that same exact plan that was come that was you know laid out before but proper
01:01:09
development is about incorporating all the ideas and the feedback and the Lessons Learned along the way uh and that applies uh to Summits as well for folks who watched yesterday's ISC and came away thinking oh they're just starting on this it's like no they've been on it for years the Summit is about taking the lessons that they learned through PES and incorporating it and adjusting the plan where it needs to be adjusted and reinforcing the plan where it's like yeah that absolutely worked the way it was and continuing to go from there it's I think a lot of I was looking at the comments and I think a lot of people took the took the this is the first time they're meeting in person because we just came out of a pandemic to mean that this is the first time they've ever talked about this stuff and that was that's that's on me that's on that's on me we could have
01:01:57
been a little bit better uh with the uh with the added on that so I apologize just uh just to also say we we do really appreciate everyone reading this material and learning it and becoming invested in this write-up and how cool and you know that's what we were trying to do with spark your imagination you excited about this stuff so I know it can be difficult where you're learning and trying to get a sense of what Star Citizen is and then we shift something and you have to relearn it so we we don't take these changes lightly and we do appreciate your investment and passion for it and always pointing out the inconsistencies that developed over time and you try to address those where we can like you know we we've talked about this before but anytime we write anything it takes like an hour of research and going through our history consolidating all our facts and like you know that's a that's a big
01:02:46
part of our their team's job is is trying to ensure consistent history to the project and so we appreciate the community's help and being like hey this year doesn't make any sense the system wouldn't have been discovered yet and like oh yeah we totally missed that thank you so Matt be real with me you were a backer beforehand you played the game you came in how long did you wait before you had to be like okay remember when you said this and you totally forgot that there was this and it's like how long did you wait before you started bringing the fire oh that was like day one I was in the job interview I was like oh yeah by the way do you know this and I was like uh remember when you said that's not what happened
01:03:34
no the only constant game development has changed all right guys we're here at the end thank you so much uh uh for taking the time uh to be here with us um a little little known behind the scenes uh thing uh we had another set of guests scheduled for this week and they unfortunately had to reschedule for some uh personal stuff um I have had a long and storied uh thread in teams called Jared's channel of bailing his ass out and uh it's it's it's only got the members of The Narrative team uh in it so uh it's I always appreciate them when when I showed when I throw the the the the fail signal up and they're like ah it's Jared he needs us and uh they come and help save the day so thank you so much everybody and uh Jeremy and Matt it was very good to meet you uh for the first
01:04:22
time uh today uh uh uh uh and uh yeah uh so yeah so that's it that Stars season live we have a special guest joining us for the last 30 seconds especially what uh sure is here Oh Sherry sure Jeremy you're muted if you want to unmute wait a minute wait a minute hi all right start it over back to the beginning so sure who are you and what do you do oh I'm sure and Sherry I'm an associate writers less archivist here it's the cloud Imperium games I thought this was I thought this was now and not an hour ago so I was like oh I totally made it inside this is okay time zone I'm so sorry about that but yeah I do uh the galactopedia and help with alien languages and planets and stuff that's
01:05:11
why it's the narrative team and not the schedule team [Laughter] the producer's not here so blame blame her oh no no all right uh uh thanks so much it's the next photos sorry anyways so thanks so much for for tuning in everybody uh be sure you check out uh ISC uh next week uh big mining changes coming to Alpha 319. I haven't seen it on the road map yet uh but we've I flew to Frankfurt this week and and caught up with Torsten and there's some there's there's some really exciting new uh mining stuff coming in 319 so check that out on ISC next week uh and then if you haven't already uh check out the recent ISC about the the server machine Summit like I said we talked about a little earlier uh it's a new kind of uh a story uh attempting to tell a multi-part thing
01:06:02
uh you know where we don't you know don't tell the whole story in a single episode uh it works for some it doesn't work for some others you know we experiment we've been I've been doing this for a long time so we're going to try some stuff if you didn't like it or whatever you should absolutely you know blame me uh the developers are doing wonderful work and they've got they've got some great updates coming and we'll revisit the summit here in a couple weeks and you'll see more of uh what their conclusions were and what they came to uh but yeah so uh for Will and Dave and Jeremy and Matt and Adam and Mike and Sherry uh I'm Jared and holy crap I remembered everybody's name uh take care everybody and we'll see you next week 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.