we really try to aim for operators that
are both fun to play alone and with your
team that are real assets in the way you
attack or defend an objective
nomad comes from this wealthy moroccan
family she got to travel a lot as she
grew up and as she got older she decided
to travel on her own so she's recruited
for being really tough being able to
endure any kind of weather pretty much
she wants to become the first woman to
travel antarctica alone on foot and that
requires a lot of resilience when it
comes to creating characters it's always
about iteration it's about talking with
other writers other illustrators other
game designers and just pitching ideas
back and forth about what kind of
scenarios they might find themselves in
and just the idea of what do we imagine
the modern moroccan women may be and i
think it'd be cool to have her as a
traveler so i pitched that idea went for
that angle and a lot of people liked it
the air jab launcher came about when she
went on a solo expedition in kenya and
she wanted to find a way to push back
the predatory wildlife without hurting
them
it felt a bit underwhelming to just have
a frog grenade so we wanted to add some
punch into it so basically pushing
people back
was really like the obvious
thing to add to the gadget to make it
really useful and cool at the same time
this new mechanic of displacement
with the pushback effect that we really
liked that was a put during the outbreak
event with the big zombie like slapping
you and you you should see the face of
people going through walls for the first
time it's it's really funny to see
she's kind of a mix and match for
fighting but as well traveling so we
started to look more into sportswear to
do trekking into the mountain
what is the military's wearing what is
compatible together we are trying to not
take something that exists
exactly the same when we have a good
silhouette
we go with these assets
you might notice that nomad has missing
fingertips on one of her hands and
there's a whole story behind that and i
think you'll find out from her what
actually happened
you know this guy is the the commander
even if he's not an old character it's
one of the older operators you don't
want to mess around with this character
so this is the the presence we tried to
to put visually on him they really
wanted somebody that was this imposing
leader of a fortress who had a reign
over it and there were thousands of
students that would come there to this
very prestigious school and it's gone on
for generations and generations and
fostered and cultivated a whole bunch of
soldiers and past soldiers and for the
future i think that's really what's
important to him and he wants to do the
best job that he can the dagger was an
important thing for us because the
commodores pass to each other
when we are in charge in the fortress so
when one is going a new dagger is forged
for the new commander as long as he's
the commander of the the fortress he
will always wear it proudly on him for
the beard we explored a ton of stuff to
the classic to the hipster beard
but in the end
it goes with the story of the character
this guy is so organized his beard
should be trimmed pretty well as the
character
well we began by just finding something
to protect arches reinforces at first we
tried with a mute effect it was working
but not as good as we expected
so we just wanted to try with
electricity for his spider claw or the
artilla electro claw
as it's officially known we i was just
doing some research and i remember that
there are in the berber mountains there
are these spiders that are like
cartwheeling spiders and i thought maybe
it'd be cool if growing up in the
mountains he had developed a love for
those spiders and then why not affix
that love for those spiders onto his
gadget
we reworked the electricity look
because it was kind of subtle like
before
specifically on walls so now it's really
clear like you see the big electrical
arcs coming from metallic
parts and you don't have to try to just
tickle the world to see if it reacts
it's really clear from a farmer
commander in moroccan arabic is kaid and
they're like that's perfect that totally
goes with the all the other operating
names that we have his real name the
civilian name is jalal al-basi and jalal
is actually a nod to one of our tech
guys here because he had spent so much
time working on the game and he is
moroccan
[Music]
it's
funny that a game named siege hasn't had
a castle or any sort of fortress until
now but with commander cade's family
kazpa
it finally fills that hole in our lineup
we really wanted to bring the rainbow
world and lore to life in a new way that
hadn't been done before and a lot of
times our maps while they have a story
standpoint it doesn't feel as connected
especially to the operators but this way
we could start to bring players in and
they may actually start to look at the
map and learn more of an operator's
story from it in this case we use the
operative story to inform all of our
room designs and layouts there's a
museum for commander kai's family in
which all the daggers of previous
commanders are there for this fortress
in fact at the beginning
i started to look
to the classic morocco because
we always wanted the player to have this
feeling of traveling
going somewhere
never never been before in the game it's
more feeling when you go to a specific
place like the dust the sand
what do you feel when you're there so i
think the overall colorful feeling the
sand the dust the aid from the sun i
think you can really feel it now in the
map many people on the team including
one of the art directors is
moroccan and they were able to as i
designed and worked just lend real
day-to-day on-the-ground insight to like
how these structures work and why people
are living in them or doing these
certain things
and that allowed me to see it in a new
way that you don't get from just reading
about it
we began to really make the map feel
different
we actually started all the map
conceptual prototypes and layouts from
real-world casbah architectural plans
we really tried to take all the
inspiration we could from morocco as a
country and it has very unique
architecture that when applied to maps
will change the gameplay in ways other
maps haven't had one way is exterior
staircases
even on their casbahs and in the map
fortress there are many exterior stairs
that like it gives attackers new and
unparalleled opportunity to get onto the
roof and project power downwards and
this is going to be an interesting
situation defenders are going to have to
cope with
as opposed to other traditional maps the
rooftop space is used as a living space
it's a very cool natural place to relax
so the rooftop as opposed to previous
maps it's usually dead or space because
no one's on the roof
it now is much more open and presents
more opportunities than maps previously
because it's someplace that people live
i built over 30 maps honestly for
morocco to try to finally get this one
right because you never know what if we
change this aspect of the casbah what if
we include one less tower how does it
change this we're always working through
that iterative until we finally lock
down on one that everyone can agree
represents the new map the best and
plays the best
we've win bastion instead of just
checking the meta just trying now to
reinforce it
and
to add more options around it but in a
really different flavor
that's what we were aiming at