XDAVID1

This is starting to seem simmilar to the lore of attack on titan

I guarantee you I've never seen it or read it in any incarnation. But sounds like I might want to... someday. In the far, far future.

Glad you loved--er, hated--that is, glad it evoked a strong reaction! :) Thanks! This made my afternoon.

The pre-Upheaval world is something we've only lightly touched on in the game so far, but as the Journal grows and expands you should expect to see more of this sort of thing. Yet I also want to try and keep the perspective in this lore to what's reasonably known by our NPCs. That is, even if this material is written in a sort of omniscient 3rd person style, I don't intend to put huge lore reveals into the Journal until the NPCs learn about it too. Well, not unless is makes sense--like here, where it may be true, may not, but there are oblique references to things the NPC thinks are known to be true. Such as the idea of manufactured Behemoths.

It's been mentioned in a few places I think, but the Orrery--the big knowledge institution in St. Avellaine where Arkan Drew, Priyani, and many others studied, and no it's not a literal Orrery but they took their name *from* a literal orrery that is sitting in the center of their main HQ--that ol Orrery has either retained or collected as many pre-Upheaval documents and artifacts as they can. They don't share a lot of this ancient knowledge because it's often perceived as dangerous. I mean, the ancients broke the world. If there was documentation about how it was done in the Orrery's possession, they're definitely not going to share it widely. But this does mean that eventually some things about the old world might be factually confirmable, inasmuch as the Orrery has proof of a sort. Or might mount expeditions to find them.

Anyway, I'm no tactician, but scattering the enemy then fencing them into a death trap seemed like a good trick. Like spinning!

isighuh

So like Destinys lore? I see you 😉

Which part? I, er, haven't played since early Destiny 2 and honestly just never had the time to get good enough to advance all that far in the narrative (well, beyond the opening of the game, which... I don't even know if that's the same anymore tbh).

PragmaticV

I'm pretty new to the game and I'm wondering if you can comment on the dev/writing process. Was the lore written retroactively to fit the characteristics of the behemoths? Was there an overarching concept preceding the design of the behemoths (besides us being in some a apocalyptic world) that inspired the design of the behemoths? I can see how many of them are inspired by real life animal counterparts and worked on from there like many shows/games seem to do, but I'm wondering if there's more to it than that.

It's late on a Friday and I'm trying to finish up a gold patrol bounty so I can get back to the Deeps, but what the heck. And I should preface all this by saying that I am by no means an expert in all the disciplines at Phoenix Labs. I mean, obviously, who could be? But I mention it in case I unintentionally misdescribe how anyone other than me does their work. This is all based on my experiences.

When I came on board, a previous writer had already established some overarching concepts of the world in concurrence, I think, with the design of the game. Visual design, I'm not positive. And I guess it all stemmed from the original original concepts that the very first Lobsters had in the long-long ago when . As I started in late 2016 we had aether and archonite, some Behemoths up and running with more on the way, airships and the Shattered Isles, the basics of the NPC names and backgrounds, and the name Dauntless. Surely lots of technical and engineering things I don't understand as well but I wouldn't presume to speak knowledgably about that in any way.

I think you are also referring to the specific design of the Behemoths' look though, too. And oh hell yes the characteristics of the Behemoths--visually and behaviorally--definitely inspired new lore and revisions to the old lore as things went along. Our artists are all storytellers too and none of the lore exists without it. Every Behemoth is a story in and of itself that you can build from asking questions about the art--why does the Drask have so many purely reptilian characteristics while something like the Boreus more of a chimaera? Why are Dire Behemoths bigger and tougher? Why do they dissolve when they die, why don't the parts dissolve, how do they get from island to island, are there baby Behemoths? (There are answers to all of these questions. And the answer to the last one is "absolutely not," by the way.)

Really all of the art: 2D concepts and 3D models, initial rough sketches and brand-new visual effects, every piece of gear and every icon, the layout of the world, the sky, the trees, the pufflehops and rams and gruk-gruks, the islands themselves and every single NPC and I'm sure some things I'm forgetting--it all evolves along with and feeds into the game design and the lore and the narrative (the last two aren't necessarily the same, at least not all the time).

And hey, if you read this far: yes, in-universe there are reasons they many Behemoths resemble real-life animals (or plants). The reasons might not necessarily be what you think, or entirely what you may think. But I will say it definitely stands to reason that if at least some of the Behemoths were made, then using building materials (as it were) you created from scratch would be risky. If, say, there was already a complex chain of proteins that could kick off the process, why waste them? No need to play god when the stuff of life is all around you. But remember, they're not just ordinary animals either (see "dissolving" above). They don't really eat what normal animals eat, for example, even if they have the tools for it. Why do they still have sharp teeth or razor claws if they feed on energy and crystals? It's not necessarily just a case of some ancients Frankenstein-ing beasts together and animating them with aether or something like that.

Well. Not always, anyway.

As the Journal and Dauntless itself continues to expand, I hope to work in a lot more history and more general world lore about locations, cultures, how society functions in the Shattered Isles. If we do it right, those answers lead to more questions that are begging for more answers.

Well friends, this bounty ain't gonna finish itself! Thanks for playing Dauntless so I get to write it. And thanks for giving me the chance here to ramble on about it.