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As the dust settles from our explosive April Fools’ Day prank, Cinematics Lead Horia Dociu, the mastermind behind the totally-not-real commando profession, reveals the inspiration and planning for this elaborate ruse:
Military shooters are just my cup of tea. Before I joined ArenaNet over seven years ago, I was working at Valve, and before that I worked on the original SOCOM. I loved playing Metal Gear and Rogue Spear! Even now, when I’m not working, I’m in front of my TV getting my ass handed to me in Call of Duty.
One day, while working on some of the previous Guild Wars 2 skill videos, I thought about how I’d love to see a SWAT team taking out charr with assault rifles and how much fun it would be to make that video. Then it clicked: April Fools’ Day would be my only opportunity to do that, so I had to make it happen!
As soon as I thought of the idea, I drew up some rough storyboards of potential skill videos. This helped me generate a big list of all the assets we’d need to make the profession reveal seem believable—video production, models, wallpapers, web stuff, etc. A full profession reveal takes a lot of work because we’re still very much in the midst of production, so I also had to be creative with managing our resources. I started with the awesome eagle logo that Daniel Dociu, our art director, designed. Then I drew up a rough concept of a cool commando uniform and asked Delly, one of our talented cinematic artists, if he wanted to help. On his own time and in between assignments at work, he created a full custom 3D sculpt and generated the in-game model. I then borrowed a pellet gun from my friend Brent and had Monty and Matt, our cinematics animators, rig me up in our motion capture suit. This provided us with rough canned animation for them to tweak and put in game, saving us the complicated process of making the commando actually playable.Still working between assignments and in the evenings, we cleaned up the animation and prepped the models. Jason Stokes, our environment prototype lead, helped with some custom map work to stage the battles. Then we were ready to shoot! Everything was done in-game with GW2 assets, but we did use some post-processing effects to replicate the night vision look. I shot the videos just like a normal skill video, focusing on pacing and dynamic camera angles that bring the viewer into the action. What really brought these videos to life, though, was the nice sound pass by James and the face-melting custom music composed by Maclaine, a couple of our awesome sound guys. The last, fun touch on the videos was AJ’s kick-butt VO and ad-libbing. He’s a real master of impressions!
Once we finished the videos, we only needed the web assets to really sell it. I asked Kekai, Richard, and Bryan, our icon painter, to create wallpapers and video buttons so the site would look authentic. Our web people took on a full profession-reveal workload when they saw how much work we’d put into the project. They made sure all the details were in place and that the site looked top-notch. The ArenaNet community team and the NC West marketing people synchronized release schedules so that nothing leaked and it could be a total surprise.
Basically, a ton of work went into this; it was “a biiiig chicken,” but I had to make sure we didn’t interfere with any Guild Wars 2 deadlines. The key was starting early, so that people could work on this fun stuff whenever they had free time. I also made sure not to involve any designers in hooking up actual game play, since that would have put a major dent in their schedules. Jon was happy to wax poetic in his write-up and interviews about all the fun nonsense he thought the commando would do, Other than that, we made certain no one missed a deadline or took on any work that would harm production. Our primary focus—always—is finishing the game. This was just a fun little side project that I loved working on and thought gamers would appreciate. After all, how can you go wrong with dragons versus helicopters? We wanted to do something fun for the fans, because we’re all grateful for the amazing community our game is fortunate enough to have.
I heard that the Guild Wars Live guys hadn’t selected a prank to do for this year, so I asked Delly, Patrick, and Duncan from our art team if they could convert the model and make a couple of new weapons to support having a playable commando in the first game. When the Live Team heard about this, they went full bore into creating a fun, reference-laced event that took this project to a new level. I painted a loading screen and some custom skill icons while they worked their magic to make the commando feel like a full on playable GW profession.
This undertaking highlighted what I like about working here: ArenaNet is just a bunch of friends working together to make great games and have fun doing it. All our effort is worth it when we read the enthusiastic reactions from our fans. We can’t wait for you guys to have the game in your hands; we want this game released even more than you do! We may build the world, but you bring it to life. Until we see you all in the game, the game is not finished. We’re hurrying!
P.S. Although we did take the commando web page down, you can still find him lurking in stealth mode here: http://www.guildwars2.com/en/the-game/professions/commando/
