DEV STORIES: EPISODE 3 — Transcript

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1. 0:10The lore?
2. 0:13What do I like most about the lore?
3. 0:14Probably that everyone can
4. 0:16find something in it for themselves.
5. 0:18I mean, the hardcore military guys will find
6. 0:21everything related to combat.
7. 0:24People who are into mutants and anomalies will find
8. 0:28cultists, blue fire, whatever.
9. 0:33Conspiracy theory fans will find
10. 0:36conspiracies, TerraGroup, all that stuff.
11. 0:39But overall, yeah, I like all of it.
12. 0:42It's this closed-off space where
13. 0:44everything the players wanted has come together.
14. 0:48Well, at least that's how I see it.
15. 0:50It's this kind of quasi-post-apocalyptic shooter.
16. 0:55I mean, it's not really post-apocalyptic, like
17. 0:57those other games that are actually about the apocalypse.
18. 1:01It's more like it just happened.
19. 1:03And it's much more grounded.
20. 1:05Like, everything suddenly just went to shit.
21. 1:09Who is Lightkeeper in Tarkov's lore?
22. 1:11Well, Lightkeeper is one of The Unheard.
23. 1:14He was basically involved, so to speak, not exactly,
24. 1:20in the original infiltration,
25. 1:22when the USECs first infiltrated the region, because he had connections,
26. 1:26and he helped them get in, basically.
27. 1:30And he has access to information, too.
28. 1:34Then, when everything went to hell,
29. 1:40some of the USECs decided to leave,
30. 1:44while others were like, "I'm not leaving. I'm staying here,
31. 1:46because it's cool here. It's fun.
32. 1:48The world's going to shit anyway,
33. 1:50so I'll stay here and we'll be kings".
34. 1:52That's how The Goons and Rogues came about.
35. 1:56They're basically USECs who aren't
36. 1:58going anywhere. They're happy staying here.
37. 2:00But basically, they work with Lightkeeper.
38. 2:04They're not in conflict with him at all.
39. 2:06They don't like him, but they're afraid of him, because
40. 2:10the USECs-- because Knight is one of the commanders,
41. 2:13one of the top USEC commanders. He's the first USEC commander.
42. 2:17So he basically knows everything.
43. 2:19He's part of the high command, basically.
44. 2:22So he knows what TerraGroup is up to and why,
45. 2:26what's going on, who Lightkeeper is, what's going to happen, you know?
46. 2:31So they're pretty close with him, you know.
47. 2:34They work together, yeah.
48. 2:35They carry out the tasks, and
49. 2:39Lightkeeper gives them information, resources,
50. 2:41basically a connection to the outside world.
51. 2:43Everything goes through him.
52. 2:44Because Lightkeeper isn't exactly a "horseman of the apocalypse",
53. 2:48but you could kind of call him that.
54. 2:52He's neither a good guy nor a bad guy.
55. 2:54He's just... he's actually a really strange guy.
56. 2:59He used to be normal at first.
57. 3:02But something happened, and he became
58. 3:05kind of a weird guy.
59. 3:07He used to be really friendly and cheerful.
60. 3:10But then something happened, and--
61. 3:12that's why his speeches are all so abstract, kind of
62. 3:15weird, and that's how he acts.
63. 3:17He's like... Lightkeeper, he's the one who's watching,
64. 3:22watching what's going on.
65. 3:24The cultists are basically a cult
66. 3:26waiting for The Unheard to arrive.
67. 3:28They're waiting for The Unheard to come
68. 3:30and become the new rulers of the world.
69. 3:31That's why they're preparing the world for their arrival.
70. 3:34And they know Lightkeeper is a member of The Unheard, one of.
71. 3:37So for them he's the first one. Maybe he's not the only one.
72. 3:40There could be others, but he's a real person, a real member of The Unheard.
73. 3:44They basically serve him.
74. 3:48Streets was supposed to be this kind of ultimate expression of Tarkov
75. 3:51and all the technology we'd created, but we just physically
76. 3:54can't seem to optimize it properly.
77. 3:56And we'd really like it to be.
78. 3:57It was actually supposed to be even bigger.
79. 4:00We just kept cutting it down, cutting it down, cutting it down.
80. 4:02The guys just went nuts and made the detail absolutely insane.
81. 4:06But, I mean, technology keeps getting better, and pretty soon
82. 4:08everyone's going to have powerful GPUs,
83. 4:11so maybe sooner or later everyone will be able to play Tarkov.
84. 4:13I mean, the city. Streets.
85. 4:15It actually started back in Contract Wars, when
86. 4:18we made a GP-only pistol, the Glock.
87. 4:22So,
88. 4:22Nikita Vasilyevich just put a random engraving on the side,
89. 4:25Kiba Arms International, a South African
90. 4:29firearms company that did, like, custom work.
91. 4:32Yeah.
92. 4:33And well, it kind of became a local meme.
93. 4:37And then we just worked it into Tarkov's lore.
94. 4:40I wasn't involved in that. I just found out afterward.
95. 4:43They were like, "We're making a Kiba Arms store".
96. 4:45"Cool".
97. 4:51I'm a huge fan of metagames.
98. 4:52A metagame is basically a game within a game.
99. 4:54I really like that idea.
100. 4:55And in general, I really love MMORPGs and the whole RPG concept.
101. 5:00I like that feeling of having a home.
102. 5:02If you can create that feeling of home in a game with repeatable
103. 5:05raids like ours, I think it's great to have
104. 5:08some kind of place that's yours, where everything's peaceful.
105. 5:11That's basically how the Hideout concept was born.
106. 5:13The Hideout is actually a metagame
107. 5:16that basically reinterprets the skill system.
108. 5:20It's basically your offline skills, your branches.
109. 5:24It's the same thing, because it's branched out the same way.
110. 5:26You still have to invest resources,
111. 5:28you still need certain levels of all kinds of
112. 5:30dependencies and so on, and so on.
113. 5:32So basically, it's an alternative version
114. 5:35of your skill system, a branching
115. 5:38skill system that gives you additional
116. 5:40perks, various fun little things, and a visual aspect.
117. 5:43And here's another fun fact: the Hideout, absolutely everything,
118. 5:46the visuals, where every single element was placed,
119. 5:50up to the section where we added the Gym, I did all of it.
120. 5:55I set up all the lighting,
121. 5:56placed every item, designed all of those areas.
122. 5:59I did all of it from start to finish.
123. 6:01All of it. Absolutely everything.
124. 6:04I didn't model it myself, but I-- I commissioned the models
125. 6:07and basically did the environment art and level design for the Hideout.
126. 6:10We needed to make a new type of enemy based
127. 6:13on the different types of basic bots we already had:
128. 6:16hard, easy, medium.
129. 6:19The idea was basically to copy the settings
130. 6:22and make a more powerful, stronger guy
131. 6:25with basically the same attributes.
132. 6:27There wasn't a model for him, but we'd already modeled
133. 6:30this lower half in Kryptek, and this leather jacket.
134. 6:33Because, as you probably figured out, this is
135. 6:37Reshala. When we needed to make that boss,
136. 6:39I just needed a unique top and bottom,
137. 6:41and we'd just modeled these for a regular Scav.
138. 6:45So what did I do?
139. 6:46I took those pants, took that jacket,
140. 6:49grabbed the standard Scav head, and just used Photoshop
141. 6:52to add "No Return", the tattoos, all that stuff,
142. 6:55and gave him a slightly worn-out look.
143. 6:58And that's how the first boss came about.
144. 6:59He didn't have any backstory at all. He was
145. 7:01just another, alternative Scav.
146. 7:04Any indie game can take off like that.
147. 7:06I mean, there are examples. I don't know if we can
148. 7:09mention them here, but there are tons of cases where something
149. 7:12pretty insignificant grew into something absolutely huge.
150. 7:14There are some parallels, too. There are examples
151. 7:18where one person was doing it all, and then suddenly, boom!
152. 7:21The game kept getting better and better, and it was
153. 7:25streamed and reviewed by more and more people.
154. 7:29And then the Twitch thing came along and started doing all
155. 7:32its crazy little things, and even more
156. 7:33people came in, and so on and so forth.
157. 7:37Back then, I still thought Tarkov had to be
158. 7:41super ultra hardcore, a game that
159. 7:44really beat the shit out of its players.
160. 7:46Just a brutally hardcore survival game.
161. 7:49But!
162. 7:50Time passed.
163. 7:51Everyone who wanted that ultra-hardcore survival game,
164. 7:53they're all playing it now.
165. 7:55So, naturally, we had to give people some way to understand...
166. 7:58The barrier to entry was really high.
167. 8:00It still is.
168. 8:01I think it's even higher now.
169. 8:03It's just that the audience has started to understand what extraction
170. 8:07shooters are, including the hardcore ones, even though there aren't many.
171. 8:10Let's be honest, there aren't really any besides Tarkov.
172. 8:13But that's beside the point.
173. 8:14People have started to realize that, well, you have to get into a game like this
174. 8:18for more than just a couple of nights with the boys, where you
175. 8:22lose your entire stash and then just delete the game.
176. 8:27So yeah, I don't think a few little concessions hurt.
177. 8:30I've made my peace with it.
178. 8:33At first, I was like, "Oh, they whined to add this,
179. 8:35they whined about that, they whined until we made things easier".
180. 8:39Some things got whined for, some things brought inertia.
181. 8:42Boom.
182. 8:43That's it.
183. 8:44And on both sides, I mean, on the one hand,
184. 8:46you can't have it both ways, but I completely understand
185. 8:49that just playing reality would be boring too.
186. 8:51If it were just a realism shooter,
187. 8:53where we're just going pew-pew, I'm a hardcore PMC, yadda yadda,
188. 8:56man, that'd be insanely boring.
189. 9:00And that's true across the board.
190. 9:02It applies to balance, it applies to lore.
191. 9:04It's just guys in uniforms with guns shooting each other.
192. 9:07We've seen that a thousand times.
193. 9:09Then what?
194. 9:10Let's throw in some cultists or something.
195. 9:13So when Zryachiy shows up on Lighthouse, I'm like,
196. 9:18"Okay, I've got no questions. It's lore stuff. It's all good".
197. 9:23Because reality's boring, and games are fun.