Halls of Torment is out on Xbox and we’re super excited to share some insight about the content we’ve added to the game for this special occasion. For quite some time during the development we’ve planned to reward our players with a special treat once they manage to beat the final Lord in the base game – the base game being the game without additional DLCs. But initially we struggled to determine what this special reward should be. Players always got excited when we added new playable characters to the game, since this opened up new playstyles and new character builds to explore.
Every time a new figure appeared in front of the camp fire, the excitement was high and the urge to give the Halls of Torment another spin rekindled. So it became clear to us what would be an adequate response to our players’ final achievement: a unique and fun character for doing victory laps.
And we knew just the right fantasy archetype that would fit perfectly in this position: the Bard. Contrasting the otherwise dark and grim world of Halls of Torment with a cheerful trickster that didn’t fight with lightning or steel but with music seemed like the proper send-off to us. The Bard should stand out both thematically and mechanically from all other playable characters. From there our ideas ran wild and an increasingly clear vision for the Bard formed in our heads.
Halls of Torment is a very metal game. The environments, characters, and themes are all things you could hear a power metal band make songs about. Even the key art would make a convincing metal album cover or band shirt print. Hence, designing the Bard in the image of a medieval metalhead made perfect sense: long hair, a gold and silver studded lute, a swaggering stance and our medieval musical prodigy was born. The battlefield would be his stage and the armies of the underworld would be his (unintentional) crowd. This of course would also have implications for what abilities the Bard would use while fighting against the hordes of the Halls.
Having a music-based character created another requirement for the game: new music. It would’ve been a missed opportunity to have a metalhead character without any proper electric guitars in the game’s score. The Halls of Torment soundtrack is moody and orchestral, and it serves the purpose of underlining the ambience of each world in the game. But it isn’t exactly metal. So we decided to add new tracks specifically for the Bard. We hired a team of professional music producers who helped us out and created a set of three tracks that don’t wear out too quickly even after repeated and prolonged listening. To spice things up a little bit we decided to produce each of the three tracks in three intensity variations. Once you would reach a certain character level, the game would fade to a higher-intensity variation of the currently played track.
Knowing that the Bard would be an outlier in the cast of player characters, we decided to give him his own exclusive set of abilities. Usually, all abilities are shared and interchangeable between all characters. This is where we’ve made an exception. The Bard wouldn’t use any of the standard abilities, and all other characters wouldn’t be able to use the Bard’s music-themed abilities; at least not under normal circumstances. All abilities for the Bard are inspired by rock concert tropes: mosh pits, pyrotechnics, killer riffs, you name it. And since they are brought to you alongside a set of awesome metal tracks, why not have some more fun with it? We implemented the Bard abilities in a way so they’d match the different instrumental rhythms of the music. This is how we wound up implementing a music cue system that would sync all Bard ability triggers with instrumental events in each of the tracks. For reasons of balancing and aesthetics we had to author these music cues manually but it was worth all the effort. Now, when you enter the Halls with the Bard, all combinations of his abilities will result in a glorious light show that will put most stage engineers to shame.
To top off all of this, we’ve added a bunch of new Bard-themed artifacts that create new challenges via the Shrine of Torment. You’ll also be able to equip the Bard’s Mark with all the other characters – once you’ve unlocked it – which will allow you to pick one of the Bard’s abilities at the start of your run.
Overall, we’re pretty happy with how this addition to our group of heroes has turned out. Bringing the Bard to the campfire felt like finding a missing piece for a jigsaw puzzle. Halls of Torment is available now on Xbox. Alongside the base game you’ll also be able to grab the Boglands DLC which contains two additional characters, an extra swamp stage, and a slew of new items and abilities. We hope you’ll enjoy it!
Halls of Torment
Chasing Carrots
$9.99
$7.99
Includes the premium features “Alternative Character Skins”, “Supporter HUD Skins” and the “Training Grounds” with the latest update: Bardcore!
Bardcore Includes:
– New Character: The Bard
– 6 New Abilities
– 6 New Endgame Artifacts
– 3 Metal Music Tracks
– Music Selection per Stage
– Manual Level Ups
The post How the Bard Found His Way into Halls of Torment appeared first on Xbox Wire.
