After nearly nine years since its original run, Guild Wars 2 is finally re-releasing Living World Season 1: Scarlet's War. The first of the Living World story updates for Guild Wars 2, Scarlet's War was an experimental period of time which utilized time-locked story chapters on a bi-weekly schedule. Because of this, those who missed the chapters as they happened would never be able to experience them firsthand. Over the years, Guild Wars 2 has refined its storytelling tools and has figured out how to re-create the experience of Living World Season 1 for modern Guild Wars 2, finally allowing players to experience this pivotal chapter of the Elder Dragon saga.

Game Rant had the opportunity to speak with Joe Kimmes, an advanced game designer with ArenaNet. Kimmes shared his insight into the process of redesigning Living World Season 1 as a persistent story journal entry. He talked about the challenges and obstacles Guild Wars 2 had to overcome in the remastered version of Scarlet's War, and spoke of how important it was to ArenaNet to share the full stories of the key characters and events introduced in Living World Season 1.

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Q: It has been close to 10 years since the original run of Living World Season 1. What were some of the greatest challenges you had to face in adapting this old content to modern Guild Wars 2?

A: One of the biggest challenges the team faced in revitalizing the Season 1 content was reworking its original setup into modern story journal standards. To give a direct example from Episode 1, in the original run the story didn’t assume that the player character had completed their Personal Story, which meant that some characters like Rytlock had multiple sets of text based on whether you were unknown to each other or close comrades in arms. By the same token, characters didn’t assume you had played any previous Season 1 content, which meant that Braham, for example, had numerous checks throughout the year to see if this was your first time meeting him. In the updated version, we’ve been able to go with the linear approach — since there’s no risk of previous missions or episodes being shelved again, the player can now meet Braham and introduce themselves just once!

gw2 lws1 braham eirsson

A similar challenge is the changes to the world during the course of Season 1. Using Episode 1 as an example again, the opening story of the episode concerns a crisis with refugees pouring into Hoelbrak and the Black Citadel. In the original run, this was handled by adding the refugees over time in new builds of the game, and then gradually removing them with the rest of the content when the players had resolved the crisis. For a permanent story, that approach doesn’t work–fortunately, over the years we’ve developed solutions for having characters appear on a per-player basis, so we were able to rework the refugee camps with that in mind. For some things, like the changes to Lion’s Arch over time, we’ll be using the older versions of the maps, but where we can the team is hoping to get the best of both worlds to let players experience the content as close to the original as possible.

Q: The original run of Living World Season 1 looked very different from Seasons 2-5 and the three Guild Wars 2 expansions. What was it like picking and choosing parts of the year-long update to feature, and what did you learn from later Guild Wars 2 content that helped you make these tough decisions?

A: There’s a lot of experiences packed into that year of Season 1 — I think we were able to refit the core story into the new episodic version, but it’s always going to be bittersweet to leave pieces on the editing table. Our goal throughout was to make sure that players got the full story experience and could go back and get the achievements or rewards they had missed. With that as a guidepost, we were able to bring back the lion’s share of content and even build some side goals into the main storyline, like helping Whispers Agent Brandubh and his partner gather intel from the Molten Alliance.

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A big thing we’ve taken from later content is the phasing of characters that I mentioned previously — having a character be present or appear differently in the open world based on the player’s story progress. That extends to interactable items or even scenery — updating even simple things like refugee mementos that the player collects allowed us to bring back collections and open world content without adding a pile of “you’ve investigated this already” messages to areas like Diessa Plateau.

In other cases, we’ve taken a page from later Living World maps and allowed story-focused map content to be permanent when it adds to the map. The original Molten Alliance events invading Diessa Plateau, for example, are fine to stay active — if you’re in the midst of the story, it’s exciting to see those attacks taking place, and if you’ve completed it, it’s not diminishing to the events to imagine that you’re cleaning up remnants of the Alliance.

Q: What parts of the original Living World Season 1 did you have to remove for the re-release? Are there any chapters you wished Guild Wars 2 could have included, but which couldn't make the cut?

A: A big early cut was the Southsun Cove arc — "Lost Shores," "The Secret of Southsun," and "Last Stand At Southsun". While those chapters are the first time we meet some characters like Inspector Kiel and Canach, it’s mostly a self-contained story. The team chose to focus on Scarlet Briar’s machinations as the key arc to bridge the gap between Personal Story and Season 2, which made Southsun Cove a side story that we decided to leave out for now.

gw2 lws1 ellen kiel

Q: What parts of the Living World Season 1 re-release are you the most excited for modern players to experience?

A: I’m excited to see how Season 1 plays as a proper linear experience, especially with the chance for us to re-polish it a bit. In the original run, if you had missed sections you’d always be playing catchup on who characters were, their motivations and plot teasers — players who jumped in partway through would have different impressions of the events than those who were following every detail and theory beforehand.

For a specific favorite on that, I’m looking forward to "Clockwork Chaos," which (spoilers ahead I suppose) is the first time the arc villain Scarlet Briar takes center stage. Since then, we’ve seen a lot more of Scarlet and the aftereffects of her actions ripple even as far as End of Dragons. Going back to that character with years of future knowledge in hand, we can present more of her motivations and struggle without worrying about giving away too much of what the future holds — and hopefully give players who missed the original a memorable first encounter with an infamous villain.

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Q: Living World Season 1 introduced a large cast of characters, least of all Taimi, Marjory, Kasmeer, and Mai Trin, all of whom played roles in End of Dragons. Was part of the drive to revamp Scarlet's War to show the origin stories of these pivotal characters? How does it feel to finally be able to tell their entire stories to players who journeyed with them for years, but may have missed out their original introductions?

A: Absolutely. A recurring point of feedback as early as Season 2 was “who are these characters, and how do I know them?” Providing recaps or reintroductions helped a bit, but especially the further we went from Season 1, the more players felt the story gap — if you didn’t meet Braham in his up-and-coming days in "Flame and Frost," it’s harder to understand him in Heart of Thorns and harder still to empathize with him as he faces internal struggles in later seasons. You’ll also have missed the origins of his catchprase, if nothing else!

I’m excited to see new players experience the story with those gaps filled, and be able to chart the growth of the iconic story characters over the years. Seeing some of their formative moments for the first time in years brought a lot of nostalgia for me, and I hope everyone feels the same whether it’s their first time ever or a long-awaited chance to revisit these stories.

gw2 lws1 scarlets war

Q: Any final thoughts on Living World Season 1: Scarlet's War, or Guild Wars 2 in general?

A: Living World Season 1 and the question of whether it could return has been a recurring topic at ArenaNet for a long time. There have been a number of advancements over the years that made this possible — the work of developers who chipped away at concerns that it wasn’t feasible and made incremental progress. I want to give credit to those numerous contributors, starting with the original Season 1 team who made sure that when Season 1’s content left the live game, it was set to the side rather than being truly deleted. Thanks to that, later developers were able to bring back pieces of it gradually in the Scarlet’s War recap, Fractals of the Mists, Visions of the Past missions and the revamped Twisted Marionette, until we reached the point where Season 1 returning wasn’t a project fraught with unknowns and risk but something that could be properly taken on.

I hope that with the story journal incarnation of Season 1, we’ve done justice to those hopes and efforts over the years. I’m looking forward to playing the content again with you all! Thanks for your questions — I’ll see you in Tyria!

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Guild Wars 2: End of Dragons is available now on PC.

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