[Archive] LWS4 cut contents (spoilers)

That thread's goal is to collect all devs quotes about cut contents in the fourth living world season, can be based on AFCs but also reddit or anything if the origin is a dev comment. It would make easier to everyone to find those.Here I start with the AFC ones:

LWS4E1: no AFCNO RECORD FOUND IN GUILD CHAT, considering wiki report, no words like "planned, originally, cut" were found.

LWS4E2:

AFC@Clayton Kisko.5207March 16, 2018I'll take a quick shot as this!Our original plans had us fighting Boticca as a villain :)There were plans to make a poke'mon snap like collection where you find specific rare animals and scan them for data collections.
We originally had Olmakhan riding Jackals but looking into the lore some more we realized this wouldn't make sense and so they now ride skimmersEarly designs of the map had a giant Volcano to the north and the Cube to the south. @_@Originally the Inquest were going to have all these crazy biomes in the central island like snow/forest/lava/rock where they would do crazy experiments on animals and dino like creaturesWe had this idea for a cool sparring like event where you trained with a Olmakhan in combat but this was later cut and moved to a narrative only sceneGorrik and Blish are amazing! But originally we had Taimi in their position :)We joked at first but for a hot second we really wanted the player and Braham to have a hug it out scene

@Cameron Rich.3905January 16, 2019Fun fact: We originally planned for multiple "Golem Pilots" in episode 2, but R3D-RCR was the only one that was made it into that episode. R3D returns in Episode 5 and we wanted to give some flavor to golem as well, so that's where the names come from. This is just a case of a fun recurring character moment, no hidden meanings :)

Guild Chat Episode 60@Cameron: Our map artist came by and just kind of like, put this on my desk and I looked at it and I was like, "What, what is this?" and it turns out this is actually (chuckles) the first little... [takes out a grayscale image of Sandswept Isles during development] ...like shot, top-down of our map design and we have, and we mentioned this in the AMA, we have just like a little tiny island up in the northwest for the wild charr, just a little tiny one. They were only to be, kind of like, a little bit of world-building—@Jessica: I like Bora Bora, over here.@Cameron: Yeah, and we had the, kind of like the Scotland coast, idea. And at one point we were going to have the volcano, that's, as a part of this peninsula, but kind of involved in this map. But, we saw that the further we got in the development, it was just kind of feeling disconnected. And, what we really wanted to do, uh, in this episode, and just in season 4 in general, is to just have every part of the episode embrace the narrative, and help it go along. 'Cause it's really easy to get away from yourself, with like, "Oh this could be cool, this could be fun", but it doesn't really add to the story.@Rubi: Yeah, it's that line that we've talked about a lot of times before. I have—have, a cool idea. It doesn't fit. Yeah, but I really like my idea! It's—it can be hard.

LWS4E3:

AFC@PeterFries.1057July 3, 2018We originally planned some content where you were researching Joko's past in order to find his weakness, a way to defeat his immortality.That honestly wasn't anywhere near as compelling as the storyline we released. We've seen it demonstrated again and again that Joko rewrote Elonian history and embellished his omnipotence over the generations in order to subjugate his citizens. Why shouldn't the Commander (who has killed two Elder Dragons and a god) just assume the tales of this tyrant's immortality weren't as phony as any of his other lies?Also something about the confetti room. Was planned at the origin that Blish portal fail and teleport you somewhere with low gravity. (Can't find the quote again)

Guild Chat Episode 65STORY JOKO@Peter: So early on I was in on some of the planning for this season, and the entire season had sort of a different sort of take originally that we scaled back a little bit and changed around. I'm not gonna talk about most of the paths not taken because you never know if we might-@Rubi: That just hurts feelings.@Peter: ... we might use some things later. One thing that I feel like I probably can talk about is that we originally ... there was a feeling that Joko wasn't a threatening enough villain, so we wanted to make him seem formidable enough that it was somebody worth taking on. There was the idea that you would be facing a series of Awakened assassins that he would be sending after you, starting with Episode One. We were going to have him kill and Awaken people who got closer, and closer, and closer to your circle of friends. In the original version of Episode Three, you were gonna have to face some of your friends that were Awakened. It was a dramatic and sad moment when you finally saw what he had done to these people that you cared about. But I guess I don't know if I want to say who they were gonna be. At one point we had a dry erase marker board with a list of everybody. It could have been literally anybody.@Rubi: My brain is going such terrible places right now, and I'm sad over something that never happened.STORY/EVENT@Nick: There's one there that's talking about the story behind the confetti room in Kourna. For those who don't know, there's this secret room under the map that is just this giant box that's got some messed up gravity. There's just confetti everywhere.@Rubi: Well, sure.@Nick: In early development when we were doing the roller beetle stuff-@Keaven: People can get into there?@Nick: Not planned.@Keaven: They're not supposed to.@Nick: They're not supposed to, but-@Peter: Naughty people.@Nick: ... there's a very good thing.@Rubi: Why is it there?@Nick: It's there because of the fact that during the roller beetle collection. one of our early iterations. had Blish futzing around with the saddle that he made, and accidentally doing something incorrectly which caused a wormhole to open.@Peter: A wormhole with confetti.@Nick: You get sucked into the wormhole and you're supposed to be flying around this cosmic fractal-looking space world. Of course, we didn't actually have ... that got cut early one so we didn't art it out, so we used temp art which was confetti.@Keaven: Confetti room.@Nick: That's what it was. You were supposed to be there just floating around in space, and Taimi was supposed to be like, "Um, uh, I don't know. I don't know what's going on, but we'll fix it."@Rubi: You could hear her say that.@Keaven: We were also, then, after that got cut we were going to reuse that area as-@Peter: Joko's party room.@Keaven: No.@Nick: His sexy Tyria—@Nick: Spoiler alert.@Keaven: Oh man. No, we were gonna use that as the Mists for you to walk through. That was one of the ways that you were gonna get there originally, in one of the versions that we went through. You would travel through the mist to get to Gandara.@Rubi: Amazing.@Peter: Oh, that's right.@Keaven: We were gonna use that room to avoid having multiple load screens. But that didn't happen either.@Rubi: Now it's a confetti room.GANDARA META@Peter: This is ThatOtherGuyOI. "With Gandara being an iconic location from Nightfall, what were some things for Season Four, Episode Three that didn't get into the live final build for the Moon Fortress?" Was there originally something on Bokoss Island?@Keaven: Yep.@Peter: Do you remember?@Keaven: Yes.@Nick: Yeah. Bokoss Island was gonna have a meta-boss. The golem that you see within the meta right now-@Peter: That's right.@Nick: He was gonna be his own fixture, his own entity, inside the Bokoss Prison. But due to just the development cycle and time constraints, we needed to cut that area. So we cut the boss, moved him over to the south-line narrative that you see now within in the meta, then reimagined the Bokoss Prison into what it is today.@Peter: I know that there were POIs and some of the landmarks that were shifting around until-@Nick: They were, yeah.@Peter: ... minutes before live, because I remember naming stuff a few times that shifted all around.@Nick: There was a lot of iteration that went into Gandara.CUT JOKO CUTSCENE@Peter: Path of Fire originally ended with Joko walking out of the Domain of the Lost. Likem, there was an epilogue that we were originally gonna have with him definitively walking out, like, "Hahaha." Yeah, we cut that. I guess it probably wasn't as clear as it could have been, how he got out, but that's how he got out.@Rubi: Now you know. We did this. We caused this.

LWS4E4:

AFC@Connor Fallon.9408September 25, 2018It's kind of funny you say this, because I always thought of the Orr bubble in Jahai as a displaced fractal. Just because it isn't a fractal that exists in the sanctuary does not mean it is not a "Fractal" as it is defined in our lore - a trapped echo of time in the mists.In early design we actually talked about having it be the searing of Ascalon, which is a fractal, but going to intact Orr felt more distinct and more novel, so we decided to go that direction in the end.

@Connor Fallon.9408September 26, 2018Really glad you enjoyed them!! This area went through a lot of iteration, both artistically and design-wise. I don't think Justin Fawcett (our main map artist) is participating in this forum chat, so I'll answer as best as I can for both and maybe he can chime in later :)Art wise, most of Orr is mostly made out of modified assets from the sunken version - cleaned up by our prop artists to remove cracks, barnacles, and the like. There are some assets from elsewhere that match the style well enough mixed in to create more variety. Justin did a fantastic job with the Viziers tower - it certainly looks like an intact version of the original. It's >worth noting in both cases, the tower is made out of multiple pieces, so there wasn't really a model to be the same as, though :)As for gameplay... originally, there was less of a time-loop and more of a never ending battle. You talked to fallen soldiers on the sides of it, and they responded differently based on your race. It was neat, but not as interesting mechanically, and it could potentially be misinterpreted as being the actual battle, and not an echo, which seemed... dangerous. So we settled on >the time loop approach instead - I have an affinity for time loops, so it was fun to implement one inside Guild Wars 2!

Guild Chat Episode 73@Connor: Ekolo's is ... Ekolo is kind of really interesting because she was actually originally planned to die in Episode 3 like, like, like Troopmarshal Olori Ogun, she was gonna be just she was going to another bounty boss and very early on in the process I was like, "Hey, like don't ... I like Ekolo."@Elisabeth:What if she didn't die?@Connor:Yeah, well, don't kill her." And then like I kind ... When I signed up to support, turns out that they're planning to do ... They, they ... It was all ... She was already planned to be a huge part of the meta, and she's this funny example of like how a small conversation can like alter the course of-@Elisabeth:Of history.@Connor:Of history, sure.

LWS4E5:

AFC@Clayton Kisko.5207January 16, 2019Oh my goodness where do I begin!Originally there was a third meta where you and Jalis would fight off gravelings but this turned into the Catacomb puzzles.Frodak was originally Kilroy but we didn't have access to the VO actorDragonbloods spears didn't always pierce!The Wrathbringer was originally suppose to be in the final instance as well but he didn't play nice with the environmentIn the final instance there was this elaborate hallway part where you would start interacting with the dwarven halls defense mechanisms to take out brand and wound KralkWe originally had a concept that the Branded Djinn in the final instance would come back as a Death Branded Djinn but we just didn't have enough resources to get that model so we replaced with with Death Branded Centaurs.We originally wanted to create a fun collection where the player could take "photos" of creatures and store them in their "index" :) One of Charlie E's pet projects.Olaf and Elaf were originally the ones throwing artifacts around in the Priory Heart but narrative talked me off the edge and convinced me that it didn't make a lick of sense.I originally pitched the idea of a collection where we wanted to find the rest of the pieces of Rhoban because we already found the thumb but it didn't really fit thematically and it really didn't make sense for his pieces to be here.Caithe was originally suppose to be involved in the Keep meta but that would introduce major spoilers just from seeing her so we decided that we had to cut her from the open world.That's just off the top of my head :)

Guild Chat Episode 79No sum-up on wiki yet.

You can now add missing quotes/ comments here too.

Frodak was originally Kilroy but we didn't have access to the VO actor

I will never understand why something like this actually matters. They have replaced so many voice actors already, so it shouldn't be a reason to not have a certain character in the game (like Zojja or Kilroy). :/ Would have loved to see Killllroyyyy Stonnnekinnn again. <3

@Ashantara.8731 said:

Frodak was originally Kilroy but we didn't have access to the VO actor

I agree. I wouldn't spotted a difference in VA between games anyway. Seems strange that they often rewrite lore/retcon things yet wont change the VA

Great topic. :) There's some really interesting information here! I'll have to see if I can find anything, and I look forward to reading whatever other people can find. :)

I'm particularly intrigued by the confirmation that the section of Orr is a fractal. I thought that was something Deesa and her krewe had invented, not something that could occur 'naturally' within the Mists. It makes me wonder what else there might be to find in The Mists, and how little we really know about it.

(One request: please can you either not put the quotes into those yellow boxes, or format them so lines don't extend past the edge of the page? I find it quite difficult to keep track of where I am when scrolling across, and to find the next line when I have to both 'track backwards' with my eyes and scroll it across. This might be dyslexia related and so affect relatively few people, but at least for me it would make the topic much easier to read.)

@Danikat.8537 said:Great topic. :) There's some really interesting information here! I'll have to see if I can find anything, and I look forward to reading whatever other people can find. :)

I'm particularly intrigued by the confirmation that the section of Orr is a fractal. I thought that was something Deesa and her krewe had invented, not something that could occur 'naturally' within the Mists. It makes me wonder what else there might be to find in The Mists, and how little we really know about it.

(One request: please can you either not put the quotes into those yellow boxes, or format them so lines don't extend past the edge of the page? I find it quite difficult to keep track of where I am when scrolling across, and to find the next line when I have to both 'track backwards' with my eyes and scroll it across. This might be dyslexia related and so affect relatively few people, but at least for me it would make the topic much easier to read.)

thx for the suggestion ^^ yup sure, done it on my mobile phone so it added by default yellow boxes, will correct that :)

EDIT: Done! hooray! note the first post can change with the time, will add more quotes if I find some.

Major update: Added Guild chat quotes.

Update: That_Shaman did some research, I let you read it, but it seems that phlunt used to have a role in a bug in the system:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/bpc898/a_glimpse_at_how_the_story_changed_at_the_start/

Also ABITS story instance were radically changed too, I found the former one more interesting: meeting phlunt in rata primus, escaping pods, jumping puzzles, security levels, puzzles, attacking two times the cube... but i'm still happy with the one we have.

/!\ authorized, he contacted ANET, not datamined.