“We hope that gamers can experience the atmosphere of martial arts, the essence of martial arts,”Where Winds Meetlead designer Chris Lyu tells me in the first of four interviews I recently had at the NetEase campus in Hangzhou, China. It’s a theme central to the game’s premise, and one I experienced first-hand duringmy three-hour preview.
Set to release later this year, Where Winds Meet follows hot on the heels of other Chinese successes, likeBlack Myth WukongandWuchang: Fallen Feathers, but the Everstone Studios development team paid no attention to that. “What we are focused on right now is the game itself and the global launch. Our team hasn’t been focused on that kind of trend,” Lyu tells me, reiterating his desire to convey an “authentic martial arts open-world experience.”
Imbuing The Wuxia Spirit Into Where Winds Meet
Much of Where Winds Meet’s marketing is focused on the term ‘Wuxia’, a genre in Chinese media focused on martial arts, weaponry, chivalry, and justice.
“Our vision of Wuxia allows players to interact with the world through martial arts,” combat designer Zen tells me. “It’s more than just combat, though. For example, you can use your internal qi to blow fish out of the water as a form of fishing. We really wanted it to have a distinct sense of character in terms of how it reacts with the world.
“There’s also an element of romance to the Wuxia spirit. In this game, you play as a wandering hero. It’s about the freedom, the ability, the demeanour, and the spirit of a hero who acts on behalf of their country and the people who fight for them.”
Everybody needs to take accountability and do what they can to make the world better.
While much of the West’s exposure to the Wuxia genre has come from movies like Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and House of Flying Daggers, Soul, the lead designer behind Where Winds Meet’s global version, says the team has no concern about hitting the mark with Western Audiences.
“The spirit of Wuxia is inseparable from the spirit of the East and the West,” they tell me. “The core of the spirit is that everybody needs to take accountability and do what they can to make the world better.”
Narrative designer Avery Wang suggests the team put a lot of effort into making the game relatable for Western audiences, while keeping that core Wuxia spirit alive, giving me a specific example of this within Where Winds Meet. “If the player walks into a certain area, he finds his money bag gets stolen by a thief, and naturally, he goes after them. It’s something that’s easily understood by everybody,” she says. “But in that process, the player gets to show many different abilities, including martial arts and mystery arts. These may seem somewhat special and have a certain Chinese feeling to them.”
Every aspect of Where Winds Meet seems meticulously designed to fit the aesthetic the team is going for. I had the opportunity to observe a recording session in which the sound team punched cabbages and snapped celery sticks to replicate the sounds of combat, and the art team hand-crafted model buildings to ensure they were up to scratch in the finished virtual landscape.
“It’s impossible to rely on experience and instincts to create a game like this,” concept artist Zhong Zhou tells me. “We had to refer to a lot of historical documents and literature to understand the layout and scales of the cities. It took a lot of research, but it offers the most immersive experience.”
The same level of research was required by the audio team, who “translated and replicated a lot of ancient music scores,” to ensure the game’s soundtrack was authentic for the time.
The Justification For A 150-Hour Game
If you’re anything like me, finding a few hours a week to play games is a difficult task, so anything that runs 150 hours or more is a daunting prospect, but it seems like Where Winds Meet will be meeting this milestone for good reason.
“Our core design philosophy is not to force players to play the things that they don’t want to play,” designer Lyu tells me. “We don’t put pressure on players. There are no deadlines to reach certain levels or experience certain pieces of content.
“And if you’re not a PvP or PvE player, you don’t need to worry about that either. You won’t run into any difficulties or miss any major rewards. They’re all cosmetic.”
In one area, we’ve designed 10,000 individual NPCs.
Where Winds Meet might promise 150 hours of content, but its narrative team suggests it’s a split of around 20/80 between main content and side content, which isn’t just limited to missions, but merely interactions with the game’s wealth of NPCs.
“In one area, we’ve designed 10,000 individual NPCs. When you enter the city, you’re able to really feel it,” Wang tells me. “Each one of these NPCs has a role in the city. You can talk to them, hear their stories, be a part of their story, or even influence their fate.”
From Wang’s perspective, the game has an unparalleled sense of interactivity. “In one region, you meet a woman whose husband was taken away by bandits,” she says. “You can travel to the bandits' den and kill them, but you realise her husband is gravely injured. It’s your choice whether you tell the woman this or not.
“If you do tell her, she will travel across the whole map to find her husband. Even if you don’t follow her, she makes the arduous journey, and you can meet her along the way. If you opt to keep it a secret, she stays in her village, frantically asking those around her if they have any details on his disappearance, waiting and hoping he returns to her.”
The Future Is Bright For Where Winds Meet
There’s no denying that Where Winds Meet is already jam-packed with content, but if the prospect of 150 hours in a rich, ancient Chinese world excites you, there’s good news.
“We have a very long plan for the main quest and stories,” Wang tells me. “There’s still a lot of content in our pipeline. We’re definitely not worried about running out.”
“In terms of planning, we already have open-world zones up to the end of next year, and 60 percent or 70 percent of them are already in development,” Lyu adds. “We also have plans to diverge from the protagonist’s story, and in an upcoming update, players will play four different characters to experience the problems they faced during this era.”
Our core goal is to have more players play this game, and in order to achieve this goal, we made it free.
Where Winds Meet is taking a bold, unusual step by positioning itself as a predominantly single-player free-to-play title, free of gacha mechanics. All additional story content is promised to be free, and only cosmetics will cost players money.
“We thought about this decision very carefully,” Lyu tells me. “Our core goal is to have more players play this game, and in order to achieve this goal, we made it free.
“We are confident that by offering only cosmetic purchases, we can achieve commercialization. We’ve achieved great results with this method in the version that has been out in China for the last six months.”
The game will also feature a Battle Pass, which is geared towards those playing the game’s multitude of online modes, which include co-op, PvP, and PvE dungeons, but again, these will be purely cosmetic, aside from a “few other materials you can get from grinding.”
It’s an ambitious aim, launching a free-to-play title like this, and it’s something the Western market isn’t too accustomed to. However, with such a wealth of content ready for launch, and plenty more in the pipeline, Where Winds Meet looks like it’s primed for success.
