Once More Unto The Breach: Mark Roberts Talks Returning To Cosmic Horror In Path of Exile Keepers of the Flame

 You can't have gothic horror without occasionally stumbling into the cosmic- they go hand in hand. In Path of Exile's Keepers of the Flame update, the game goes back to the Breach, with all its creepy phalanged glory. 

Mark Roberts, Game Director at Grinding Gear Games said the new League was of particular sentimental value to him: he'd worked on the original Breach league in 2016, and was now leading Keepers of the Flame 9 years later. On top of that, given the gravitas the original Breach had, he says it felt just right revisiting those story elements. 

Revisiting An Old Friend

"Our modern day leagues versus our leagues back then, they don't really compare to the same degree. Like, generally speaking, our leagues, we try and have NPCs, more world building, crafting systems, you know, more in-depth reward systems and stuff like that going on. Like, there's just a bit more happening", Mark explains. "Whereas back then, we didn't have the resources for it. We didn't have the time for it. We hadn't learned from nine years of mistakes".

"You know, we were still doing good. We were still pushing out content, but like, it's really awesome to now come back and recreate something that we didn't get to fully", he says. "It was, 'well, what would it look like if we got to do this now with everything we know and everything we can do in a team size that's probably triple what it used to be', you know? And that's what we kind of get out of it, is this awesome thing".

One other fun part of revisiting the Breach is the existence of Path of Exile 2. Mark explained that part of the decision was also based on efficiency- many Breach assets were already being made for the game's sequel, and being able to make assets that could be used for both games allowed the team to spend more time refining either game. 

It wasn't just assets, either. On the worldbuilding side, the Keepers of the Flame also acted as one more cool tie in to the next game: 

"The monastery that's in Keepers of the Flame is actually the home of the monk class from PoE 2, which is kind of fun", Mark says. "And it's something I hope to then get to be able to extrapolate on later. And I would expect to see some changes in the monk's dialogue or new things popping up that, sure, you don't need to know. You don't need to play PoE 1 to understand".

Speaking of the Breach, though, there's a lot to love. Writhing masses of fingers in a cosmic horror coat of paint- they're easily some of the coolest enemies in the Path of Exile world. 

Of course, one of the big questions came down to how to animate that many digits. While Mark wasn't clear on the specifics, he said in broad strokes they were still being done the old-fashioned way: keyframes. 

"There's a pretty big team of animators and they're honestly champions. So when they, I think as long as they spread out the amount of monsters or effectively how many fingers each member of the animation team has to animate, they're generally pretty okay with it", Mark said. "I think if every single one of them went on one person, they might eventually get sick of it. But yeah, it's all good".

Chilling By The Tree Tree

It's not just the enemies, either. The Tree of Genesis, a new feature in the update, is also a writing mass of hands, that you have to unlock wombs for so it births you upgrades, currency and items. Mark said that while the system itself was a product of efficiently using their tools, the physicality of the tree came from Path of Exile 2.

"In PoE 2 at the start of the Twisted Domain, there's these trees that the environment artists made out of hands and they're all kind of gray and desaturated. But I remember thinking they're really cool and probably going to go underappreciated because they're just a tree that is made of hands, but it's not a key feature. It's not bright. It's not in your face", he says. 

"I was like, hold on, we can probably, hold on, can we use that? All of a sudden now we had a design for a crafting system and then we were like, just due to a random asset that an environment artist made that was cool, we're like, okay, obviously there was a Breach and hands correlation, but it wasn't ultra strong", he says. "It was honestly mostly represented through a few unique items and some microtransactions. And then PoE 2 extrapolated on that and the hands and the fingers became the main thing. And then, yeah, we just kind of went from there and we're like, well, let's double down, like hands and fingers everywhere".

Looking back, he expressed pride in the visual direction of the Breach. 

"It is very gross. If you think about the process of the Breach, because all of those creations are born of these trees. The Breach Lords are born of these trees", he explains. "All the creatures, they're all just like birthed from these trees in a really gross way by using actual organic matter harvested and planted in the base of these trees. It is gross. And we wanted to make sure that we don't just hold back on that grossness".

Thankfully, fans can experience all that and more with the Keepers of the Flame update for Path of Exile dropping October 31st. With a new League built around enhancing your character with Grafts and fighting off swarms of the Breach, it's the perfect kind of tonal shift to welcome the spooky season.