overcoming a realization challenge

How the Idea Came About

Narrative Limitation

While designing the Main Story Quests for Season 2 of Skull and Bones, I became increasingly aware of a larger narrative limitation: players had no meaningful, personal interactions with seasonal antagonists. In Season 1, antagonists were only encountered through world event boss battles, which made them feel distant and interchangeable rather than present and personal.

This issue stood out even more because we had available cinematic designers who could help craft strong antagonist introductions - if only we had a space that could support those moments.

Ideation

I explored several options. Placing antagonists on existing outposts was one possibility, but these locations lacked the control and atmosphere needed to properly establish their presence. If these characters were meant to anchor an entire season, they needed dedicated spaces such as lairs or sanctuaries that could reinforce their identity and threat.

Opening up the base world to build new locations was considered but quickly ruled out due to the technical and production constraints of a live game.

Breakthrough - Thank you Baldurs Gate

The breakthrough came from playing Baldur’s Gate 3, where many narrative moments are delivered through small, self-contained interior spaces accessed via simple interactions. That sparked the realization: we didn’t need to change the world; we just needed to step outside of it.

Skull and Bones already supported this approach in a limited form within the Havens. Using that existing framework, I began experimenting with creating player-centric locations, isolated narrative spaces accessed through interaction, as a way to enable meaningful antagonist encounters without altering the base world.

Proof of Concept

The goal of the proof of concept was simple: to validate that we could create a small, player-centric narrative space without opening up or modifying the base world.

Learning the Systems

I began by studying how the game’s existing player-centric locations were set up, reverse-engineering the flow and understanding the systems that allowed players to transition into these isolated spaces. Using this knowledge, I successfully implemented a basic interaction where engaging with an object (e.g. a door) would teleport the player to a predefined location.

Hitting a Snag

While the teleportation flow worked, I quickly hit a limitation - I had little experience in building physical spaces from scratch.

To move the prototype forward, I collaborated with a junior level designer who had stronger expertise in layout and prop composition. Together, we scoped a small, focused environment that could support a short narrative moment.

Putting it Together

Once the space was built, I wired the interaction to transition the player into the location and release control back to them within the environment. The end result was a functional prototype that demonstrated players could seamlessly enter a bespoke narrative space from the live world.

This proof of concept validated that player-centric locations were technically feasible, low-risk, and scalable for future seasonal content, paving the way for more meaningful antagonist interactions without requiring changes to the base world.

Integration with the Seasonal Questline

With the proof of concept validated, player-centric locations became a core pillar of our Seasonal storytelling.

These spaces were embedded directly into the main questline and served as the primary narrative payoff for each Season. By transitioning players into a dedicated location at the climax of the quest, we were able to deliver focused interactions, controlled pacing, and meaningful introductions to the Seasonal antagonists.

This integration transformed antagonists from distant threats encountered only through world events into active narrative forces, giving players a clearer understanding of who they were, what they wanted, and why they mattered within the wider world.