The development of the games was progressing remarkably well. At this stage, the various studios under PixelPioneers Games had matured significantly after working through multiple large-scale projects, with each team becoming increasingly experienced and efficient.
On the art side, John never insisted that every visual element mirror the scenes from his dream memories perfectly. Instead, he established a unified artistic direction and stylistic guidelines, then encouraged the artists to unleash their own creativity within those boundaries. That had always been John's philosophy. Rather than restraining talent, he preferred to inspire it.
Time and again, the results had proven him right. Giving skilled artists room to interpret ideas had consistently produced work that felt more vibrant, natural, and memorable than rigid imitation ever could.
The greatest challenge, however, was never the artwork; it was the numerical balancing of the games.
For Warcraft, balancing wasn't especially problematic. The primary concerns revolved around the strengths and weaknesses of each race, the statistics of every unit, the abilities of each hero, and the interactions between their skills. This also included unit abilities, building functions, economic systems, and countless hidden calculations beneath the surface.
Fortunately, John's dream memories contained mature and battle-tested data. Without those references, the designers would have needed months of repeated testing, countless balance patches, and enormous amounts of player feedback before arriving at acceptable values.
Because of those memories, however, John could skip much of that exhausting trial-and-error process. The numbers stored in his memories had already survived years of refinement, making them an invaluable foundation for development.
Assassin's Creed, on the other hand, presented an entirely different set of problems. Although it was also an open-world sandbox title, its design philosophy differed considerably from The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. While both encouraged exploration, Assassin's Creed incorporated far heavier RPG progression systems, making resource management significantly more important.
The RPG mechanics introduced an entirely different layer of complexity. Skyrim also contained randomized resources, but those resources rarely affected a player's long-term progression.
For instance, after defeating a bandit, the player might discover a spell tome, a diary, several miscellaneous items, and a handful of gold coins. Reload the save and defeat that same bandit again, however, and the loot might consist of nothing more than a few gold coins, with the spell tome nowhere to be found.
These randomized discoveries existed primarily to enrich the world and make exploration feel unpredictable. Whether the player obtained those items or not rarely influenced the overall game experience. The sense of mystery, curiosity, and discovery- that was what Skyrim excelled at delivering.
Assassin's Creed was fundamentally different. Because it featured deeper RPG progression, every resource needed careful planning. Its overall resource economy resembled the design philosophy found in Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain, where production, upgrades, equipment, and progression all depended upon a carefully balanced cycle of resource generation and consumption. Maintaining that balance was anything but easy.
The simplest example was straightforward. Suppose completing a mission rewarded the player with one hundred gold coins, while researching a new technology required one thousand.
Then the designers had to determine exactly how many daily contracts, bounty missions, side quests, or exploration activities should be available before the player naturally accumulated enough resources for that upgrade.
Every reward had to be calculated.
Every cost had to make sense.
Every upgrade had to feel meaningful without becoming tedious.
If progression depended primarily on mission rewards instead of ordinary enemy drops, then the structure of each mission itself also had to be designed around that economy. Rewards that were too scarce or required excessive grinding would leave players frustrated, exhausted, and eventually unwilling to continue.
Conversely, if every mission showered players with abundant resources while requiring almost no effort, the entire progression system would collapse. Players would lose their motivation to explore, experiment, and pursue long-term goals because everything worthwhile could be obtained too quickly.
Players were, in many ways, a wonderfully contradictory group. Without a clear objective, they would quickly declare a game boring. Yet if developers handed them detailed instructions, rigid objectives, and guided them through every mechanic step by step, they would complain that the game held their hand too much and robbed them of freedom.
"...Wow. This story..." Inside the office, Luna stared at the plot outline John had just finished writing, unable to suppress her amazement.
Just like The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, John's outline for Warcraft contained only the major story beats. The finer details, dialogue, and scene construction would eventually be expanded by the writing team. Even with his otherworldly memories, handling every aspect personally would leave him with no time to oversee the countless other projects under development.
The manuscript Luna held described one of the story's most iconic moments. Within the royal capital of Lordaeron, Arthas returned home in glorious triumph.
Flowers filled the streets.
The citizens celebrated their prince.
Cheers echoed throughout the kingdom.
Then, before everyone could understand what was happening, Arthas drove his sword straight into his father's chest.
"...Now that is one incredibly devoted son," Luna muttered with a helpless sigh. "Players are going to be completely dumbfounded. They'll witness a noble, righteous Paladin gradually descend into becoming the Lich King's Death Knight."
John chuckled.
"Don't worry," he replied with a grin. "There are even bigger family tragedies waiting later."
Hearing that, Luna glared at him playfully before letting out another sigh. "Even so, squeezing such an important story into only two or three minutes of CGI is incredibly difficult."
Although John's reputation within the gaming industry had reached astonishing heights, and many critics believed that Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain, together with its Snake Eater expansion, showcased exceptional cinematic direction, John himself understood the truth better than anyone.
Creating in-game cinematics was not the same as directing a feature film. Many camera angles, transitions, visual effects, and emotional beats could be adjusted, refined, or even completely rebuilt through technical tools after production. Compared to traditional filmmaking, game cinematics enjoyed far greater flexibility. The CGI sequences in Warcraft could likewise undergo numerous revisions during post-production.
Even so, one limitation could never be ignored. Time.
How could they tell a powerful, emotionally devastating story in only two or three minutes? That was the true challenge.
In many ways, it resembled film editing. A finished movie often contained several times more footage than its theatrical runtime. Determining which scenes to remove, which moments to emphasize, and how to maintain emotional pacing was one of the most difficult aspects of filmmaking. Excellent footage could be ruined by poor editing. Likewise, an ordinary production could become extraordinary through brilliant editing. Everything depended on execution.
John and Luna continued discussing how each scene should be directed, how every emotional moment should unfold, and how the story would eventually be presented through the game's CGI cinematics.
Meanwhile, elsewhere within PixelPioneers, another team was moving even faster.
After receiving John's outline for Assassin's Creed, Martel and his core creative team wasted no time defining the game's artistic direction. They had already completed the first concept CGI trailer. Naturally, it bore no resemblance to actual gameplay.
Given the project's development schedule, the character models themselves were probably still unfinished, so the trailer existed purely as a cinematic concept piece.
It followed the same strategy employed by countless game publishers: release an eye-catching CGI trailer first, amaze players with breathtaking visuals, and generate anticipation long before the game itself was playable.
Some publishers even intentionally blurred the line between cinematic trailers and real gameplay, subtly encouraging players to believe the CGI represented the final in-game graphics.
However, reality is often disappointing. The game itself was still nothing more than a tiny seed, freshly planted, carefully watered, patiently nurtured, and waiting for the day it would finally grow into something extraordinary.