As you know, the Cultists of the Eternal End are Endless Legend's 8th faction. They were entirely designed by the community so for this blog post, we've asked a few questions to the winners of each step of the Faction Creation Contest:
- Nosferatiel for the faction lore and gameplay
- Telum for the units and city visuals
- adazu for the Cultists logo and boat
Jeff (aka Slowhands) on the lore
The Cultists, though they are a faction in the Endless Legend universe, were designed as part of a community competition based on our guidelines. The winning proposal from Nosferatiel combined a lot of interesting -- and weird -- riffs on the Endless and the history of Auriga. As the loremeister for Amplitude, it was a lot of fun to see what Nos came up with and how he used our backstory to create something really unusual. So here is what he did, in his own words.
Nosferatiel, winner of the first step of the contest: lore & gameplay
AMPLITUDE: "please, introduce yourself."
NOSFERATIEL: "Denis, 29, Diplom-Physiker (german diploma physicist) specialised in elementary particle physics and on his way to get a doctoral title."
AMPLITUDE: "How did you find out about the Faction Creation Contest? Did you already play a ton of Endless Legend then?"
NOSFERATIEL: "Since being second in the Endless Space faction creation contest, I anticipated getting a second chance and was getting ready for having a good concept before a faction creation contest was ever announced on the chance that Amplitude would repeat the same thing they did for ES for EL. At that point, I had also played lots of EL, already. I posted as one of the first persons, because I already had a rough concept in the drawer and was lucky about the general theme of the contest playing to the strengths of my faction without major reworks of that concept."
AMPLITUDE: "Could you explain how you came up with your submission (lore and gameplay)?"
NOSFERATIEL: "I took up my failed ES attempt and started with the concept of a precursor for that as a general idea of a setting. It was a pretty close thing, then, so it wasn't too far off the mark. The main weakness of the old concept, to me, was that the ES faction's gameplay wasn't very fitting for the overall game. So I went back to first principles and applied Brandon Sanderson's (awesome author) second law of magic: Limitations > Powers (link).
Instead of starting with powers my cultists should have, I tried defining limitations for them, first. That way, things like the Queen being immobile and the Unspoken being erratic came to pass. If they were just omnipotent, they'd be bland and uninteresting. Giving them huge trade-offs was in some ways the actual start of the cultists. It was a logical trail of thought to get from the Queen being unable to rely on the Unspoken to do her bidding to a replacement. Any kind of robotic replacement by and for itself wouldn't have fit the setting too well and Auriga was basically desolate (there shouldn't be surviving factories or facilities in good shape), so the Queen needed easily impressed subjects that she could manipulate after even one off-chance event that the Unspoken would do what she told him to do.
In turn, "easily impressed" scratched out any known or new major faction with its own culture and no need for outside protection. Instead, the minor factions seemed to be the best choice for the Queen's support. Now, what happens if the Queen and the Unspoken meet a minor faction? Explaining to them Endless technology would be rather pointless, as this would erode the Queen's base of power. On the other hand, any sufficiently advanced technology should be indistinguishable from magic to the observer, so dust came to the rescue of the concept and the relation should most likely end up being religious.
From that point on, the question is what the Queen wants to do and how to achieve it. This way, the backstory of the hatred of the Queen for the Endless resulted in order to generate a powerful motivation and drive for her as well as an ultimate goal: Leaving the planet. This gives rise to the question what means she can employ and so the Queen basically became the city, itself, because this way she would control her followers most completely and have all resources in one spot for creating her spaceship.
In the end, the limitations gave rise to the powers and all of the gameplay."
AMPLITUDE: "how was it to work with the designers at Amplitude? Anything funny you remember and would like to share?"
NOSFERATIEL: "If you read the wall of text before this section, you might get my logical train of thought. It's less about "why" characters do something and more about "how" they do it, given that they have certain limitations. I remember my Skype conference with the Amplitude designers and our discussion being quite tentative by two completely different ways of thinking clashing. They asked me why I created the cultists this way and I was always thinking of how the Cultists could prevail from their own and unique perspective.
One of the most fun things to do was working with Slowhands on the way the cultist quests are presented. In the process, I defined all the different personalities and triggers for them of the Unspoken for Slowhands and we got into more detail about how the one city of the Cultists worked. The end result was Slowhands's interpretation of the almost hypnotic power with which a resistant minor faction's member gets drawn into the Queen's unrelenting grasp."
AMPLITUDE: "How did you handle the stress: the forum polls and then the GAMES2GETHER votes?"
NOSFERATIEL: "Making a statistical evaluation of the evolution of votes in the contest. I was logging the state of the votes at more or less regular intervals and studying the evolution of the votes over time."
AMPLITUDE: "Would you participate in a forum creation contest again?"
NOSFERATIEL: "Remembering the fuss about a (community, not developer, mind you) moderator participating in a contest, I'd think thrice before doing that, again. It's probably not worth all the uproar. Moreover, I've already won once. I do not necessarily need to participate, again. If I won a second time, this would be quite awkward, no matter how good or bad my proposal would be. Therefore, I plan to abstain from any big contests in the future."
AMPLITUDE: "We've known Nosferatiel for a few years now: he started as a regular member and then became a VIP and forum moderator.
We want to make games with all of you, so we've never forbidden any members to take part in our contests and you can be sure that we'll always encourage any of you to participate."
Telum, winner of the second step of the Faction Creation Contest dedicated to the units and city visuals
AMPLITUDE: "please, introduce yourself."
TELUM: "My name is Blaž, I just recently finished my studies, painting major. Other than contemporary art, my interests are illustration, comic art, graphic design and video games (of course)."
AMPLITUDE: "How did you find out about the Faction Creation Contest? Did you already play a ton of Endless Legend then?"
TELUM: "I found about the contest while lurking on the forums when the game was still in early access phase. I played quite a bit of Endless Legend by then, but I immediately fell in love with the game's art style and thought it would be great to contribute something to the game development, so once the first phase of the contest was over I knew I had to try."
AMPLITUDE: "Could you explain how you came up with your submission (units and city visual)?"
TELUM: "Nosferatiel's idea is what drew me in, in the first place. It had a certain mystery to it and was very open to all sorts of interpretations. Another thing was that he tied his faction directly to the Endless race which was quite a challenge since their presence in the games so far was very vague, at least the visual part. So the main inspiration were the Endless structures and face sculptures depicted in the game and in some of the concept art.
I wanted to keep the feeling of an ancient race so most of the inspiration for the city came from Egyptian/Mesopotamian and Byzantine architecture. I decided to play with some of those elements to try and create a sublime, living monument of a city with a focus on verticality to achieve that menacing look which would fit the throne of the unmoving Queen, but at the same time keeping it simple enough by just exaggerating the shape so it suits the overall game style. I settled on the idea of ever rising towers, mixtures or organic spirals at the bottom and inorganic obelisk-like structures on the top, clean geometric shapes only broken by situational ornaments and detailed domes. Relying on Nosferatiel's concept, the structures start as enormous stone buildings, then OMCETS slowly start to build the organic spiral in the center from the remains of dead or sacrificed cultists. As that organic/synthetic mass of flesh, bone, metal and crystals is growing inside its starts to elevate the building, while smooth, decorative stone is slowly being built downwards, protecting the center.
In contrast to the simple city, units were imagined as a ornamental automatons, for which inspiration came from my fascination with European Medieval armor and weaponry. They are the Endless constructs which are adorned with fine crafted shells which resemble armor. Since I imagined Endless constructs not strictly following the humanoid shape I exaggerated their proportions so they look "awkwardly dressed", like they are in constant pain, to achieve that uncanny valley effect. Every automaton also styles a humanoid mask, which serves as a symbol of the Queen. And although the Queen isn't necessarily of humanoid appearance, the mask is purely an icon crafted by her followers which directly references the Endless statues. As a generic androgynous face, the mask serves as the symbol of the Cult hivemind and by wearing the mask automatons get a visual indicator that they are direct extensions of the Queen herself. Think of it as a naive attempt of concealing something different and terrifying to the common folk."
AMPLITUDE: "we did our best to capture the spirit of what you were trying to convey in your concept art. Were you satisfied with the result?"
TELUM: "I'm very happy with the results! The art team understood what I was trying to achieve and did a great job translating my sketches into a fully fleshed out concept art while still preserving the important feeling of it, like the elongated proportions and the sense of dread. On top of it, animations of the units are what really sealed the deal for me. The awkward robotic walk, the twitching; it's perfect!"
AMPLITUDE: "How did you handle the stress: the forum polls and then the GAMES2GETHER votes?"
TELUM: "The voting was pretty intense to the last minute, but I really enjoyed every second of it. There were some great entries, and I was pretty surprised that people recognized mine and voted for it. I'm very grateful for that! It's great to see how community votes directly effect the game development."
AMPLITUDE: "Would you participate in a forum creation contest again?"
TELUM: "I definitely would. I had a lot of fun and it's great when you are able to give and receive feedback in the process and watch things unfold."
AMPLITUDE: "Anything else you would like to add?"
TELUM: "This was an invaluable experience and I'm honored for being a part of it. World needs more folks like Amplitude!"
AMPLITUDE: "Oh stop it you, we're going to blush!"
Adazu, winner of the final step of the Faction Creation Contest dedicated to the Cultists logo and boat
AMPLITUDE: "please, introduce yourself."
ADAZU: "My name is Katerina and I'm a student, formerly of biochemistry, currently of programming. I spend most of my free time playing games, on the screen or on tabletop. The rest I spend slowly penning my way up from amateur-tier in art and writing."
AMPLITUDE: "How did you find out about the Faction Creation Contest? Did you already play a ton of Endless Legend then?"
ADAZU: "I played, but I wasn't part of the online community. I rarely sign up for or follow forums, so it was only through Telum that I was alerted to the contest. We had been playing games together online for nearly a decade, and we shared the hype for EL since its announcement. I was wary to enter though, as I didn't have much prior experience in design. Telum convinced me to give it a shot regardless."
AMPLITUDE: "Could you explain how you came up with your submission (faction logo and boat)?"
ADAZU: "As my mission was to create the addendum to an already beautiful whole, I tried to compliment Nos' and Telum's work as best as I could.
In regards to the boat, one of my first thoughts was to create something that looks benign at first glance, but upon closer inspection has some sinister or unsettling undertones. In Telum's visual design of the Cultists I feel the units are not intentionally creepy, it's just a consequence of their construction and perhaps a slight naïvité. They rely on recruiting minor factions to aid in their mission, so their design must have a missionary flavour, yet the nature of their origin is not completely masked. Because the water in EL is semi-transparent, I thought of using this to obscure but not hide the unsettling part of the ship's design. I first thought of the Portuguese man-o'-war, then married that with a giant octopus, and then added the moveable shell to further the benign and pragmatic nature of the unit. This allows the ship to appear quite friendly to other minor and major factions as it glides along the surface, but from the player's perspective the writhing tentacles beneath the surface are obvious. Their construction must appear resource-efficient, yet they take care to embellish it with fine detailing. With this thought in mind I decided the ship would not be entirely mechanic, but share materials with the largest construct the Cultists create; the buildings. And so the ship became enveloped in recycled flesh.
The motif of the logo is the mask; the symbol of the queen and a picture of the people, radiant against it's backdrop symbolising the rest of the world or the universe. I chose rays emitted from the dome of the head and not the entirety of the face as I wanted to avoid the look of a blazing sun, given Nos' thoughts on the matter. Instead it has a dawn or dusk likeness, but could just as easily be a symbol of wisdom and truth with the cultist mind being the source."
AMPLITUDE: "we did our best to capture the spirit of what you were trying to convey in your concept art. Were you satisfied with the result? "
ADAZU: "To say I was satisfied is an understatement. It was an honour to see something I helped create become a part of a game I love, and I think the artists did a wonderful job of incorporating the design into the faction. Even though my contribution was the smallest of