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Speak of the Devil: https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1184370/view/4170974735561379408
Devil in the details
The road to Hell is paved with good intentions, or so they say. And in Wrath of the Righteous, this phrase can have a quite literal meaning.
Devil is the final, 10th Mythic path in Wrath of the Righteous, available only to the Commanders who began their Mythic journey as an Aeon or Azata. It was added to the game in secrecy, never having been mentioned in any articles or announcements before release, and purposefully avoided in our social media for a good while after. Even the patch notes referred to it as a “secret Mythic” for nearly two years!
Of course, it didn’t take long for players to discover this surprise. The option of becoming an agent of Hell itself on Golarion was instantly recognized as a very cool concept, and was met with a very warm welcome. The intimidating blazing winged figure of Mephistopheles added to the picture.
However, as the time passed, we started receiving feedback from our players that, while very fun, the Devil felt somewhat… lacking in comparison with other Mythics.
Between being one of the last elements of the game to be added before release, and appearing really late into the game, Devil clearly didn’t receive as much love as some other paths.
That’s why when the game was receiving its Enhanced Edition, we felt it was a great opportunity to fix this nuisance. Our narrative team has proposed an exciting new quest for the Devil, where the events in Mendev would take a completely new twist as Queen Galfrey, devoted follower of Iomedae, would stray away from her goddess, corrupted by the Devil Commander.
The quest was deemed to be very thematic and fun, and the implementation started. Scripts were written, dialogues were prepared. At some point, bits and pieces of this quest have even ended up in the game files, where modmakers and dataminers discovered them, sharing their excitement.
But then, an unfortunate turn of events took place. The quest never made it into the Enhanced Edition, causing a lot of frustration and disappointment among the community which was already planning how they would corrupt the righteous queen. But what happened?
To understand the reasons behind this, we need to dive a bit deeper into our development process. When we plan a big update with new features, first we accumulate ideas. These come from many sources: some originate from within the team, some pop up naturally during the development process, others are adapted from your suggestions, comments, results of community polls and popular mods. Yes, we read what you guys write, and quite a lot!
Then we vote. After voting for the features for the Enhanced Edition, new content for the Devil Mythic path ended up roughly in the middle of the list, with the cutoff line being just slightly below. Normally, that would mean it would be implemented.
Unfortunately, things don’t always go as planned. A combination of unexpected delays, errors in estimation and a few force majeure factors left us in a position where we weren’t able to finish it in time. With a heavy heart, we were forced to scrap the quest altogether.
We’ve come out with an honest explanation and expressed hope that one day in the future, we might be able to come back to it.
Most likely, you've already guessed where this is going.
It was sad to watch the endless stream of memes about the abandoned Devil all these years, knowing we didn’t deliver what we wanted. Many members of the team play our games as well, or even originate from the community itself, and they were as frustrated as the community was about this.
Eventually, an initiative has gained momentum inside the dev team, to come back and rewrite this frustrating chapter of our game’s history. It helped a lot that you, the players, didn’t forget the Devil and kept asking questions and sharing your pain in numerous comments and suggestions for all this time. Thanks to that, and a massive enthusiastic drive from certain members of the team, we were finally able to allocate the necessary resources and finish what was started!
With the DLC6 “A Dance of Masks” marking a major milestone for Wrath of the Righteous, we agreed that there would be no better time to release this new story content for the Devil than the patch that comes alongside the DLC.
Here’s a little glimpse of what is expecting you:
We hope that this late, but very anticipated gift to our community will make our players happy. We are sorry that this took so long, but we believe that it’s always better late, than never.
And… Before you ask, no, this does not mark the end of our adventure. Not yet. There are still cards up our sleeve to surprise you!
Stay tuned and enjoy your Lawful Evil shenanigans!
