Gone Gold with Simon Hill
Welcome to Gone Gold with Simon Hill, a show that features fun, insightful interviews with some of the biggest names in video games. From developers, to actors - this show delves in to what makes your favourite video games tick.
Gone Gold with Simon Hill
Myrkur Games - Echoes Of The End
Echoes Of The End is a brand new Cinematic, action-adventure and the debut title from Icelandic Developer, Myrkur Games. This narrative driven fantasy is set in the picturesque region of Aema - which has real world locations from Iceland's stunning landscapes, scanned in to the game. We discuss the inception of the studio to it's now 40 strong team all dedicated on making memorable gaming experiences.
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Hello and welcome to another episode of Gone Gold with me, Simon Hill, esports host, industry presenter and TV personality. We are indeed back for another episode of Gone Gold. How are we all doing? Hope everyone's had a fantastic weekend. As always, it's been nonstop here where I've been travelling the country, which I'm very lucky to do and have the opportunity to do for work. If you're at Gamescom this week, I hope you all have a great time. There's plenty of great announcements on the horizon. I think the gaming industry is about to get even more busy in the build-up to the holidays. Thank you to everyone who tuned in to the episode last week. We'll see you next time. helpful tool for shows like this and your time would be greatly appreciated finally you can also follow the show across x instagram and tiktok at gone gold show where you'll be able to see video clips of your favorite interviews amongst many other fun little insights from the conversations that's at gone gold show on x instagram and tiktok right then let's get into this episode almost 10 years ago three icelandic students began the journey of creating their very own studio. Recently, they released their first game. Cinematic action adventure Echoes of the End, an impressive technical feat for a AA studio. You'll hear some really detailed development stories here and how publisher Deep Silver got involved. It's all here. It's Gone Gold with Mercury Games.
Unknown:Mercury Games Bye.
Simon:Almost 10 years ago, three Icelandic students wanted to pursue their dreams and lifelong passion into video games. After a lot of development time, studio evolution and a publishing deal with Deep Silver and the release of their first game, the studio has evolved into a now 40 strong team that has recently launched the cinematic action adventure Echoes of the End. I'm very excited to welcome the senior technical level designer John Rosaria and Thank you so much. Thank you. What an incredible feat. This has been for you to finally release your first game. Let's kick things off by going right back almost 10 years ago since Mercury Games was founded. Your first game is now finally out into the world with positive reception and people are finally getting their hands on Echoes of the End. How will the studio feeling being able to see that dream now become a reality? Daddy, I'll go with you first.
Dadi:I mean, it is impossible for me to imagine what... Dade from 10 years ago would have felt about where we are today because the journey that we've been on here is sort of exceptional and there are several steps along the way that make all of this make sense as you progress from moment to moment as a team and the whole thing evolves. You kind of understand where you're headed next every step of the way, but the leap, if you talk in terms of those 10 years ago when our bosses were deciding to make this game that that is just absolutely impossible to imagine i think so we're we're ecstatic
John:i mean i think for me it's kind of like a dream come true in a sense because this is like the first game where i've had a lot of input involved in what the actual game is um because i came from ubisoft before it's a lot more really corporate You're really told what to do, when to do it, and you have to do it by this time. Here, there's so much freedom in what I can think, what I can make, and what I can bring to the table. So it's just... I don't know. There's a lot of emotions for the first game that I've really cared about to come out.
Dadi:Because it's a small enough company as well that we are... We all have to wear a lot of hats. So part of my job is doing cinematography for cutscenes. But then it's also talking with actors. It's also doing PR. I got to write bits of the game. And the same with John is like a senior technical level, whatever the title is. But John has to make sure that the gameplay experience is working. He has to make sure that the puzzles feel excellent. And he has to sort of shepherd this process. game from its rougher stages down to the way it plays and feels when the audience finally get their hands on and the players
Simon:whilst doing my research daddy you're the the celebrity of the studio really you're the face of the youtube channel because i was brought up in broadcasting and i would watch these videos whilst doing my research i think this guy just needs a tv show but essentially mercury games youtube channel was that for you an incredible strategic plan of content to bring echoes of the end to the forefront of what you were doing you can tell how passionate the studio was about this project and still is. What was the initial concept behind the game and then to set it with a stunning Icelandic backdrop that inspired the studio?
Dadi:We all really missed that sort of genre of games that is becoming increasingly rare now where you would be able to go get a game and you'd play it and I remember growing up you'd go to your friend's house and they had bought a game on their PlayStation 2 or whatever it was and you'd play it with them over the course of a few weeks after school or just a week or a And that would be it. That would be the entire package. It wasn't a lifestyle. It wasn't a forever product. It was a piece of art and fun and excitement that you got to experience in a flash in a moment. So we really wanted to make that kind of rip roaring action adventure where you get the whole thing out in like 15 hours is the sort of runtime of the game. We wanted to make sure that we could do that for modern graphics on a next-gen console. And that's kind of where that idea starts.
Simon:The backdrop for this game is stunning. Iceland is very famous for its northern lights, its Viking heritage, and let's not forget its striking landscapes, vast mountainous regions and impressive waterfalls. You guys actually took multiple field trips out to remote locations and with the ability of photogrammetry, I think I've pronounced that right, You were able to recreate those areas, mountains and landscapes in the game. Talk to us about the process of this and how it began for you, John, building real world locations within the level design. We had to kind of look at like
John:what levels we wanted, the environments that we wanted and how it could work with the game. Because you can always just scan some things and then, you know, you put it in and then it doesn't necessarily work in terms of like the structure of it whether a player can actually jump on top or does this look like something that's traversable stuff like that so we need to think about the locations really and then it kind of comes down to what the player is going to experience
Dadi:as well We thought a lot about these sort of... John and I and Haltor and people from the team, we'd have these meetings where we'd try to figure out what is this chapter of the game about? Because we have these levels, these 10 levels throughout the game. And a big part of that was we wanted to make sure we get the Icelandic photogrammetry. And we were trying to think of what sort of different looks of... Iceland that people would see on the internet on Instagram or whatever. How can we capture these and put you there? And photogrammetry is the way that we technically do it. We take these pictures of assets. We go 360 around them and photograph them from a million angles and process it. And we've got a video on our channel about that. And we even scaled it up to doing it with drones and doing glaciers and mountains and everything like that. But the challenge then comes in because once you've got all these assets, you don't have a game. You've just got photos. Thank you. And the thing that we needed to do and the thing that John's talking about here is also we wanted to make sure that we put you in these locations. So you, you know, there's a section in the opening shot of our first trailer where there's lava and Rin is upside down. And these are two different aspects that we're thinking, how do we marry these things, right? And number one, we're inspired by volcanic eruptions in Iceland right now. We've had, I think, 18 in the last 18 months. It's been the entire Reykjavik Peninsula where I grew up erupts every few weeks now. But there are no upside-down gravity platforms, right? So that's the bit that the classic adventure gameplay has to come in. And that's sort of where I want to bounce it over to John, because we had a whole bunch of stuff in there that we wanted to get that kind of rip-roaring adventure feeling. We don't just have the gravity platforms. We've got a few other things as well.
Simon:And I know you included the mountain that was seen in the Game of Thrones series. When you're out at some of these Icelandic landmarks, are you able to appreciate them in a different way, knowing they'll be featured in your game as well? As
Dadi:a local, I think I'm more excited about seeing them in the game now than I am in real life because I've gotten used to seeing them in real life. So it's kind of mind-blowing seeing them in a game. But I'd be curious, John, how do you feel about that? For the people that are coming
John:to Iceland and the people that have played the game, it's going to be an extra kind of wow factor when they actually see it in real life and they actually see it that it's one-to-one. chapter one. That's also in Game of Thrones. And I'm like, wow. It's like I'm actually there. And if any of our players actually do come to Iceland and then have that same feeling, it's like I'm actually in Ymir. It
Dadi:is sort of fantastical, isn't
Simon:it? It's a wondrous place that you've created, and also I think it's quite educational in many ways. As you said, the game is set in Ema, a dangerous region that can certainly be unforgiving, unpredictable, and shrouding in an unnerving amount of threats ready to give you a challenge. One thing that grabbed me instantly with EMA is, despite its beauty and its visuals, it can also be a very bleak place to navigate your way through. What was the process like to make sure you were able to set the right atmosphere in such a vast region?
John:I feel like we didn't have to draw too much from the world itself. We kind of got that through Iceland, in a sense, because there is nothing here. Like if you go out, if you've been in Iceland, you've driven around the golden circle, the only things you will see are the landscapes and tourists. There's nothing. Yeah.
Dadi:And then you kind of have to figure out a way to extract the fantasy out of the emptiness and the sort of stillness that is Iceland a lot of the time. Because we've got these trolls early on that you find in the start the game and they kind of persist throughout. Those are drawn right out of Icelandic mythology and the Icelandic mythology around them comes from the environment. We have these rocks and cliff faces and the volcanic rocks are very porous and they look like faces in the rocks and there are these stories in Icelandic folklore about when the sun comes out, the trolls freeze in stone. They're petrified. And that just seemed, we'd seemed like fools if we were going to scan those cliffs and not then have the trolls that created them in the game. You know what I mean? So there are all these kind of connections that we're always drawing on as both as locals, but also as people who are moving here and are experiencing this culture and the visuals and they want to capture it.
Simon:A heavy focus for you going in from day one was always about narrative. And in this story, you take control of Rin, played by the wonderful and talented Aldis Hamilton, who some of you may know from Hellblade 2. Talk to us about who our protagonist is and what brings her to this story.
Dadi:So Aldis and I worked together on a film that I produced. I had the honor of producing before I started working here. And she's an incredibly talented actress. And when we were auditioning for her, for Rin, we got all kinds of folks coming in. The way she just blew us away was spectacular because she understood video games in a way that is very rare among actors, especially Icelandic actors, the way they come in. And she's a gamer first. She talked to us at length about how much she loved Mass Effect. And so capturing that with her was always– the more we could get her on board and get her excited about this character, the better the character became. So we would bring her more and more into the process and make sure that she had an input on a sort of foundational story level all the way since back in 2018 when she got originally cast. So that's always been a very open process there. And that's sort of the beauty of this whole thing. There are only– I think 40 of us at most in the studio. And that's sort of the environment we wanted to create with this company the whole time is we wanted to make sure that everybody gets a chance to be passionate about the things they're doing and do the things that they're passionate about.
Simon:John for you when you've got actors that are that open and collaborative and talented and you're building these levels and these worlds how rewarding is it for you to merge them both together and see how that impact of the character can can have on the world that you're building?
John:I mean I think I think it's great like the seeing the performance and then the way that it's That Dade's been able to merge them into the cinematics and then into the actual levels, it's amazing. You get to see their emotions, and then you get the feedback from the actual character, or the actor, then the character, and then the actual gameplay. It's just spectacular.
Dadi:These things are all sort of holding hands too, right? It's a lot of fun,
Simon:yeah. Marrying those two worlds must be, again, super rewarding. You have the visuals, you have the story, you have the characters and the level design all slowly coming together. What was the point for you as a studio knowing that this was your first game where everything kind of clicked? You have all of these disciplines finally coming together as one.
Dadi:John, I was talking to you on Friday. I was talking about the illusion puzzle. Do you remember this?
Unknown:Mm-hmm.
Dadi:Spoiler warning. A small spoiler warning here for the game a little bit. But do you remember what I'm talking about? Yes.
John:The illusion intro. It's kind of a puzzle slash narrative event in the game. And we have a narrative tech designer with us called Ace. And I remember when I... first envisioned the mechanic. I kind of just thought, that'll be cool. And then I moved on. And then Ace came along and said, I kind of want to try this type of puzzle. And then we kind of sat together on the same PC looking. I was like, this could work. There's something here. There's something special here. And then we brought in narrative, and then we brought in environments and then we it all came into this one big sequence which i've i've seen a lot of players like live streamers of people on youtube whenever they go to that section it's just they are what it's always wow that was
Dadi:amazing and i think it's the kind of thing that we kind of have a special we have a specialty here that we can do this sort of stuff because It's both narrative. It's this section where Rin and Abram are building trust. And it comes at a point in the story where that is absolutely essential. But it's also gameplay. And it's also a tutorial for the level you're about to play. And it's all of those things at the same time. And I think you can only really get that when you have people like Ace and John and Magnus who then worked on editing those scripts. And then the three of them just own it. It is their baby. They get to make it together. And it's not massive sprawling, you know, John said corporate earlier. Instead, it's this sort of team of friends trying to make each other have fun playing games, trying to get each other to get excited to play each other's stuff.
Simon:Trip on it earlier, John, with the corporate side of this industry, but knowing that you have support where you can quickly speak to another member of the team and be able to get clarification on something, that kind of collaborative effort is rare these days within a studio.
John:Oh yeah, definitely. I think when I was working at Ubisoft, I would rarely actually stand up walk to another colleague and ask for their input on what to do. I was always just kind of tunnel visioned on my own task, making sure that I was doing things properly and then sending that off. Whereas here in this company, I feel like I can have a chat with someone for five minutes and then an idea pops into our heads. We discuss that a bit more. I can then walk back to my PC, prototype it, show them what I've made. And they were like, that's exactly what I thought about. And then we can kind of stretch that out more and kind of like, it's kind of like Play-Doh. You get to experiment and actually find cool things for the player to play around with.
Dadi:Creates these little sort of game jams almost.
Unknown:Yeah.
Dadi:Where it's like, now we're playing on this one thing together.
Simon:And that's what this show is all about, is bringing those little insights that some people may not be aware of. And I think that's what makes Project so passionate and so easy to connect with for the listeners, is knowing how important this is to every person within the studio. We mentioned the other character within the game earlier. There's a great togetherness between Rin and the person you bump into, which becomes Abram. He can be quite useful in parts of the game. The chemistry between the actors... really bleeds through onto the screen here. It's been praised in other reviews how the writing and companionship between the two is a highlight of the game for sure. How important was it for you and the team to have a companion throughout the game?
Dadi:Oh, it's essential. We really wanted to make sure that we could have this kind of... We could ground the game in this certain kind of... realism and one of the things that we were struggling with is that we wanted to make a world and if there isn't anybody around to talk to about the world it just exists in pamphlets and paper and stuff and if there's stuff going on in the character's head she needs to be able to talk about it so we absolutely needed a companion the the thing that took us uh that took us a moment to figure out was how funny they should be and then how useful they should be because that's sort of where we we thought the key to finding finding out if we could get players to fall in love with Abram like we do would be in making sure he's hilarious. And I, and that's where the actor comes in. Who's an Icelandic comedy national treasure. You may not, you might not be familiar with him, but if you're an Icelander, you, you love him. And then there's the usefulness. And this is where John and his team would champion the idea of him. He's got like a grappling hook and he's got a magic race and stuff that could interact with puzzles. And all of that sort of, pulls in this kind of usefulness in the level so that he's always with you and it's always the pair of you solving things.
Simon:What were your initial impressions when you first saw a demo version of this all put together?
John:The demo that I played was very different from the game that we actually have right now. The first iteration of it, I think, there wasn't as much or i think the narrative was there like they they were friends they were they were they were close with people not necessarily close with each other but like they were um with each other throughout the entire demo um but there wasn't that much uh cooperation in terms of gameplay um but then as soon as i came on board then we started to actually build the levels and the mechanics, you could really see how Rin starts to actually trust him. Because at the start, she's kind of like standoffish. She kind of doesn't trust him that much. I mean, why would you? This is just a random dude. right? She just meets this guy and she's like, why should I trust you? What are you doing in this cave type of deal, right?
Dadi:It's the weird man looking in the cave. There's something off about him.
John:Exactly. And then, so I think as a player, most people would be like, who is this guy? I don't trust him. And then the progression of the mechanics and the progression of the narrative, it's kind of hand in hand because you start to see the usefulness of Abram in the actual level. And then it then starts to help with the actual narrative of the game because the player actually starts to trust him a bit more and more and
Dadi:more. Yeah, because the player gets the trust. It's not just Rin in the script trusting him. It's also the player needing to trust him. And that's where the, the things like that illusion puzzle came along, but also just in general, like the demo, John was completely right. The demo he played when he was joining back in 2021. That demo had, uh, had a lot of the same sort of, uh, dialogue and stuff like that, but Abram wasn't nearly anywhere as useful. He was just sort of standing around talking. So it's, it's getting, uh, It's something that John pushed for a lot is getting that kind of idea of having him play the puzzle with you and you using him to play the puzzle. And then, yeah, like you're right, Nick. the player learns to trust Abram too.
Simon:Within this story of revenge and redemption, you're engulfed in this deep fantasy setting of myths, magic and monsters. The world feels very alive and ever-evolving. What are some of the favourite fantasy elements in the game and what inspired them?
John:A lot of the mechanics that I'm I made were kind of inspired by Legend of Zelda, I'll be honest with you. There's a lot of Zelda in this game. The puzzles especially, when I played Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom, you can really see that. I think the preservers in Chapter 3 were initially, it came from a clip of um in hogwarts what's the hogwarts game hogwarts legacy hogwarts legacy yeah yeah and we were like i like that visual let's make that into a mechanic
Dadi:yeah yeah yeah with the with the when they fix the bridge there not just fixing it but then like unfixing it because there are sections where you sort of have to find the middle stage in the in the um the debris all coming together
John:I mean, there's a bunch of things like... There was a cut mechanic that I can't really talk about too much. But it was inspired by Danny Trejo in... The Predators movie starring Adrian Brody. That's it. That was the inspiration. I was like, I'm going to make something that's linked with this.
Dadi:Yeah, there's so much of that stuff where you get inspired by one thing and then it kind of changes and morphs and then other people play with it and it comes back to you and it's a completely different thing, but it's exciting in a new way and you play around with the whole thing. I love the bosses. I really like Eobard, who... I don't know how much we're going to talk about, but he's, you know, he's this kind of classic high fantasy, like archetypical, big armor, like big sword villain. And that's been, that's been a different character throughout the various versions of the story all the way going back. And he's, he's, been that look with a different name and then been a new look on that name and then so on. And it cycled back and forward until he came back to sort of the original concept because we just loved it so much. And those are the high fantasy elements. I'm a big D&D nerd, so I love the heroes and archvillains. And that feels archetypical to me. Rin is this sort of cyanide fighter. And you've got the boss monster villain there.
Simon:There are some stunning boss fights in this, and we'll try and keep it as spoiler-free as possible, but some of those bosses that you've created are almost godlike. What was the process in building those? Did it come from the folklore that you had read or seen or studied, or was this kind of a mash-up of everyone in the studio putting ideas together?
John:I think definitely for Skuggi, that was a folklore type of deal, right?
Dadi:Yeah, we wanted to make up a ragged doll folklore. So it's not a specific Icelandic myth or anything like that, but we wanted to feel like it could be. We wanted to add our own roster to the breadth of Icelandic folklore, and that's where that character comes from. The ragged doll have their own sort of story of them that I think you can learn from. learn throughout the game.
Simon:The gameplay mechanics have multiple layers, with combat being a very fun throwback approach with a twist. We mentioned your companion earlier who does contribute in combat. You're able to grow your abilities with a skill tree in this game as well. What do you feel stands out when it comes to Rin's abilities and the way she approaches each battle across multiple areas against a variety of different enemies?
Dadi:I love all the combos. My favorite is the, if you get a perfect parry, one of the first things you unlock is then you get a blast for free. Yeah. That's one of the ones where it just, because parries are so satisfying already. And then you get the blast with it, like all of those Kia. There's also like just a regular combo where you can pull some guy onto your swords and then throw him off. That's very satisfying. Yeah, that's so satisfying.
John:I think my personal favorite is the shift onto your companion.
Dadi:Oh yeah, you throw somebody at Abram and he just smacks him in the head. Sometimes I feel like he needs a workout. So instead of me fighting, I just try and throw him over to Abram just so he can get a good right hook practice. I
John:remember when that was in the game and I didn't know about it. No one told me about it. And then I just randomly was testing the combat and then it happened. And I was like, holy shit. That is hilarious.
Dadi:Was that not a joke originally? Because I remember seeing that for the first time on the Discord and somebody had put on the Xcone give it to you clip onto it. So it was just a video recording and it was a white box room and the bad guy was just a mannequin. And then you throw the bad guy out to April and it just goes for a split second. Xcone. And then the guy's out. We laughed so much. You're like, I had this going on.
Simon:Brilliant story. I mean, there must be plenty like this within your Discord server whilst creating the game, different animations, things that didn't make it into the game. One aspect that I feel is imperative to any game is the score. And the stunning orchestral score and dramatic turns are what makes Echoes of the End stand out. What was the initial plans for the studio when it came to the score in the game? And was this how you envisioned it from the beginning?
Dadi:So with the score, much like with Rin, we really were just sort of waiting to see if we'd fall in love. And that happened with Altice when she came along. And the same happened with the music, because we were... We didn't have any funding at the time, and we were just trying to figure out the basics of sort of putting stuff together. And now, a good friend of mine, but at the time I didn't know him at all, Victor, he asked if he could have a talk with me. And we just talked about the story of who the character is. He bought me lunch, which was very nice. And then he emailed later like a clip of him screen recording Weiss, which is like a scoring software with footage of sketches, like little doodles of what might be happening in game. And he had built like eight bits of music, like a whole suite for Rin and her character and the main menu and a whole bunch of other stuff. And at that point, we just fell in love. We were like, okay, let's get this guy in. He's got to make this game feel real because that was the most real our game had felt for a while because we were looking at it and now it had music. You know what I mean? You add these elements on and suddenly the game becomes more real. And same with the, you know, you add the dialogue on, it becomes more real. You add the music. Oh my God. So we just fell in love. Like in the same way, we just got excited and we were like, can we please... Can we please God get this man in here and get him to score the entire thing? And I think we still use that same main menu theme. And I think we use the same RIN theme. I don't think they've changed since the original pitch from.
Simon:Are we going to see a potential vinyl release of the score for Echoes of
Dadi:the End? Oh, you'll have to. I wish we could. I wish we could. John's a vinyl collector. Oh, yeah. Yeah. I'll see what I can do. We'll go, we'll go poke Victor. I know he wants to put something together, but I, I, There are no formal plans or
Simon:anything. I collect game vinyl. So if you do, can you please let me know? I have so many. Yeah. I think that becomes such a grounded way of portraying your game is knowing how all these disciplines have come together. For you, John, when you're hearing the score being added into the worlds that you have helped build and create and putting all these little parts together, what's the impact for you personally and professionally seeing it all come together like that?
John:It's kind of like... a jigsaw puzzle in a sense. That's the relief that's like, oh, it's done. This is actually the final product. Because you can get puzzles, you can get traversal, you can get the story, but all those pieces just floating in the air doesn't really make you feel anything because it's all null and void in a sense because they're by themselves. But as soon as you put them together, those, it just really clicks. I think the first time that happened for me, that clicking happened was kind of after Alpha. uh during that crazy time um it where you could really see the full game together where you could really see like the narrative pace the the gameplay uh the score uh the boss fights and the combat it just uh all like
Dadi:and you went from one to the other to the other it just continued like yeah there was no breaks because before alpha you're you're we're developing one chapter at a time so you sort of finish a chapter and you have to switch it off but like you're saying in alpha you just and then the next thing and then the next thing and then the next yeah oh god
Simon:wow you can see the flashbacks and how much that has meant to you to see where it is now that was incredible too yeah I mean just seeing it on your face then was there was a proper moment for you then I think
Dadi:a little
Simon:yeah one thing I think is worth mentioning here is the journey you've taken to get here Wow.
Dadi:God, it's sort of been incredible that we got here at all. It's easy to talk about these things, but you got to remember that like making anything is just insanely tough. And there is this sort of entropy at work in the world that makes it so that it's very difficult, right? And that's, you know, whether it's fighting Unreal Engine or whether it's a pandemic in the middle of what then eventually turned out to be the year we signed on. But we really thought that we were going to go somewhere in 2020, and then suddenly we were not. You know what I mean? So there are all these different steps along the way that we had to overcome some serious challenges. There have been several times where you think, maybe this isn't going to work. And then you get here. I don't know. This has been an emotional week, to say the least, for myself.
John:I think a lot of the people that... Well, I guess people in general in this industry have a lot of imposter syndrome. You know? Like, everyone... is thinking that they're not good enough, even though you really are. Like, if you know, if you're in this industry, you really are good enough that you don't need to prove anything to anyone really. But it's always that thing in the back of your mind. They're saying, you know, you need to get better in a sense. And I guess it's, it's a good thing sometimes for, for you to think that you need to be better because then hopefully you will do something about it. Yeah.
Simon:There's also a really funny story that comes with how you got actor Aldous Hamilton to scan all sides of her facial animations, which involved a garden hose and some string.
Dadi:Yes. So this is actually for the full body scan. The... The idea was back in well before we had any nickels worth to our name, we were in an attic and we had built a photogrammetry rig out of 17 DSLR cameras that we had bought, by the way, on account of the fact that one of our employees owned at the time some Bitcoin. He sold all of it and it then skyrocketed in value a couple of years later. Oh, wow. Yeah. We used that money to buy these DSLR cameras and then it was not enough for a full 360. It covered about the first 45 degrees. And this is not for the face. This is for the full body because we wanted to get her proportions right. We wanted her– like we never got her head to look right on whatever models we made. So we wanted to have reference. And this would not work because we needed to rotate her to get a full 360 scan. Ideally, what you do is you get photos or cameras all around. But we figured what if we– rotate altis on this platform. And then we have to go get a platform. We have to go figure, you know, and we go online. I think we look and we find some turntable built for this process. And it was, it was like, it was more than what we were paying in rent or whatever. Like it was, it was not in budget. So we go and get a cheese platter and a garden hose and we cut a hole along the end of the garden hose and we get fishing wire. Actually, I could go get this and show it to you on the camera here. But we could go get fishing wire. We wrap it up inside the whole thing. We bolt the hose to the side of the cheese platter. And then we slowly pulled as she sort of stands there balancing. And that worked. I imagine it was probably tough to clean the data, but it worked. We ended up with a full body scan. And suddenly, the head looked right on the model. The amount of stuff like this, like little things that you're thinking, why is this one thing weird? Why does the character not look right? Well, it's because the head and the body aren't, they're not, they don't match. How do you get that? Well, there's a garden hose and some fishing wire.
Simon:But these are the things, moral of the story is just make it work. And in the end, you'll get that result. And by the sounds of it, that was the early days for you before obviously any backing or support came in. You were just there to make it work and make those dreams become a reality.
Dadi:Yeah, we now have cameras to go all the way around. And we can now do one of these scans with a click of a button. And then all the cameras take a picture. That would have been great back then, but it didn't have it then.
Simon:Before we wrap up, firstly, I'd like to thank you both again for joining me on this episode. It's been great to speak to you both. The passion has shone straight through the cameras all the way from Iceland. What's next for the studio? Do you continue to grow and evolve, support the game? And where do you go from here?
Dadi:Well, we just want to make sure that we make this game as good as we can make it. We want to keep patching and working on it. and deliver a quality experience by tackling any problems that come up. We're watching streamers and we're watching our friends play and we're playing it ourselves like crazy over here to make sure that... Also
John:getting feedback from the player as well. Yeah. Just the feedback from whoever's messaging us on our socials or any streamers that are just talking randomly about what they think about the game, the reviews and stuff like that. That really does help us with trying to improve the game.
Dadi:Yeah, it's our first outing. We just want to... get it as good as we can.
Simon:You should be very proud of what the studio has achieved with all the hurdles you've had to jump over and what you've had to overcome and the challenges that were laying in front of you and you've overcome them all and now you have your first game out in the world you'll continue to support and listen to the players and I really can't wait to see where Mercure Games goes I think you have a very bright future if this is the first iteration of what we've got to look forward to I think we've got a lot to look forward to now what I'd love to do on this show is I love to give my guests the final word. You can choose to do with that what you will, whether that be thank the studio, thank the players and the fans and those supporting you. From me, I would like to thank you again both for joining me on this episode of Gone Gold.
John:Obviously I'd like to thank you for having us here. Thank the studio for accepting me and having my crazy ideas in the game. And the people that I'm working with, thank you. Thank you to all of them for putting up with me and listening and helping me become better.
Dadi:I'm very grateful for everybody who's making sure to leave us a review and tell us how their games are going right now so that we can read them and we can go fix them. So if you are playing and you're enjoying yourself or if you have feedback, please let us know. And I just... I really want to make sure that we can get this experience as good as we can for everybody who's out there playing right now. So thanks. And thank you for having us.
Simon:Pride and passion just bled through in that interview, didn't it? You can tell how much this means to Mercure Games to finally release their first game after 10 long years. And you can tell Echoes of the End has so much promise, so much potential. It's an impressive feat for a AA studio. And you look at what they've achieved so far. Only 40 people work in that office in Reykjavik Ice and no doubt there's a lot more special projects to come from that studio and I look forward to where that goes in the near future thank you so much to Mercury Games for making this happen really exciting interview some great insights some funny stories and that's exactly what this show is all about thank you for those who stayed tuned and listened to this episode again a really fun one to get in the bag a lot more coming in the next few weeks I can't wait to share some of the names, guests and studios that I've got lined up. My diary is packed. And if you are listening for the first time, thank you. Make sure you give this show a rating, subscribe, tap those little stars again we mentioned at the top of the show. All that engagement really does make a difference for shows like this. For all of those as well, make sure you're following Gone Gold Show across all of social media, X, Instagram and TikTok, where you'll get video footage from these interviews. alongside many other fun little insights. And of course, don't forget to download your favourite episodes. That way, I'll be able to tell where in the world you're listening from and it'll pop up on my little map. At the moment, we're on something like 63 countries around the globe have heard this show, which is incredible. Absolutely mind-blowing. Well, that's the end of another packed episode. I'll see you next week with another exciting guest that you don't want to miss. But until then, you know what to do. Keep it gone gold.
