The story behind the Golden Update's new content expansions
The Golden Update has now been out for some days, and we hope you've been taking the chance to try the game for the first time or, if you were there from the beginning, jump back in and enjoy some of the behind-the-scenes improvements we added, such as 60fps, better water tech, new menus, etc.
Veterans will notice positive differences, but for new players, the goal of these improvements is to be "invisible" – the game naturally feels good.
While all the tech stuff is fine and dandy, we know many of you have been eagerly awaiting new content. The Golden Update features two new expansions: The Shield of Chronos questline, and the Criminal Hunts. Let's see in more detail what they entail.
A new dungeon!
The main idea with the Shield of Chronos questline was to nudge people in the direction of Grand Core. While it plays a vital role in the story, it's not compulsory to explore Grand Core to finish the game. It was also an opportunity for us to tie Monsters of Uncharted Seas to Knights of the Lost Realm, as Grand Core was the theatre of the final dungeon in the first game.
The Shield of Chronos that you find in Oceanhorn 2 is not the same as in Monster of Uncharted Seas – instead, it's its prototype. We had to be a bit careful here, not to break the story continuity.
Initially, we were thinking of having a puzzles-only dungeon with little backtracking. We ended up adding a new enemy, the drone, to spice things up a bit.
The Shield of Chronos you get as a reward for completion can deflect bullets and lasers and is an excellent update for the classic shield Hero wields from the first phases of the game.
Criminal Hunts
The idea for Criminal Hunts has been in the air for a while now: we toyed with the idea of adding larger, unique versions of the regular enemies to the game. (Related: did you know that rare, blue versions of Scarabaras called Scaronyxes were already in the game? And have you found the Bot Warriors?)
The Hunts make sense lore-wise (Knights would pick up extermination jobs at the job boards to protect the people of Gaia), and the search for the Criminals' dens adds to the mid game content – quests players can complete outside of the main storyline.
We're happy with the result, and we think the community is having fun looking for these mischievous monsters. Here's some hope for the future: in principle, the job board system could also be used for other activities!
From Arcadia, this is all for today, but we have more news coming. Stay tuned!