Fallen Earth Developer Diary: New Flagstaff University
Massively is proud to host a brand new five-part developer journal from the Fallen Earth team which will explore various levels in Fallen Earth, their storylines and how they make the player experience richer. This fourth one takes us through New Flagstaff University, and was written by Wes Platt, Content Team Lead for Fallen Earth.
Higher education's never been quite so deadly as it is in New Flagstaff University.
The campus was established by GlobalTech in the Northfields section of the Grand Canyon Province soon after the megacorp took over the national park from the federal government. A prominent and well-funded university, NFU provided top-notch scientific research and experimentation programs. In the century since the Fall, the school-like the great city that yielded its name-has crumbled into disrepair. However, it still contains equipment that's useful for scientific tinkering.
The Shiva's Favored, mutants who are bent on shaping the Province to their liking, have holed up here with a crazed scientist named Dr. Eddings, who has enlisted a small army of mutants to defend his lab. That lab includes a gas-powered centrifuge needed to create radioactive material needed for a bomb.
Players who visit the barter town of New Flagstaff in Northfields will start their journey to NFU by completing a mission sequence in a sewer system known as the Underworks, where friendly mutants known as Underfolk dwell. Eventually, you're informed that the Shiva's Favored are hard at work creating material they need for a dirty bomb to further wreck the climate for humankind, while making it more amenable to their own needs.
We asked the art and boss design folks to create a creepy multi-level campus with a few key rooms that would serve as our set pieces for the NFU adventure. They gave us dim hallways, spacious showcase chambers, monsters that leap out from behind opening doors, and a boss who provides a great challenge for players who are finishing up content in the second sector of Fallen Earth.
Take friends and make your way across the rolling hills to the sprawling campus. Just inside the main building, you'll find mutants held in thrall by Eddings' minions in the Shiva Strike Force. Clear these, then you have to work your way down a corridor that's crawling with vicious (and rapidly respawning) blight wolves.
Classrooms throughout the university are packed with piles of dead bodies: the detritus of the mad scientist's experimental failures as Eddings worked to create his strike force. Your team will have to work its way up and down stairwells to reach the various mini-boss fights.
After defeating strike force leaders in an auditorium, swimming pool, and basketball court, teams finally get a chance to take on Eddings himself as he tries desperately to save his centrifuge from destruction. This dangerous encounter puts players in a room with a device that puts off increasingly powerful bursts of lethal radiation. If something goes wrong, Eddings gets the upper hand and wipes everyone in the team.
Be careful taking on the lessons NFU has to offer. The teacher's a beast.%Gallery-48606%
