Fantasy RPG The Waylanders Creative Team Adds Talents from Telltale Games, BioWare

Ambitious party-based RPG The Waylanders has just met its latest Kickstarter goal, bringing the talents of Emily Grace Buck to bear on the game.

Buck joins another high-profile games industry veteran working on the game: Mike Laidlaw, the creative director on BioWare’s Dragon Age series. He left BioWare near the end of 2017 and has focused on other creative endeavors since then. Buck was a Narrative Designer at Telltale Games before being laid off along with most of the team in a majority studio closure. Buck has been extremely proactive in advocating for unionization in the industry following the layoffs, and has been conducting freelance work since then; joing The Waylanders’ writing team marks her return to game development.

The combination of Buck’s talent and that of Laidlaw will be fully realized for players through the localization work of Josué Monchan, another industry veteran who has eight years of translating experience and has worked with studios like Lucas Pope, Devolver Digital and Daedalic Entertainment. A fourth and final experienced collaborator has yet to be unlocked and revealed.

Regarding her official addition to the team, Buck wrote on the game’s Kickstarter page:

My writing samples for my first game design position were all thinly veiled fantasy game fanfics. I got the job.

And now, many years and a lot of titles later … I’m not writing fanfiction any more! I’m getting to actually write the real thing! A real, huge, fantasy RPG!

My time at Telltale allowed me to experiment with all kinds of ways to help players emotionally invest in games, and have agency over their relationships with NPCs … while still giving those non-player characters agency as well.

Thank you so much for giving me the chance to work on The Waylanders. This is a dream come true.

I can’t wait to use my previous narrative experience and my love for this genre to bring you what I hope will be a delightful and robust gaming journey through the world of the Celts!

The Waylanders is a party-based RPG developed by Gato Salvaje Studio that is inspired by beloved fantasy classics like Dragon Age: Origins and Baldur’s Gate. It will feature “innovative and tactical combat” along with six main classes, 30 advanced classes and over 800 skills. The game will bring the legends of Celtic cultures to life through a journey that will span over 40 hours of gameplay. You’ll be accompanied by eight companions, with the ability to customize your character, and choose from four diverse races and unique romance options. The game has attained half of the funding needed for its full development, and the development team hopes to reach the goal of $150K by Nov. 16.

If backed, the game will be available on PC and will be translated into a multitude of languages. Gato Salvaje’s CEO Sergio Prieto and his brother, Fernando Prieto Prado, spoke with GamesDaily.biz about designing such an ambitious project in Spain’s growing-indie scene.

Stay tuned for future updates on the game’s Kickstarter campaign—you can lend your support right here and find out more about the game via the video below.