 What's up everybody, I'm the Mangoos, you are awesome and if you've been paying attention to Ethereal's Discord, you may have noticed a channel called the Ethereal Development Fun Facts. While we haven't received a lot of new information regarding Ethereal of late, this Discord channel has many interesting tidbits. Most of them are pretty straightforward, however some of them are kinda confusing so I sat down with Owen, one of the founders of Undying Games, to clarify some of them. Let's go line by line and go into a bit more detail on these little fun facts. First up are the animations. Each myth is scheduled to have 400 animations upon full release of the game. To put that in perspective, most Paragon Heroes had around 150 to 200 animations and we all know how detailed Paragon was. It is of note however that they specify full release, the alpha version will of course not be as detailed as the final product. We also learned that Dante was the first myth to be worked upon, in my experience with covering the game he seems to be the frontrunner to be the poster boy. The jungle camps in Ethereal will be heavily inspired by games like Diablo 3 and Dark Souls, instead of just wailing on the minions you'll have to dodge and time your abilities. This adds another layer of depth to the jungle role and will hopefully free up the opportunity for more than just bruisers to be effective junglers. They plan to have 151 items in Ethereal, the rusty ring being my personal favorite, and most of the top tier items will tie into their very extensive lore. This one's a bit sad, their mocap studio used to have 12 cameras. The motion capture work was a big part of their ability to add so many animations however, that shit got ransacked during the columbia riots and a bunch of the cameras got stolen so let's send them back. Atropos, the PvE boss of Ethereal, will have corresponding music to go along with his phases. If you didn't know, taking Atropos will be a 3 phase encounter. Little touches like this are always nice, kinda adds to the immersion when you got that standard video game ramping up the music as the boss changes phases. I'm gonna skip over this hair one there, just kinda talk about how hard it is to do realistic 3D hair and epic is trying to put more into their engine to make hair easier to do and like flowy and stuff, but that hasn't happened yet. Now we get to the stuff that I find interesting, while the art style of Ethereal is different from Paragon, the map and models are no less detailed which can be a cause for concern if you're not swinging a big dick graphics card. This graph shows us that their new level designer has been tweaking things and optimizing the game to ensure that it still runs as smoothly as possible. Every myth will have at least one skin, one of the perks of creating the game from scratch instead of using free assets is that you have to be able to create new models and skins. I love all the models and authoritative skins that I've seen so far. They will have their own launcher in place for the free alpha, that's a big old sigh of relief for anyone that has been dicking around with the over-prime downloads. This post talks about animating through physics to give a realistic feel to the game. What they're talking about here are things like Severog's flowing robes or Rogue Kalari's cape. Items like that are animated with their own physics, Undying will be doing the same with Ethereal while still paying attention to the performance of the overall game. The items will not be restricted, you can buy whatever you want for whomever you wish and as always, the item art is fantastic. Dr. Grace's mech has a name, the Mars 3, not much to say here. The sound effects for the game are being produced by Tricolor's Star. They have a budget that allows him to buy the items he needs to produce the effects. If you've watched any of the videos I have that feature Tricolor, you know that he has an absolute passion for sound design as well as access to a variety of voice actors and other resources, really looking forward to his work in Ethereal. This graph confused the shit out of me. What it shows is that once again, their level designer is doing everything he possibly can to keep the game optimized without sacrificing shader complexity. The lighter the color, the better the optimization. Undying is trying to strike the perfect balance of looking great and performing well. They've been testing the game on lower grade graphics cards to make sure that the finished product is accessible to as many people as possible. They specifically designed the game to leave room for the inclusion of other classes. This seems to be a direct reference to the mysterious Overseer class that is planned for the final release, but will not be there in the pre-alpha. Asheron's voice lines are done yet will not be released yet. He's one of the few that we haven't heard. Undying seems to be storing up a load of good stuff to hit us with all at once. 90% of the assets used in Ethereal were created from scratch. While you see many pre-made epic assets in the old map videos, those are just that. Old map videos. There is another map in the works and they're working hard to make everything unique to Ethereal. This last one cracked me up. Did you know there are secondary objectives aside from Atropos and the Wyverns? That looks like an unintentional leak to me. I knew about the Wyverns, but I'm pretty sure this is the first time anyone's ever mentioned it to the entire community. Oh and be leakage shit man. That's all for now folks. It seems that all the games I track have learned a lesson from both Strange Matter and Soul Leave, and that lesson is to keep your mouth shut and release everything at once in one giant info bomb. I'm hoping that Undying starts blowing up soon. I am so ready for this game. I've already been talking with Jellynees, who you may recognize as one of the co-hosts I had on For the Minions, about doing our own Ethereal focus podcast. I'll provide links in the video description if you want to check him out. Very charismatic dude. If you liked the video please hit that like button. If you didn't like it let me know why I'm open to criticism. Subscribe for more Ethereal content because once this game gets up and going I'm going to cover the shit out of it. For now this is the man goose signing off. You guys have a good one.