Hi everyone! I’m Jeff Miller, Environment Artist on Neverwinter, here to talk to you about our new 10-player Trial, Svardborg!

The idea for this environment was pretty simple; we wanted to have the ultimate fight with in the throne room of Jarl Storvald. When it came to pre-production and production it was even clearer how awesome this was going to be.

We started with the concept phase. Our concept artist, Chris Dien, did an amazing job exploring what a frost giant throne room interior would look like. We started with looking into what information we had on the frost giants themselves. Working with Wizards of the Coast, we gathered as much information on frost giants as we could include: personality, culture and style. We then looked into real world cultures that came close to the ideas we had. The Vikings best fit our theme and vision for the frost giants. Chris then worked on blending all this information into one awesome concept piece for the throne room.

(Concept art for the frost giant throne room)

Once I had this, creating the structure was a blast. I started with the structure of the room itself, making sure the scale felt correct. This room is frost-giant size, not player. This is instantly apparent the second you step foot into the building.

As you can see in the previous image, there was more to the room than just the structure itself. We wanted to sell the idea that Jarl Storvald has been trying to unlock incredible power from the Ring of Winter.  The idea was that the room would show some of the uncontrolled power of the ring. Jarl Storvald obtained the Ring in Brynshander and players got to see the results of that first hand. Now he is trying to unlock the full power, which is why you are needed to stop him.

It was blast working with the team to come up with this environment. The frost giants have been a great culture to figure out and represent with in Neverwinter. I can’t wait for you all to get in and check it out!

Jeff Miller

Neverwinter Environment Artist

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