Wayfinder's Journey From Free-To-Play To ARPG With A Collaboration With Spider-Verse's Joaquim Dos Santos

screenrant.com:

is finally approaching its final launch next week, but it's had a long and arduous journey to reach the form it's taken now as a fantasy ARPG. Developed by Airship Syndicate, the company behind titles like, the game was originally slated to be published by Digital Extremes as a free-to-play online experience. However, after Digital Extreme shuttered its publishing wing, the developer regrouped, leading to a huge overhaul of the design that took from MMORPG to what it is today.

is now a three-player co-op title with no free-to-play elements, evolving into a premium, one-time-purchase game. Set in the world of Evenor, players can choose between several different characters to take on adventures with as they fight against the Gloom, a dark chaos spreading across the land that the titular Wayfinders have special abilities to combat. As part of the game's character rollout, the company partnered with animator Joaquim Dos Santos, a co-director of and its upcoming sequel, to showcase the character Grendel in a special anime-style short.

Across two paired sessions, interviewed CEO and creative director Joe Mandureira alongside animator Joaquim Dos Santos about the collaboration that brought Grendel to life, and again with Airship Syndicate president and game director Ryan Stefanelli to discuss the challenges of self-publishing, the issues with the free-to-play game model, and the title's big evolution into an ARPG.

Screen Rant: To start off, I'm curious to learn a little bit more about how this collaboration first came about, and what that overall back-and-forth process was like for you guys.

Joe Madureira: There was one Comic-Con where you [Joaquim] came by the booth, and we chatted, and I was a huge fan of Korra, so I was a fan of his. I just didn't know he had worked on this stuff. We geeked out that entire show, I feel like, and we were like, «We got to work on something someday.» That was probably 10 years ago.

Joaquim Dos Santos: That was just a long-standing