We’re happy to announce that we’ve brought on Eric Sexton to help enrich and accelerate the design work on Grim Dawn. It is especially exciting for us since Eric was one of the early artists / designers at Blizzard North, contributing to what are obviously some of our favorite games of all time.
Starting as an artist when Blizzard North was originally called “Condor,” Eric animated player characters on Diablo 1 and contributed such creative touches as the macabre detailing of the Butcher’s room and wrote many of the quest concepts. Transitioning to more of a design role on Diablo 2, Eric contributed to the story and world development. Most recently, Eric worked on the creature design team for Borderlands II, creating NPCs and monsters.
On Grim Dawn, Eric is primarily involved with world building and the development of lore but is eager to branch out. He was able to get up to speed on level creation quickly and has already made major contributions, building the mountain fortress that will mark the end of Act 3 and working on an expansive high-level swamp region where some faction quests will take place. Eric has demonstrated a special knack for creating unique points of interest within levels to give them a distinctive feel and detailing out dungeons in a way that really enhances the atmosphere.
Beyond improving our design efforts, we’re also hopeful that this new addition to the team will help increase the rate at which we can produce the remaining content and speed us towards the end-of-year delivery we’re currently targeting for the full release of Grim Dawn.
Eric will be going by the name Hyboreal on the forums.
The little environmental details are one of the things I especially love about this game, especially when those details help to tell a story about things that happened.
Welcome to the team! Can’t wait to see your work in game!
That’s great news. While I like Grim Dawn’s overall art style I think it’s pretty lacking from an exploration/POI perspective. Hopefully Eric can bring a little more flair to the world and make exploring it that much more interesting.
Interesting… swamp region… I’m all ears!
And good he was responsible for the creature designs in BL2 not the gameplay of the classes. I’d fear for GD in that case… ^^
Edit:
And more characteristics sounds great too. Always a top priority on my list, sadly so often neglected…
Like the others, I’m thrilled to see his/your work ingame. I, for one, read those little pieces of lore with such enjoyment that thinking I might get more makes me drool.
Thats good news, glad you are able to expand slow but sure with quality people and I of course enjoyed D1 & D2. Is he any good with achievments? Would love to see them finished, atleast the first batch
May I be excited about you joining Crate although I never played any Diablo game? Please accept my sincere apologies, but under threat of sped up content release I won’t be able to close this gap in my education anytime soon.
So much has been done already…not that everything that’s done isn’t AMAZING…it is. To think that if he had joined from the start though? omg. The poor guy is probably going to want to change and tweak sooo much stuff…if Crate let him it would be a 2020 release though
