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The multiplayer mode Factions was a genuine fan favourite from the first game, but Naughty Dog made a deliberate call to leave it out of Part 2 entirely so the whole team could pour every ounce of effort into the single-player campaign. They were clear that Factions wasn't gone for good, just parked for a while.
Drake's Fortune sold over a million copies within just ten weeks of hitting shelves, quickly earning it a place in the European Platinum Range of best-selling titles and proving Naughty Dog's gamble on a brand new IP had paid off.
When the game got localized for Germany, the word 'Nazi' was scrubbed out of the dialogue entirely. It's a fairly common move for German releases dealing with that era, but it does mean a few lines land a bit differently for German players.
Ashenfall isn't just a pretty backdrop. It's soaked in wild magical energy called anima, and the 'Anima Twist' effect this creates is why you'll find plants glowing in dragonfire colours across the Fractured Plains and other regions looking nothing like the RuneScape you remember.
Turning into the Ghoul wasn't a quick job, at least not at first. Walton Goggins originally spent up to five hours in makeup every single day to become the character, with prosthetics designer Jake Garber gradually whittling that process down over time as they both got more efficient at it.
The goblins roaming Ashenfall used to follow the war god Bandos back in mainline RuneScape lore. On this continent, they've switched allegiance entirely and now serve the dragon general Velgar instead.
The Barbarian King shares his name with Marc "Tryndamere" Merrill, one of Riot Games' co-founders. It's not the only bit of himself he worked into the lore either, since he also picked the name for Tryndamere's in-game wife.
The gloriously nostalgic Starcourt Mall in Season 3 wasn't built from scratch. The crew filmed inside Atlanta's real Gwinnett Place Mall, which actually opened in 1984, just a year before the season is set. The production designer described the location as still holding onto 'echoes' of its original 80s showpiece glory, even with half its stores long abandoned.
