Cindy "Abigale" Bowens sits down with Art Director Darren Pattenden.

Senior Community Manager Cindy "Abigale" Bowens has just released the most recent Lunch with a Dev interview. This time she sat down with Art Driector Darren Pattenden to discuss the creation of Rift: Planes of Telara.

Pattenden discusses his inspirations, how the look of the world of Telara was established, and technical issues that arose when creating creatures for the game. Pattenden also talks about the most difficult part in creating Rift:

"One of the most challenging things about making a large open world is that creating natural looking environments is difficult in real time computer graphics, even with today’s technology. A real world outdoor scene has essentially an infinite level of visual complexity. Couple that with the need to cover a vast amount of real estate and it’s a real head scratcher figuring out what to depict to sell a scene using an economy of resources. What creates mood, atmosphere and immersion? It’s akin to impressionist painting in many ways. We can’t possibly depict every blade of grass or dew drop and literally everything that might be present in a real world scene, so we have to figure out what to depict that creates an overall impression instead, which is why great lighting and good use of color is absolutely vital."

Head over to to Abigale's forum post to read the full interview.