Case Study — IC5
The Shield Maiden's Quest
Sanzaru Games · Asgard's Wrath · 2018-2019
Role: Senior Designer IC5 · Discipline: Quest Design, Narrative Design, Level Design · Engine: UE4, Blueprint
The brief
I was tasked with designing a side quest for the shield maiden — the first of four playable characters in Asgard's Wrath — to fill in her backstory and add replay value to an existing level. The constraints were real: the quest had to fit within an existing level with a new area added, incorporate puzzles using two of the early followers, and any narrative changes required sign-off from the creative director.
The problem
The shield maiden's original backstory was straightforward — she lost her brother when her village was sacked by Tyr and his army. It was functional but it made her a victim of circumstance rather than someone with an active emotional problem to work through. I felt it could be adjusted to give her more complexity and make the resolution more meaningful.
What I did
I reframed the backstory: instead of losing her brother to Tyr's army, her brother chose to join it. That shift changed the emotional stakes entirely — from grief over a loss to something more complicated, a betrayal she had to reckon with before she could move forward. I worked with the creative director to get sign-off on the adjusted narrative, making the case that the betrayal angle gave the character more emotional depth and made the quest's resolution earn its moment.
From there I designed the full quest flow: a series of beats built around collecting items associated with her brother, puzzle moments incorporating two of the early followers, combat placement, and a final set-piece culminating in a viking funeral pyre. The pyre sequence was designed specifically around VR physicality — placing her brother's items onto the boat, using a follower ability to launch it into the water, then grabbing a bow, lighting the arrow tip on a nearby flame, and shooting it at the boat. Every step is a physical action the player performs, not a cutscene they watch.
I built the blockout into the existing level, iterated on pacing and timing until the beats felt right, collaborated with the writer on shield maiden monologue VO to carry the emotional weight of the moment, and polished it through to final.
Quest flow — puzzle/combat/collect rhythm repeating three times, each loop adding an item and a piece of backstory, building to the funeral pyre set-piece
The results
The quest landed well with the team. A former colleague later told me it was his favorite quest or moment across both Asgard's Wrath titles — which meant a lot given the scale of content across both games.
Player reception reflected that too. The quest was remembered fondly in reviews and playthroughs — a streamer described it as “an amazing and touching side quest” in a dedicated video that captured the funeral pyre moment in a way that showed exactly what the sequence was designed to do.