Our team was also told early on that the Valkyries would be the hardest bosses that players would face in the game. Principal character artist, Raf Grassetti, recollected, “We knew that the Valkyries were there more to challenge the players and test their skills as optional bosses. So, that’s one of the initial directions that got reflected in the design too.” Both gameplay and lore affected the final character design - a collaborative process common throughout the development of our game. “Even game designers breaking down all the different classes and how they were going to work, this was such a big character that it took a long time.”

With these two aspects in mind, our artists, Vance Kovac and Justin Sweet, merged those different characteristics with one another to create this memorable character template. Our team’s goal would be to make sure these Valkyries emit a mixture of both elegance and fear. Dela recollected, “We wanted them to make them feel frightening; we wanted to make them feel tough. We also wanted a bit of beauty and nobility in their designs. The concept team really walked the razor-thin edge of beautiful and frightening at the same time, exactly what the characters thematically were trying to emote in-game.” Our team was very enamored by the concepts Justin and Vance did of the Valkyries being an angelic form of Death, which was a direct influence and we wanted to continue that theme of creating a character that was stunningly beautiful, yet terrifying. “You want to feel they are taking the souls and shepherding them as they transition to Asgard.”

