Article ID: DD-08
Last updated: 2026-08-10
TLDR
- What this is: Walking the Rift explores the distributed outdoor and public-space side of Shattered Bounds: Rift Walker, the working title for the future AR MMORPG phase of Shattered Bounds.
- The key idea: Instead of only visiting dedicated experiences like Battlegrounds, The Tower, or the Grand Dungeon, players would eventually be able to experience parts of Shattered Bounds through AR glasses in selected parks, trails, fields, partner locations, and approved public spaces.
- What changes because of it: Quests, NPCs, monsters, gathering, items, crafting, Rift Zones, and special events can exist across physical locations, with the real world becoming part of the game map.
- What stays most important: Safety. Rift Walker is not about turning every street into a battlefield. It is about placing the right kind of adventure in the right kind of safe real-world space.
- What’s next: This article explores the future public-space layer of Rift Walker and how it connects to the wider Shattered Bounds ecosystem.
Answer Block
Shattered Bounds is being developed in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, with a long-term goal of creating connected fantasy adventures across physical and augmented spaces. Shattered Bounds: Rift Walker is the working title for its future AR MMORPG phase.
This Deep Dive focuses specifically on the distributed outdoor and public-space side of that vision: a future where players use capable AR glasses to see and interact with parts of the Shattered Bounds world layered over selected parks, trails, fields, partner locations, and approved public areas.
AI-supported NPCs, Rift Zones, location-based encounters, quests, gathering, items, crafting, and special city events could turn safe physical spaces into places of adventure. The goal is not to replace the real world or make players ignore their surroundings. The goal is to carefully reveal another world through AR while keeping safety, awareness, and real-world context at the center of the experience.
Quick Facts
- Official article title: Walking the Rift – Shattered Bounds as an AR MMORPG
- AR MMORPG working title: Shattered Bounds: Rift Walker
- Development starting point: Ottawa, Ontario, Canada
- Long-term scope: Designed to expand beyond Ottawa as the technology, systems, partnerships, and safety model mature
- Experience type: Future outdoor and location-based AR MMORPG layer
- Main play spaces: Parks, fields, trails, open public spaces, partner locations, and approved event areas
- Core systems: AI-supported NPCs, Rift Zones, quests, enemies, gathering, items, crafting, city events, and persistent player identity
- Primary safety rule: The real world always comes first
- Inspirations: Sword Art Online: Ordinal Scale for location-based AR city events; Orna for location-based MMORPG structure, location-sensitive activity, gathering, and traveling NPC concepts
- Current roadmap direction: Battlegrounds → The Tower → Shattered Bounds: Rift Walker → Grand Dungeon → Coliseum
- Roadmap status: Directional rather than permanently locked
What You’ll Get from This Deep Dive
Concept in plain language
Walking the Rift is about the moment Shattered Bounds begins appearing outside dedicated venues.
It focuses on the public-space side of Shattered Bounds: Rift Walker: the version of the experience where parks, trails, fields, and selected real-world locations become places where players can discover and interact with the other world through AR.
Why it matters
This is where Shattered Bounds begins to feel less like a collection of places you visit and more like a world that can appear around you.
How it affects the player experience
Players could discover Rift Zones, speak with NPCs, complete quests, gather materials, craft items, investigate lore, encounter enemies in suitable spaces, and participate in special events across approved locations.
How it fits into Shattered Bounds
Shattered Bounds is made from several connected experience layers:
- Player Room: the personal and at-home layer
- Battlegrounds: the short structured encounter layer
- The Tower: the structured party-adventure layer
- Walking the Rift: the distributed outdoor and public-space layer of Rift Walker
- Grand Dungeon: the destination layer
- Coliseum: the spectacle and world-boss layer
These experiences are different in scale and purpose, but the long-term goal is for them to feel connected through identity, world state, history, characters, and progression.
Why Talk About Walking the Rift Now?
This article is not a launch announcement.
Walking the Rift is a future-vision article. It explores the distributed outdoor and public-space side of Shattered Bounds: Rift Walker, the working product title for the AR MMORPG phase of Shattered Bounds.
So far, the Shattered Bounds Deep Dives have introduced several parts of the larger vision.
Shattered Bounds: Battlegrounds is the short structured encounter layer: focused, replayable, and built around physical AR challenges.
The Tower is the structured party-adventure layer: one party entering a longer-form experience, completing a run, and returning with a story.
Adventurer Identity explores how physical identity artifacts, persistent profiles, and the Player Portal can create continuity across experiences.
Shattered Bounds: Grand Dungeon introduces the destination layer: a hybrid NPC village connected to a multi-floor indoor dungeon.
Walking the Rift asks a different question:
What happens when Shattered Bounds is no longer only somewhere you go, but something you can find layered over the world around you?
This is one of the central ideas behind Rift Walker.
A park becomes a Rift Zone.
A trail becomes a quest route.
A familiar field becomes the site of a special event.
A strange traveler appears along a path that was empty the last time you visited.
A gathering route changes because something has happened nearby.
A monster sighting becomes a reason to message your party.
The AR MMORPG vision is not simply about putting enemies everywhere.
It is about revealing another world.
Sometimes that world should be dangerous.
Sometimes it should be strange.
Sometimes it should be peaceful.
Sometimes the most memorable encounter might simply be finding an NPC sitting beneath a tree who remembers the last time you met.
But none of this works unless the real world comes first.
The goal is not to turn every street into a battlefield.
The goal is to place the right kind of adventure in the right kind of safe real-world space.
The Core Concept: The Real World Becomes the Map
The public-space side of Rift Walker begins with a simple idea:
The real world becomes part of the map, and Shattered Bounds becomes the fantasy layer revealed through it.
That does not mean every road, sidewalk, parking lot, or crowded space becomes playable.
It does not mean the entire city becomes one giant combat zone.
Instead, activities would be matched to selected locations where the experience is appropriate.
A park or open field might support a combat encounter.
A trail might become a gathering or exploration route.
A quiet public space might host a traveling NPC.
A partner location might become a quest stop, gathering point, or crafting location.
An approved event space might support a larger shared encounter.
A Rift Zone might contain enemies and anomalies.
Another Rift Zone might reveal a peaceful settlement, trader, scholar, gathering opportunity, or piece of history from the other world.
Different locations can support different kinds of play:
- Combat encounters
- Gathering
- Exploration
- Crafting materials
- NPC conversations
- Lore discoveries
- Party objectives
- Environmental puzzles
- Traveling characters
- Special events
- Shared community goals
This is what makes the idea different from simply putting monsters on a map.
The real world should matter.
A riverside trail, an open park, a wooded path, a quiet garden, and a large field should not all feel identical.
Each space can influence what is revealed there, what players do there, and what kind of story the location supports.
The fantasy layer should fit the place.
It should not fight it.
Safety Comes First
Rift Walker only works if safety is treated as a foundation of the experience rather than a restriction added afterward.
Because players would be moving through actual parks, trails, fields, and public areas, the game cannot be designed like a screen-based MMORPG where players can safely ignore everything outside the game.
Players are not moving avatars with a controller.
They are moving their actual bodies through actual spaces.
Other people may be nearby.
Weather may change.
Terrain may be uneven.
Visibility may be reduced.
A space that was appropriate yesterday may not be appropriate today.
Some locations may be crowded, restricted, private, temporarily closed, or simply unsuitable for a particular activity.
The real world always comes first.
That means Rift Walker must be selective about where different kinds of activity appear.
Some areas may support physical combat encounters.
Some may support gathering.
Some may support exploration.
Some may support NPC interactions, crafting, lore discovery, or passive story moments.
Some should support no gameplay at all.
A crowded sidewalk should not become a combat zone.
A road crossing should not become a quest objective.
Private property should not become a shortcut.
An icy trail should not become a movement challenge.
A narrow path should not encourage players to swing weapons or dodge enemies.
The activity needs to adapt to the location.
That is why the outdoor side of Rift Walker should focus on carefully selected parks, trails, fields, open areas, partner locations, and approved event spaces.
Even within those spaces, not every activity belongs everywhere.
Combat needs more room than conversation.
A gathering activity needs different safety rules from a world-boss encounter.
A passive lore event may be appropriate somewhere that an active movement challenge is not.
The fantasy should make the real world feel more magical.
It should never make it less safe.
Rift Zones: Places Where the Other World Shows Through
One of the core concepts in Rift Walker is the Rift Zone.
A Rift Zone is a selected real-world location where something from the Shattered Bounds world becomes exposed through AR and players can interact with it.
That interaction does not have to be dangerous.
A Rift Zone could contain enemies emerging through a breach.
But it could also reveal:
- A traveling merchant
- A hidden settlement
- A gathering location
- A strange ruin
- A creature that is not hostile
- An environmental puzzle
- A temporary crafting opportunity
- A scholar investigating the boundary between worlds
- A story event
- A peaceful glimpse of the other world
The important idea is that a Rift Zone represents contact.
Something is visible there that normally is not.
The player puts on their AR glasses and sees that the familiar space has another layer.
Perhaps roots from another forest appear woven through the trees.
Perhaps an ancient wall stands where the real-world path continues.
Perhaps strange creatures are drinking beside a stream.
Perhaps a damaged breach is releasing hostile creatures.
Perhaps a merchant has set up a temporary stall and will be gone tomorrow.
The existence of a Rift Zone should not automatically tell the player what kind of experience they are about to find.
It tells them that the boundary between worlds is thin enough to interact with.
What is on the other side may vary.
That creates more room for discovery.
And discovery is one of the most important parts of the Rift Walker vision.
AI NPCs in the Real World
AI-supported NPCs are one of the reasons Rift Walker matters.
In many games, NPCs are fixed in place.
They repeat the same lines.
They hand out the same quests.
They forget the player the moment the interaction ends.
Shattered Bounds is aiming for something more persistent over time.
That does not mean every NPC needs to be fully autonomous.
Some characters can remain simple.
Some can be scripted.
Some may only appear during events.
Some can exist primarily as shopkeepers, quest-givers, scouts, guides, or lore characters.
But important recurring NPCs could eventually become part of a larger continuity layer.
They might recognize returning adventurers.
They might remember earlier visits.
They might refer to a party’s previous Tower run.
They might comment on recent Rift activity in a local park.
They might know that the player helped during an earlier event.
They might appear in different places over time as traveling merchants, scouts, scholars, wandering adventurers, or messengers moving between locations.
This is one of the places where LivingNPC-Engine can eventually connect back into Shattered Bounds.
The goal is not to make every character endlessly talkative.
The goal is to make the world feel inhabited.
Imagine meeting a strange traveler in one Ottawa park.
Weeks later, you find the same traveler somewhere else.
The character recognizes you.
Perhaps they remember what you discussed.
Perhaps the situation has changed.
Perhaps they were traveling toward the place where you have now found them.
That small amount of continuity changes the feeling of the interaction.
The world begins to feel less like a collection of menus and more like a place where characters exist between your visits.
AI NPCs should support that feeling carefully.
They can provide context, hints, local story, quest framing, relationships, and continuity without overwhelming the player or distracting them from the physical environment.
The NPCs are not the whole game.
They are one of the ways the world remembers.
Quests, Items, and Crafting
Rift Walker should not only be about fighting enemies.
An AR MMORPG needs different kinds of adventure.
Some players will want combat.
Others may prefer exploration, gathering, crafting, story, discovery, social play, or event participation.
A living world should support more than one kind of adventurer.
Quests Give Players a Reason to Explore
A quest might ask a player to:
- Investigate a newly discovered Rift Zone
- Follow traces of a creature along a trail
- Find and speak with a traveling NPC
- Collect materials from several safe locations
- Recover a lost artifact
- Investigate a strange environmental change
- Deliver information between characters
- Contribute to a larger event happening across selected areas of the city
Location can become part of the story.
The player does not simply click a quest and walk toward a marker.
The place itself helps explain why the quest exists.
Items Give Meaning to Discovery
A player might find:
- Monster materials
- Herbs
- Ore
- Relic fragments
- Event tokens
- Crafting components
- Lore objects
- Strange materials that can only be found near certain Rift conditions
What a player discovers should connect to where they went and what they experienced.
Crafting Makes Exploration Matter Later
At this stage, the exact crafting rules do not need to be locked.
This article is not the place to decide recipes, statistics, rarity systems, economy balance, or final equipment progression.
The important concept is simpler:
Players should be able to explore the world, find things, bring them back, and turn those discoveries into part of their character’s story.
A player might gather materials from a wooded trail and later use them for potions, tools, cosmetics, Player Room decorations, event artifacts, or future equipment systems.
Crafting should not exist simply to create a resource grind.
It should support the fantasy of being an adventurer.
You went somewhere.
You found something.
You brought it back.
Now it matters.
Enemies and Location-Based Encounters
Location-based encounters are where the public-space layer of Rift Walker starts to feel alive.
One of the inspirations here is Orna, particularly the broader idea that movement through the real world can influence what players discover and encounter.
The Shattered Bounds version would need to follow its own design, systems, and safety rules, but the underlying idea is useful:
Where you are can matter.
A quiet park, a riverside trail, a wooded path, and an open field can all support different kinds of activity.
Open fields might support larger combat encounters or event objectives.
Forested areas might support tracking, gathering, hidden creatures, environmental story, or mysterious NPCs.
Trails might support exploration quests, resource routes, or story fragments.
Parks might contain temporary Rift Zones with enemies, creatures, anomalies, characters, or event activity.
Partner locations might become quest hubs, crafting points, NPC stops, or access points to specific storylines.
This also creates space for traveling NPCs.
A merchant, scout, scholar, or strange wanderer might appear in different selected locations over time.
Players could learn to watch for them.
They might share sightings.
Someone could post that a particular merchant has appeared in a park for the weekend.
A scholar might spend several weeks moving between different Rift Zones.
A recurring character might become part of the community’s shared stories.
But encounter placement must always follow the safety model.
The system should not place combat where combat does not belong.
It should not encourage risky movement.
It should not reward players for entering unsafe, private, crowded, closed, or restricted areas.
The real world becomes part of the design.
That means the real world also sets the limits.
Special Events Across Cities
Special events are where Rift Walker can begin to feel shared.
One of the inspirations for this layer is Sword Art Online: Ordinal Scale, particularly the feeling of players gathering because something important is happening at a real location.
The Shattered Bounds version would need to be more careful, more practical, and grounded in real public-space design.
But the feeling is useful:
Something is happening in the city, and adventurers are gathering to respond.
For Shattered Bounds, a city-scale event does not mean that the entire city becomes playable.
It means an event is happening across selected locations.
A major Rift might appear in a park.
A world boss might emerge in a large open field or approved event space.
Several areas of Ottawa might contribute progress toward closing a larger breach, while every active gameplay location remains intentionally selected.
These events would need agreement with the city, venue partners, or relevant site owners where appropriate.
They would also need their safety model considered before the event begins:
- Clear activity boundaries
- Suitable terrain
- Visibility
- Crowd flow
- Accessibility
- Capacity limits where required
- Rules that do not reward dangerous movement
Possible event concepts include:
- A weekend Rift outbreak across several approved parks
- A world-boss encounter in a large open event space
- A traveling NPC appearing at several scheduled safe locations
- A seasonal gathering event tied to trails or nature areas
- A city-wide crafting contribution goal
- A lore event where players investigate clues across selected public spaces
- A party challenge where different groups contribute to a shared outcome
The fantasy can be city-scale.
The activity still needs to be location-controlled.
That distinction matters.
Across the city should not mean everywhere in the city.
It should mean selected safe locations become part of one larger shared event.
How This Fits Beside the Other Shattered Bounds Layers
The public-space experience of Rift Walker is only one part of Shattered Bounds.
Different layers serve different purposes.
| Experience | Role | Space | Player Flow |
|---|---|---|---|
| Player Room | Personal layer | Player’s own home or personal environment | Players return, customize, reflect, craft, and manage parts of their adventure |
| Battlegrounds | Short encounter layer | Controlled physical play space | Players enter focused, replayable AR challenges |
| The Tower | Structured party-adventure layer | Controlled dungeon-run environment | A party enters a longer story-driven adventure |
| Walking the Rift | Distributed public-space layer | Selected real-world locations | Players discover Shattered Bounds during exploration and everyday movement |
| Grand Dungeon | Destination layer | Dedicated indoor venue | Players visit a large controlled fantasy hub and dungeon destination |
| Coliseum | Spectacle layer | Large controlled encounter venue | Players face major encounters designed to also be watched |
These experiences are connected, but they do not need to behave the same way.
The Grand Dungeon can be more controlled, theatrical, and physically designed.
It can use permanent sets, lighting, sound, props, staff roles, and indoor AR spaces to create a strong destination experience.
Walking the Rift must be lighter, more distributed, and more responsive to changing real-world conditions.
It cannot assume every space is controlled.
It cannot assume every player is inside a dedicated venue.
It needs to fit into spaces that already serve other purposes.
A Player Room is where the player returns.
Battlegrounds is where they test themselves.
The Tower is where their party enters an adventure.
Walking the Rift is where they discover that the world extends beyond the walls.
The Grand Dungeon is somewhere worth traveling to.
The Coliseum is where major encounters become spectacle.
Each layer can strengthen the others.
Player Identity Across the World
Walking the Rift depends on identity.
If players move between locations, join events, meet recurring NPCs, gather materials, complete quests, and return over time, they need continuity.
This connects back to Adventurer Identity.
The player’s Adventurer artifact can connect their physical identity token to their persistent Shattered Bounds profile.
The physical form may evolve over time, but the important concept is that the player’s identity can follow them across Shattered Bounds experiences.
A recurring NPC could recognize the same adventurer they met elsewhere.
A city event could record contribution.
A gathering route could connect materials to long-term crafting goals.
A Tower result could become part of the character’s history.
A discovery made in a Rift Zone could matter later.
Over time, the Player Portal could expand beyond session history and records to include achievements, inventory, event participation, crafting progress, and other persistent-world systems.
Identity is what turns isolated activities into a persistent world.
Without identity, a Rift encounter is one isolated event.
With identity, it can become part of the player’s history.
A player might help close a breach one weekend.
The next week, they gather materials from a peaceful Rift Zone.
Later, they encounter a traveling NPC.
Months afterward, one of those earlier experiences affects a conversation, achievement, crafting goal, event status, or future story interaction.
The important thing is not only that the game remembers points and rewards.
The important thing is that the world remembers enough to make returning meaningful.
What Has to Wait for AR Glasses
The full Rift Walker vision depends on AR hardware becoming more capable, comfortable, and common.
The public-space side of the experience needs glasses that can support:
- Outdoor visibility
- Real-time overlays
- Stable spatial tracking
- Location awareness
- Comfortable long-duration use
- Practical battery life
- Audio
- Safe interaction with the physical environment
That is a difficult hardware problem.
For Rift Walker to work well, players need to see the fantasy layer without losing awareness of the real world.
They need to recognize obstacles.
They need to see other people.
They need to understand terrain.
They need to notice weather conditions and changing visibility.
They need enough battery life for meaningful outdoor sessions.
They need an interface that does not demand attention at the wrong moment.
That is one reason the current roadmap direction begins with more controlled experiences.
Battlegrounds can test short physical AR combat loops.
The Tower can test longer party-based adventure structures.
The player’s Adventurer identity systems can develop continuity across experiences.
LivingNPC-Engine can develop the character-memory and interaction systems that may eventually support important recurring NPCs.
These pieces can mature before Rift Walker is expected to operate across uncontrolled and changing public spaces.
The current roadmap direction is:
Battlegrounds → The Tower → Shattered Bounds: Rift Walker → Grand Dungeon → Coliseum
That order remains directional rather than permanently locked, but the logic is that the earlier phases can prove important systems before Rift Walker asks them to function across a much larger and less controlled environment.
Rift Walker depends on one of the hardest versions of the technology.
It needs AR glasses suitable for everyday outdoor use, not only experimental demonstrations.
Until then, it remains a future horizon being prepared for through the systems built today.
From Venues to the Living World
Walking the Rift is about the moment Shattered Bounds stops being only somewhere you visit.
It becomes something you can encounter.
A park becomes a Rift Zone.
A trail becomes a quest route.
A familiar field becomes the site of a city event.
A strange structure from the other world appears between familiar trees.
A traveling NPC is waiting somewhere you did not expect them.
A monster sighting becomes a reason to message your party.
A gathering route gives you the final material you were looking for.
A crafted item becomes proof that you explored, gathered, discovered, fought, and returned.
This is the public-space layer where Shattered Bounds: Rift Walker begins to feel like an AR MMORPG.
Not because it simply copies the structure of a screen-based MMO.
But because it can give players:
- Persistent identity
- A connected world
- Shared events
- Recurring characters
- Location-based activity
- Discovery
- Long-term reasons to return
The Player Room gives the adventurer somewhere personal to return to.
Battlegrounds gives them a short challenge.
The Tower gives their party an adventure.
The Grand Dungeon gives them a destination.
The Coliseum gives them spectacle.
Walking the Rift gives them something different.
A world to find.
Key Terms
Shattered Bounds: Rift Walker
The working product title for the future AR MMORPG phase of Shattered Bounds.
Walking the Rift
The title and focus of this Deep Dive: the distributed outdoor and public-space side of Rift Walker, where Shattered Bounds can be discovered through AR in selected real-world locations.
Rift Zone
A selected real-world location where the Shattered Bounds world is exposed through AR and players can interact with it in some way. A Rift Zone may contain danger, exploration, resources, NPCs, lore, peaceful encounters, or special events.
AI NPC
A digital character that can eventually remember players, respond to relevant events, and provide continuity across visits and locations. Not every NPC needs to be fully autonomous.
Location-Based Encounter
A quest, character, creature, resource, puzzle, story event, or other interaction connected to a real-world location.
City Event
A larger event distributed across selected approved locations, where multiple players or parties can contribute to a shared objective.
Adventurer Artifact
A physical identity token connected to a player’s persistent Shattered Bounds profile and future cross-experience systems.
Mini FAQ
Q: Is Walking the Rift a separate game from Shattered Bounds?
No. Walking the Rift is the name of this Deep Dive and the framing used here for the distributed public-space side of the future AR MMORPG experience.
The working product title for the AR MMORPG is Shattered Bounds: Rift Walker.
Q: Where would players use Rift Walker?
The public-space experience would focus on selected parks, fields, trails, open public spaces, partner locations, and approved event areas.
The goal is not to make every street or location playable. Different activities would be matched to spaces where they can be experienced appropriately and safely.
Q: Will every Rift Zone involve combat?
No.
A Rift Zone means that part of the Shattered Bounds world is exposed and can be interacted with through AR.
Some Rift Zones may contain enemies or dangerous events. Others may contain gathering opportunities, peaceful creatures, crafting interactions, exploration, NPCs, lore discoveries, environmental puzzles, or passive story moments.
Q: How do AI NPCs fit into this?
AI-supported NPCs could help make the world feel persistent by remembering relevant player interactions, reacting to events, appearing in different locations, and providing contextual conversations or quests.
Not every NPC needs deep AI, but important recurring characters can become part of the continuity layer.
Q: What are city events?
City events are larger, time-limited AR events distributed across selected approved locations.
They could include Rift outbreaks, world bosses, traveling NPCs, shared crafting goals, exploration events, or larger story developments.
City-scale does not mean every part of the city is playable. The individual activity locations would still be intentionally selected.
Q: Why not build Rift Walker first?
The full version depends on mature AR glasses, outdoor tracking, safe public-space design, persistent player identity, NPC continuity, world-state management, and systems that can operate across changing real-world environments.
Battlegrounds, The Tower, Adventurer Identity, and supporting systems such as LivingNPC-Engine provide opportunities to develop and test parts of that foundation before Rift Walker needs them at a much larger scale.
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