[h3]
Hello Stalkers![/h3]
While building the world of Chernobylite, we tried to give it a deeper meaning. Each level, its surroundings or a specific place on the map should, in our opinion, be something more than just a pile of rubble covered with plants and moss. Ideas came to our minds sometimes accidentally, sometimes intentionally. Some places are the result of a combination of these two factors. The best example of this is the village in Red Forest.
[h3]
A village on the edge of everything[/h3]
There would be no village in the Red Forest at first. It was supposed to be a huge forest area that could be explored at will. Ultimately, we decided that building a fenced off area in the middle of the map could be the perfect opportunity to achieve one of our goals. Our intention was to show samosely, because it is probably the most characteristic element of the zone. First, we had to come up with an outline for the backstory of this place. So initially it was supposed to be a farm of one man, around which people started to gather. Not long after Shadows and Chernohosts began to roam the area, they put up a great wall around the farm.
It was the easiest thing to come up with a story. Now it was necessary to make the concept come true and develop it so that the whole thing had arms and legs. In short, it was about building a village from scratch. The main emphasis was on the fence and the entrance gate to prevent soldiers and monsters from entering the village. We did it not only for architectural but also practical reasons - creating any event that would involve a sudden intrusion of intruders into the village would be very troublesome.
When the village - or rather its foundations - finally came into being, we were able to test the prototype of the Olga quest on it. It worked well, it played well, but another problem arose - the village was too empty. So we add a few side characters that were only supposed to stand and make up the artificial crowd. Then everything went from thread to ball: NPCs got short texts that they said in conversation with the player, each had simple characteristics (e.g. one deals with pigs, the other is a guardian, etc.), and over time there were also character animations. Over time, placeholders replaced newly designed character models - no more Clone Wars! You can see the effects of the changes we are gradually introducing in the game.
[h3]
Cut off from the world[/h3]
At one point, we had the idea to make the village in Red Forest more open and resemble places from RPGs games. One where the player can enter and, for example, talk to traders. Unfortunately, we had other, more priority things on our minds and the idea died. However, when we look at it in retrospect, the decision to abandon this idea seems right. Why?
As you know, to enter the village you have to go through the guarded gate. And here comes a curiosity: the concept of the gate has changed twice. Originally, we thought over an ordinary gate, opened like a castle gate. However, later we analyzed what we had done so far and came to a fairly important conclusion. Well, the people of the village are wary of people from the outside world. Hence the concept of a double gate, that will allow guards to check who passes through it before they enter the village.
If you put all of these together, it is easy to come to the conclusion why the vision of an open village wasn't the best - there is no point in creating a fully functional place with shops, gunsmiths, etc., if its community isn’t very willing to open up to outsiders.
[h3]
One big strange family[/h3]
Speaking of the side characters wandering here and there, we had a lot of fun creating them. We had a lot of freedom to act, we could do whatever we wanted. The wilder the event, the better. NPCs for them were created for the moment - if we have a nice idea and we needed a character for it, we could create a prototype of the event using the "puppet". From this huge mass of ideas, we removed those that we thought were stupid, and we combined the rest in such a way that one NPC would appear in several events. More or less this is how the outlines of the first characters - Vagabond and Volodya - were created.
Having already had a few characters, we started to think the other way around - we thought about how to use them so that they would appear in the game more often than just once. In this way, we have created another wave of events that lead to a reunion, for example, Volodya, who does not want to sell us to the soldiers, Evgieniy annoying the villagers, etc.
Finally, we had to give each of these characters their own characteristics. It was a must because it turned out that we had too much fun creating the next characters, forgetting about the need for consistency. In addition, we wanted to avoid the situation of the player dealing with inert puppets with no personality. Fortunately for us, this bug has been fixed and our joyful creativity has gained a soul.
Thanks to this, the player can meet on his way Vagabond, who cut his teeth on capitalism and has the qualities necessary to achieve success in a new, crazy world - he just has the talking. Therefore, in the dialogues, he often mentions his business contacts with, among others, Donald Trump, Bill Gates or Vladimir Putin. Semyon, on the other hand, is a man who has seen many things and experienced many. However, you can see that the staves are in the wrong place. Just listen to his theory that Hitler and Stalin were conspiring to create the NAR and the creatures prowling everywhere to enslave the Ukrainian people. And there is also Locksmith, who, while looking for his brother, is not afraid to enter the darkest and most strange places. He rejects any thought that his brother is dead.
We have created a real gallery of curiosities, impossible to forge. You won't find two of the same characters in Chernobylite. It's worth getting to know them all.
[h3]
Footnotes Stories[/h3]
We would like to take this opportunity to encourage you to our new initiative. When we’re doing research the history of our game, we read a whole lot of books and notes about events from the past. We decided that the knowledge we obtained in this way seemed too interesting to hide it in a drawer. That is why we publish short stories every week on our Facebook profile, which were created as a result of reading all kinds of helpful materials. An excerpt from one of the stories can be found below.
“The Fate of Balts - Part One
Fears and Distractions
There was a series of chilly nights in June 1986 in Chernobyl. The continental climate caused a painful difference between daily and nightly temperatures. Fortunately, Sergeant Major Edgars Ozoliņš from the Latvian Soviet Socialist Republic and other officers were lucky enough to receive greatcoats. The privates from his company have been issued typical Soviet quilted jackets. They would still freeze anyway at night and sweat profusely during the day while removing radioactive waste in special uniforms that were impossible to wear and caused burns. Only then would the company receive Soviet uniforms from the Afghan War. (so-called Afghankas)
But at least there were a lot of distractions to choose from. Despite the Chernobyl disaster, the FIFA World Cup would still go ahead as planned in Mexico. It's been less than two months since the accident, and the world seemed determined to go back to normal, even though the danger was far from over. No wonder: the Soviet propaganda machine was working overtime to keep the impression that everything was under control. The Americans went with that narration simply because they were interested in not drawing more attention to the possible dangers of nuclear installations in their own country.
And so that summer, the world - very much oblivious to the consequences of the Chernobyl Disaster - watched in awe as Diego Maradonna scored the Hand of God goal against England and led Argentina to win the Cup. Soviet Union footballers put up a good fight in the group phase. They have defeated Hungary 6-0, won against Canada 2-0, and drew 1-1 against France. Dynamo Kyiv's Igor Belanov was a star of the show and was named the European Player of the Year for 1986. But despite his brilliant performance Soviet Union eventually conceded to Belgium 3-4 in the knockout phase."
If you liked it, we encourage you to read the full version of the
first part and the
second part on our Facebook profile.
[h3]
That's it for today![/h3]
Take care, Stalkers!
