[DevNote] Redesigning the Narrative Experience

Hello again Survivors!

When we decided on the Rework during Early Access, we outlined three big things we wanted to address: More Map Diversity, More Character Diversity, and an Overhaul of the Meta-game System to match.

And as we mentioned in a previous Dev Note, there's been a general shift in the character diversification process towards minimizing scripted "Personal Narrative" and focusing more on gameplay.

We're currently in the process of play-testing 8 Characters using dummy resources (all images are subject to change!), and we're not yet sure how many characters we'll end up with, or specific skillsets, etc.

But before we talk about these new Character System/Content Design directions and experiments, we need to talk about the narrative changes associated with this character diversification.

So today, we'd like to share some of the core intentions and thought processes behind our rebuilt narrative with a focus on character diversity.

[h3]Choosing the Narrative Focal Point: “The Desperate Struggle of Humanity”[/h3]
In our "Archives" post, we introduced the keywords we wanted to bring to life through our narrative: "Humanity," "Creature Apocalypse," and "Medieval" were key.

At the time when we needed to rebuild our narrative once again due to a shift in character design, we established the following principles to avoid repeating our previous trial and error.

Don't try to use multiple keywords, choose one keyword/sentence to "Reinforce" the feeling.
The chosen keywords/sentences should align with the core gameplay mechanics (Strategy/Tactics).

With that in mind, we went back to the core of the experience we wanted to convey by choosing a "Creature Apocalypse" to create a tactical stage-centric Tactics RPG.

As a result of that thinking, we decided that it was most important for combat to make the player (and characters) feel like they were in the middle of a "Desperate Struggle."

The systematic intent that all enemies have vision and need to be approached with caution, why we think a low-power setting is more appealing to players instead of a hack-and-slash experience with "Overwhelming Power," and how victory in combat can only be achieved by "Deep Thought" can all be tied together through this topic sentence.

We felt that if we could get this direction right, we could create a narrative sensibility that would work well with the Strategy/Tactics of a Tactics RPG, without necessarily trying to extract human conflict/morality or survival game elements like hunger from the keyword "Creature Apocalypse".

This leads us to the following design directions,

Priority 1 : Conveying the emotion of "Desperate Struggle" through combat systems and content that pit you against creatures.
Priority 2 : The way you win the fight should be based as much as possible on your "Knowledge or Abilities as a Human Being.”
Priority 3 : That "Knowledge or Ability as a Human Being" captures the "Medieval" background theme as much as possible.

By setting these Priorities, we've clarified the purpose of each of our Narrative and Content Themes and focused on what we know we can do best.

Below is some concept art that was created as a result of a conversation with our art team about how the keyword "Desperate Struggle" should be represented. What’s your opinion on this? We’d genuinely love to hear!! :)

[h3]Narrative Points: “Inherit the Knowledge and Experience of the Dead”[/h3]
So, we need to find a good way to express the “Desperate Struggle” that is more than just creatures and high combat difficulty! We want an experience that feels much more unique.

The Darkest Dungeon series builds on the established dungeon crawler genre to "shine a light on the psychological fears of adventurers," and creates a unique experience through its signature "Stress/Affliction system" and other game elements.

Meanwhile, titles like Rogue Legacy have become great textbook examples of the "Roguelite" genre, with its unique twist on the "die and you start over" style of the roguelike genre: you carry on the legacy of a previous character.

Our next goal was to ensure that the abstract experience goal of "The Desperate Struggle of Humanity" could be expressed through concrete means, such as the "Stress System" and "Legacy Ssystem" of the games above, and that all elements of the game were consistent with that core experience.

Of course, the process was not easy by any means, but it would be a very long post if I tried to recount all the trials, errors, and discussions, and I relied more on “Inspiration/Ideas” than “Logic/Analysis” in this process, so I'll just share the flow of the conception process as follows.

First, we assumed that the game's character system would be closest to Darkest Dungeon after the character diversification work.
- Since a "fully customizable character" approach like Battle Brothers would not work with the current artwork structure,
- We've decided to go the Darkest Dungeon route and have fixed classes, but not fixed characters (randomized names, different traits for different characters within the same class, etc.)
However, there was a lot of debate about whether or not we really wanted to introduce a “Permanent Death” system.
- We decided to move away from the idea of having to restart the game if one character dies in combat, but there are plenty of examples of games where a character who reaches 0 HP just "leaves the battlefield" and doesn't "die permanently".
- While there are many advantages to having a permanent death system to keep the overall theme alive and convey the "weight of choice," the end result is "repetitive tasks that require you to spend time rebuilding your character," unless you change the genre to a completely run-based roguelike.
In the midst of this thinking, the idea of "being able to carry over the knowledge and experience of a deceased character" came up.
- In other words, if the game structure is such that a diverse group of human beings can all be playable characters, rather than a fixed character with a personal narrative, why not pass on the skills, stats, traits, etc. of a previously deceased character to another character? This was the idea.
- Our hypothesis was that this approach would allow us to retain the narrative feel of "permanent death" while compensating for its gameplay shortcomings.

The inspiration for this idea was a manga called "G. About the Earth's Movement" (2020-2022 serialized, written by Uoto, published by Shogakukan).

The manga, which follows the struggle of intellectuals to prove the theory of geodynamics against the religious authorities who suppress it as heresy, is a highly original narrative in that it doesn't feature a single protagonist, but rather "a group of human beings risking their own deaths to pass on the knowledge.

I won't go into the details as it would be a spoiler, but if you're interested in this kind of thing, it's worth a read!

From this process, a secondary goal was set: to build on the foundational experience of "humans' desperate struggle against creatures" and feature gameplay that "inherits the knowledge and experience of the dead".

However, in order for this goal to become an actual experience like Darkest Dungeon or Rogue Legacy mentioned above, we needed to plan for more specific systems and mechanics.

We'll share our design direction for this in next week's post.

Unlike the combat system and map design, which were more about "improving" on what was already in place, the character system and the narrative underpinnings associated with it are much more abstract, and I think that's why it's going to be a long explanation.

But we also have a lot of new ideas and interesting things ready to show you so stick around for future Dev Notes when we’ll be sharing them!

Until then, as always, See You Next Week!
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