DEVLOG #3 – Worldbuilding Without a Save File
[p]Before the first lines of code were written, before prototypes were sketched or pipelines built, Fading Echo already existed as a tabletop campaign passed between friends, dice, and too many late nights.[/p][p]It was a multiverse stitched together by instinct. A thousand realities mapped out on scraps of paper, held together by house rules, narrative leaps, and that beautiful, unpredictable thing that happens when players take the story into their own hands.[/p][p]A strange and shifting world where the rules weren’t fixed, where cities could dream, and where a few scattered beings, called Legends, could feel the shape of what was coming before anyone else.[/p][p]It didn’t start in a pitch deck. It started at the table.[/p][p]Manu, one of the co-founders of New Tales and its head of content, had been running this setting across multiple groups for years. It was rough. It was chaotic. And it worked, because it was alive. The Echoverse grew out of improvisation, player choices, and consequences that spiraled into myth.[/p][p]When New Tales came together, we knew we wanted to publish but also to build worlds. We just didn’t yet have the right one.[/p][p]So Manu pitched his. And the rest of the founders saw it for what it was: not just a campaign setting, but the seed of something bigger. A foundation. A universe. A world worth walking into.[/p][p]That’s when the long road to Fading Echo really began.[/p][p][/p][h2]Before the Fracture, There Was a Pattern[/h2][p][/p][p]Even in its earliest form, the Echoverse already had all the key pieces in place:[/p]![]()
[/p][h2]From Campaign Notes to Creative Backbone[/h2][p][/p][p]To take the Echoverse from a homegrown campaign to something that could carry a full video game, and maybe more, Manu brought the old crew back together.[/p][p]He reached into his tabletop past and reunited with a few familiar faces: Serge Olivier, Olivier Frot, Didier Guisérix, and Farid Ben Salem. All veterans of Casus Belli and the broader French RPG scene, they weren’t just collaborators, they were players at one of the original tables. They already knew the world from the inside out. They’d helped shape it with their choices, their chaos, and their characters.[/p][p]Together, they helped reforge the setting into something more than lore, a full IP Bible. Structured, scalable, and modular enough to support games, books, comics, and a dozen other formats we haven’t even think of yet.[/p][p]We also had the chance to work with Michael Chu, former lead narrative at Blizzard and one of the core storytellers behind Overwatch. Michael brought an outside voice we really needed, helping us shape the tone of the world, lean into its contradictions, and figure out how to carry that sense of myth and messiness from the Bible into actual game systems and story.[/p][p]And then there was Jasmine Bhullar, who came in early to help co-lead the writing. With most of the narrative team rooted in French traditions, and one incredible Korean artist**,** Leeda, shaping early visual language, Jasmine brought a new rhythm and a global voice to the Echoverse. She grounded our big ideas with emotional clarity, helped us find the edge between heart and weirdness, and later joined the game team to carry those voices into the characters, the dialogue, the story and the moments you’ll actually feel when you’re playing.[/p][p]It was the kind of team-up that didn’t come from a casting call. It came from the world itself.[/p][p][/p][p]Did you know?[/p][p]The Fading Echo IP Bible ended up clocking in at around 250 pages. We may have gone a little overboard. But honestly? We had a blast doing it. There’s something incredibly satisfying about building a universe from the inside out, especially when you’re all still a little emotionally scarred from the ending of Lost. So we made ourselves a promise: the world could be strange, layered, full of echoes and paradoxes, but it had to be weirdly logical, grounded in its own fake physics. No mystery boxes without answers. Of course, that didn’t stop us from going deeper.[/p][p]More recently, Jasmine circled back with the idea of reworking parts of the cosmogony based on the Second Law of Thermodynamics, specifically referencing Le Chatelier’s Principle (Because why not add a little thermodynamic equilibrium to your multiversal collapse?). We’ll see where that rabbit hole leads.[/p][p][/p][h2]Look, Feel, and Vibe Checks[/h2][p][/p][p]Before we locked in a single mechanic, we were already testing visuals with Olivier Frot, not to define a polished art direction, but to see what felt off and what made us lean in.[/p][p]We weren’t chasing a “final look.” We were chasing friction. That space where the strange meets the grounded. Where Renaissance-punk cities collide with metaphysical decay. Where a multiverse of echoes doesn’t just look like another spin on the same old tropes.[/p][p]Those early look-and-feel explorations weren’t just about aesthetics; they helped us find the tone. The mood. The pace. They shaped the questions we were asking about the world and how we wanted players to feel inside it.[/p][p]All of that visual research became core fuel for Amaury, our Art Director, and the foundation on which the entire Art Team began shaping the game. We’re still working that way today to some extent, learning through friction, chasing what sparks.[/p][p][/p][p]![]()
[/p][h2]Same Beginning, Different Medium[/h2][p][/p][p]One thing we’ve kept almost exactly the same: the game’s opening.[/p][p]Just like in the original campaigns, you begin the story as a Legend stranded on a forgotten Shard. The Maze has been closed for a century. You don’t know why you’re here, or even what you really are. And then, without warning, the Pathways reopen.[/p][p]That moment is where Fading Echo always began. In the initial tabletop version. In the video game. In whatever other stories we have in mind for other media if they ever come to existence one day. That sudden rupture. That sense of “something bigger is coming.”[/p][p]And while your journey in the game starts on Corel, the Echoverse isn’t waiting for you. Elsewhere, in Echo and the Liege Kingdoms, the first battles of the Twilight War are about to begin. The Resistance is rising again. Houses legacy is being fought over. Everything is in motion.[/p][p]You’re just arriving late. Kind of.[/p][p][/p][p]Did you know?[/p][p]We might never get the chance to release a full TTRPG set in the Fading Echo universe. But if we ever do… let’s just say we already know exactly which system we’d use.[/p][p]Well, three systems, technically. We’ve narrowed it down. More or less…[/p][p]That hasn’t stopped a few members of the narrative team from hijacking the writing chat on a regular basis to argue the finer points of modular rule design, narrative mechanics, and whether dice pools are truly satisfying or just nostalgia bait. We won’t name names. But you know who you are. (PS: But this could easily be a TTRPG book is not a valid excuse Jasmine!)[/p][p][/p][p]![]()
[/p][h3][/h3][h2]Making the Echoverse Playable[/h2][p][/p][p]Those early campaigns didn’t just give us the setting. They gave us the blueprint.[/p][p]Some examples?[/p][p]The idea of Immanence, that each Reality follows its own internal logic, became a foundation for how we design everything from traversal and puzzle systems to combat dynamics and environmental behavior. It’s not just a narrative conceit. It’s baked into how the world reacts to you.[/p][p]Æther, the strange and volatile essence of the multiverse, turned into a shared resource used for upgrades, powering forgotten machines, weaving abilities, even reigniting broken parts of the world.[/p][p]Corruption isn’t just a thematic danger, a threat. It has mechanical teeth. It spreads, reshapes enemies, distorts rules, even bends gameplay in the places it’s taken hold.[/p][p]And the Maze? It’s more than lore. It’s structure. It defines how Realities are connected, and how we build and explore them in the game.[/p][p]All of it comes from the tabletop. We’re still playing. We just have a lot more tools now.[/p][p]So yeah, Fading Echo started at a table. With friends, with dice, and with more ambition than sleep.[/p][p]Now, it’s something more. A world we’re building across formats, across teams, and across stories, held together by people who believe in it and keep finding new things inside it.[/p][p]The Maze has reopened. And we’ve only just stepped in.[/p][p]Next up, we’ll crack open what makes Fading Echo tick, how the gameplay loop turns exploration, æther manipulation, and systemic choices into the heartbeat of the experience.[/p][p][/p][p]Until then… try not to get lost in the Shadows.[/p][p][/p][p]The Emeteria Team[/p][p][/p][h3]🌊 Flow with us[/h3][p]✨ Wishlist Fading Echo[/p][p]Steam | Epic Games Store | PlayStation Store | Xbox Store[/p][p][/p][p]💬 Join the Echoverse on Discord[/p][p]And follow the adventure:[/p][p]YouTube | TikTok | Instagram[/p]
- [p]Echo, the Infinite City at the center of everything: decadent, mysterious, scarred by its past.[/p]
- [p]The Legends, scattered and mostly forgotten, half-gods and half-refugees.[/p]
- [p]The Maze, the web of paths between Realities that once connected everything, now closed but about to reopen.[/p]
- [p]The Paradox, a force of corrupted order, spreading through the cracks with its own terrifying logic to impose a single singularity.[/p]
- [p]The Houses, ancient power blocs still playing their endless game, even as the world frays.[/p]