2016 was the yr when all of it went improper. Draw your individual conclusions as to why, however the international political path beginning that yr left Ragnar Tørnquist and his workforce at Norwegian game studio Red Thread feeling disenchanted.
“Being a game developer right now, you feel like ‘what the fuck are we doing?’” says Tørnquist. “We’re writing and talking and making games [but] we feel kind of helpless and powerless and insignificant – a feeling of frivolity or pointlessness. I felt very strongly that I want to keep making games, but I also want the games to mean something and maybe have a positive social impact, as much as that is possible, but also without being preachy.”
Enter, then, Dustborn. The lately revealed title, which debuted on the Future Games Show, is about in a fictionalised America, gripped by fascism, divided by weaponised disinformation, and torn between the rival factions of oppressive Puritans and authoritarian Justice. Draw your individual conclusions there, too.
Caught within the center is Pax – a Black, pregnant younger lady, attempting to outlive a highway journey throughout the Divided States of America to ship a mysterious package deal, with solely her misfit bandmates and the robotic that drives their tour bus to depend on. Pax has an edge in evading the Puritans and Justice although – she’s ‘Anomal’, gifted with energy over language itself. Thematically, it’s a becoming transition for a developer recognized for its character-centric and dialogue heavy games.
The reveal trailer reveals just some early, fundamental examples of Pax utilizing her powers, which at a look makes it seem as little greater than a sonic blast, akin to the X-Men’s Banshee blasting enemies away. However, her skills are set to play with the concept of how phrases themselves will be weaponised, having a bodily impact on the world as a lot as they can be utilized to govern or misinform – one thing Red Thread needs gamers to essentially replicate on as they journey throughout this damaged America.
Players can have entry to a “lingual arsenal”, permitting them to wield phrases and phrases in opposition to folks they encounter, each enemy and ally. You may bodily assault or mentally confuse a Justice agent as simply as you subtly coerce a bandmate into utilizing their very own distinctive powers or expertise. The level, Tørnquist says, needs to be to think about “at what point does that sort of create a moral quandary for you”.
Part of constructing that arsenal can be a system the devs are calling ‘Wordcraft’, which, per Tørnquist, “on a very high level means an ability to basically record and remix disinformation, and then use that again to craft new words, new sentences, that you can use both in dialogues and in combat. That’s an important part of the game, and an important aspect of that is figuring out how these words work on different people.”
Dustborn can be Red Thread’s first action-oriented game. When the studio was based, it was with a view of making narrative adventures, first with Dreamfall Chapters, continuing the story of 1999’s The Longest Journey and 2006’s Dreamfall – which Tørnquist had written and directed at Funcom – and then with 2019’s Draugen. While these titles had some parts of motion to them, they might usually be scripted occasions – right here, the motion is integral.
“Our roadmap has been ‘we want to tell stories, but we want to keep doing it in new ways,” says Tørnquist. “With Dustborn, we asked ourselves, ‘how can we take what we learned during Dreamfall and Draugen, and do something different?’ This story, which was there from the very start of this road trip, it felt much more dangerous. I mean, both Dreamfall and Draugen had danger, but it was often more sort of a psychological or interpersonal threat, while Dustborn is about the external threat, of you being the hunted.”
As a consequence, Dustborn goals to discover how storytelling, dialogue, and language will be immediately utilized in fight, slightly than merely occurring alongside it.
“I think in a lot of games, combat is its own thing, it exists separate from storytelling,” explains Tørnquist, “which is kind of odd, because in the best action movies, the action is tied to the story. We wanted to include dialogue in combat in a way that we haven’t seen before. That sort of goes back to weaponised words – how the dialogue system [will be] used in combat is something that not a lot of games have done. Basically, we’re trying out combat but it’s gonna be from our perspective, sort of a Red Thread view of interactive storytelling.”
Despite Dustborn having been within the works for simply over three years now, the timing of its announcement meant it landed proper in the course of the Black Lives Matter protests, and in opposition to a backdrop of constant real-life political corruption that doesn’t really feel too far faraway from the game’s alternate universe.
“We actually delayed the announcement of Dustborn because of what’s happening,” says Tørnquist. “Both because of the virus and then, of course, BLM, we felt like we do not want to come across like we’re trying to tap into the zeitgeist or trying to sort of exploit the situation.”
That stated, the game is unabashedly happy with its politics and its dedication to illustration. Beyond being fronted by a Black lady, the game options a mixture of LGBTQ+ folks (early screens additionally point out Pax has two mothers), completely different physique sorts, age variance, ethnic range, and – maybe most significantly as a band – completely different musical tastes. Pax’s being pregnant may also be a significant a part of each the story and the gameplay, however Tørnquist is staying tight-lipped on how, for now.
The studio is, nevertheless, keenly conscious of the optics of being a Norwegian studio engaged on a game with a various solid, set in America. While Norway is “more diverse than people think”, Tørnquist acknowledges that the dev workforce is “not particularly diverse” at current, however is actively aiming to enhance the extent of enter and illustration behind the scenes, “especially on the writing side”. As manufacturing on the game strikes from the broader plot – the game’s skeletal construction of what occurs, when, to whom, and why – Tørnquist goals to usher in extra expertise from Black and minority backgrounds to flesh out the characters and the way they might act.
“We’re not gonna complete that without working with people who have a personal experience from at least some of our characters’ points of view,” Tørnquist says. “I want to say I’m specifically looking for writers who are Black and female, in order to really explore the background of the main character.”
One of the extra fascinating features of Dustborn’s world is that the fascistic forces Pax can be attempting to keep away from, Justice and the Puritans, aren’t as predictable as you may count on. While they’re very clearly the “bad guys”, they’re not one-dimensional cannon fodder.
“Justice was started as a positive force [which] happens with a lot of authoritarian regimes – the whole law and order thing, bringing justice to the people,” Tørnquist explains. “It seems like such a positive idea but of course it’s all about who controls it. With Justice, we’re going into our idea of policing and the inherent danger in giving people that power but putting a different face on it, because I think that’s easier to talk about these themes with a fictional force that marries and reflects reality.”
The Puritans, in the meantime, are virtually the precise reverse of their namesakes – slightly than the model of non secular obsession the title conjures, they’re really technocrats.
“They are what would happen to Google, Apple, Tesla, Facebook, if the apocalypse happened,” says Tørnquist. “It all ties into the idea of propaganda, words, disinformation, and things like that. That’s something that’s super interesting to me – these sort of puritanical technocrats believing that technology and information is the solution to everything. These sort of idealistic [views] that have proven to be incredibly dangerous and corrosive to society, we give a face to that.”
Perhaps extra fascinating is that Red Thread isn’t seeking to dodge the overt political factors it’s elevating with the game. It’s all too acquainted to see builders faucet into political themes, however then declare objectivity or that it’s for gamers to interpret their that means. With Dustborn, Red Thread is taking a agency stance that the authoritarianism and oppression of its warring enemy factions are unhealthy, really.
“We have a point of view with this game,” Tørnquist says. “We’re not stepping back and saying ‘you figure it out’. We’re actually saying, ‘No, fascism is bad’ – but we are also going to let our characters argue about it.”
While Tørnquist is conscious that the game’s mixture of various illustration and political ideology will result in accusations of “virtue signalling”, he’s additionally adamant that “we are making a statement with the game. Our cast is our cast for a reason, our setting is our setting for a reason. These are things we believe in, but it’s also a game about a multitude of themes.”
While Red Thread is planning to flesh out its new world on the run as much as the game’s 2021 launch – a comic book is about to disclose extra particulars, and Tørnquist says his workforce has “a pretty extensive backstory that I hope we can explore” – the clearest theme of Dustborn could also be that of unity within the face of rising oppression. As the game’s slogan says: “There is no hope, except for us.”
