Dustborn has turned loads of heads with spectacular showings in current months, and with its promise of a narrative-driven, musically infused action-adventure expertise, it’s definitely captured the eye of fairly a number of individuals. Previous to the sport’s launch earlier this month, we had the prospect to ship throughout a number of of our questions on it to its builders at Pink Thread Video games, studying extra about its setting, choice-driven mechanics, narrative ambitions, and extra. Under, you possibly can learn our interview with studio founder Ragnar Tørnquist.
NOTE: This interview was carried out previous to the sport’s launch.
“For the longest time we’ve wished to create a recreation that took the visible language of comedian books and introduced it to interactive, animated life. With Dustborn, I imagine we’ve succeeded.”
Dustborn has a visually very placing artwork type. How did you choose this search for the sport?
Right here at Pink Thread Video games, we’re massive comics followers. I’ve personally learn comics my entire life, and nonetheless do — though there hasn’t been a whole lot of spare time these previous few years.
For the longest time we’ve wished to create a recreation that took the visible language of comedian books and introduced it to interactive, animated life. With Dustborn, I imagine we’ve succeeded, largely due to artwork director Christoffer Grav’s background in illustration and graphic design. His artwork type and path has been central to the sport’s growth.
Not solely does Dustborn look like a comic book e book; we additionally inform the backstory of the characters by way of an in-game comedian (which additionally exists in printed kind for individuals who purchased a bodily copy), and on the finish of each chapter you get an illustrated recap of the sport’s occasions — nice for reminding gamers what’s occurred, particularly in the event that they cease enjoying for a short while. It’s like these “beforehand on” segments you see earlier than a brand new TV episode.
Dustborn was made with the Unity engine, so we needed to write our personal shaders to perform the distinctive look… and we plan to proceed this type with one in every of our upcoming (and unannounced) video games.
The setting of the sport sounds extremely distinctive. What had been your inspirations for the sport’s story?
Oh, there are so many influences, it’s exhausting to call all of them — however the story was closely impressed by real-world occasions up to now decade. There’s a rising political and societal division between individuals, not simply in North America and Western Europe, however throughout the globe. A part of this divide is because of social media and the unfold of mis- and disinformation. We wished to inform a narrative the place this theme — the ability of phrases, and the way language might be weaponized — was central to each the narrative and the sport mechanics.
We had been additionally impressed by video games just like the Yakuza/Like a Dragon sequence — which has finished such an incredible job mixing genres and play-styles, and balancing a critical story with plenty of silliness in a novel and attention-grabbing approach — and by Ultimate Fantasy 15, and Life is Unusual: True Colours.
On the comedian e book entrance, The X-Males is an apparent supply of inspiration, together with Preacher and Transmetropolitan — and plenty of others. We clearly dug deep into our assortment to see how we may use that visible language in a online game.
However Dustborn was additionally knowledgeable by our love of street journeys and the will to inform a narrative a few journey throughout an alternate historical past North America, visiting totally different places and biomes alongside the street, and spending time with a various group of characters impressed by our personal private experiences.
Will gamers be capable to affect the story by way of their motion? We all know you possibly can have branching relationships with the opposite characters, however does that affect the principle narrative?
To a point, sure; every main character within the recreation receives their very own ending, knowledgeable by Pax’s phrases and actions, and a few scenes play out otherwise based mostly on the way you determine to unravel issues, and on the characters’ present emotional state. The sport actually isn’t about these main narrative branches — it’s rather more concerning the little issues, about how individuals really feel and react, how they reply to your dialogue decisions — however you possibly can definitely affect the plot in quite a lot of methods, and there’s room for replay.
“There are so many influences, it’s exhausting to call all of them — however the story was closely impressed by real-world occasions up to now decade.”
One of many issues Dustborn guarantees is a whole lot of various gameplay mechanics relying on the placement and what’s occurring within the story. How deep can gamers anticipate the totally different gameplay mechanics to be?
Truthfully, Dustborn is extra about selection, pleasure and delight than deep recreation mechanics. There’s fight, there’s a music rhythm motion recreation, there’s one thing we name “Echo recording”… together with plenty of mini-games. Our aim was to maintain gamers on their toes, continually, and to combine genres, vibes, tones and moods, and to make the sport simple and accessible for narrative gamers to get by way of the story — to not make a hard-core recreation that’s notably difficult.
That mentioned, there’s depth should you go in search of it and make investments the time. The fight system, for instance, lets you improve your magnetic flying bat (!) in three other ways, utilizing discarded tech you accumulate throughout exploration. You additionally craft new “Shouts”, that are utilized in fight, and mixed together with your crew’s powers unlock new combos. And the music recreation has totally different completion ranges, based mostly in your efficiency — and these have an effect on the dialogue within the recreation.
The central gameplay mechanic – utilizing phrases to struggle and resolve all types of issues within the recreation – sounds extremely intriguing. What are you able to inform us extra about it? How did the thought for it as a gameplay mechanic first come about?
That is the central theme of the sport: phrases have energy, and we’ve to watch out about how we wield and weaponize them. This ties again to how social media has turn out to be such a robust power in our lives, and the way data — together with mis- and disinformation — have an effect on us all, culturally, politically, spiritually, emotionally. We wished to make a recreation the place that theme manifested as a recreation mechanic, and that’s how the thought of Vocals (or “Vox”) happened. Pax and her crew can use their Vox — highly effective phrases — to govern individuals and struggle enemies.
It feels like music performs an vital function on this recreation. Might you elaborate extra on what gamers can anticipate?
Music does play a big function in Dustborn. Pax and her crew pose as a punk-rock band on their journey throughout America, and it’s important to each write new songs and carry out them at venues alongside the street. Your efficiency impacts the story in small methods; you don’t need to be good at it, however there’s room to follow and enhance, and to broaden your set checklist.
Our composer and audio director Simon Poole was a key particular person on the inventive crew, and the sport’s rating was written alongside the design and growth of the remainder of the sport — we imagine that sound and music are essential to the participant expertise, and the audio and soundscape are additionally intently related to the sport’s meta-story, which is concerning the origins of language itself.
“That is the central theme of the sport: phrases have energy, and we’ve to watch out about how we wield and weaponize them.”
Roughly how lengthy will a mean playthrough of the sport be?
In the event you rush by way of the sport, you possibly can in all probability full the story in 12-15 hours — possibly much less, should you’re impolite to everybody and lower them off! However should you take your time with each dialog, get to know every character, discover all places absolutely, search for collectibles and benefit from the journey, you could possibly simply spend 20 hours or extra on this street journey.
Do you may have any plans to convey the sport to the Swap, or maybe its upcoming successor?
To not the unique Swap, no, however we’re very fascinated about Nintendo’s subsequent console, and if Dustborn performs nicely, I wouldn’t be stunned if we announce one thing within the first half of 2025!
