CHERNOBYLITE WILL BE FULLY RELEASED IN 26 DAYS
Hello Stalkers!
Nobody likes to die in a video game. Because you have to start all over again. If you fail again, the fun starts all over again. Over and over again. The situation repeats itself, and you become frustrated or helpless. Or both. When creating Chernobylite, we decided to slightly change the way players think: the death of our character in the game doesn’t mean repeating the same fragment or the entire game from scratch. Rather, it’s a chance to fix the mistakes of the past and thus start the game at a completely new point in the timeline. It can help… but also harm.
In this report, we're going to take a look at a certain gameplay element that is one of the hallmarks of Chernobylite. However, to explain exactly how it works, we’ll have to use specific examples. And that means SPOILERS.
If you haven't played Chernobylite yet, we advise you to play it first. This material may help you in the future.
So play it, then come back to us.
Did you play?
How far are you?
Then a little more.
Already?
Okay, let's get started!
Life during death
For starters, it is worth mentioning that in Chernobylite you can die in many ways. Shooting, bleeding and falling from a great height are standard methods. This can also include, among others, gas poisoning, suicide caused by insanity (remember not to overlook the sanity level!), or even… deliberate suicide. Yes, you can build a dedicated device in the base.
Someone might accuse us of being inspired by Futurama. Someone might even say that it was so.
But to the point. After the first death, whether caused by a special event (don’t be scared when you see the power plant "explode" from the base window), or by positioning yourself under the barrel of the enemy's weapon, Igor moves to the fractal world. In a short tutorial we explain using the example of a scene with Olivier, who asks us to enter a password before entering the base, how changing one memory can affect the entire game (in this case, it is about improving our relationship with Olivier), and that such changes come at a cost in the form of chernobylite.
Fractal Timeline
After completing the tutorial, the real fun begins. Welcome to the fractal timeline!
Long, straight road with "islands" on the sides. Those represent the player's current memory. All of them are of key importance for the plot, as they are related to the most important missions in the game. It's time to show some examples of how "playing" with memories affects everything that happens around us.
Mission "Hacking into NAR servers". After Mikhail distracts the NAR soldiers from the computers, we are given a choice: destroy all the information on them or look for clues related to Tatiana's disappearance. If we choose the first one, NAR soldiers will appear on maps much more often. If we choose the second choice, we will find the clue we need and even improve our relationship with Olivier. This choice, however, has its consequences in the mission "Mikhail in trouble". Normally, when we ask Mikhail to join the team, he'll agree. But after the events of "Hacking into NAR servers," Mikhail will first request an apology. And what to do: apologize or admit directly that it should have been done this way? Choosing one of the answers will make Mikhail leave. And even if he can be persuaded to join us, it doesn’t mean that he’ll do it with a smile on his face - he remembers perfectly well what we did to him. The consequences of our decisions are not so easy to avoid.
Being in the fractal world, we can choose a memory: destroy the NAR data and continue on the straight path to get Mikhail to the team, or look for clues, knowing that it’ll be very difficult to convince Mikhail. Changing the memory of the first mission will have a lot of consequences in the second.
But there are also situations that are much more complex, and thus complicated. Especially if in one mission there are several such situations in which we have to make important choices. Also from the moral point of view. In the "Traitor" mission, we have to decide: kill Konstanty or let him go free. In the case of the second option, we’ll worsen our relationship with Olivier, who doesn’t really trust the "traitor". By killing him, we’ll be a bit calmer and even get some valuable items from him. Seemingly simple. However, the problem will appear in the mission "A voice in the woods".
As you remember, our task is to find the man who stole the supplies from the village in Red Forest. We find Konstanty trapped in the basement, return him to the village (during the conversation we can agree to his plan or not, which also has serious consequences in the future), and then we ask Olga to join us. That’s it. But in the case when we decided to kill Konstanty in "Traitor", we get a completely different choice: either tell the truth to Olga and try not to get killed by her hands, or lie to her and thus worsen our relationship with Tarakan and Mikhail. If we want to live in harmony with Olga, we have to withdraw our choice from the previous mission. But do we really want to do it?
We have repeatedly emphasized that the choices we make in the game have a significant impact on its further course. So we have given you a tool with which you can correct your past mistakes. The only question is, are we really doing this? Anyone who has watched "The Butterfly Effect" knows perfectly well that any change in the past has consequences in the future, not necessarily pleasant for ourselves. The same thing happens in Chernobylite: by changing one memory to something we think is better from a single mission perspective, we can make our situation worse in the events that will happen much later. Or better. You won't know if you don't check.
The consequences of our actions can be seen especially at the end of the game, when Igor is planning the last mission, "The Heist". We have devoted an entire report to this issue. We then paid attention to the importance of maintaining balance in relations with our companions. The higher the loyalty, the greater the chances that team member will stay and go with us on the last mission. The problem arises with those NPCs whose trust we have greatly strained - if we pissed them off, they’ll come back on the occasion of "The Heist", but not to help us. On the contrary, they’ll want revenge. The mentioned situation with Olga is the best example of this.
https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1016800/view/3042725371156667779
The interconnectedness of all events in the game is much broader than you think. So it's a good idea to play the whole game a few times and experiment with changing the timeline. You may be surprised how much depends on you.
That's it for today!
Take care, Stalkers!