**This blog was posted several months ago, and we will be posting the other months soon to catch up on the Steam news tab. If you want to see all of the blogs now, visit our website**
February 2024 Devblog: Story Deep Dive
Welcome back! Last month, we talked about some of the challenges we've encountered over the course of development, particularly focused on late 2023. This month, Chip is taking a break from writing devblogs to focus on making the game (and to start doing devstreams again - check out his twitch!) so I'll be taking over.
Who the Heck is Writing This Then??
Hiya, I'm Olivia, or Xilirite in some circles, and I'm the narrative lead, as well as the sole writer, for Dark Deity 2. Though I didn't work on the first game, or even play it until Chip and I got in contact, my last 8 or so months have been almost nothing BUT Dark Deity, and I'm super excited to get to talk about some of that process with y'all. That's all the talking about me I plan to do - I'm only really introducing myself here because I may write more devblogs in the future.
You may remember last month, we'd talked about wanting to do a blog post about the specific challenges that arise from writing a sequel to a game that fell so short of its potential. That's still in the cards, but we figured it'd be best to start by giving you an idea of what makes Dark Deity 2 special before we got into anything like that. First, let's catch you up to speed on what the game's actually about!
25 Years Later...
DD2 takes place across the pond from the first game, on the continent of Verroa. While you visited briefly in DD1, 2 expands the region dramatically, and then adds a quarter century of time between the games for good measure, allowing for a fresh new take on the world and those characters that return from the first game, as well as a blank slate for players unfamiliar with 1 to learn about the world. Returning players will find that a lot's changed since last time!
Irving, now a middle aged man, is the grandmaster of the Order of Eternals, taking over his late father's position. In the wake of the first game's events, the Order has stepped out from the shadows, making itself known to the world, involving itself more heavily in Verroan politics, and expanding their role from merely safeguarding the Aspects to safeguarding all magic in the realm. The Order is sworn to neutrality with an oath to prevent anything like the events of 1, known in universe as the Empyrean War, from happening again.
However, this time around, he's not the protagonist. Instead, the story follows the whole Sildairan family - namely his kids, Gwyn, Riordan, and Arthur - as they attempt to navigate the rising tensions in Verroa, as well as the increasing expectations placed upon them. As the Order's mission statement slowly begins to intersect with, and conflict with, Verroa's political conflicts, the siblings are forced to find where they truly fit into the world around them... which sometimes requires making some tough calls.
Choice
When I joined the DD2 team, choice was a major thing on my mind. Though the Steam page was plastered with the word, and story choices certainly existed within the outline I was shown, I found I was dissatisfied with the existing level of emphasis. Many of the choices being offered were primarily a vessel for gameplay variation, a way to choose your quest reward without necessarily impacting the story or characters in significant ways. I knew we could do better.
Throughout DD2, you will be asked to make a decision between one of a couple potential paths, with many of these choices deciding the fates of entire nations. Characters will live and die by the decisions you make, and the choice is never so easy as "good or evil." Will you value hope, keeping faith even without guarantee that your faith will be rewarded? Will you be pragmatic, doing whatever needs to be done to keep Verroa safe? Will you adhere to the Order's tenets, or break them? What will your Verroa look like? Some of these choices will lead to the maps you play on being altered partially, possibly even experiencing an entirely separate chapter!
Of course, with decisions having such consequences, there's no one definitive way your story will end. As credits roll, you'll see not only ending slides for your party members, but for all the places you visited along the way, finding that your choices may impact the world in unexpected and interconnected ways. I won't pull your leg and try to count endslide variations as "different endings," but we've made an effort to ensure that you feel your impact upon the world in more than just superficial ways. For me, though, far more than its impact on the world, I enjoy the implications that these choices have on our main characters.
Meet the Sildairans
Irving, you may already know. It's been a long time since DD1, and he's changed quite a bit from then, but deep down he's still the same guy he always was, just with 25 years of life experience and a new writer to take a new approach to his character. I'm saving him for that more specific "DD1 into DD2" devblog I mentioned earlier, but he's just one member of the family.
His daughter, Gwyn, is the oldest of the Sildairan children, and the one who leads the player army into battle. She's a natural leader, practically born for the role, and has been a shoe-in for Irving's successor all her life. Despite this, however, she struggles to see in herself what others see in her, and as the situation in Verroa worsens, she struggles to live up to her father's ideals, each choice she makes becoming another in a rapidly growing list of regrets...
Riordan, Gwyn's brother, is the middle child. With Gwyn having always been the responsible one, Riordan is more than happy to let her take the spotlight, preferring instead to enjoy his extra helping of free time. Despite how this may make him sound, he's far from lazy - he works tirelessly to support Gwyn, as well as the rest of his friends within the Order. However, as his disputes with his father grow more and more severe as the subject matter holds greater and greater consequence, he finds that simple life he wanted slipping away, and fights to try to keep that spirit alive.
Finally, there's Arthur, the youngest child. He's, you know, visibly an elf, so as you might be able to guess, he's Irving's adoptive son, found after his two siblings were born. Quiet and sharp witted, Arthur is a gifted magical prodigy with a deep love for the land of Verroa. He idolizes his family, but feels a rift between him and them that they seem not to feel in return, pushing him away from them and into an increasingly desperate search for answers about who he really is. For every answer he uncovers, he finds three more questions lying beneath, and the rift between him and the others only continues to grow, despite all their efforts to reach out to him.
However, there's one more member of the family; Alden! Returning from DD1 and nearly 3x as old, he's the family uncle, acting as a mentor for the children when Irving's duties keep him away. His childlike wonder from his days as a young prodigy has morphed into a kind of gentle whimsy, and his decades of experience as a powerful archmage have given him knowledge and wisdom beyond compare. As he watches Verroa's peace erode away, however, he begins to see history repeat itself, revealing old wounds he had long since buried as he does all he can to protect his family from growing up the same way he did; as children of war.
Characters as a Driving Force
DD1's Irving is a very traditional protagonist. He's a young man with a sword, a brash and headstrong idealist who won't let the status quo prevent him from doing the right thing, and the right thing almost always involves swinging his sword at some very bad men. It's not a bad trope by any means - this kind of character has persisted for so long specifically because of how enduringly compelling it can be to watch these coming-of-age, zero-to-hero type stories play out.
However, I feel Irving doesn't ever manage to truly stand out from among his peers, becoming lost within the rapidly escalating complexity of 1's villain plot and the steadily expanding web of minor characters that he has to compete with for screentime. Like I said, I'll talk more about Irving some other time, but for now, the important bit is that going into DD2, I once again knew we could do better.
Characters are the beating heart of a story like this, and I've focused in HARD on making sure this element of the script sings. The Sildairan siblings, particularly Gwyn, were my top priority every step of the way. Every plot beat had to mean something to them, had to move their story forward, had to change how the audience perceives them and how they perceive themselves. As the story begins, each of these characters already has an internal struggle, and their arcs are just as important, if not MORE important, than the main arc of the plot.
This requires some refocusing. I see a lot of SRPG fans mention how nice it would be if their entire army could be relevant to the story, chiming in from time to time and going on arcs of their own. In DD1, entire chapters would be devoted to characters like Sloane, who previously had very little relevancy at all, and by the lategame, Irving can hardly get a word in edgewise past the various more mystically- or politically-inclined party members. I understand where this desire comes from - the large ensemble casts are a part of what make these games so popular, and it's easy to imagine how nice it would be if each one got to have a whole game's worth of character development... so long as you gloss over the details.
DD2 scales this element back, focusing instead on a smaller handful of notable party members, key side characters, and of course the villains. Instead, new characters will be given a time in the spotlight, while their more personal stake in the plot is most relevant, allowing players to get to know them better before deciding whether they want to dive into that character's bonds to learn more about them.
Of course, bonds are back from the first game, though they've been tweaked as well. That DD1 thing, where you'd unlock several bonds in waves due to how the story gating system worked, will be a thing of the past. Instead, bonds are more focused, higher quality, focusing on exploring the characters in more significant ways. These side characters will still undergo an arc, but it'll be up to you to coax it out of them. The main story, then, is freed up to focus on the characters that matter, while you can still explore all your favourites to your heart's content.
That additional focus is what allows us to really dig into our major characters. Where DD1's Irving ends the game having left unfortunately little impression, DD2's protagonists have more to say, more to do, and more reason to say and do things worth reading about. At this point, it starts to all fall away into little writing ephemerals - the teeny tiny details that you can't point out, but you CAN feel, and unless all our test readers are LIARS, we're very confident that we've nailed those details. I have no doubt in my mind that 2's cast, especially its leads, will really shine.
A Whole New (Half of the) World
Of course, Verroa is just as important to the plot as any character. I remember, when reading through the notes for DD1's script in preparation for DD2, being fascinated by some of the ideas at play, many of which never made it into the game or else sadly failed to properly crystallize. Verroa is, in a way, a chance to take a second crack at these ideas, hoping to succeed where Etlan failed in portraying a world ruled by petty kings, squabbling lords, and opportunistic nobles.
Despite how that might make the place sound, it's also about celebrating some of the beauty of this place. Verroa is the homeland of the elves, a land dripping with history and culture. The Sildairans will journey to some of the further corners of this land on their quest; from the seedy underbelly of Hao'fen to the polished marble halls of Threllisar; from the rolling hills of Grettania to the magically-scarred dunes of Miridar; from the bioluminscent glow of the Towering Weald to the unforgiving icy chill of the Expanse; and perhaps, even to lands beyond Verroa, maybe even beyond any known maps...
In truth, one of the biggest challenges has been trying to touch on all of these places as much as I want to. Chip was the one who created the world of Verroa, long before I ever showed up, and having to decide what to show and what to leave in the notes was some of the hardest decisionmaking I had to do on this project. With so much ground to cover, both figuratively in terms of characters, plot, and themes, as well as literally in terms of the actual globetrotting adventure, there's just only so much time to go around. Hopefully, I made the right choices, and you can get as immersed in the world reading about it as I became while writing about it.
The Most Important Question
The last bit I want to touch on before wrapping up is this; while I think Chip is honestly too harsh on DD1, I think one of the biggest things that title lacked was conclusive, compelling answers to what is, in my opinion, the most important question in any story:
Why?
Why do the characters do the things they do? Why do they believe the things they believe? Why did the villains become the way they are, and the same question again for the world at large? Why THIS story, told with THESE characters, in THIS way?
DD2's original script outline, before I joined it, had one major thematic throughline running throughout it, but there simply weren't enough ways to explore that throughline to make it interesting. It didn't justify this story being told, nor did it justify these characters being the ones used to tell it. When we retooled that outline, around the same time I reoriented the way we look at story choices, this was one of my biggest goals; setting up a compelling reason to tell this story, a concept or set of concepts that this story felt uniquely situated to tackle in strong and interesting ways.
Gwyn is not just the main protagonist of the story, she's the only character who possibly could be. Her arc is too inextricably tied to the progression of the plot and the progression of the themes. Put differently, her "why?" is the most compelling it could be, and another character's would just be less interesting, less fitting, less impactful. Likewise, it has to be Verroa; it has to be Irving; it has to be Arthur, and Riordan, and Alden, and all the rest, because they're each core to how the themes of this story are being explored.
I want to talk about quite a few things using this script. DD2 is about family, how family can build us up to be stronger or tear us down from the inside, how being beholden to one's family is at times both a blessing and a curse at once. It's also about heroism, and what it means to be a hero, exploring the concept of who heroes actually serve and what comes after the hero's quest is done, as well as what it means to live in the shadow of a legend. It's also about divide, both the large divisions that lie between nations and peoples, and the small divides that may separate two old friends, or a father and his daughter, or two leaders fighting for a common cause.
And lastly, it's about discovery; the joy of a grand adventure, of learning new things and meeting new people and seeing new places; the terror of knowing, of opening a box you cannot close and living with what you've learned, for better or worse; the need to know more, to never be satisfied with what you already have and to push for more and more; and the pain inflicted by discovering that what you thought you knew is no longer true, that you've built your life around that which is now a stranger to you. And, likewise, the clarity, peace, and relief of discovering something better to rebuild around.
It's not always about all of those things at once; many of these ideas are most heavily explored in bonds, or else act more as an undercurrent to add texture to the other, more heavily explored topics. However, they're ALL important to me, and ALL important to the characters; these questions are the "Why?" for so much of the cast, and in exploring them, I hope to bring out the best of them, and lend these characters a genuinity and heart that DD1 at times lacked.
What's Next?
Currently, Chip is finishing up the gameplay revisions he talked about last time, and we're re-entering the playtesting phase at long last. Our other devs are busy making sure the world we've made is brought to life in ways more impressive than I ever could, with top-notch music and art helping to back up the (hopefully) more impressive systems, levels, and story. Meanwhile, I'm working on applying the final touches to the script, going over it with a fine tooth comb and polishing it until it shines. After that, it's time for all the optional content writing - that means bonds!! - where I get to really bring all the minor characters to life rather than just the core ensemble. The project looks better every day, and I'm super excited to get a chance to play it again now that the systems revamp is complete. I hope y'all are just as excited to play it yourself once it's ready!
**Once again, this developer blog was months ago, so have moved forward quite a bit since then. We will be posting the other developer blogs soon so we can get the Steam audience caught up!**