Hello, everyone!
I’m Lance, lead writer on SacriFire. Today, I’ve been tasked with talking to you all about SacriFire’s approach to storytelling, and also telling you a little about myself, and how I got into gaming. Like many members of the team, I spent an unhealthy amount of time playing RPGs as a child in the ‘90s (and haven’t stopped since).
My mother spoilt me - I had a gameboy, SNES, PS1, N64, and much of what came after - and I grew up on a diet of such classics as Chrono Trigger, Secret of Mana, Illusion of Gaia, and Final Fantasy VII. It was a desire to (try to) write incredible stories like those that led me to Pixelated Milk, where I’m fortunate enough to have worked for the last few years.
Starting with Characters
I’ve always subscribed to the belief that the key to any story is character. When I started writing SacriFire, I began with Ezekiel, and his motivations, taking on board feedback from Bartek (who also has a lot of love for classic RPGs, particularly Xenogears and Vagrant Story, which I was asked to use as inspiration). Once I had Ezekiel clear in my mind, I sketched in the personalities of the people closest to him (Sheol, Zephaniah *), and as their own natures, weaknesses, and strengths began to emerge, I moved outward in a gradually expanding circle, creating more and more of the cast of characters around them and at the same time, inevitably, the details of the world itself.
The history of Antioch, with its quirks and idiosyncrasies, all started with the character of Ezekiel, one way or another. We have quite a journey planned for him, and for that to happen the world had to be set up in such a way that he could discover its secrets simultaneously with the player.
Then the World Around Them
That brings me onto my main point. As I was fortunate enough to be given a sizeable amount of time to work on the lore of SacriFire before development began, I was already well-acquainted with the world when I began the script (which of course ideally should always be the case, but in reality sometimes isn’t). Writing a world like SacriFire’s, where the characters are not new arrivals but have lived there all their lives, creates a challenge for any writer: how does one justify explaining the workings of such a world for the purposes of the player? For example, why would Ezekiel need somebody to explain the nature of sky carriages to him? He’s been using them to travel since he was a boy. The myths and history of the world? He already knows them.
One way we solved this problem was by starting off Ezekiel in the novitiate (a sort of monastic enclosure). Having Ezekiel grow up in this kind of environment gave him limited experience of the world outside, and therefore provided a reason for things to be explained to him.
There was also the use of the ‘final exam’ scenario at the beginning, where Ezekiel is undertaking a test, which naturally puts him (and the player) in a situation where they will be receiving instructions. For the most part, though, we simply let Ezekiel move around Antioch freely, and by extension, we hope the player will be able to piece together information about the world based on Ezekiel’s interactions and experiences.
I’ve moved around a lot in my life, and one thing I’ve learned is that people (and especially kids) are incredible at assimilating contextual clues. I’ve also found that it’s a lot of fun putting fragments of information together to try to get a shape of the whole, and that’s the experience we want our players to have as well. “Show, don’t tell” is one of the most over-repeated writing maxims out there, but it’s not bad advice all the same.
The Whole Affects Each Part
This type of implicit storytelling requires a lot of collaboration between different departments. I remember, for example, spending a fair bit of time talking with the art department about various religious scenes and characters of Antioch’s history, because we wanted them to be depicted in background paintings that hang in the Dome (Antioch’s Notre Dame, so to speak).
It affects gameplay hugely as well, because you have to think about how things such as money, or weapons, or curing items are handled - things that are essentially gameplay-critical, but which also tie into the overall lore. For example, we had to talk about how to tackle the loot mechanic in Erebus, as it’s a ‘spiritual realm’ where objects (and lux, which is the game currency) would not be transferrable back to the physical world of Antioch.
All of the different departments have to be aware of the context of the narrative as a whole, because it affects even tiny background details of a scene to a far greater degree than the casual player might expect. It’s a big challenge to keep everyone on the same page, but I like to think that the result (Antioch, and Erebus; the characters who live there; all of our gameplay systems) has been worth it.
The End Result
The advantage of this type of expositional storytelling is that it gives the player the freedom to choose how much they wish to participate. Some players aren’t particularly interested in the lore and prefer to spend their time making builds for approaching combat, for example, and that’s fine. Expositional storytelling lets players participate as much, or as little, as they wish to.
Hopefully, the little fragments which people do pick up about the world through background NPC dialogue, or through letters or books they find, will encourage them to dig deeper.
That’s it for this entry! If you enjoyed this post, then please wishlist SacriFire if you haven’t done so, and feel free to join our Discord to chat with the devs in real time about the game. Sheol protect you all!
* Elise came later, as the result of some necessary structural changes. Strangely enough, once I included her, it felt as if she had always been there.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1661330/SacriFire/