For the love of games
First off, let’s get something out of the way: we LOVE video games. More specifically, we love narrative video games. And, from classics like Life is Strange and Detroit: Become Human to indie darlings such as What Remains of Edith Finch and Undertale, we’ve played them all.
After bingeing most of what was available, however, we realised that there aren’t that many story-driven games out there, especially when compared to other genres like shooters and platformers. Moreover, narrative games, or any video games for that matter, rarely feature characters from some groups, for instance indigenous or LGBTQ+ communities. At Unreliable Narrators, we believe these stories need to be told.
There is no truth, only stories...
Humans tell stories. It’s in our nature. Stories we invent, stories we heard from friends, stories that go back generations. But as they are told and retold, they morph and evolve to become something different. In time, narrators inject their own perspectives so much that even historical events become… well, unreliable.
Our team wants to embrace these ambiguities to tell nuanced and rich tales, featuring characters that are generally misrepresented in the history books.
Telling the “other side”
Take our first game, for example. Two Falls (Nishu Takuatshina) allows you to live the story through two unique perspectives.
There’s Jeanne, the young French woman, entrenched in her religious beliefs, and facing all the unknowns of this “New World”. After the wreckage of the boat on which she crossed the Atlantic, she is left alone with Capitaine, her loyal dog, to fend for her survival. To her, the land is menacing and frightening.
On the other side, Maikan, a young Innu, is trying to grasp the rapid changes his land is facing. To Maikan, nature is home, full of colors and wonders, but the way European settlers treat the land his ancestors have inhabited for thousands of years fills him with horror, as he witnesses the consequences of their actions.
Stories that will make you think
As with Jeanne and Maikan, we want all the characters of our future games to be confronted in their beliefs. They will try to overcome the challenges they face by drawing on their own experiences, learning along the way that reality is often more complex than it seems at first glance.
We want our players to go through the same process as they play our games. Thanks to elaborate plotlines, human-like interactions, mature themes, and sometimes uncomfortable subject matters, we hope to help them see the world through a new lens.
... and these are true stories.
To achieve this goal, we need our characters to be as authentic as possible. For example, Maikan can’t simply be our team’s conception of what an Innu is; he needs to talk and act like one. He needs to be an Innu.
Therefore, we are working very closely with Innu institutions, like the Tshakapesh Institute, and their elders to help validate our script, our scenes, and how our characters react to different situations, to make sure we are representing the Innu culture in the best way we can.
That is the process we want to go through for all our future games. Whether we tell the story of a forgotten Canadian Regiment that helped win World War I, or the brave people that fought for the Haïtian Revolution, we will always work in collaboration with experts and knowledge holders from the respective communities to help give a genuine voice to those who have been silenced for too long.
Thank you!
We know we’ve said it quite a bit, but we’ll never be grateful enough for all the help your support provides. By contributing today to this Patreon, you not only allow us to create games that we all love immensely, you also help give a chance to other creators to tell their own stories.
The Unreliable Narrators team.