Hello once again, Survivors!
We're just finished testing the first full, unified (as opposed to piecemeal) build for the first time since the reorganization and are in the midst of identifying improvements for the next build.
We've been talking about our mapping standards, UI, and narrative direction versus procedural generation in isolation, and it's probably been hard for you to get a sense of "so what does this all look like together?"
It can be confusing, even for us! No matter how much thought and intention we put into creating a subset of things, the end user experience is almost always different from what we intended. I think that's what makes game development so challenging, but also so fascinating.
Over the next few weeks, I'll be walking you through the elements that make up this consolidated build, what worked and didn't work intended, and where we're headed next.
Today, I'd like to start by talking about the most important elements of our new direction: the “Ember” and “Memory Binding” systems.
What is an "Ember"?
When we were reimagining the game's main themes of "Medieval" and "Apocalypse", the idea of "carrying on the knowledge and experience of the dead" was one of the things we talked about. We wrote about this back in March in this post, and the narrative framework for doing so and the concept of "Ember" in this post.
As always, there were a lot of trials and tribulations and stories that went into organizing this idea into a workable system... but I'll share those stories in a future post in the form of an "Archive" when I get a chance.
For now, here's the broad outline of the narrative.
- The religious people of Remore venerate the "Fallen Flame (a great stone that fell to Earth) as a holy relic, and it serves as a vehicle of faith for many, much like the "crucifix" of Christian religions.
- When the First Creature appeared (for reasons that will be revealed over the course of the game), this Fallen Flame holy object was destroyed, scattering countless "Fragments" throughout the world of Remore, known as "Embers".
- The player characters that will come to discover these scattered Embers are the first to realize that they contain the living memories of those who have died, and that as they collect smaller Ember Fragments, the Ember’s power grows as it absorbs them.
The new narrative is built around the above, with the ultimate goal of the game being to gather the scattered Embers and use their power to defeat the “First Creature” and end the outbreak.
The idea is that players will actually find these "Ember Fragments" scattered throughout the maps during gameplay, and that they contain the memories and experiences of those who “died” during the outbreak throughout the world of Remore.
“Binding” the Memories of the Living and the Dead
When you return to your Hideout with an Ember Fragment from a stage, the memories of the dead contained in the Fragment are absorbed into the Ember that you and your party have in camp.
Each memory can be identified by the name and occupation of the dead person in life, such as "Memory of John the Swordsman" or "Memory of Brune the Thief," and these memories can be bonded to the current "living," or player-controlled characters.
When a memory is bound, it grants the player character the following "Abilities" based on the dead person's "Class" and existing abilities.
- Stat Gains: Increase or decrease in Stamina/Strength/Dexterity/Fortitude/Agility stats.
- The dead carry over the "Abilities" they had in life, though certain stats may decrease!
- You'll see a lot of unfamiliar stats, but we'll talk about the stat system overhaul in a separate post.
- The dead carry over the "Abilities" they had in life, though certain stats may decrease!
- Skill Additions: Specific "Weapon Skills" or Tactical Skills like "Grappling Hook" and "Side Step" from the Early Access version.
- The idea is that "the skills that the dead have gained in life" are now available to the living through Memory Bonding.
- Adding Strengths/Weaknesses: Adding effects that are not directly used “Skills,” but rather a kind of temperament trait.
- For example, the memory of the Assassin class can give you an ability that adds power to your skills when you surprise an enemy.
- On the flip side, it can also give you a Weakness. For example, if you bind the memories of the Assassin class, you'll gain "Penalty to attacks within the enemy's line of sight". which is a trait of that class.
Each “Living” character also has their own unique “Stats, Skills, Strengths/Weaknesses” separate from these “Memories of the Dead.”
So, for example, a Guard who specializes in shield skills will have a strong synergy with memories that emphasize Counterattack, while the new Inquisitor character has a specialization in Pain/Collision, which pairs well with memories that emphasize blunt force or pushing...
However, each memory has a cost, called "Influence," and the maximum number of memories that can be bonded is constrained by an "Influence Limit" value based on each character's current level.
As such, how well you can create synergistic combinations of memories under the constraints of Influence will be at the heart of the new meta-gameplay, and our goal with the redesigned memory binding system is to encourage diversity, so that the same character can bind completely different memories to create completely different builds and forms of combat.
Related Changes and Self-Assessment
Bringing the "Bonding" system centered around the memories of the dead contained in this Ember to the forefront of the metagame has led to a number of changes, both large and small, in many areas.
- Once the character "Perk" system was in direct conflict with the memory bonding system, it became much more streamlined.
- Each character's unique skills, strengths, and weaknesses are no longer a "choose between two trees" and automatically gain a set of abilities as you level up.
- Instead, the focus has shifted to "choose and bind memories that go along with those unique abilities", allowing for even more variety and possibilities for actual character building!
- We've also changed the weapon modification and forging structure to be more streamlined.
- Technically, the effectiveness of existing Tier 1 weapons hasn't changed much, but instead of gaining a new active skill from a Tier 2 weapon, you'll now be able to bond with classes that specialize in a particular weapon, such as Swordsman or Spearman, to increase the power of that weapon and gain additional active skills.
- If you want to go with "diversifying your tactical skills" instead of "diversifying your weapon active skills," you can do so by selecting only the memories that match!
In other words, the goal was to concentrate on the "building/customization" elements that were scattered throughout each character/weapon in the original Early Access version into a new core system called "Memory Bonding" which would both reinforce the thematic feel of the game and make it more fun to play through the variety of combinations.
We're still working out the kinks in the UI, and we've barely started to play around with the narrative setup, but the bottom line is that the internal feedback on the Memory Bonding system so far has been very positive!
Even with only about 20 memories in the test build (plus the three new characters) due to time constraints, I really enjoyed the challenge of figuring out which memories to assign to which of the six characters, and the difference in experience when using them in combat felt really meaningful.
And the future plans...
At this point, we've only seen the most basic skeleton of a system with "Pre-prepared" NPC memories in the game. The original idea that inspired this system, and the ultimate goal of its implementation, is to create a "play experience that carries over the memories of a player character and ties them to another character even when the player character dies".
This is because we think it's essential to deliver the thematic experience of "the dead continuing their will to live on and accomplish impossible goals" that we talked about in our initial narrative pitch.
It's also a major way to address what we consider to be the downside of permanent death in party-based games, as we don't think it's a good experience to have "similar/identical characters regenerate to fill the void left by dead characters," no matter how thematically appropriate permanent death is.
Our goal for the next build is to minimize the sense of loss of punishment by having the experience of the dead carry over, while also making it so that "killing a character on purpose is not a better option for normal gameplay," and we're thinking a lot about how best to do this.
There's a lot more we want to talk about related to the Ember and the Memory Binding System, but I think that's as much as we can share for now.
We know that many of you are eagerly awaiting the next update, and we'd like to take this opportunity to thank you again.
As much as I can't wait for you to get hands-on with the new gameplay and get feedback, we realize that the changes we're making are more of a process of redesigning and building the game from the ground up, which will take some time, but rest assured we believe it will be worth the wait!
So, we'll continue to share as much as we can in writing so that you can get as close to the team's understanding of why and what we're building, as well as our internal assessments and plans for it.
Next week, we'll be taking you through some of the other changes in the builds we're currently testing, including the changes to the stat system we've been sneak peeking at.
As always, thanks again and see you soon!
Thank you,
REMORE