Stop me if you've heard this before. You're reviewing a presentation document and, after a few short pages describing familiar gameplay (hack-and-slash, magic, etc.), you're bombarded with a few thousand words of backstory that's supposed to sound like a revolutionary new IP that will redefine gaming . It looks fantastic. But how do you know if it will catch on?
Well, you don't. It's why so many developers implore newcomers to spend less time building the world and more time putting prototypes together. But eventually the day comes when your team needs to build a brand new fantasy setting. You probably work at a smaller studio, don't have a big franchise to lean on, and will only have some leeway to build big new mechanical systems. What do you do then?
Obsidian Entertainment has faced this challenge for much of its life. Its library is full of games in original worlds like The external worlds, Tyrannyand the Pillars of Eternity series (we have the wild and original RPG to thank Alpha Protocol while we are here).
Many developers who worked on the games are still at the company Declared game director Carrie Patel. The first-person action-adventure game set in the world of Pillars of Eternity is Patel's latest, having risen through the ranks from games writer onwards The external worlds TO direct the DLC The danger for Gordon. Now forward Declaredis helping the team tackle the daunting task of making the Pillars setting unmissable for a wider audience.
It's the answer to riff on.”familiar, but with a twist?” More or less. Patel said the Declared the team spent a lot of time figuring out where Pillars of eternity Director Josh Sawyer's world-building was broken. Sawyer, a history buff, leaned on less explored historical inspirations like the era of the Dutch and East Indian trading colonies. “Familiar,” sure, but probably only if you were paying attention to the world history lesson given by the high school football coach.
The world of Declared it is equal parts grounded politics and metaphysical encounters with the divine. Patel explained to Game Developer in a chat at Gamescom 2024 that to make these concepts accessible to all players, the team looked at them through this lens: How can players use these ideas to build their own stories beyond narrative?
Build your identity in the strange new world of Declared
Patel explained that as she has grown into the role of game director, she has expanded how she goes through the game when sampling what the team has produced. “You slow down and try to notice every moment of your experience,” he said. Questions he asks himself include “when am I excited? When am I curious? When does my attention begin to wane? What draws me in from moment to moment?” Obsidian's practices of iterating quickly and getting content into the build “quickly” make it more possible for her to bring those questions back to her colleagues and give them the time and direction with which to iterate.
These are questions players will no doubt ask themselves when they resume Declaredas for many it will be the first time they enter the complex world of Eora. The game is set in a region called “The Living Lands”, where political actors and deities move and control the world. “I loved finding stories that brought both of these worlds together,” he said with palpable excitement. What allows players to grasp his enthusiasm is a clear sense of direction they need to make their own choices about the world.
Sometimes the choice is “what to do with this bear?” Image via Obsidian Entertainment/Microsoft.
The game's metaphysical elements are defined by the idea that, as with real-world religions (depending on who you ask), there is no “one right answer” that determines how the divine works. He recalled reading Reddit threads where players argued about the end of Pillars of eternity and arguing about which god to support because it was “clearly the right choice.”
The trick, however, is that the developers don't want these to be “even” choices, especially “morally” uniform ones. “It doesn't mean that all things have the same moral weight, but you're not trying to say 'player, this is what you have to choose,'” he said. “You're saying 'player, here's a world and here's a conflict with all its complexities, and there's not always going to be an easy solution.'”
Players enjoy defining a setting for themselves
Obsidian's games have been built this way for a long time, a way that puts a lot of trust in players. You could look back Fallout76the company's take on the Fallout series that gives players a much wider range of narrative tools to influence the Wasteland than its predecessor Fallout 3 by Bethesda Softworks.
Patel's experience echoes some advice we've heard from game directors Hidekai Miyazaki. His words “trust in players” are present in his words, but he also captured why it still takes an incredible amount of work to build that trust in the first place.
Image via Obsidian Entertainment/Microsoft.
Letting players define their place in the setting “gives players something to think about,” he said, adding that it's “one of the coolest aspects of role-playing.”
“It's not just 'who am I mechanically, what is my vibration.' It's also 'what do I believe, and how do the situations I'm encountering in this world force me to answer that question?'”
“Strength” is the key word. In an industry that relies on “power fantasies” to excite and attract players, being forced to do anything can be disheartening.
Maybe if you're one of those world-building minded developers (look, I hear you, I've got a few mega tomes on my personal hard drive), this is what your game world needs. Not just the story and events that inform it, but the ingredients that excite the player and make them want to define themselves in a grand adventure.