Don’t Nod has reinvented the video game love story with Banishers
It can be hard to keep up with Don’t Nod. The French studio has established itself with an eclectic oeuvre of mid-budget games with a strong emphasis on storytelling, from its sci-fi debut Remember me to his beloved teen drama Life is strange and his last: Banishers: Spirits of New Eden.
A sequel to the studio’s 2018 cult classic VampireBanishers: Spirits of New Eden resembles its predecessor – in which a doctor was tormented by his transformation into a vampire in the aftermath of the post-Great War Spanish Flu pandemic – by using the supernatural premise to build out character-driven morality plays, this time with a game-spanning story. romance.
In Exilesplayers play the dual roles of Red mac Raith and Antea Duarte, partners in love and profession. The eponymous Banishers, they are ghost hunters and exorcists who face a personal crisis when Antea is killed during a ghost tour and must accompany Red in non-corporeal form. As players solve chases as the mortal Red and the ghostly Antea throughout the game, players must continually revisit the question: Will Red resurrect Antea or banish her to the afterlife?
To talk about it for a moment Exiles‘ unique approach to video game morality, romance and supernatural horror, Polygon spoke with Don’t Nod creative director Philippe Moreau and story director Stéphane Beauverger, who had a lot to say about making player choices difficult and the importance of placement of players on both sides of a love story.
Polygon: Don’t Nod has made so many different types of games over the years – what would you say a Don’t Nod game would be?
Philippe Moreau: We like to do different things, but I think the common ground we have is that we like to make players responsible, to make them think about their actions, about the meaning of what they do. Getting people involved, not just shooting and turning your brains off.
Stéphane Beauverger: Perhaps also the tendency to ask more questions than to provide answers.
Don’t Nod’s production has grown over the years as the company has grown. It is now both a studio (with two locations) and a publisher. Do you think people are aware of this? Does it matter or affect their expectations?
Beauverger: Sometimes it scares us a little that people are starting to see us as a AAA game studio. No no no! We are still small! We are still cautiously making AA games. We try to be generous and passionate in what we do, but we’re not a AAA studio, not at all. I think we usually have between three and six or seven projects, counting the games produced or distributed by Don’t Nod.
Exiles seems to fit that (AA) mold as a love story. Was making one of these your first impulse when you started development?
Beauverger: The love story came when we knew we were going to tell a ghost story. We’ve already done something about vampires. What’s new? Mummies? Not very interesting. Werewolves? Eh! Ghosts? Okay, ghosts are cool.
What is the specificity of a mind? It is emotion, regret, melancholy, secrets, something that has not yet been told by someone who has died and who has something to say before he goes forever. A love story about grief was something very specific to the concept of ghosts.
And ghosts give you the backbone of the game’s moral, which ritual to banish them with, who gets blamed for a haunting. How do you know when a choice is compelling and difficult for the player?
Beauverger: We try to make sure that the characters you meet have reason to shine and reason to potentially be hated. They have deep motivation. For the player’s mental safety, we have some Real 100% assholes, so you can access it for free! You can kill them without too much brain torture. But for the rest of the characters, we tried to make sure you could understand all sides of the story or the riddle. So it will be up to you.
Moreau: To make sure it works, we usually do a lot of playtest sessions where we can see the different options players choose. And if we can find a balance between the different options, it means we’ve done a great job and we don’t need to change anything. But if the convergence is too great, we may need to adjust the characters a little, otherwise it may be a story mistold. So we might adjust the different hints that the players will discover, to make sure that they really understand the motivations, that they can connect all the dots of the story, to make sure that they get to the point have to make a real choice.
Beauverger: We also know that statistically, most players prefer to play against the good guy. About 75% or 80% of players prefer to play the white knight. So we have to find a way to turn them on. To somehow be seduced by the dark side. For example, bringing Antea back to life means killing a lot of people.
Do you find it exciting when you see that people take a long time to make a choice?
Beauverger: You have no idea. Every time I watch a Twitch stream and someone lays down the path, I say, “Yes! We did it!”
How do you get the player to care deeply about Antea and want to bring her back to life when it’s such a morally charged decision?
Moreau: Antea was quite a challenge. We’ve worked a lot on her to make sure that she’s not just a sidekick, that she’s not just here to make jokes at some point or just use some powers. We had golden rules: Antea had to be a driving force, a positive force, and she had to always be there during the videos. If you pay close attention, you can see that she is on screen most of the time, even though she has nothing to say.
In terms of gameplay, we’re making sure you can use her just as well as Red. That’s why the switching function is there; this was not there at the game’s conception. We gave her a lot of skills to ensure that players will play like her, and to find the right balance between the two characters so that people get the impression that they are playing a couple.
I appreciate how the central dilemma in Exiles is focused on this couple’s moral obligations to each other, not necessarily on the morality of earth-shattering decisions like in many other games. For me, it plays with ideas of love, making you something you didn’t know you were, and I’m curious if that’s a lever you wanted to lean on.
Moreau: Yes, that’s why we decided to make a love story, to generate this kind of immersion and these kinds of complex choices. Love is something personal, something intimate. So we’re pretty sure that people will react very differently because of their relationship with love. I think it can appeal to people. I hope so.
Beauverger: Another golden rule we had while creating the game was: Red and Antea always work as one couple. And you’re going to play both sides, because we (could have) said to the players: ‘Okay, you’re playing Red, you’re in love with this woman, and she’s in love with you. And you have to accept that fact.”
But because you play both sides of the couple and all decisions are made by both characters, they never agree 100% on anything. This was very important to us. It gives the player the feeling that they are dealing with and in control of a love story and a couple, and that they are not receiving any kind of forced love from another character. A few journalists asked us why there aren’t as many love stories in video games, and I think that’s why. It’s not easy for a player to be told, ‘You’re in love with this woman or this man, and you have to act like this.” But if you say, ‘You’re a couple. You play them both. This is a package!” it’s easier, I think.