We seen the value and presence of stories being a bigger part of games these days. With developers, writers and publishers realizing the opportunity that lies within a compelling narrative, we continue to see new methods in which a story can be told.
In the upcoming adventure game Everybody’s Gone To The Rapture, its developer, The Chinese Room, hopes to convey a powerful narrative that can only be found within the world of games. Everybody’s Gone To The Rapture Creative Director Dan Pinchbeck talked with Gamereactor about the world they want to create and the half of a dozen areas players can explore in it.
“The big thing for us was to tell a story that only a game could tell – create a world, pack it full of story then let the player go, wander, explore and discover for themselves,” Pinchbeck said. “There’s six areas in this English countryside, in the valley the game takes place in. In each area there are these glowing balls which represent these strange phenomenon. There are a number of those, and finding all of those unlocks a mini-climax in that area. And each area relates to one of the central characters in the story.”
This is an interesting fashion in which to explain information about a game’s most central characters. Providing an area for each character will lead to some intriguing revelations for players, but hopefully they will all be connected in one fashion or another. That could end up making for a very powerful narrative.
The narrative in Everybody’s Gone To The Rapture seems to be branching as Pinchbeck said there will be “multiple plot-lines” that progress all at the same time. All of them do not move forward at the same pace, which means people can experience a part of the story without certain context.
When you learn something in Everybody’s Gone To The Rapture versus when someone else discovers the same thing will differ. This is The Chinese Room’s way of differentiating one person’s playthrough from another person’s. Pinchbeck talked further about the game’s story.
“Because it’s non-linear, the player’s not being openly directed to any particular part of the story, [so] the order in which they discover facts about what’s gone on could change radically from player to player, which means everyone could end up with very different interpretations of the events that happened. That’s scary, but really exciting,” Pinchbeck said.
Everybody’s Gone To The Rapture is scheduled to land on the PlayStation 4. The game is expected to launch sometime this coming summer, and perhaps we’ll hear of a release date at E3 2015.
