Dev Talk #4 – Choices & Consequences
In the last of the Dev Talk mini-series, PortaPlay talk to us about choices and consequences in Gerda: A Flame in Winter. What kinds of choices will Gerda have to make throughout the game and why? How do those choices, and their consequences, contribute to the story?
Join Hans Von Knut Skovfoged, the CEO and Creative Director, and Shalev Moran, the Lead Designer, for one last short video that delves into the process and reasoning behind Gerda: A Flame in Winter.
Be sure to check out the past videos for more cool insider insight from the developers:
Dev Talk #1 – Introducing the Game
Dev Talk #2 – The Woman behind Gerda
Dev Talk #3 – When RPG-Lite Meets Narrative
Tell us more about Gerda and why her situation means she must make tough choices.
Hans: Gerda Larsen is the main character in our game. She is a nurse in her early twenties. Half Danish half German who has grown up in this area, but then moved away and came back after she got her nurse education. And she really is a peaceful and normal person. She wants a family. She wants a nice house. She wants to have a nice job where she can help people. She wants to live a life which is not extraordinary, but where she wants to feel safe and secure and do good. So a normal person like you and I. But sometimes even the most normal persons are put into extraordinary situations where we cannot keep living the lives as we were used to, and that is going to last. And that’s the situation she is in.
What kind of dilemmas will players face in the game and how does that contribute to the story?
Shalev: Do you help a person who is suffering even though they may cause suffering to others? Do you give your resources to this person or that person when there’s just not enough to go around? The best dilemmas and the best challenges in our game are ones where you cannot come out clean. You cannot have a perfect score. Much like the real dilemmas that people in real crisis are facing.
It’s a story that has both a linear path that you take through, but also so many branches that you can take and see different things in different places on top of so much player choice and player expression in how they shape Gerda and how they influence the plot and making this tight thriller story, a story that has ups and downs and lots of tensions and a very, very tight plot combined with all that player influence was a big, big challenge.
