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Dustborn
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All about Dustborn, its comic-style road trip, and its fascinating mix of genres
Dustborn was one of the most unique and interesting games at Summer Game Fest in Los Angeles but we couldn't talk about it until now at Gamescom in Cologne. Here's our full interview with creative director Ragnar Tørnquist.
Audio transcription
"We're at the jungle area of Summer Game Fest Play Days, although we're going to talk about a bit of a dusty game, which is pretty unique.
I think it's the most unique thing I've seen so far in the show, so congratulations on that, Ragnar."
"Thank you so much for joining us.
How did the concept and the mix of genres you're using here come up?
Yeah, that's interesting, because this game really is a mix between so many different genres.
We have the storytelling, the narrative, the character relationships, the music minigame, the combat, and there's stuff that we haven't even showed you yet."
"There are lots of different game modes, and sometimes I feel like we've just taken on too much.
We're creating five different games on top of each other, but that was basically where the idea came.
We wanted to create something that was fresh and new, inspired by comic books, inspired by road trips, and that was just different from the other games that we play."
"We're always interested in finding new ways to tell stories, and again, through a comic book game that opens up a lot of possibilities.
But it was really a process where we started telling our story, and then as the story progressed, new gameplay elements entered the picture, and we realized, okay, we need this in order to have the characters go through this particular scenario."
"And then it all just built on top of each other, but at the heart of it, it was always about the story and the world, and especially the characters, the humans at the center of this story.
And that's where all the gameplay mechanics have basically emerged from."
"Yeah, you have a rhythm game, some combat system, like a beaten up, but underneath them all, there is a very complex dialogue system, which you can interfere with, you can interrupt others, you can interrupt other characters, you can interact with the ones you want to talk."
"How did you build that system, and how does it work exactly?
Well, we've built our dialogue system through all of the games we've made.
So, before this game, we made a game called Dreamful Chapters and Draugen, and those games were built around versions of this dialogue system."
"But what we've done now is taken it to the next level, in order to make it feel more conversational and more real.
So, in the real world, when you talk to people, people are not just stopping and waiting for you to say something."
"You know, if you're sitting with a group of friends, if you don't say anything, they will keep talking.
If you interrupt them, they'll turn to you, and then they'll start talking to you.
And that's what we wanted to do in this game as well."
"And I think, like, when you start playing the game, you go like, whoa, what's happening? You know, this is unusual.
I'm used to sort of being the star of the show, being the one everybody talks to and people waiting for you."
"No, in this game, they will keep talking if you don't say anything.
And sometimes you lose the ability to say something if you wait, or you might get new dialogue options if you are patient.
So, we both, like, reward you and punish you for playing, you know, dialogue a certain way, but there's no wrong way to do it."
"It's all meant to feel natural, human, realistic, and it's all part of this relationship building.
How you interact with the characters and what you say to them affects how they feel about themselves."
"And that's where a lot of the sort of the branching, we call it emotional branching, because we want our characters to be the focus.
So, how they sort of feel about the world and about you is affected by how you speak to them."
"I know the story is a mystery.
I know it happens, like, in the near future.
Tell us a little bit more about the story.
Players can expect to learn about what's going on in this future America and also the background of the characters themselves."
"Oh, that's a lot right there.
Yeah, I mean, that story at its very sort of basic level is a road trip.
These characters are traveling from the west coast of America to the east coast."
"This is a fictional America 10 years into the future.
So, this is a world where California is a nation called Pacifica.
The rest of the United States is the American Republic.
It's ruled by an authoritarian regime."
"And our characters basically have to safely travel across America carrying a precious cargo.
But then during the journey, you learn more about the complexity of the story.
You get new characters who join the team."
"So, the crew grows from four people to, I'm not going to say how many, but it grows a lot during the course of the game.
And you learn more about the background of this universe, a world where words have power, where the main character is able to use language in a way that affects other people."
"And a lot of the characters you meet along the way also have this power, and they manifest in different ways.
And then you also learn about how this came to be.
And it's a story about the power of language, about disinformation, about social media, and about how we talk to people will affect people and affect reality."
"Some of the characters have the box power.
Other characters don't.
Other than that and the story, please tell me a little bit more about how you guys nailed the comic style."
"Because we've seen this work in a 2D environment, but this is a 3D game.
You move the camera freely, and it really looks like a comic book.
It looks really nice."
"And also how the music is so important to the game, too.
Oh, yeah. I mean, the music, just starting on the music, is so important.
We're a very small studio, but we have an in-house audio director who's a permanent part of the team."
"He's there from the very start to help us develop our concepts.
And music is a huge part of the gameplay, both as you play as a punk rock band traveling across America.
That's your cover story, so you have a musical minigame."
"But music also plays a big part of these characters' lives.
So that's a huge part of it.
But you mentioned the comic book look, and we spent years trying to perfect this."
"And it started out with we were all comic book nerds.
We always knew we wanted to make a comic book-type game.
And very early, our art director, Christoffer, who's like a genius, and he's a comic book artist, he basically did the concept art and was like, OK, this is what we need to make exactly like this."
"And that's actually what we ended up making, a game that looks like a living comic book.
I'm extremely proud of the team for doing that.
And of course, I have absolutely nothing to do with that."
"I'm a writer and director, you know.
But the team has done such an amazing job that I really hope we get to make more games in this style, because it's Dustborn."
"I think there's no other game that looks like it.
It's super unique.
It's not really sort of cell shading.
It's a comic book."
"It's a living comic book, yeah.
A little bit Moebius-inspired?
A little bit Moebius, yeah, yeah, absolutely.
Yeah, we actually took inspiration both from French comics and American comics, and I think that's very visible."
"All right, I'm really looking forward to learning more and to playing by myself.
So when can we expect Dustborn to release?
Of course, by Quantic Dream, new publishing spotlight."
"Spotlight, yeah.
When can we expect it to release, and on which platforms?
I think we're keeping all of that under wraps so far, but we're going to be at Gamescom, and there's going to be more information there."
"When it comes to platforms, without being specific, it's pretty much all of them.
See you at Gamescom then.
See you at Gamescom."
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