In the event you’ve been following the information saga of Disco Elysium and its religious successors, there’s an opportunity you’ve seen a selected picture of Hopetown, the would-be Disco successor from Longdue Video games.
It’s what appears to be a screenshot displaying the principle character partaking in fairly Disco Elysium-looking dialog with an outdated woman surrounded by pigeons, aptly-named Pigeon Woman Prudence. Traces like “I would somewhat lick the bin [knock the bread from her hands]” and “Yeah, feed the plenty! So let it’s executed. EAT UP, SKY RATS! (Take the bread)” are amongst what might be mentioned. The display’s been dissected with surgical precision by Disco followers such as you and I, all asking one essential query, the principle query all of those studios have confronted: does this really feel worthy of being thought of Disco-y?
“Main as much as the Kickstarter, it is actually onerous to get that message out to say, ‘This is what we’re about, this is what the sport goes to be, this is why you ought to be fascinated with it’,” Hopetown narrative director Grant Roberts tells me. “We had a picture that was displaying a pattern, like an instance dialog within the sport. The unique function with that was for it to stay on the Kickstarter web page [and say] right here’s what this appears like.
“Earlier than it, there’d [be a bit] speaking about all of the methods the dialog system goes to work, afterwards [a bit] speaking about a number of the expertise, and within the center right here’s this [image]. However that picture was additionally used for promotion, for advertising and marketing, and so the primary instance of the writing of Hopetown out on the earth is mainly this – it wasn’t a screenshot it was mainly nonetheless an idea picture [showing] this is what a dialog would appear to be. Is that the perfect illustration of what the writing goes to be in the end [in] what we ship?
“In all probability not, however we can’t be capable of get to that time of ‘this is what the writing goes to be, this is why it is best to contemplate backing us or contemplate becoming a member of us on this journey’ till a lot later. So, we’re contemplating doing issues like Early Entry. We’re contemplating doing one thing like a demo to provide folks an concept of what they could possibly be stepping into, however till we get to that time, all we are able to do is present you the kickstarter and present you what else is on the market.”
Roberts doesn’t blame of us for dissecting that picture (and Hopetown’s different advertising and marketing and promo materials) to the extent they’ve. “It has been concurrently onerous and never,” he says. “After we’re making a sport that is so clearly impressed by this legacy of CRPGs as much as and together with Disco Elysium, when folks have a look at one thing like that – and I’d do the identical factor – what I’ve in my head is my reminiscence of probably the most superb moments from these video games. Once I’m evaluating that to an idea picture that’s styled as a screenshot, as a result of that’s the section of improvement that we’re in proper now, nothing goes to carry as much as that degree of comparability, that degree of scrutiny. I am under no circumstances saying that it is unfair for folks to make that comparability. We put it on the market, choose it for what you’ll.”
Roberts joined Longdue as narrative director on Hopetown in October 2024, that means he’s solely been within the put up for roughly 5 – 6 months. He tells me he was “one of many first folks [brought on] full-time within the firm”. By that point, as detailed in an in depth report from IGN in November final yr, former ZA/UM builders Argo Tuulik and Dora Klindžić had already parted methods with CoGrammar, the corporate tech entrepreneur Riaz Moola based Longdue by. This resulted in a dispute over launch contracts that led to a court docket case which left Tuulik and Klindžić going through a six-month wait earlier than commencing work on the kinda Disco Elysium religious successor studio they’d since introduced, Summer season Everlasting.
What Roberts and Hopetown technical lead Piotr Sobolewski inform me of the sport’s improvement thus far appears very a lot to replicate the impact you would possibly anticipate such a scenario to have on a sport’s improvement.
“Once I began,” Roberts says, “There had been slightly bit of labor executed on an authentic idea, earlier than I bought there slash proper as I bought there. However numerous that work – the setting, the principle character and stuff – has all been made out of date by the work that we have been doing since then. So, there’s nonetheless a kernel of what was there within the authentic idea, nevertheless it was the seed of an concept mainly, and now over the previous few months it is grown into what you may see on the Kickstarter.”
“The people who find themselves right here early on, being ex-ZA/UM folks, they had been enthusiastic about particular themes and particular settings and particular time intervals and particular issues that would occur on the earth,” he says barely later in our dialog, “As they moved away from the studio and different folks began to come back in, whereas we’re nonetheless extraordinarily enthusiastic about making one thing true and making one thing nice and placing our blood and our ardour into it, the issues that had been initially explored, that setting and people themes, they’re – not that they are much less fascinating to us, however they’re another person’s themes, another person’s passions. With the dev group because it stands now, we now have completely different passions, and we’re making a sport about one thing completely different.”
So, the kicker. What’s the sport about because it at the moment exists? Nicely, it casts you as a rogue journalist in a Northern English mining city that’s “steeped in corruption and energy performs”. The journalist a part of the equation has a direct hyperlink to Roberts’ previous.
“I used to be a journalism main for some time in faculty, again within the olden instances,” he tells me. “I used to put in writing for a online game journal, Subsequent Technology journal again within the late 90s, so I’ve bought a little bit of a journalism background. There are different folks on the group who’ve journalism backgrounds, different folks’s households who’ve had backgrounds in journalism. We’re speaking to all of them in regards to the craft of journalism about what it meant to be a journalist throughout [certain times], what it means to be a journalist in trendy instances, what it can imply to be a journalist in [Hopetown’s] world.”
He brings up the present state of the occupation, how a lot issues have modified for it in latest instances with “numerous extra conventional journalistic endeavors, not having the assist each from the general public or from benefactors”, and the necessity for a “strong” press in 2025, when the world is present process a “generally gradual, generally fast slide into authoritarianism”.
In the meantime, he says that making a fictionalised city within the north of England being the setting is one thing that Longdue’s artwork director has been wanting into visible reference-wise. “The north east of England and the Yorkshire space is the place I feel we have seemed for inspiration. The vibe up there, or at the very least the vibe across the time interval that we’re taking a look at [for inspiration], in addition to a number of the visuals.”
Roberts’ group additionally plan to make use of the true world UK’s lengthy historical past of coal mining to “assist inform the sport”. “Not that we wish it to be dry or a historical past lesson or a documentary or something,” he says, “however we’re setting it in a world that [you] will recognise on function, so we are able to dig into that stuff, so to talk.”
Alternatively, each Roberts and Sobolewski cleared up one factor that the sport received’t contain: generative AI. Some hypothesis about this had been ignited by Sobolewski’s LinkedIn profile, which cites his Ph.D qualification in AI, in addition to a number of roles involving the tech.
“That is my different ardour subsequent to sport improvement,” Sobolewski responds after I carry this up, “however I am not mixing these two at Longdue. These are issues which are my private stuff that I am doing for a residing, and for my very own private progress. I am not shy about it and never hiding something. Sure, I’m an AI guide for varied firms. For me, I feel consuming artwork is type of like consuming meals, and if it is not executed by a human, it does not have soul. It is type of like consuming plastic.
“I feel that AI is nice as a result of it understands human language and might flip unstructured knowledge into structured knowledge, so it may well truly extract some data from paperwork, and so on,” he continues, “I do not assume AI needs to be used as a substitute for human creativity. I do not assume it is a good route.”
“Our writing is from writers in all the things that we put out,” Roberts provides, “Our artwork is from artists, and that may proceed to be the case. Even when we wished to make use of generative AI to make content material for the sport – which we do not – the expertise is not there to tug off good writing. It’s going to write dialogue that feels like good writing, however the individuals who recognize good writing can inform the distinction.”
The narrative director, in the meantime, has a CV that’s not attracted as a lot consideration from Disco followers. All through an extended profession in sport dev, he’s labored as a author on the likes of Bungie’s Future 2 and Rocksteady’s Suicide Squad: Kill The Justice League. He tells me that having seen how the event course of works at giant studios on triple-A tasks like these has helped give him “a extremely zoomed-out view into the best way to do it effectively, whereas nonetheless leaving room for that zeal” that he’s making use of to the smaller-scale Hopetown.
“It was nonetheless actually satisfying to search out new tales to inform with characters that folks already cherished and the worlds that folks already cherished,” he provides by way of how incorporating the non-public into writing can differ between bigger video games with established lore and a brand new IP like Hopetown. “However having the ability to construct one thing new, a brand new world with new characters that folks will love is, I feel, thrilling otherwise.”
On the finish of the day although, as that aforementioned non-screenshot has confirmed, this freedom for Hopetown is coming with one measuring stick Longdue has taped its sport to. For higher or worse.
“There’s numerous ways in which it is going to be related and numerous ways in which it is going to be completely different,” Roberts says after I ask him straight how Hopetown will set itself aside from Disco Elysium. “We’re not particularly honouring the legacy of anyone sport, it is extra in regards to the historical past of the style. Whereas we did use that messaging early on, based mostly on the those who had been engaged on that early idea who’re not with the corporate it made sense to say that it was a religious successor.
“So, there are elements of Disco Elysium that we’re impressed by and that we wish to make on this sport. Psychological complexity and storytelling, that’s clever and trendy and mature, however not in a darkish and gritty means, however like an grownup means. Actually monumental, vastly impactful conversations with characters within the sport, each inside and out of doors of your head. Disco impressed us rather a lot in these methods, and numerous video games over the previous few many years have seemed like Disco, they have this digicam perspective, both isometric or diametric, or nevertheless you wish to consider it. We’ll appear to be that, we’ll have conversations with ranging dialogue and with expertise that may communicate up throughout conversations, and that may information you throughout conversations.
“So, it’s for individuals who – I feel the opposite day I described it as – in the event you like Disco Elysium, then you definately’re most likely going to love Hopetown. And in the event you did not like Disco Elysium, then you definately would possibly like Hopetown anyway.”
