Harmony: The Fall of Reverie interview \u2013 Devs discuss tackling real-world issues in video games Don’t NodThe developers behind Harmony: The Fall of Reverie spoke to us at Dexerto shortly after the game launched to discuss everything from literary influences, the sudden shift to visual novel storytelling, and how they chose to tackle real-world political issues in a video game. 2023\u2019s video game calendar is undeniably stacked. With big names like Starfield, Diablo 4, and the mega-popular latest installment of Legend of Zelda just the tip of the iceberg. However, a game that may go under the radar for some, despite coming from a relatively well-known studio, Don\u2019t Nod, is Harmony: The Fall of Reverie. Despite its low-key release earlier this month, Harmony: The Fall of Reverie brought with it not only a fair few innovations for Don\u2019t Nod, with a sudden shift to visual novels, and a 2D art style, a far stray from the studio\u2019s normal stylings, but with the new changes also came what may be one of their best stories to date. So, to get a better insight into the newer look for Don\u2019t Nod and the captivating story woven throughout Harmony, we decided to ask the devs a few questions on the sudden shifts. Don\u2019t Nod\u2019s shift to 2D with Harmony: The Fall of Reverie When you think of Don\u2019t Nod, you may first think of Life is Strange or Remember Me, both games rendered in 3D. But with Harmony, Don\u2019t Nod presents a new visual style, so I wanted to know why they felt this was the direction to take the game in. \u201cProducing 3D sets is very demanding and since the beginning, we wanted to give more space to the writing and prose,\u201d executive producer, Cyrille Combes, said. \u201cWe were also a very small team, so we tried to simplify the production of the sets while retaining a strong, polished visual style.\u201d He described it as \u201ca concept art rendering with movement and animation\u201d, which was much faster to create. Not only was Harmony a dimensional shift for Don\u2019t Nod, but it was also an art style shift. Going from their trademark 3D to 2D, it saw them adopt the visual stylings akin to Avatar: The Last Airbender, ala its fusion of Japanese anime aesthetics and Western animations. To which the devs were happy to add more influences to the list. \u201cYes, and many others like Tekkonkinkreet, Love, Death + Robots, and Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse,\u201d Combes said. Even adding that the art team drew great inspiration from the animated works of Alberto Mielgo, who you would know as one of the main brains behind the visuals of Spider-Verse. Devs talk integrating real-world problems into their game In my review of Harmony, I wrote extensively about how the game tackled real-world topics of gentrification, the injustices of capitalism, and familial trauma, which is once again quite the shift for Don\u2019t Nod\u2019s writing department. So I asked the devs whether it was a conscious decision for the team to tackle these topics. \u201cIt was definitely a conscious decision. Since hopes and dreams are at the core of our game, dealing with politics and social issues was unavoidable for us. Because one of the two worlds in Harmony is a fantastical and imaginary world, we wanted the other one to be very real and concrete,\u201d Narrative designer, Matthias Fuchs explained. \u201cThese real-world problems are things that affect our everyday lives, and we think it\u2019s important to discuss them through art and literature.\u201d And it shows, as much of the game revolves around how a mega-corporation, Mono Konzern, affects not only the real world of Alma, but also Reverie, and the hopes and dreams of all its inhabitants. Heavily politicized issues of gentrification were such a big point for the team that it essentially inspired the approach to the game. \u201cI\u2019d say the world around us and the political climate was what inspired us initially,\u201d Fuchs said of writing inspirations. \u201cWe wanted to tackle modern issues like capitalism and injustice through a solarpunk lens \u2013 one of hope, with a positive approach to darker themes,\u201d he added. Fuchs further touched on the various inspirations the writing team had, and it\u2019s quite the list. \u201cIn terms of world-building, Neil Gaiman\u2019s Sandman was an obvious inspiration, along with Roger Zelazny\u2019s Chronicles of Amber and even Tim Power\u2019s Last Call.\u201d And as for the writing side, he said, \u201cWe took influence from character-centric literature like Haruki Murakami, Lydia Davis, and Raymond Carver. \u201cWe knew we wanted to switch between small and larger scale, from the intimate to the metaphysical, with a pinch of magic to wrap it all together.\u201d And because of how much focus was put into the game\u2019s writing, it all but naturally lent itself to a visual novel. \u201cWe wanted to explore other possibilities of telling stories and that\u2019s why we went with a very text-based game with the Augral at the heart of the choice system,\u201d Combes explained on the studio\u2019s decision to make Harmony a visual novel. \u201cIt took us time and iteration to find the right balance between these different pillars: leaving space to the writing, unfolding stylish visuals while sticking to this boardgame-ish gameplay, and the result is what you get in Harmony: The Fall of Reverie.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Harmony: The Fall of Reverie interview \u2013 Devs discuss tackling real-world issues in video games Don’t NodThe developers behind Harmony: The Fall of Reverie spoke to us at Dexerto shortly after the game launched to discuss everything from literary influences, the sudden shift to visual novel storytelling, and how they chose to tackle real-world political […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-81322","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81322","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=81322"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81322\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=81322"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=81322"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=81322"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}