Summary
Trese Brothers has a long history of making games that feature incredibly rich dynamic storytelling, and the team’s latest title Cyber Knights has taken the concept to new heights thanks to some surprisingly deep narrative systems. Similar to Trese Brothers' pastindie gameslikeStar Traders: Frontiers,Cyber Knightsis designed from the ground up to be infinitely replayable, and it’s the kind of game where no two players will ever really experience the same playthrough.
In an interview with Game Rant, Andrew Trese and Cory Trese broke down the various systems at play that result in a massive number of story permutations, and they also discussed how their years of experience with tabletop games inspired the way that players will manage their characters, choices, and relationships inCyber Knights.
Cyber Knights Draws From Years of Tabletop Gaming Experience
Unlike manyturn-based tactics gameswhere characters are treated somewhat like chess pieces,Cyber Knights' characters have rich lives and backstories that have far-reaching implications in both the realms of narrative and gameplay, and circumstances surrounding these characters are ever-changing. Characters in Cyber Knights react to virtually everything in some way: a character who was injured on a previous mission may have some character development that wouldn’t have occurred if things went perfectly. Another character may leave altogether if certain conditions aren’t met.
You’ll have characters who disappear for a while, you’ve got characters who just stress out about being told no, and if you help them, then you’ve got negative effects. So you’re pulled in a lot of directions, and at the heart ofCyber Knightsat the safe house, you’ve got the timeline, and too many things to manage, right? That’s the right spot for a game to be. “I have too many missions, and I’ve been trying to get Aaron to surgery for his bone grafts but it’s gonna take him out for 18 days, and if I don’t do it Emille swears she’s gonna leave again. How am I going to manage this mess?” I think that’s really what we’re shooting for. This all comes from years and years of tabletop.
Aside from the turn-based tacticsheist gameplay,Cyber Knightsis largely a game about managing complicated people and the unique lives they lead. Every decision has consequences, and it all comes together with the game serving as an emergent storytelling vehicle where each playthrough is its own cyberpunk novel and a plot that takes shape in entirely different ways.
Cyber Knights' Narrative Can Evolve In Countless Ways
Under the hood, theCyber Knightsemploys a sophisticated tag system that helps fill narrative roles. Instead of a particular named character being pre-selected for a given plot made just for them as is the case withBaldur’s Gate’s companions,Cyber Knightsinstead looks for individual tags that a number of different characters may possess. One narrative development may involve characters who have tags related to having grown up on the streets, or who have past dealings with certain factions, and this leads to playthroughs where some plots involve completely different characters than previous runs.
I think we’d be remiss if we didn’t talk a little bit about the casting director, which is a component that we’ve layered on top of all of this. So you have these backstories that give the players a starting point, but inside the game, once you get going, the casting director is a component that sits in the story system and has a list of stories that it could fulfill, and it looks for people that meet the criteria.
The way we’ve built out theemergent story systemto make it procgenable is that a backstory is like a list of 40 tags. You are an ex-UKF fighter, you were a professional fighter, you’re a martial artist, and you have media training. It’s a silly amount of things that come out of each of these backstories that get tracked by the system. And later, the casting director might be looking for somebody who was raised on the streets and was a professional fighter.
Characters can always pick up new tags, too, which opens up untold thousands of story permutations. Perhaps one story calls for a character that has undergone extensive cybersurgery, and in the current playthrough, Aaron has had many cybernetic implants as a result of the player frequently getting him seriously injured. AlthoughCyber Knightsmay resembletactics games likeXCOMon the surface, the way it generates unique stories each time brings to mind titles likeRimworldthat are so loved for this reason. While many games tout their multiple endings,Cyber Knightspossesses a unique quality in which the entire playthrough from beginning to end can be just as varied.
