This proved to me that when creating main characters in the game, we should avoid decisively approaching the questions asked, but rather present different attitudes, clash them with each other, and let the player have his or her own take on them. We’ve also realized that there is a quite large group of people that might feel disturbed or even offended by putting human life in line with works of culture.
Our early internal surveys and focus tests revealed to us that, among the surveyed people, there were those who very much identify with the need to protect art while others had a rather ambivalent attitude towards it. We wanted to touch a very nuanced and ambiguous matter of art, cultural heritage, and its value - a topic that can arouse extremely different emotions and opinions among audiences, especially when put in line with the theme of the value of life in itself. Tragic events like this constantly remind us about the responsibility resting on our shoulders when touching a subject like war and its consequences. At that time, reality and the daily work on the game and its fictional world had dangerously paralleled each other. Our feelings resembled those of the original This War of Mine team when the Ukrainian crisis began just a few months before the release of the base game. And here, right before us was the situation at Notre Dame. We were constantly talking about the dilemmas we’d like to build around that subject, looking for effective ways to present the importance of heritage overall to our players.
The work on the script assumed tens of hours of reflection on the essence of cultural heritage and its value for society. We were just working on a DLC revolving around the theme of cultural heritage and its preservation during the war. Social media was in turmoil people immediately started fundraisers to save the building, and every media outlet was covering the event in granular detail.Īt this very moment, over a thousand kilometers away in the heart of Warsaw, our This War of Mine team was touched by this event in yet another way. Here the whole world was rubbing its eyes in amazement, watching helplessly as one of the most iconic cultural objects of our civilization turned to ashes. When the roof over the famous Notre Dame cathedral in Paris was being ravaged by a massive fire, our team was just closing one of the early milestones in the latest addition to This War of Mine - Fading Embers, third episode of the Stories DLC.
11 bit studios‘ Tomasz Kisielewicz served as a lead artist for This War of Mine and shares his story of the development in what follows. Living in a warzone and carrying a heavy burden, Anja wrestles with herself to answer the question of what is more important - survival of human legacy or the survival of a man. First there was Father’s Promise, then The Last Broadcast, and the third piece portrays the story of Anja. Fading Embers is the crowning episode of Stories DLC - a set of narrative-driven scenarios for This War of Mine.
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