Ex-BioWare boss shares new Nightingale details: "Each decision has different consequences"
It will "empower players to do what they want"
Ex-BioWare boss Aaryn Flynn has shared some new details on how Nightingale will let players choose just what manner of alternate history adventurer they want to be.
Flynn discussed his new game, the first project from his new studio Inflexion since he founded it after departing BioWare in 2018, with Eurogamer. Flynn gave an outline of how Nightingale is built to give players an interactive world and "really empower players to do what they want." He said the Nightingale reveal trailer, which dropped during The Game Awards last week, has one great example which perceptive viewers may have already noticed.
"In our trailer, there's a really nice moment in there that's meant to show the dichotomy the world will present - where a giant is bending down to receive an offering from players," Flynn said. "That's one way you can solve that encounter. A bit later in the trailer, there's a bunch of Realmwalkers in combat with the giant - and the giant is rampaging through the community they built. That's another way to try to solve it. Each challenge has different outcomes and each decision has different consequences."
Realmwalkers are what players are called, by the way, and they get their name from the way they step from one realm to the next using a system of magical portals. However, a recent collapse of the portal network means these extra-planar explorers are all just trying to get back to the eponymous capital city of Nightingale. As for why everybody's dressed to the nines in alt-Victorian style, Flynn said it's an ideal aesthetic for the game because it "offers something of the contemporary even at a point that's 100-plus years old."
Inflexion hasn't announced a release window for Nightingale yet, but it is planning to scale up testing to include more players in 2022.
Get ready to survive wherever you find yourself in Nightingale with our guide to the best survival games.
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I got a BA in journalism from Central Michigan University - though the best education I received there was from CM Life, its student-run newspaper. Long before that, I started pursuing my degree in video games by bugging my older brother to let me play Zelda on the Super Nintendo. I've previously been a news intern for GameSpot, a news writer for CVG, and now I'm a staff writer here at GamesRadar.