A spiritual successor to narrative-driven cRPG Disco Elysium, which will let players literally shape the world with the choices they make, is in the works from a new indie studio made of former developers from ZA/UM, Bungie, Rockstar, and Brave at Night.
The studio is called Longdue, and its currently-unnamed psychological RPG will be its debut project. As per a press release, it'll explore "the delicate interplay between the conscious and subconscious, the seen and unseen" in a world where "the lines between the mind and the environment blur," meaning the landscape is constantly changing and evolving with each decision you make, in a physical, visual, and thematic way.
Speaking to 12DOVE, narrative director Grant Roberts tells us that Longdue's project is "continuing a legacy" of cRPGs from the last 30 years, following a through line established by "Fallout and Baldur's Gate and Icewind Dale," as well as Disco Elysium, which itself "set the bar very high."
Rather than being daunted by that, however, Roberts thinks that being able to "continue in that legacy and stand alongside something as successful as Disco is really exciting." This new project isn't meant to be a competitor, and the team is "overjoyed" that Disco Elysium was as successful as it was, with the narrative director noting that in some ways, "it opened the door for more games like this to be successful."
But this is no sequel, so what does it mean to create a spiritual successor to Disco Elysium? "When we say spiritual successor, we mean things like [being something] extremely narrative driven that draws on some of the elements that people really loved about the first game," Roberts begins. "Like, you know, the incredibly deep world-building with so many different layers and tangents, the psychological complexity of that game, and again, of like the legacy of games that came before it as well, running all the way back to Planescape. And, you know, storytelling that feels like it's intelligent."
Crucially, Roberts says, "it's not about doing what they've done before, because, you know, that would be a sequel." He continues: "We want to be inspired by Disco and all the games that have come before, and make something new, and explore new things, and create new stories."
Roberts confirms that the team has been working on the project on and off for around a few months, so it's still very early in development – it's "still in the concepting phase," to be exact. With that in mind, the devs are still "sort of figuring out exactly how we want to do this" when it comes to what systems the game will use, the world they want to create, its art style, and scope. Even so, Roberts thinks it'll probably be "similar in scope to something like Disco Elysium."
At this point, the full line-up of veteran developers working on the game hasn't been revealed, although notably Disco Elysium art director Aleksander Rostov, and lead writer and designer Robert Kurvitz aren't involved.
All in all, a lot of what's in the works is still a mystery. However, Roberts says that the devs know they want the game to have "an incredibly rich interiority to the character, conversation with yourself, and conversation with other people. We know we want to explore these themes of, you know, there being incredible contrast between internal and external, and in different worlds that that could be." That's not to mention the so-called "psychogeographic RPG" elements, that'll see "conversations that you have with yourself or with people tangibly affect the world" in a way more tangible "than what is ordinarily found in games like this."
There's currently no planned release date for Longdue's project, but Roberts says he's "looking forward to the next few years of exploring this and building it."
In the meantime, be sure to check out our roundup of the best RPGs and the best video game stories for even more games like Disco Elysium.
