Marrying Emergent Storytelling With A Traditional Act Structure
The Alters, like many of 11 bit's games, pairs heavily philosophical themes about human nature and the consequences of choice with solid, mechanics-first gameplay. While it has a traditionally structured main storyline, the Alters that you create will offer emergent storylines in how they interact with each other, as well as how severely their personalities clash.
"This main storyline is a very traditional story with branching and decisions that change the course of the gameplay," Kisilewicz tells me. "Then we have the Alter storylines, and there's a lot of agency for the player because you can't have all the Alters in a single playthrough. You decide what Alters you create." You can decide to choose Alters based on their skills to play more strategically, or you might want to create a certain Alter just to see what their combination of life experiences has done to their personalities.
This, in turn, creates emergent narratives. "Based on our economic decisions, they're angry or they're happy about it," Kisilewicz explains. "Based on what kind of Alters we created, they can have tensions between each other. They can argue about the quality of food, our rules - many different things. So with each playthrough, those things will turn out differently for every player. If you want to really experience all the Alters, you would have to play the game again."
This is fairly in keeping with the core theme of the game: your choices will always have consequences for other people. "You can't please everyone," Kisilewicz says with a smile. "Your choices will always affect someone. They'll have some good consequences, some bad consequences. You have to learn how to handle what's happening because of your choice instead of dwelling so much on the question 'what if'."
Venturing Into Voice Acting
The Alters is an extremely character-focused game, and because of that, the studio decided to have voiced dialogue for the first time in 11 bit history. The more Kisilewicz described the way Alters interact, the more aghast I grew – just how was one voice actor meant to record so many lines, for so many subtly different characters, for so many permutations of possible interactions? Because, yes, Jan Dolski is voiced by one actor: Alex Jordan, who's previously done voice work on games like Cyberpunk 2077, the Telltale Game of Thrones games, and Baldur's Gate 3 (he did the sex sounds for that last one).
"We had like 60 sessions with Alex so far, so it's like 240 hours so far of just being with Alex in the booth," Kisilewicz says. "It's a big acting challenge to make them different, but not too different because it's going to be cartoonish, but then we don't want them to blend in with each other. We have this golden rule that if I close my eyes, I have to be able to say which one of them it is. Finding it is a challenge on its own, but maintaining it for 200, 300 hours of sessions is crazy."
Drawing Inspiration From Iconic Sci-Fi
But the characters are just one aspect of the game – the other major part is the hostile world outside of Jan's base. 11 bit has done an excellent job of making the world feel familiar, but with a twist, and combined with its deft use of cinematic montages and cutscenes, I couldn't help but be reminded of specific iconic sci-fi films and television shows. I asked Kisilewicz about the team's influences, telling him that I was reminded of Interstellar and Netflix's Dark while playing.
"Interstellar was definitely something we mentioned a lot when it comes to the feel of the planet, because I really like these almost realistic planets in Interstellar, but with a twist on some physical elements," he said. "It's cool to show this planet as unfriendly, not in a way like there are aliens running around, but in that the environment is harsh."
The Shimmer featured in Annihilation was also an influence when it came to the depiction of Rapidium, the key element in The Alters' 'cloning' process. "We really wanted to have something where you can't really name what state of matter it's in. Is it a gas? Is it a liquid? We call it 'glitch crystal.' It's like a gas that's distorting everything around it and glitching it. You can imagine how tough it is to talk with VFX artists. Let's do something that doesn't exist. How about that?"
He also highlights similarities to Netflix's 3 Body Problem, which he hadn't been aware of before the show's premiere. "We have this triple star system. I was having a laugh last week about 3 Body Problem. I was like, 'Oh, okay, so they have the same problem as Jan.'"
All of this comes together to create a game just like its hostile planet – familiar in how it pulls together its influences, but also something I've never quite seen before. The Alters is slated for a 2024 release, and I'll be there on day one.
