Paradise Lost Devs Discuss Alternate History Game's Decisions and Mechanics
From the publisher that brought players Ghostrunner comes a new alt-history endeavor titled Paradise Lost. The story is told entirely from the perspective of a boy named Szymon (Simon in English) as he encounters a hidden bunker that seems frozen in time. The setting for this story is an alternative to the events of World War 2, in which the Nazis were not defeated in 1945 and instead unleashed a nuclear bomb on most of Europe.
Szymon seems an unlikely character to discover the forgotten bunker, but the story is about more than the mystery of the bunker. Szymon suffers a loss in his life, and players accompany him on his journey not only through the Polish wasteland and bunker, but his emotional one as well. In an interview with Game Rant, Paradise Lost developers Bogdan Graczyk and Chris Panas-Galloway discuss the big picture of Paradise Lost and how its setting came to be, along with Szymon’s emotional journey. This transcript has been edited for brevity and clarity.
GR: What inspired you to make Paradise Lost?
CPG: The company's founders were fascinated by Slavic history and they wanted to make a story that weaved Polish history and Slaving mythology together. As you get further into the story then you'll see those two things coincide and unravel the mystery of the bunker.
BG: We're also a studio based in Warsaw, and Warsaw was a city that was really heavily affected with the outcomes of the second World War. You can see the evidence of history at basically every street corner, so the sense of history and interest in history is something that we all shared among the studio. Then we decided to push it a bit further into "What if? What if the second World War didn't actually end in 1945?” Another inspiration is this place that exists in lower Silesia, a region of Poland, where the Nazis have actually started the construction of a bunker and all the records have been destroyed. No one to this day knows what they were planning there, but there is some evidence of some really weird and malicious ideas. We decided to push this fantasy a bit further and create this alternative history that served as a setting for the story.
GR: Were there certain parts of Slavic mythology that you wanted to use?
BG: Well, the mystery about Slavic mythology is that it's actually not really well documented. So actually, all the physical documents are made by Christians, so what we know about Slavic mythology is already a reinterpretation through the lens of a whole different culture and belief system. So every time you try to explore Slavic roots and origins, it's like venturing to an unknown land and that's what's so fascinating about it because there's a lot of freedom for interpretation. There's a lot of missing parts that we basically don't know, so that's what fascinates us about Slavic mythology. What actually is happening in the game is that we are trying to sort of recreate a religion starting under these extreme circumstances, like from scratch. So we were kind of doing this reverse-engineering of what would happen when the alt-gods failed and we're in dire need of new ones. And that's where Slavic mythology comes in.
CPG: It meant that we could pick and choose which parts of the mythology we felt fit best to the story and that really the themes of the gods supported the atmosphere that we were going for.
GR: Are there different endings to the game?
BG: Yes, there are different endings and there are different payoffs along the way. So the monument was one of the examples, and the device that we didn't want to show you is actually like this bunker's black box, like the black box you have in planes. So it's recorded certain events and while recreating those events you can actually interact with [them] and kind of shape the history in a different manner and those decisions have outcomes. Those decisions affect your relationship with Ewa and it affects how the game ends.
GR: How long would you say it takes to beat the game?
BG: Well, it's something around 3 and a half to 4 hours for one session. If you want to see alternative endings, then you need to spend a bit more time. There are exclusive pathways that you can take, and we tried to construct those paths in a way that you have a generally very different context of what you just went through based on the path that you take, so you can actually have a pretty different interpretation of the events or the characters and their decisions based on the choices that you make.
GR: This seems like a very isolating game that makes you feel alone - are there going to be any jump scares or is it more exploration-based?
BG: It's definitely more exploration. We felt that jump scares do not really fit the atmosphere. We wanted this to be like a slow burner kind of thing that you can sink into. Thematically, the way that we've structured the game, Szymon is overcoming a deep personal loss while pursuing those answers and the game is structured in a similar way that psychologically the five stages of grief progress. So what we've just seen is bargaining, so we're in the middle of going through the process of grief. It all starts with denial, then comes anger. Bargaining is probably the second longest chapter in the whole story.
And thematically it's not just that Szymon is trying to bargain his relationship with Ewa, we're also seeing this in the world because the whole theme of this level is how the Poles tried to create their new situation in the bunker. So how they were bargaining among themselves, and you can already see that there's a drifting apart from the factions inside the Poles, and that's what bargaining is all about. Then there's depression, which is the lowest point in the story and the most horrific emotionally, rather than scary. But then at the end it's acceptance and it's up to the players how they decide to cope with the situation through Szymon.
CPG: I think, crucially as Bogdan said, it's a deeply personal story and journey that Szymon is on. And we didn't feel that horror elements gelled with that properly. It's more about you taking on the role of a small boy and trying to discover this crazy place and discover something about himself as well in the process.
GR: Did you want to say anything else about the game?
BG: We just can't wait for the game to be out there and we really hope that the interactivity will resonate with the players. We're looking forward to some reddit discussions, but we're also looking forward to people really sinking into the emotional and personal side of this experience, which is so hard to present without any major spoilers. Hence we're focusing mainly on the world building in these pre-launch materials.
[End.]
Paradise Lost is in development for PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X/S.
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