Patrick Ó Rian

But again, at Zalm,

I think the way other video games would work is you'd have a lot of design documentation and then everyone would work off that documentation.

At Zalm, a lot of the proof of what we're doing is in the build of the game.

So the build of the game is what we call the game through its various stages.

You work all the way up to release build.

So the programs are key in bringing that stuff to life early on so we can see how it plays and how it feels because what you write in the dialogue engine is going to be a totally different thing when you translate it to the actual build where you have the art and the environment.

and the soundtrack and all that kind of stuff.

So the programmers are a kind of ally in that sense that they get everything together and allows us to see it.

And then we can make kind of revisions and changes based on actually seeing it as the player will eventually, or at least, you know, kind of rough sketch of how the player will see it.

Yeah.

Yeah, I think that's hugely important.

And I think that goes back to what you said at the beginning, I think, where previously, you know, a game, the design of a game might have been just, you

or here's the arctic level and can you write something based on lava because we want to do something set in a volcano um and then you know everything would come from that kind of philosophy whereas in zelm everything from the writing to the music is integrated into an experience for the player so we're always kind of conscious of what story we're telling and we we collaborate hugely on that kind of

yeah that melding of like of storytelling and when it comes to music it's always about you know what will serve the scene how do we want the player to feel um and we have great composers and and sound designers who get us get us over the line on that front yeah

Yeah, when and where we can, we do think of that.

There's some meta stuff in Zero Parades that kind of breaks the fourth wall, and that is the stuff we're very interested in, or at least a certain subset of the writers are very interested in doing.

It's a bit like, the first time I remember seeing this in a game was in Metal Gear Solid when you're

um the boss fight the psycho mandus and he tells you he starts reading your memory card and you have to switch the controller ports physically um to beat him so we're very interested in that kind of stuff and how the um yeah how that how the system you're playing on and how you experience the game uh can lend itself to the player experience as well

I think that's a good question, and I think the answer is both yes and no.

The last part of the development was a slog for sure.