The Forgotten City started out as a fully voiced, narrative-driven Skyrim mod that dropped players into a repurposed Dwemer city whose inhabitants lived under a strange curse: If just one of them sinned, everyone died. With the help of a time loop, memorable characters, and multiple endings, players could unravel all of the city's mysteries. The story earned its place in modding history when writer Nick Pearce won an Australian Writer's Guild Award, making it one of the first mods to win an award for storytelling.
Game ZXC sat down with Pearce to discuss the upcoming reimagining of The Forgotten City, which is being developed as a standalone game that transports the setting from Skyrim to Ancient Rome. He discussed recreating and changing the mod, what makes his game stand out, and some of the new additions coming to its story. Interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.
Q: The Forgotten City is a reimagining of a mod that won you an Australian Writers’ Guild Award. What are the biggest changes from the original?
A: We’ve leveled up everything that could be leveled up: there’s a new setting, a engine (Unreal), gameplay mechanics, professional voice acting, and an achingly beautiful orchestral soundtrack from Armello composer Michael Allen, but my personal favorite is the new script: it’s been completely re-written, with a bunch of massive twists, new characters, puzzles, and four new endings. To give you an idea, the new script is well over double the length of the original at 80,000+ words. I really wanted to make sure that anyone who played the mod – even recently – will be surprised and delighted by all the new content.
Q: There are several games about time loops in development or recently released like Deathloop and Returnal. What do you hope makes The Forgotten City stand out?
A: The Forgotten City is in a whole different category. It’s for people like me who are bored with action-focused shooter mechanics. It rewards exploring a historically authentic ancient Roman city, questioning an intertwined community of colorful characters, solving puzzles with lateral thinking, and cleverly exploiting the time loop Groundhog Day-style. Our time loop mechanic is a bit different from other games in that it allows you to retain objects taken from previous time loops, which opens up a range of fun puzzles. For example, you can steal life-saving medicine from one timeline, and if you manage to escape the apocalyptic chaos that follows, you can start a new time loop and deliver that medicine to a dying woman just in time to save her life, which opens up new story threads.
Q: What are some of the ways players will be able to use their knowledge of previous loops?Â
A: I tried to capture the fun of one of my favorite films, Groundhog Day. So, for example, you can blow the minds of our characters by revealing knowledge about them you really shouldn’t have, or trick them into falling for you, or scam them out of a lot of money, and even change the course of the day’s election. Every character has dialogue that plays out differently when you speak to them on subsequent time loops.
Q: The original Forgotten City mod had some great characters. Can we expect any cast-members or characters to return from the mod?
A: There sure are! Dooley, Gulvar, Vern, Hjormund, Dwemora, Rastasia, Luki, Jeshol, Domitus, and others – they’ve all been re-imagined as ancient Romans and re-named accordingly. For example, Dooley is Duilius, or Duli for short. But they’ve evolved, and some of them aren’t what you might expect, and across the board they each have about twice as much dialogue as they had in the mod, so I’d say they’re deeper, more nuanced and more reactive - more like real people.
Q: Does the new protagonist have a name and their own story in the standalone?Â
A: I think games are at their most immersive when players get to be whoever they want, so we let them determine their own name, gender, and origin, and pick one of four backstories: an archaeologist, a soldier, a fugitive, and an amnesiac. Each backstory has a subtle advantage. For example, the archaeologist gets occasional insights into the ancient world, and the soldier has a handgun – but only 10 bullets, ever, which they’ll have to ration carefully. The backstories also have a subtle impact on the way certain characters respond to you. And finally, part of the game’s mystery is discovering more about yourself as the game progresses, but I don’t want to spoil anything.
Q: Will there be RPG features like character customization and inventory?
A: I wouldn’t describe it as an RPG, but it does have some light RPG elements, like allowing players to choose their own name, gender, origin and backstory, and gather an inventory full of items. We considered adding a skill tree, but it didn’t make the game more fun; in The Forgotten City you progress by gathering items and learning secrets from each time loop, and then using them to make the day play out differently each time; I think that’s far more rewarding and more immersive than allocating skill points in a menu. In fact, it’s designed so you can play the entire game without ever having to open your quest log or inventory, if you want.
Q: The new game reimagines the Dwarven city from the original mod as a lost city from Ancient Rome. What drew you to the Romans for the standalone game?
A: Most people are surprised to learn the story works even better in an ancient Roman setting, steeped in Greco-Roman mythology. As you know, at the center of the story is The Golden Rule, a mysterious ancient curse which means that if one person sins, everyone dies. It’s a form of collective punishment, which has striking parallels to Roman military customs like decimation, and fables like Baucis and Philemon, whose city was destroyed because the gods were angry about the moral failings of its residents.
It also allows us to explore some really fascinating real-world history, mythology and philosophy, as well as re-create a beautiful game world full of historically authentic art, architecture, and costumes. There are other reasons too, and I’m dying to tell you, but I don’t want to spoil anything. But when you play it, you’ll get it.
Q: The Forgotten City trailer shows the player wielding guns and riding a zipline. What can fans expect from combat and new mechanics?
A: It’s also possible to steal a mythical golden bow from the shrine of the Roman goddess Diana (who the Greeks called Artemis) and use it to turn anything organic into gold, which opens up some cool puzzle platform mechanics and some fun combat tricks. For example, you can turn an oncoming enemy into gold, and then boot them into other oncoming enemies, toppling them over like bowling pins.
But to be clear, combat is a relatively small, and totally optional, part of the game. It’s designed so you can talk your way through every confrontation you’ll encounter, and not just with a boring speech skill check which bypasses dialogue. I set out to design conversational confrontations which feel like boss fights, where you need to choose your words carefully, knowing that the wrong response could end in an apocalyptic event which kills everyone in the city.
Q: Will the city be larger in the standalone game?
A: The city is about 30 percent larger than the city in the mod. There’s plenty of interesting places to explore, and some massive secrets which lead to game-changing twists – I wish I could say more!
Q: Can fans expect the standalone game to be longer than the original Forgotten City mod?
A: It usually takes people about eight-to-10 hours to get to the first ending, and but the game has wildly different multiple endings, so their second playthrough might take them several additional hours.
Q: How many possible endings will The Forgotten City have?
A: There are four endings in total, all of them new and different from the mod, and most of them have minor variants depending on what you did, who you were, and what you discovered during your playthrough. One of them in particular is really special to me, and some of our testers have reported welling up with tears and/or having their minds blown – but you’ll just have to play it for yourself!
[END]
The Forgotten City releases in July 2021 on PC, PS4, PS5, Switch, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.
