The Narrative of Marchenghast

Hey there StarFam! 

For once, it's not the awesome possum Ella writing this month's blog post, but you do get another narrative designer / writer instead! Neat, right? My name's Greg, and I'm super stoked to share more about all the love and care the team has put into the narrative work for Marchenghast. Believe me, I could talk about Marchenghast world-building, lore, dialogue, and characters for hours (edit from Greg's colleagues: he HAS), but this blog post would turn into a podcast series. So let's get right into it!

Err, what's your job? What do you do at Star Stable?

In a nutshell, "narrative designer" is a sort of weird mix between game writer and game designer; what you actually do varies a lot depending on what each project or phase needs. 

Sometimes it's straight-out writing, such as writing quest text and dialog: for example, in the last year I wrote, co-wrote or reviewed several side questlines together with our game designers (for instance Show Jumping Fever, South Hoof Storm and Rania and Sigry's Fishing Trip). It's still one of my favorite parts of the job! It's so much fun to write dialog for characters as different as the overly dramatic sir Tariq Modde, the earnest and caring Hugh, or Sigry during a heart-to-heart with her daughter.

But over the course of a typical week, I do a lot of other things that aren't writing actual game text. For example, I'm one of the people looking after our lore at our company: we do our best to keep track of established canon, and make sure new additions fit in. And if I or someone doesn't have the answer, someone at Star Stable will!

What about Marchenghast? How did it start for you?

Marchenghast was a different beast altogether (pun intended): on more narrative-heavy projects like that one, a narrative designer is usually involved from the get-go and up until release. In my case, I started working on the early lore and area concepts for Marchenghast in April last year! And I wrapped up writing the dialog for the last chapter of the story (= what will be released on April 29th and May 6th) as well as supporting our awesome translators just a few weeks ago, so all in all, Marchenghast has been one year of my life!

If you're curious about how we worked on the early phases (ideation and concepting), check out Stacy's September blog post: it was the foundation of everything we built, and all disciplines (including Art, Game Design, Narrative, among others) worked very tightly together to come up with all the rules of that world. Story, lore art direction and gameplay were created together in a collaborative way. Just be thankful I wasn't the one drawing those concept art pieces. Marchenghast would have been something if it had been the case…

What did that mean in practice for me, you ask? Writing loooooots of internal documentation that would hopefully inspire our artists, designers, animators, sound designers, etc. And also presenting that documentation, talking about emotions, characters and themes to my colleagues, so that they would turn those into a music piece, a clothing style for Margarete, pieces of castle wall or a glimmer lantern.

Our goal was for our beloved players to not only read about the lore in text and dialog, but ideally to experience them in all aspects of the game, graphics, audio and gameplay. Ideally, everything ties together, every asset tells a part of the story and everything makes sense in the world of Jorvik. The architecture of the castle, the Marchenghast coat of arms, the level of wear and tear, the colors of the witches' magic and the Blight, the statue in the castle and many more - these are the kinds of decisions narrative and art spent a lot of time on, and figured out together!

So you work a lot with lore. What can you tell us about that?

We started the Marchenghast project from what was established canon in the game and used that as the base of our ideation. Why did Luciana mention that part of the Marchenghast walls looked even older in the Jorvik gazette? Why is no one in Jorvik aware of Marchenghast? Why did someone believe the castle used to be owned by a family of Bavarian origin? Why was there light at night at one of the castle windows? 

In particular, we put a lot of effort in making sure our additions in terms of witches and magic were connected to the previous lore. If we were adding a new witch coven, how did they fit in the established witch canon in Jorvik? What did they have in common with Pi, the Vala, or the Shadow Witches? What made them different and why? What color should the Saltus witches' magic be, and why?

One more thing we focused a lot on when it comes to lore: we've tried to move away from a good-vs-evil portrayal of witches and nobles, and add some more nuance (and hopefully depth) to their respective backstories. You'll get to experience more of that in this second drop!

Are there some behind-the-scenes secrets that you can share with us?

Yes! As I mentioned in a recent video, one of our main inspirations were fairy tales ("Märchen" in German), and with that I mean the OG, dark and rather messed-up original fairy tales (look them up, you won't be disappointed!). The Brothers Grimm and Germanic folklore were wonderful sources for me, and I used them in all kinds of ways throughout the project: for instance, I named the beasts and fleshed out their lore based on Germanic spirits and beings. Can you find out which one each beast is named after, and what it implies about the tales surrounding each beast?

I also named certain key locations in the castle and the forest based on characters and events in the Grimm fairy tales: Gretel, old Hans, Trude's Hut, Hunter's Thicket. Even the Duke's first names are a nod to the Brothers Grimm's names. Another example: the "wandering seeds" are inspired by the well-known will-o'-the-wisps ("Irrlicht", literally "astray light" in German; the lights in the distance that cause you to wander in the forest and vanish forever).

Wait, wasn't Marchenghast released in February already? What's new in this second drop?

If you didn't catch it, take a look at Stacy's update in January for more details on the two drops.

In the first drop, we established the world, the two main areas, and the characters, but it was also very important to introduce the new gameplay features and explain how the story and daily activities worked (you know, how you need to complete daily activities for a few days to unlock the next part of the story). But we only got to tell the first part of the story of Margarete and Abigail (and Ilwedrisch!).

In this second drop, we get to focus on the story. We ride along with these 2 characters on their respective journeys, and see them struggle and change. For the team, the first drop wasn't always a smooth ride, and it was tough at times; however, for the second drop, we were able to make some changes in our production in order to have more time to do polished work. In particular, I hope you folks will get to see how much love we put in the environmental storytelling, the character development, the cutscenes, the dialog and the music, to name a few - we even got to flesh out some of the side characters.

And like in the first drop, completing daily activities will be a key part to unlocking the next chapter in the story; after all, it takes time to fully earn someone's trust, or to change long-established mindsets… let alone get sworn enemies to make peace. 

And yes, in this second drop you might get answers to some of the open mysteries of Marchenghast!

What did you have the most fun with? What are you proud of?

It's really hard to pick just one, so I'll mention a couple of things I enjoyed the most:

• Writing the dialogue: like in other media, writing means rewriting. Editing. Shortening. Getting other people to review and critique your work. There's a loooot of dialogue in Marchenghast, so not gonna lie, it took a big effort, but I'm super grateful for all the feedback I got from a few team members, and I hope you folks will enjoy playing those quests.

• Supporting our wonderful Character Art and Concept Art teams in designing our NPCs, in particular Margarete and Abigail. What exact time period are they from? What should be the dominant colors, and why? Making sure that Margarete's look was both noble and equestrian/active, stuff like that.

• I have a soft spot for everything audio, and I always love working with our amazing sound designers and seeing hearing them make magic out of words. Some of the things narrative and audio worked closely on: working with emotion and variation to design the voices of Margarete, Abigail and other characters, finding the right emotions and moods for the music, especially for the major story beats of the second drop. And a couple of weeks ago, Axel (Audio Director) and I even sat down and workshopped track names for the 2 Marchenghast playlists: Nobles and Witches! Even those should be an integral part of the lore, right?

Overall, Marchenghast is easily in my all-time top 3 of the work I'm the most proud of in my whole career, and it's not in 3rd place. As a Narrative designer, it's so moving (and also a bit nerve-wracking tbh) to see how passionate you folks are about the lore and characters of Jorvik, how it inspires your own creations, and how you correctly (most of the time :P) pick up on all the little clues and hints I/we plant in the environments, props, outfits and dialog. I just hope you love exploring this darker, more mature direction with us, and that you love playing it as much as I loved making it.

And who knows? Maybe we'll come back to Marchenghast soon. There's so much stuff we had to cut, connections to Jorvik and existing lore we didn't get to focus on. And clearly, peace is fragile in Marchenghast…

Thanks a lot for caring as much as we do!