The Alters: Branching Narrative Explained – IGN First

[DogOfViolence]

We are our choices. It may be a cliche, but it’s true. Our choices define us: where we go, what we do, who we meet, how we handle problems, and why we are, ultimately, who we are. Imagine all the key decisions of your life laid out before you. How many would have to change to turn you into a different person? Two? Three? Or just one, in the right place, at the right time? What choice would that be for you? And who would you have become if you’d chosen differently?


Those are the questions at the core of The Alters, a narrative survival game from 11 bit Studios, the team behind This War of Mine. In The Alters, you take on the role of Jan Dolski, a simple worker on a mining mission gone horribly wrong. Stranded and alone on a strange planet after his ship crashes, Jan must figure out a way home. But he can’t do it by himself. He’ll need the help of alters, alternative versions of himself who made different choices in life and have the skills and expertise Jan needs. But alters aren’t just another body and set of skills; they’re entirely different people with unique personalities, hopes, dreams, traumas, and ambitions. To get home, Jan will need to not only get along with his alters, but make some hard choices - and come to terms with some of the choices he made in the past.


To better understand The Alters and how this unique set-up affects the many branching story paths you’ll encounter as you play, we sat down with game director Tomasz Kisilewicz and lead designer Rafał Włosek. The interview that follows has been lightly edited and condensed for clarity.

IGN: One of the most interesting things about The Alters is, well, the alters themselves, and the branching narratives that are going to come out of the possible lives of Jan Dolski, but to understand the branches, I think we have to start with the tree. Can you tell us a little about Jan, and this predicament he finds himself in?

Tomasz Kisilewicz: So Jan, the main character of our game, he's got many regrets in his life, and he tends to ask himself this question, “what if?” “What if I'd made some different choices in the past? Where would I be right now?” So he's using this space mining mission that he's on as a chance to put his life on a different track, but unfortunately, things go south and he ends up all alone on this distant, desolate planet where, in order to survive and go back home, he needs to face even more tough choices, including the creation of the alters. But from that point on, the decisions he will have to make are entirely up to the players.


IGN: The idea of basing The Alters on different outcomes of decisions Jan regrets is really interesting. Can you talk about where that idea came from, a few of those decisions, and the alters they lead to? Are there any decisions Jan doesn’t regret that become an integral part of the game’s story?

Kisilewicz: When we were creating the life path of Jan and designing different decisions that shaped him into who he is in the game, we really wanted this to feel relatable. So we were gathering our own experiences internally in the team, asking ourselves, what is your what-if question, what is the thing maybe you regret in your life? And they can come from different places. It can be career-related or maybe relationship-related. Things like, “what if I didn't leave my hometown? Or what if I fought harder to save this relationship I had,” things like that. In the end, we really want every player to find something relatable to them. At least one of the choices that Jan had in his past, I hope will be something the players can relate to.

"We were gathering our own experiences internally in the team, asking ourselves, what is your what-if question, what is the thing maybe you regret in your life?"

IGN: Creating alternate versions of yourself to get more manpower and access to different skillsets is a neat idea, but these are also different people with different hopes, dreams, fears, and regrets. Can you talk about how those things affect these different versions of Jan, and how they might behave as a result?

Kisilewicz: We are bringing new alters to the base in order to solve the problems that Jan, the main Jan, wouldn't be able to solve on his own. So for example, we can bring the scientist Jan, who will be able to conduct research and create a technology that will allow us to move our base, and run away from the sun. And he solves our problem. But at the same time, we are bringing a new person to the crew with an entirely new personality. Jan's scientist is a very career-driven, ambitious alter. Soon he might start undermining our decisions as a leader. So while solving one problem, we are creating new ones. And in order to effectively manage our crew and find solutions for everything, we have to really understand who they are, what is their personality, what affects them, and successfully manage them.

IGN: Jan is obviously going to have to manage the relationships between himself and his alters, and probably going to have to intervene when problems arise. Can you talk about what that looks like? What are some of the things we’re going to have to manage here, and how do those decisions affect the outcome of the narrative?

Rafał Włosek: In order to get along with the alters well, we'll have to understand the emotions that they have and what people they become because of their life decisions. And the emotions are handled by a pretty sophisticated emotional system that is more complex than just they're feeling good or bad, and a single bar. And because of that, we can have emotions like frustration or rebellion. They may be amused by something or maybe stressed by something or saddened by something. And all those different emotions allow us to create different alters who act differently in different situations because then those emotions translate to the things they do. So they may rebel against the player or may help the player somehow, or maybe boost the morale of the crew. Or on the other hand, they may be so sad that they don't want to work anymore.


IGN: Clearly, keeping all of these different versions of Jan happy is going to be a big challenge. What happens when some of the alters aren’t happy or don’t have a good relationship with our Jan or the other alters? Can you talk about how that affects the narrative? What about when they are happy, or we’ve managed to build a productive relationship?

Włosek: If the alters are not happy, they're angry, sad, afraid, or they're in conflict with Jan or the other alters, they may influence the game on many different levels. They may try to rebel against the player. They will lower their efficiency. They will not want to work for the mission, but they will also influence the story of themselves, of their own storylines or the stories of the other alters.

Also, there's a lot of things going on on the emergent storytelling level. So if they're in a bad shape, they may start some narrative bits that will create a different gameplay experience. But let's not forget about the fact that if the alters are in good shape and they're happy and highly motivated, they will on the other hand help the player. They will help him in achieving his goals. It'll be easier for them to fix their problems, but they can also help the other alters with fixing their problems and dealing with their past and decisions.


IGN: One of the things that fascinates me about The Alters is the base itself, and it seems the decisions you make regarding how it is managed have the potential to have just as much impact on what can happen in the story as the other Jans do. Can you talk about that, and maybe give us some examples of how the base itself plays into what happens in the story?

Włosek: Base management is very important for many aspects of the game. First, it influences the economy part. Of course, this is pretty obvious, but also has to be maintained. If you don't maintain your base well, it'll deteriorate. There will be accidents. Those accidents will create emergent stories and will influence the general alter storylines or the main story. And finally, the bigger the base is, the more rapidly we can bring back home. And this is very important for Jan, for the people back on earth. So this is another way you can influence the narrative.

Base management is very important for many aspects of the game.

IGN: The root of any good story is conflict, and there are a lot of conflicts in The Alters. We’ve got to manage our relationships with the other Jans and we have to manage the base, but it also seems like we’re in a race against time because of how the star that the planet we’re on orbits. Does the amount of time we spend on this world affect the ways the narrative can play out? If we progress very quickly, do we get access to branches in the story we wouldn’t otherwise see? If we’re struggling and taking a long time to make progress, do certain paths become closed to us?

Kisilewicz: We want to spend time with our Alters. We need to invest time in our relationship because only then we will be able to uncover their stories and understand them fully, and with this crew that we understand, and that we know how to manage, we will be able to succeed in the mission.

Time is a very important resource in our game. Everything we do requires some time, whether it’s excavating the resources, or crafting stuff, or conducting the research, all of the tasks require some time. And that’s why we need the alters on board, because Jan won’t be able to make everything in time. He’s being chased by a giant rising star, so he’s got this ticking clock behind his back, but at the same time, we don’t want to rush things too much.


IGN: In the past, you’ve said that The Alters is “using a mix of classic and emergent” narrative and reflects how splitting the life of the main character opens up new paths for the story. Can you talk more about what that means, and how we’ll see that mix in the game specifically?

Kisilewicz: From the very beginning, we wanted to tell the story of Jan in a classic manner, but also create a game that is more open-ended and allows players more freedom in creating their own stories. So the narrative structure in our game consists of different layers. On top, we have this more classic narrative structure, which is a branching story of Jan landing on the planet and finding his way home. And it is a branching story with multiple different endings.

But underneath there is this second layer of the alter storylines, and it's up to the players what alters they create. It's not possible to have all the alters in a single playthrough. So when you replay the game, you will be able to create different alters and also within their storylines make different choices to shape their story in your own way. And underneath all of this, we have this giant layer of the emergent narrative that comes from the decisions you make. Economical decisions, strategic decisions, the way you handle your base, the way you treat your alters. It all affects them and can result in some unexpected outcomes, different reactions, different events, different mini-scenarios that can happen. In the end, we hope it all adds up to this unique experience of each player having their own unique playthrough.


IGN: You’ve talked about how The Alters is a spiritual successor to This War of Mine, which is really interesting given the drastic change in setting and genre. Can you talk about what you learned from This War of Mine, and the impact that had on The Alters in how the story plays out, or anywhere else?

Włosek: And there's also the topic of emergent gameplay. This is also something that showed up in our games for the first time in This War of Mine. In The Alters, we do the same thing. We use a lot of emergent narration, but in this game, we also connect that with a more classic approach to the narration, where we have a single storyline that is branching and we enforce this storyline with those emergent systems that make this story richer.

IGN: Is there any aspect of The Alters that players can’t see or isn’t immediately obvious that you’re particularly proud of, and hope players get something out of?

Włosek: There are a couple of mechanics in-game that I am proud of, but they're not easily visible at first glance. One of them is the emotional mechanic, which is pretty complicated. It consists of many different variables, and we don't show them as values or numbers, but more like adjectives that are floating around the alters. They have different sizes and those variables connect into even more sophisticated emotions.

And all of this makes it very hard for our analytical brain to process. But it's quite easy if you try to use your empathy to process. So the idea behind making this so complicated is not only to create different personalities for the alters that are very nuanced, but also to make the player use this proper part of the brain when they're trying to cope with alters.


The other thing would be the way we use the exploration. Of course, it is a tool to get a gameplay loop. You're going to go explore, look for the resources, go back to base, and face the problems with the alters, and so on. But it is quite important that we also wanted to use this exploration part to create a special environment for the player to actually think about all those decisions that the alters made and ultimately maybe create a space for them to think about their own decisions.

IGN: What are you most excited for players to experience in The Alters? Is there anything we haven’t covered that you’d like folks to know about?

Kisilewicz: We can’t wait for the players to meet the alters, learn their different stories, and, understand what made them who they are. In the end, we just hope that everyone will find something, and learn something about themselves through the alters.


Wishlist The Alters on Steam if you're interested to learn more.