Realms Beyond: Ashes of the Fallen is one of the biggest cRPG disappointments in recent years. Not because it was bad, or anything like that. The reason it was a disaster is that it got put on ice permanently before it had a chance to wow anyone. It was a Kickstarter success, but unfortunately, the development petered out. It’s unclear as to why, but as game development goes, financial issues were probably one of the problems.
However, I got the opportunity to talk to the mysterious lead writer of the project, who wanted to remain anonymous. The person in question won’t be elaborating much on why Realms Beyond is currently dead in the water, seeing as the focus of the interview will be mainly on the writing.
So, welcome to an interview with the lead writer of Realms Beyond. It’s time to find out what this game was all about, and what kind of grand narrative we are sadly missing out on.
Let’s start with yourself. What are your writing skills? What projects have you worked on, and what do you usually write about for fun?
Hello! I write short stories and novels in the science fiction and fantasy genres, and currently work on strategy games and RPGs by small indie studios. Sadly, Realms Beyond is not the only canceled vaporware game I worked on. This is a more common fate for game projects than you think.
What kind of books, movies, games, and other media inspires you if we stick to the genre of the game?
My main literary inspiration is the classic sword & sorcery tradition of Robert E. Howard, Catherine Lucille Moore, and especially Clark Ashton Smith. Stories where the lands are exotic and the magic mysterious. Among games, my main inspirations are Arcanum, Morrowind, Thief, and Planescape Torment. I like games with exotic, evocative settings. Generic high fantasy doesn’t do much for me. A strange statement considering Realms Beyond was a high fantasy game, I know, but we were trying to do some interesting things with the setting that went beyond your average fantasy slop.
Were you the only writer on the project?
I was the lead writer responsible for the main questline and worldbuilding, but had several other writers working with me. Scott Hamm and Casey Hollingshead are two names you might recognize. They wrote a couple of side quests set in the early towns of the game. We also had a German writer who went by the nickname Laterna Magica, whom I put in charge of writing the lore of Kvenland. His style was very poetic and gave the game’s writing a unique voice, at least in the German version.
How did you collaborate with your team, in person or online?
We collaborated online. Most of the team lived in Germany, but not everyone was in the same area of the country, and some members were from other countries. Meeting in person wouldn’t have been feasible. Besides, we didn’t really have an office – everyone worked from their home office. Version control was done with Perforce and all the game files hosted on Peter’s own server.
Did any issues arise from working in that style?
We communicated in private developer channels on our official Discord. It worked pretty well, and none of us had any issues with the approach. It’s a pretty common approach among independent development studios whose members live in different parts of the world.
What did you think about the work dynamic within the team? How was the work culture?
It honestly worked pretty well. I communicated with the other team members regularly, and we had two interns working in level design who shared their progress with me once a week. Of course, as is usual in the business, deadlines weren’t always met, but I never had to deal with a lack of communication. Even if a deadline wasn’t met, I would get a progress report and give feedback on how the map was shaping up. Relations between team members were friendly and professional and conflicts were resolved amicably.
There was only one exception – a writer who was very stubborn about seeing his own ideas implemented, particularly about the druid faction. He repeatedly ignored my input on his quest design, which didn’t align with the overall worldbuilding. He didn’t respect my position of seniority as lead writer and sometimes approached Peter, the lead programmer and de-facto boss of the company, behind my back begging him to greenlight his ideas, then claimed “Peter said I could go ahead with this!” when that wasn’t true. Peter always told him to accept my revisions, but he lied about it to try and push his ideas through. He also had a bad relationship with the German writer, Laterna Magica, to the point where he refused to communicate with him at all and even badmouthed him in private conversations in an attempt to drive a rift between him and me.
Needless to say, that guy was let go as he became impossible to work with and kept disrupting the otherwise healthy team dynamics. He started out as a dedicated fan of the game and prolific poster on the official forums, and when he applied as a writer, we decided to give him a chance. I guess there’s a lesson about hiring overly excited community members in here.
Apart from this one exception, I was very happy about the dynamics within the team. The level designers did a great job and were quick to listen to feedback, the writers came up with interesting quests and delivered the dialog files promptly, and communication between all team members happened on a regular basis.
As the lead writer, what was your job beyond writing for the game? Did you delegate writing tasks to others?
Yes, I assigned tasks to the other writers like designing side quests for specific locations, writing the lore for specific regions, and working with level designers to give some background story to our dungeons. Interestingly enough, everyone was excited about writing for the different human cultures we had, but nobody was fighting over the elves and dwarves… in the end I had Laterna work on the elves and dwarves. He wasn’t too excited about it, but did a good job anyway. Since the homelands of both races weren’t going to be in the game anyway, we didn’t need to go into too much detail for them.
It’s kind of interesting to see that in a team with multiple writers, nobody was too keen on working with the generic fantasy races, and much more excited about the different human cultures we were creating. Dwarves are usually just short people who like mountains, and elves tall people who like forests. I don’t think they add anything to a setting, to be honest, and much prefer human-only settings. You can be a lot more creative with different human cultures, because elves and dwarves have certain expectations associated with them. You can’t stray too far from the classic image without people asking “Why make them dwarves if they have nothing in common with dwarves?”
What did you write for Realms Beyond?
I was responsible for the majority of the worldbuilding, with the exception of Kvenland, the elves, and the dwarves, all of which were handled by Laterna. He also helped me design the religion of Cormac, the kingdom most of the game was set in. I wrote the main questline as well as several sidequests and NPC dialogues.
Writing for a game must be different from writing a novel or short story. Tell me about some of these differences and what kind of limitations they entail. How did you work around these limitations?
Unlike novels and short stories, games are an interactive medium. You always have to consider the element of player choice. A linear quest that doesn’t give the player any choices has no place in a proper RPG. In a traditional story, you don’t have to think about alternate solutions. If there’s a shootout scene, there’s a shootout scene – that’s it. But in an RPG based on player choice, the player should have the option to avoid the shootout. Perhaps by stealth, perhaps by diplomacy, perhaps by simply approaching the goal through an area without enemies.
My approach to quest design was goal-based: instead of designing quests step by step, I designed them with the end goal in mind and then provided different ways to reach it. It doesn’t matter how you get there as long as you get there.
Working on quests was my favorite part of the job, as we had a powerful dialog toolset that allowed for plenty of character checks. Skill and attribute scores (both above and below a certain threshold), race, class, sex, equipment, inventory items, etc etc.
I designed scenarios where having a low stat could be of benefit (you were framed for a crime, but the deed required high strength to pull off, so if you had very low strength you could show your flabby noodle arms to convince the guards you didn’t do it), three different types of persuasion that all had different stat requirements (diplomacy, intimidation, seduction), presence or absence of equipment slots (a certain nobleman would positively notice female characters without footwear), using inventory objects to solve problems (using a rope to descend down a well), and many more.
I worked with other dialog writing engines before and after, but Realms Beyond’s was the most powerful I ever worked with. Every single status effect in the game could be checked by the dialog system, even temporary effects caused by spells.
How much of the writing for the game was finished?
Only about ten to twenty percent, I would say. It was planned to be a large game and we had only finished the first town completely. The main quest was still in its beginning stages. A few more months of development, and we could have polished these early areas enough to make for a decent Early Access release. Alas, certain managerial issues within the company prevented that.
What was the theme behind the setting like? What were the key features? What was the general background lore in Realms Beyond?
It was a traditional fantasy world in decline. The Kingdom of Cormac, where most of the game took place, was besieged by orcs in the west and plagued by heretical cults from within. There was a sense of melancholy about everything, a decaying world whose glory days were long behind it. The western areas of Cormac struggled with refugees running from the orcish invaders, a frontline where young recruits became jaded veterans, and the effect of constant raids on local agriculture. The central areas of the country were rife with corruption within church and nobility, but a few good men attempted to keep things in order. But I wouldn’t go so far as to call it grimdark, as there was still a light of hope and the player could achieve positive outcomes through his actions in the world.
Was there any research involved in the making of the world?
Most of the realms had a historical basis, so we did some research into making them feel like authentic fantasy versions of those cultures. For our version of northmen, we deliberately wanted to do something less overdone than vikings, so we based them on migration period Germanic tribes instead. The southern realms were based on ancient Greeks, Egyptians, and Mesopotamians. Naming conventions for characters were pretty much directly taken from historical prosopographies.
Funnily enough when we shared some of the lore, people thought we were ripping off Dragon Age because the realm of Pyrrhenia had an oracle named Andraste. I found that name in a list of Celtic gods, and thought it would fit well to an oracle. But apparently, the founder of the main religion in the Dragon Age world also has that name, so people thought we were just copying that character… I had no idea about that, and frankly am surprised people even noticed, because Dragon Age lore is fucking boring. All I remember about that game is the hordes of trash mobs it forced me to fight.
Was it hard to write the worldbuilding considering how much it covers and to make it coherent throughout?
It took some effort to keep it consistent, certainly. We used a central wiki hosted on our own website where we’d write comprehensive documents about every culture, their social order, their religion, their fashion, their institutions, etc. That helped us keep things well-organized, and whenever there was a question about what people of that area would say or do, we could consult these documents.
Did you find it satisfying to create your own world with your own rules?
Of course! Creating a world is fun, and working out the details of all the different cultures creates a lot of quest hooks we could work with. It’s one of my favorite parts of working on a game.
What was the most “outlandish” thing in the lore?
I don’t remember all the details, but generally, the lore tended to be more down to earth than outlandish, at least when it comes to high fantasy aspects. The southern realms, particularly Sabag-Hirar which was based on ancient Mesopotamia, were my favorite due to their exoticism. The entire realm had a very bronze age feel to it, both visually and culturally. The priesthood was the most powerful social class, slavery was common and widely accepted as a fact of life, and the capital city contained a vast garden watered by an extensive canal network.
I love bronze age cultures, and ancient Mesopotamia in particular, and there’s definitely a lack of those in most fantasy settings. I think that qualifies it as outlandish!
What was the main storyline, and how was it designed?
The main plot revolved around the Brotherhood of the Inner Flame which promised people liberation from the morally uptight state religion. In the beginning, the player would get involved with the cult and enticed to join its ranks, but as the main story progressed, the sinister motive behind the cult’s charity became apparent.
The player had a choice between joining the cult and overthrowing the existing order, or joining the church and preventing the revolutionaries from throwing the world into chaos. Initially the Brotherhood was designed to appear benevolent to the player, liberators who want to save the common people from an oppressive church… but the more the player learned about them, the more their true intentions became apparent. It was intended to be a surprising twist on the overplayed “good rebels vs evil church” trope we see so often in RPGs.
How would the quests outside the main quest be designed, fetch quest type of deal, or something more involved? Did the writing differ for these, compared to the main narrative?
In many cases, they were more complex than the main quest. Side quests allowed us a lot more freedom to tell complex stories and offer a wide range of player choice, because they stand alone or are small quest chains of two or three quests, whereas in the main quest, any choice could have ramifications way down the line. You can afford to make a complex side quest with 5 different outcomes, but you can’t do that for the main quest.
Were there different paths planned, as in the typical good or evil paths? Did that make the writing difficult?
There were two main paths through the game: either help the church against the Brotherhood of the Inner Flame, or help the Brotherhood overthrow the church. Within each faction there were also minor path differences (support the hardliners of your faction or the moderates), but the overall structure was one of two main paths.
While it’s of course a challenge to make sure player choices have a proper impact and are referenced by later quests, we made sure to work out the structure of each main quest path before writing the actual quests. That helped us keep everything in line and prevent scope creep in the main quest.
What was your favorite quest-line, and why?
Not exactly a questline, but I’m particularly fond of the side quests I designed for the realm of Sabag-Hirar, as they featured a lot of intricate scripting and plenty of player choice. One quest had you help out a wrongfully enslaved noblewoman whom you could meet at the slave market. To help her, you had to purchase her for yourself… but if you didn’t have enough money, she would be sold to another client within a timespan of 1-4 weeks. In that case, you had to ask the slave trader whom he sold her to, track down the client, and buy her from him, for a much higher price of course.
Another quest had you help a young woman fulfill her lifelong dream of becoming a priestess. She’s about to be married off in an arranged marriage, which would prevent her from joining the priesthood, but becoming a priestess requires a full year of serving as an acolyte, which her parents would never allow her to do as they want the marriage to happen. With a cleric in the party, the player could have performed an initiation ritual in which he faked several divine omens to give her an express route into the priesthood (because the gods willed it so)!
Another quest in that region involved a missing husband with a load of debt. The woman asks the player to help her track him down, because the debt collectors have been forcing her to work it off and she really misses her husband. When the player goes to search for the husband, it turns out he went to another city to run away from his debt, where he keeps wasting his money on booze and whores. You can try all your dialog skills on him, but ultimately the most you can convince him to do is give you enough silver to pay off his debts back home. No matter how hard you try, he’s not gonna go back… he’d rather keep boozing and whoring than return to his nagging wife.
What kind of characters would we get to meet during the game? Vagabonds, knights, scoundrels?
Plenty of different characters from different walks of life. The main quest featured plenty of corrupt and power-hungry characters who’d try to manipulate the player into doing their bidding, and a handful of honest men trying to do the right thing. As the story was focused on the conflict between a sinister cult and the church, most main quest characters belonged to one of these religious organizations: priests, bishops, holy warriors, etc.
Was Realms Beyond party based, and if so, did the companions have their own agenda and will? Would they depart, or become angry if you did things that went against their moral compass?
Realms Beyond was party based, and you would create your entire party from scratch. No pre-written companions were planned. All six characters were player-made. Considering the amount of content we had planned, it would have been unfeasible to add detailed companions to the mix, and when given the choice, I would rather spend my time designing another handful of side quests instead. For the amount of work it takes to write a full-fledged companion, you can write at least two or three lines of side quests instead, and from my perspective, those have a lot more value for the game.
Who was your favorite character, and why?
The man in the side quest I mentioned above, who skipped town to run from his wife and debt. Sometimes, we all want to do that, don’t we? And he just went and did it, the absolute mad lad.
What parts of the writing do you think the gaming public would have appreciated, or taken notice of?
Definitely the large amount of choices offered by quests, especially side quests. Main quests usually had only one or two outcomes, but different ways to approach them. Quest design wasn’t a strict A -> B -> C affair, but a more loosely goal-driven structure. For example, the player’s journal would merely tell him to retrieve item X or meet character Y. How you got there was up to you. In that regard, it was very much in the spirit of Fallout 1, which merely gave you three goals: get water chip, destroy military base, confront The Master. This is, I feel, the superior approach to quest design because it allows you to easily add or remove planned content based on development needs without screwing up too much. You could cut an entire questline and still be fine, because achieving the ultimate goal is not dependent on any of the steps you take towards it.
Also, the realistic down-to-earth vibe of the lore and characters would certainly have been noticed. We tried to build a believable fantasy world based on ancient and medieval mindsets, with no trace of modern thought anywhere to be found. Priests who genuinely believe in their divine mission, pragmatic beliefs about slavery, a feudal mindset when it comes to the structure of society, etc.
With the game being in permanent hibernation, should we write it off, or is there hope still?
Considering the messy ownership situation of the assets, I would say it’s dead Jim.
If Realms Beyond had been released, do you think it would have the potential to become a modern isometric RPG classic?
Yes, absolutely.
What kind of knowledge did you take with you from the project?
Realms Beyond taught me a lot about keeping the importance of organization and tempering your scope. Ultimately, Realms Beyond got stuck in development hell because we were too ambitious. When we had already spent most of our money and failed to find a publisher to fund the rest of the project, we decided to make a smaller spinoff adventure set in only a handful of locations (re-purposing a map one of our level designers had made) and release that for 10 bucks on Steam. Keeping the scope small for your first project is better than committing to something you can’t realistically finish.
Sadly that plan failed due to some internal strife. At least that smaller project could have seen the light of day, if not for the ownership issues that arose towards the end of the company’s life, with one of the two 50% owners blocking every decision we wanted to make, and dooming the game into eternal vaporware limbo.
How disappointed are you that we never get to enjoy the writing you and your team did?
Considering the creativity we put into our quests, very. The true strength of Realms Beyond was the quest design and its sheer variety. We experimented with soft time limits (where waiting too long wouldn’t fail the quest, but change one of its variables), disguises (where having certain clothing or armor equipped would help you impersonate someone), using spells during dialog (like charm or sleep), etc. It’s a shame that none of this will see the light of day.
Before ending the interview, do you have anything to add about the development, Realms Beyond in general, or maybe yourself?
I think I’ve said all there is to be said about Realms Beyond. All I would add is that while RB is dead, I am not, and you might see some of my quest design elsewhere soon 😉
I want to thank anonymous for giving me the time to answer my questions. While I found the interview interesting, it comes with a certain feeling of melancholy. I genuinely think this project would have made a very fine and memorable cRPG title if it only had a chance, but alas, it was not to be. Hopefully the writer takes some of these ideas he had for this game and transfers them to another project, so it wasn’t all for naught.
/Thomas
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