Welcome back! This month's dev blog entry is going to be a bit shorter - which makes for a good opportunity to take a dive into the game's setting, story and thematic focus. This is an area I think is best left mostly unexplored in this dev blog in favor of experiencing it firsthand, but I do want to give an idea of how Core Decay thinks about its story and its role within the game.
Note: This post goes over the story premise and initial events of Core Decay in some detail. If you would rather not have this spoiled ahead of time, I would recommend skipping this one!
State of the world
The year is 2089, and Earth is taking its final breath. Environmental disasters ravage the planet, resources are rapidly depleting, and many regions of the world are becoming entirely unlivable. In the 2050s, a disease known as the New Plague swept the globe, vastly reducing the world’s population before a cure was developed. Many governments have since broken down into city-states or smaller sovereign nations, and large national armies are almost extinct.
Corporations dominate the global landscape, but not through overt consumerism as was predicted in the early 2000s - excessive consumption is simply not possible for the vast majority of people. Rather, corporations stay in power through being the sole proprietors of global logistics, communication, large-scale power grids, food production, and similar fields. Basic resources are either produced and consumed on a highly local level, or distributed globally by a handful of large monopolies.
Decades of resource shortages have caused much of society to regress - personal cars, computers and similar luxuries are increasingly rare, as is cross-continental travel and instant communication. Scientific progress is taking place, but rarely in ways that benefit the general public. In many nations and city-states, authoritarianism is the only way to keep order. Most people live and work within the small area they were born.
It is in this dying world that the future shall rest on an unlikely savior…
Core Decay is an exploration of how society would respond to its ultimate end. It is a story of hubris, philosophy and self-preservation, and of the lengths we go to justify our actions in the face of inevitability. It is a story about the potential last moments of humanity, and of whether there is an intrinsic value to our continued existence.
Waxing philosophical
This genre of contemplative sci-fi, exemplified by works across many mediums such as Deus Ex, Prey, SOMA, Black Mirror, The Matrix, Contact, and many more, is rarely really about breaking new philosophical ground. If anything, the themes explored in these kind of stories are usually surface-level and derivative of existing thought, but this is not a bad thing!
While there is no doubt the game medium, as any other, can achieve loftier and more academic goals, it was never quite the intent of these particular titles. Rather, games such as Deus Ex convey armchair philosophy, and does so both intentionally and very well. These stories present a compelling setting and uses this as the context within which to explore themes that are really more about sociopolitical issues than about philosophy as such.
Deus Ex, for instance, covers many different philosophical concepts, almost to the point of being a Sophie's World of games. It offers a brief look across many interesting ideas, delving deep enough to illustrate why these thoughts are interesting, but brief enough to stay approachable. Deus Ex, at its core, is not about abstract philosophy at all - rather it revolves entirely around a singular question:
What is the best way to govern society?
This question is at the heart of Deus Ex, and begs further questions - what does "best" entail? Is the goal of society to ensure stability, to maximize happiness, to allow for the height of human expression? These are interesting questions, and yet the question is implicit. The player is encouraged to consider these things through interacting with the world and the people of the game, and also with themselves.
The key point here, though, is that all of this is digestible. I have seen some attempts to recreate this kind of experience where the premise has started out with "We need to explore some brand new philosophical idea" or "The story has to be really complex and brainy", and this misses the point a bit. That's not to say it can't be done or done well - but that was never the intent of games such as Deus Ex. Rather the setting and plot serve to popularize philosophical and sociopolitical concepts, acting as a soapbox through which all sorts of interesting ideas can be touched upon and briefly explored, whetting your appetite to dig deeper into the ideas outside of the game, while being just deep enough within the game to be captivating in their own right. This is a careful balance to strike, but being aware of this goal and direction is the first step.
The value of sentience
Core Decay, subsequently, takes a similar approach. The overarching narrative of the game revolves around a central theme - the value of sentience - while the world and the people within it adds context to exploring a wide range of philosophical ideas at a fundamental level.
A good way to illustrate this is looking closer at one aspect of this theme - specifically, the nature of sentience, an impossibly comprehensive concept. What does it mean to be alive? What makes you you? What does it mean to be human, and does it carry an intrinsic value? And more broadly, should humanity strive to continue to exist simply for the sake of it?
The key mistake I believe a lot of creative works make, is attempting to actually answer these questions in a definitive manner. This is the realm of actual philosophy, warranting a far more academic lens that is often self-defeating.
Rather, a better approach is to look at these questions from the point of view of those who ask them. Within the world of Core Decay, who is asking these questions? Why? What answers might they find based on their world views? Are their beliefs genuine or merely a framework to justify their actions?
This provides a compelling setting where the player does not engage with these themes in an academic sense, but simply talks to people, who may have different answers and different motivations to those answers. Some may have genuine ideological motivations, whereas others may be driven by self-preservation. Contextualizing these abstract themes through characterization is a hugely effective way to convey them in a more human way, and a way that can feel a lot more grounded.
Wait, what were we talking about?
Before moving on, I would also like to quickly address one other aspect of the particular style of storytelling seen in games such as Deus Ex - the stylistic approach to its delivery. In Deus Ex, it is not uncommon to strike up a conversation with someone on a practical matter, to then immediately jump into a full-minute monologue on some particular philosophical concept that would feel entirely out of place in a real-life conversation, then jump straight back into practicals.
This is a very intentional stylistic choice, and curiously works very well against the otherwise more grounded approach to storytelling. While not particularly realistic, it allows the game some leeway in quickly jumping into some philosophical exploration and then return to more character-driven commentary on these concepts.
This does require some suspension of disbelief, but I have found it to nonetheless be a good approach to walking that line between characterization and exposition, and Core Decay follows a similar approach.
Outside of this more stylistic approach to philosophical expression, characters are considered as people more so than vehicles for exposition. The latter does exist, but more so because of character motivations - it might for instance be in someone's best interest to distract you with irrelevant details to keep you from finding out the truth. Which brings use to another key point - people will lie to you, try to manipulate you, and use you towards their own ends. And the sooner you realize this, the sooner you will also realize that you can do the same.
In conclusion, the way Core Decay approaches its narrative, story and themes, is to begin with a central question and a central premise, and then ask these questions within the context of the world itself. It does not break new philosophical ground, but rather provides a soapbox to illustrate a variety of ideas from the viewpoints of a variety of people - culminating in one of six endings, reflecting your own views and thoughts and how they might compare to those around you.
So what's with Descartes?
The observant among you have likely noticed numerous ties to René Descartes throughout material showcasing the game, from scattered mentions of the shadowy Descartes Initiative to the use of Cartesian duality as a reoccurring visual motif. Indeed, the game opens with a famous statement of his:
“In order to seek truth, it is necessary once in the course of our life, to doubt, as far as possible, of all things.”
The exact ties to Cartesian philosophy will remain obscured for now, but I did want to make one point here in the context of what we have discussed so far in this post - very little of this is a direct analysis of or commentary on Descartes' models of thought.
Rather, the philosophy of René Descartes is used to illustrate themes of self-importance, of hubris, and of attaching intrinsic meaning to historical philosophy. Cartesian duality in many ways was a progenitor to many of the ideas discussed more in-depth throughout the game, but looking at it today is not hugely meaningful - which is exactly the point. To his adherents within Core Decay, the mythology of Descartes is more important than the philosophy itself, and uncovering why this is the case is a far more relevant theme.
Conclusion
While I have intentionally left out most concrete details on the story of Core Decay here, be assured that more information will continue to be shared over time! For now I mainly wanted to give some insight in how the game approaches narrative and storytelling - and of course as always I'm happy to answer any questions in the comments below!
