Brutal, Intimate, and Clever: The 'Core Aesthetics' Behind…

Wartorn is a roguelite real-time strategy game under development by Stray Kite Studios, a team co-founded by industry veteran Paul Hellquist. Hellquist boasts an impressive pedigree: over the last two decades, Hellquist has served as the creative director behind Borderlands 2, a lead designer for BioShock, and as a lead designer for SWAT 4, among other projects. With a background largely in first-person shooters, a roguelite strategy game is certainly a change of pace for the seasoned developer, but it's a project he appears to be more than equipped to tackle.

In a conversation with The Best War Games, Hellquist spoke about Wartorn and its development process. According to Hellquist, each game he works on tends to identify several major qualities to lean into, which are aesthetic rather than mechanical; these "Core Aesthetics" drive every decision behind the game, leading to a project that's aesthetically and thematically unified.

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By Jack Peachey

Wartorn's Three Core Aesthetics

"Core Aesthetics" refers to the feelings that developers aim to evoke in players, and in Wartorn's case, the chosen aesthetics include brutal, intimate, and clever. Each of these aesthetic qualities influences the game's direction in some way, such as how brutality influenced the game's often bleak narrative events or its gore and dismemberment features. Hellquist explains:

"Every game that I work on, we identify “Core Aesthetics” that we are trying to achieve. These are the emotions or feelings that we are trying to evoke in our players. For Wartorn, they are: Brutal, Intimate, and Clever. As you can see, these are not mechanics. We start with the aesthetics and then design mechanics that will lead to player behavior (dynamics) that result in players feeling these aesthetics.

Brutal influenced the tone of many of the narrative events and other pieces of the story, as well as leading to things like gore and dismemberment, and the idea of trying to help refugees find new hope.

Intimate comes through in the relationship between our heroes, Yara and Elani, as well as their connections and yearning for their family. It also influenced how close the camera is during battles, how many squads we allow you to control, and why we name all of the squads.

Clever leads to the elemental combos and rogue-lite “builds” entering into the design to allow players to feel like they are finding loopholes in the game design to increase their potency."

Using aesthetic traits in this way is a unique approach to game design, where many developers often opt to design around specific mechanics or features and then shape an aesthetic around them. By establishing a set of emotions that underpin each design decision, Wartorn has become an evocative real-time strategy game.

Wartorn’s Most Important Qualities to Get Right

As for a particular quality that was important to nail in Wartorn, Hellquist singled out the game's gory and visceral combat, which pairs with the intimacy players feel thanks to persistent squads that grow over time—only to be torn to bloody shreds at a moment's notice. He says:

"Getting the visceral combat that we loved from Myth: The Fallen Lords was high on my list. I also wanted more intimate combat where I could grow my squads and come to feel like they have been on the journey and grown with me.

After that, the next element to get right is marrying the overworld storytelling portion of the game to the battles. To be honest with you, we are still working on this with the help of our community. I don’t think we have fully achieved our goals here yet, but that is a focus for us during this Early Access period. We are doing something really different and are learning as we go."

Hellquist admits that Wartorn still has some work to do in another key area: having overworld events play a deeper role in shaping the game's battles. Still, there's plenty of time for the Early Access game to achieve its vision, and with an experienced developer like Hellquist at the helm, Wartorn is in good hands.

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