Noblesse Oblige One Year Retrospective (Patreon)

Going to put this on baron tier like a lore post since it’s functionally somewhat similar and such.

So, it isn’t something I’ve talked about a ton, but you may have seen it around. Noblesse Oblige isn’t actually a new project, but one I started back in the summer of 2017. I posted the first three-ish versions back then, before IRL stuff made itself a huge pain. I had an explosion of my friend group late that summer that left me quite depressed, and just as I was recovering from that, someone close to me had serious health issues. And, just when -those- were starting to come under control, the pandemic happened. So, the game was on hiatus for a very long time.

In some ways, I regret the fact that I had to stop then, considering that the market for independent games was a lot less oversaturated then than it is now. If I had been able to keep working then, maybe the game would be done by now. I think the worst thing is also the loss of advertising venues; most of the places I frequented back then just don’t exist now, and my tolerance for social media is close to zero. I really miss the era of forums. But, on the flip side, my work between then and this year made me a better writer who can write high volumes much more quickly, and a lot of the assets I’ve used in the game didn’t even exist back then. So, on the whole, it’s a tradeoff that I don’t think was entirely for the worse, and moreover, it was pretty unavoidable. So, I take the positives from this and press on, overall. I can’t say that issues like this might never disrupt the game again, but at this point it’s something I’m much more fully engaged in than I was then, so I think it would take significantly more to stop work for a long period, etc.

Aside from that, I set out to make Noblesse Oblige because of two main things: (a) I saw that it was possible (mainly through Sierra Lee and The Last Sovereign) for one person with a modest budget to make a game that I personally enjoy more than most AAA games and (b) the fact that there just aren’t that many things out there that perfectly appeal to my tastes. I like to think I’m not the type of person who sets out to make his dream game; I think a more modest and realistic goal is making a game that I fully enjoy. I love TLS, and it was my strongest inspiration, but there are definitely some places where my tastes differ a bit, and for a long time it was the closest thing I'd played to a perfect game for me. It was probably the strength of my vision for the game that kept the ideas intact and still growing through the six years of hiatus, ultimately.

In that regard, if I had to characterize my creative style, I would say that it’s shaped foremost by the preference for a strong, competent protagonist who has a lot of agency. I also enjoy the exercise of power, and romance, as well as a degree of... richness and luxury in the background. I really enjoy creating -spectacle-, which is one reason I tend to lean into elaborate mapping and complex cutscenes.

I’m also pretty proud of what I’ve done with the combat in terms of making it interesting and engaging and sort of managing the complexity involved at the same time. There’s a lot to keep track of it, but I like to think that most of it makes sense. I also tend to be pretty transparent about things, in part because I personally see the world as something that can be understood and also because I personally find it more enjoyable to try to figure out how best to move pieces on a board than to try to figure out the rules to the game I’m trying to play. This is a personal preference, of course, and I understand those who prefer it the other way.

Where I feel I’m weakest tends to be in creating tension. I think this is one area where games as a form appeal to me, because gameplay can handle some of that element. I like to think I’ve also improved my writing of villains lately compared to the past. In a way, because I see many acts of evil as self-defeating, it’s easy to write villains who are weak or never truly manage to do much damage before they’re dealt with. I think I’ve gotten better about that. I still see most evil actions as self-defeating in the long term (even Machiavelli said you should avoid being hated at all costs). but appreciating the short-term benefits they can bring someone helps with making more compelling and effectual villains.

This is something I think I’ve done better in Noblesse than many of my past attempts at writing villains, or at least I hope so. Certainly, I’d like to think that Gerhardt managed to draw some blood, heh. Obviously we’ve yet to fight any of the really important people in full, so that aspect will take some time to be fully put to the test, but it’s something I’m getting more confident with respect to. I know my first attempt at writing Anselm was a bit less menacing than I’d hoped, but I tried to adjust for that a while back and have overall been happier with how he’s felt since then (I changed this back in v0.10). I try not to retroactively change scenes in major ways too often, but sometimes it’s just necessary.

Overall, though, after a year of making the game again (technically a bit more since I made several updates just for myself before I started doing releases again), I am happy with my output and progress. By the standards of the Hugo Awards, a novel is about 40k words or more, and each update these days is at least that. Of course, I don’t do length for length’s sake, but I am still proud of the length I achieve. In general, my philosophy has been “if doing something would legitimately make the game better, I’ll do my best to make it happen.” Sometimes that takes a lot of effort, but it does make me feel like I have no real regrets, and that’s a very good feeling. I’m doing what I can to make the best game I can. Overall, it’s a satisfying thing to pour a lot of effort into. At times, that the reach hasn’t grown more can be a little discouraging, but I’ve always been a person with a lot of long-term patience. I’m grateful for those who play the game and share their thoughts, and, of course, for their support in making it.

Incidentally, I’m about 34. I know some creators have concerns about their longevity or losing their inspiration around this point in life. For me, though... as John Paul Jones said (not really, but it’s a good quote =P), “I have not yet begun to fight.” I really do feel like I’m someone at the beginning of my creative career and I hope to continue making games for a long time to come. Since I’ve been asked a few times, I think it’s reasonable to say that Noblesse is pretty indicative of the kind of things I like to write: fantasy, character-driven, political, with a strong protagonist and fairly significant romance aspects and overall a focus on pragmatism and morality. I expect that essence to stay the same in future works. I’m really not the kind of person who minds being typecast, as long as the type I’m cast in is one I like. It would be fun to experiment with a more spatial battle system (think of Trails games, if you’re familiar with them) if I had the resources, but that would essentially be an added layer on top of the kind of combat we have in Noblesse. I’m very proud of the combat, and will likely build on similar systems in future projects.

Another question I’ve been asked a lot is how far we are into the game. My usual answer is “very roughly, maybe 20-30%,” but it really is hard to pin down. Another aspect of my creative style is that it’s very emergent. I basically never write anything out of order, mainly because I can’t; there’s too much chance that things would change before we reached that point. I have an overall sense of the plot and the major story points, but the specifics are filled out as we go along. Characters also like to decide they want to do something different than I had planned; honestly, a lot of very important people have basically written themselves into the story of their own accord. I count this as a strength of my writing, because I think it creates a lot of compelling things, but I need to leave room for it to happen, so my plans can’t be too rigid. This makes it very hard to guess in advance how much content a given section of the game will have. So, the answer on how long the game will be really is: we’ll have to see, haha.


I appreciate everyone who is along with me for that journey. So long as I tread this path, I intend to continue forward, relentlessly, and see it through to its end.