Nightclubs, Gods And Romance: Inside The Unexpected Interactive Musical Game, ‘Chorus’

When Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein was first published in 1818, London’s Quarterly Review hated it. Describing it as horrible and disgusting, the reviewer was left ‘in doubt whether the head or the heart of the author was the most diseased’. Despite admitting that the writer responsible for the book had the power of conception and language, they felt that these skills would be better ‘employed in a happier direction to amuse or amend their fellow-creatures’.

Smaller independent games have not only toyed around with new methods of storytelling and gameplay but also created brand-new audiences.

Basically what this means is they thought Frankenstein was too weird for an audience. They wondered why the author couldn’t just do what other writers were doing and make readers smile instead of inflicting them with whatever this disturbing story was about. An audience already existed for fun, pleasant stories, so why take a chance on something so bizarre and strange? Who the hell wants to read about a reanimated monster searching for the meaning to life and love anyway?

Whenever someone creates a work of art, the inevitable question about its intended audience gets asked sooner or later, especially when it comes to money. When it concerns video games, this question is raised early and points a laser focus towards a proven track record of sales, a guaranteed audience and whether or not the thing you’ve poured your heart and soul into can fit comfortably within a known genre.

However, in recent years, this long-held tradition has started to break down and dissolve. Outside of the shelves of big annual titles that generate spreadsheets full of ironclad revenue, smaller independent games have not only toyed around with new methods of storytelling and gameplay but also created brand-new audiences. The kind of audiences that were already there, waiting for something entirely unique, but now have a clear path towards a type of art or medium of entertainment that may not have always appealed to them.

That’s where Chorus comes in.

Set in a modern world of urban fantasy, Chorus pulls together nightclubs, Greek gods, minotaurs and murder in an adventure game which is one of the first in an entirely new genre — the interactive musical.

Liam Esler, the game’s managing director, tells me how they approach explaining what Chorus actually is. “So much of game design is ‘We have this idea, we think the idea will work, but we need to find the right iteration of it that’s engaging’. People have to see it. It’s one thing to be like – it’s an adventure musical, which that term took months to work out. It’s very hard to describe it to people. If it’s a ‘musical video game’ it just sounds like a game that has music in it.

David Gaider, the creative director of Chorus, agrees. “It does have gameplay, so it’s not exactly a visual novel either. The publishers nod and go ‘Yes that makes sense, but we still don’t have any hard data’. They don’t just want a potential audience; they need hard numbers.”

Both directors have years of experience in the world of writing and producing role-playing games. Classic adventures like Star Wars: Knights Of The Old Republic, Dragon Age, Pillars Of Eternity and Baldur’s Gate bear their names. Yet with all this highly-respected gold on their collective resume, nothing is a lock when creating a new kind of video game.

Since there’s an apparent high level of risk involved when pitching something in an untested genre, it makes sense to throw caution to the wind and aim high. Shoot for the stars, and you’ll probably still hit the moon. The bonus of taking these chances is if they land with an audience, they land hard. A unique story executed in a refreshing way sticks to the human psyche like glue, whereas an iteration of something that has come before loses its flavour with every version. So in that respect, using music to traverse the strange and dangerous world of Chorus seems like it was meant to be.

Within this adventure where music is part of the gameplay and the songs are like boss battles, Gaider tells me about how the flow of a song can’t be sacrificed.  “You can’t just have the song play and it’s a really long cut-scene, you need something to do during the song. We talked about when you make choices during the song, what are those choices for? Are they just flavour? Is there a point to it? How long should we stay on those choices? Because if it’s too long, the flow of the song is interrupted. We didn’t want that. But if it’s too short, then we’d have to paraphrase the choices so they’re just a word and that felt a little too simplistic, so we’re trying to find a happy medium in there.”

Music is part of the gameplay, and the songs are like boss battles.

Gaider says they’re still trying to find it because Chorus is still in pre-production. In a quest to find that new audience, they’re crowdfunding the development of the game with a release target of 2021. Considering the size and scope of the role-playing games Gaider has written, this makes sense. There are no half-measures here, Chorus looks to be creating a world for a player to fall deeply into. With the help of storied composer Austin Wintory (Journey, Assassin’s Creed Syndicate) and the voice talent of Laura Bailey (Gears of War, Spider-Man, Critical Role) and Troy Baker (most games in existence), everyone involved is throwing their hat in the ring in a big way.

A new studio, called Summerfall, was built in Melbourne to create Chorus. Esler explains how the small development team in Australia will design the global project. “One of my specialties is running remote teams and our team is spread over several timezones. The core team will be based here, David in Canada and then Troy and Austin are in LA. We just had a 3am call with Laura this week.” Gaider chimes in to say he eventually plans to make things more local. “As the creative director, a lot of my interactions are going to be with Troy and Austin who are only one timezone away which is nice. But that’s only for a little while. The intention is for me to get a visa and get over here to Australia. I’ve done forty-five winters in Edmonton, so I think I’m good.”

Discovering new audiences can sometimes be an organic phenomenon. They grow, change shape and develop appetites. But a method to nudging these audiences in certain directions is simply a case of opening the right kind of door. One of the first events in the story of Chorus is a murder, which already strangely fits within the musical genre. “Musicals in general deal with very dark themes,” says Esler. “Like Dear Evan Hansen or Into The Woods, which is probably one of the most depressing musicals of all time. I think songs allow you to delve into some of those topics in ways that maybe you wouldn’t otherwise be able to.”

Back in 1818, the dark themes in Frankenstein may not have pleased some people but for the most part, Mary Shelley was outstanding in combining gothic horror, romantic literature and science fiction. Her work had a massive influence on all kinds of art by creating a milestone work of fiction which still resonates with audiences today.

But there wasn’t a proven path of success for Shelley and Frankenstein was a complete gamble. At the time, Jane Austen was all the rage in bookshops and Bram Stoker wouldn’t be writing about vampires for another eighty years. However, any hesitation from readers of Frankenstein was quickly overcome through great writing and the compelling journey of its characters, such as the tragic, guilt-ridden Victor Frankenstein, lost in a spiral dealt to him by his own hand.

Characters resonate with audiences long after genres of entertainment come and go. People remember more about the personalities that connect with them, more than the A-Z journey of a plot. The team at Summerfall Studios understand that memorable characters are another door to allow audiences into their world. Especially if they are fresh takes on old myths.

The fantasy world of Chorus involves certain gods from Greek mythology, who have survived into the modern era and largely devolved into shadows of their former selves. Apollo, the god of prophecy, has lost his way and wanders through the mortals while Pan, the goat god of the wild, revels in rumours and gossip for his own benefit. But perhaps the most striking change to these centuries-old characters is that of the Queen of the Underworld and wife of Hades, Persephone.

Gaider explains the journey to bring this particular god into the 21st century. “Sitting down for each of the major characters we had, we knew what they were classically. With Persephone, the inspiration for me was all the stories seemed to stop with her getting kidnapped and brought to Hades. Apparently, she’s the queen, and that’s all there is to her from that point. That seemed kind of sad, so maybe thousands of years later, she overthrows her husband and realises she doesn’t have to be his right hand. So our Persephone has clawed her way back to independence and now runs this nightclub called The Underworld. She’s one of the characters who is more aggressive and thinks they shouldn’t hide and need to assert themselves.”

“So I sit down with Ben (Benjamin Ee, Summerfall’s art director) and say what I’m thinking, which is I need to feel her strength and outrage. Her look needs to be that she rebelled against the other gods because Persephone is traditionally pictured as having these lustrous blonde curls and we thought — what if she just shaved them off one day and did a Britney?”.

The characters of Chorus will experience romance, but not the typical disposable kind.

If there’s one thing in video game storytelling which has proven to strengthen the connection between player and character, it’s the possibility of romance. Through dialogue options and careful plotting, the concept of romance options in a game has become more popular in recent times, to the extent that entire games are now built around it, rather than the other way around.

In many role-playing games, your character may get the chance to romance other members of your adventuring party. Conversation directions lead to attraction, and hopefully, a rewarding thread emerges where the connection between characters becomes stronger than the rest. It’s another example of memorable character interactions striking a chord louder than any plot elements or story setting.

In the past, the majority of romance options have been exactly that: optional. A superficial layer on top of the main questline to add spice or colour to a game but with no real, lasting ramifications which intertwine with the overall narrative. The characters of Chorus will experience romance, but not the typical disposable kind. It will affect events throughout the game and possibly the ending. This is something Gaider has always wanted to achieve in his career.

“When I was working at Bioware, the only time that really happened when we first did it in Baldur’s Gate II. There was a point in the plot where whoever you romanced got kidnapped by Bodhi who was a vampire. Then they got turned into a vampire, and when you caught up to Bodhi, you would encounter your love interest and have to kill them. You’d then have to go on a separate quest to bring them back to life.”

“Not only did that intersect with the main plot but it made the existence of the romance so much greater which gave more of a reason for it opposed to just saying nice things to them a lot. So for periods after that, I was thinking maybe we could do this, but you always ran up against teams who were like ‘well this isn’t a romance game’. The thing about having an indie game is you inherently exist to cater to a smaller, niche audience. So you can say, people who want romances is one of the core groups.”

In the end, despite artists and writers exploring new genres of entertainment, they’re never the ones directly responsible for creating new audiences. The audiences create themselves because they’re the ones who have always been there, waiting to be discovered. Their desires might be awakened by new ways of telling a story about a reanimated monster or a singer conversing with old gods, as it’s more about people realising what is personally important to them when it comes to art.

This is what Chorus seems to strive for. The concept of an interactive musical adventure is built to grab your interest immediately. But it also holds the potential for audiences to approach it gradually — to identify that it is either the musical half or narrative half of the game which compels them to play it. Whenever someone creates a work of art, like the team at Summerfall Studios, it will hopefully find an audience. When and if this happens, it inevitably means that the audience will be forced, by their own hand, to uncover new things about themselves.