“Mor. Utopia"
Houses are covered with oily spots, and the air itself seems to be darkened. The earth groans from pain with lips of people infected with sandy mud. They can no longer help, except to alleviate the suffering with morphine, but morphine will come in handy to me. I am also infected. The gerbil prefers exclusively living fabrics, so I go without fear of a fresh corpse and cut out my heart, liver and kidneys. In my shelter, I will turn them into bloody porridge and mix them with healing herbs to eat this abomination and survive. The donor did not give consent, but his guts will serve as the highest goal. Perhaps thanks to him I will be able to save the city. Maybe not.
Yesterday Ice-Pick Lodge – Perhaps the last freemen thoughts in the Russian gaming industry – launched a campaign on Kikstarter. They will try to raise 250 thousand dollars on the remake of their very first, cult, work " Mor. Utopia ". And this means that the sand plague will be a feast again.
City of meanings
Ideas. They live on their own. Swim somewhere on the air and from time to time penetrate into us, controlling the mind. Who knows, perhaps they have their own views on our fates? “We constantly have new ideas – but they seem to voice their desires themselves,” admits in an interview Nikolai Dybovsky , The main ideologist Ice-Pick Lodge. – One says: “I came to you, but it’s too early for me to speak, I’ll sit in the corner, wait for”. Another: "I am too good for you, I will come later when you grow up". In general, no one is especially asking us ". It was the ideas that decided when the question arose about where to move on the “ice axes”.
► all life – theater. Thanks to the "mora", this phrase acquires an additional meaning.
The Dybovsky team had options: there is a large and expensive project " Cold ", There is a mysterious" Living word ", There is " Leviathan ". However, the choice fell on a remake " Mora ", And there is no rational explanation for this choice. I just really wanted to. “There is an acute sensation that“ Mor ”is needed (not only us, but in general), and it is needed right now – or the moment will be lost forever,” the author mysteriously declares.
► “Fear often accompanies uncertainty and ignorance. To build a passage of “playing with a problem” on these states is very natural, and fear organically accompanies them. And to scare people just in order to knock out an extra portion of adrenaline out of them, we do not love ".
It's hard to argue with this. Here and there, military conflicts erupt more and more often, people become angrier, a fever is raging in Africa, and the whole world seemed to froze in a painful expectation of something. Humanity is arranged so that a relatively calm time cannot last a long time. And against the backdrop of all this gloomy expectation, the survival simulator in extreme situations " Mor. Utopia »Looks murderously organic.
The expectation of something is that we experienced all twelve game days in the “sea” of 2005, and what we will probably experience in the updated version, which is unlikely to be released before two years. Three completely different heroes – a bachelor, a guruspic and impostor – have exactly twelve days to defeat a sandy ulcer enveloping the city of a veil of a pain area behind the district. And time flows rapidly.
► children. While adults play games, children solve problems.
Direct speech
On the nationality of the city
“If we recall the“ question of Pushkin ”by the same Dostoevsky, Russian uniqueness consists precisely in universality and polyphony, the ability to https://sister-site.org/magic-win/ understand and voice the features of any culture. Therefore, the city is the steppe, “central”, at the intersection between Asia and Europe, between archaic and futurism ”.
► "Mitos (art director Ice-Pick Lodge. – approx. Ed.) wants to greatly change the appearance of the city, but I do not want to change it at all. Let's see what comes of it ".
It is believed that Albert Camus’s novel “The Plague” is actually an allegorical story about the life of France during the fascist occupation. And, of course, "" Mor " – he is also not just. The history of death (or miraculous salvation?) A city, stuck somewhere at the junction of civilization and a mysterious steppe, to some extent the allusion to the nineties, which Nikolai never perceived as a time of gangster lawless. “This is a period when people have opportunities for creating the most incredible things, realities, worlds – although they used these opportunities very sadly,” he says. – And “Mor” is a game of what price people pay for a real dream, for the realization of a miracle ”.
“Mor. Utopia " – a work about difficult times. About a difficult choice. About humanity. About how dreams endure, crashing about the rocks of human indecision and prejudice. About Us.
► ICE-Pick Lodge promise a complex selection system. Alleviate the suffering of a patient with morphine or leave a medicine for yourself? Exchange the only revolver for a loaf of bread or still stay? Whom to save and to whom to give to die?
"The torment is our specialty"
“This will be a new interpretation,” Dybovsky answers my question about what we should expect from remake. – It's like a new film or performance staged according to the classical play. And it’s interesting for us to work again with this plot again! Last time we frankly did not. The script of impostors, for example, simply filled up. I understood what this line should be about, but I absolutely did not understand how to do it ".
ICE-Pick Lodge is well aware of the disadvantages of the original " Mora " – some players and reviewers at one time could not accept them. Some saw in complex and awkward battles the intriguing fraction of realism and charm, others – an inappropriate obstacle. Someone considered the annoying fences of the city an unsuccessful design decision, and someone-an allusion to the anatomy of the bull, in whose organs the city areas are named. There were not enough resources for all ideas, and the debut of the project played a role.
► “The appearance of the city: we perceive it as a real one, existing outside us, and we need to handle it respectfully”.
“According to the concept, the city was infected zonally, and its areas had to be clearly separated from each other, because the artificial intelligence of everything that moved was too primitive,” Rybovsky honestly explains. – Infected, armed and other specific inhabitants of patients or boarded -up quarters should not have penetrated into zones of other types – and there were no other ways to stop them, except for a banal fence. ". However, now the authors have more elegant ways to solve such problems.
Random events will also appear – so that you have more fun to travel to your two from one end of the city to another. But no system of quick movement between the houses of the city’s inhabitants is definitely expected. “Without this difficulty,“ Mor ”will no longer be itself,” explains Nikolai. – Our studio makes not attractions, but tormented ".
► surviving the "sea" is not easy. You need to eat, sleep, monitor the infection in your body and … try not to die in a dark alley from a gangster knife under the rib.
As well as in Silent Hill , To understand the problem and solve it – you must suffer. Just now these torment will be thoughtful, logical. And certainly "Mor" will not become easier. Dybovsky assured us separately in this.
Direct speech
About translation into other languages
“We now have an alpha-and several English friends who will help her. The correct translation into English will be its main task throughout the entire development period. And with other languages - here you will have to rely on the good conscience of localizers. We are calm for German, Wolfgang Valka will be engaged in it, with which we made The VOID (we have known as “Turgora”. – approx. Ed. ). He puts his whole soul into this – besides he is a writer. Recently released a big novel about ancient Rome ".
Difficult choice
The thought is banal, but otherwise it will not work: all the charm " Mora " – in his atmosphere. The city groans from pain, while the three dominant families are gnawing for power, rats run along the gloomy streets and roam in bloody rags infected, and the player, trying to understand what they want from him, survive and desperately saves his close associates, constantly swallowing antibiotics. In a surreal paper polyhedron, children start their frighteningly adult game, and in the massacre at the other end of the city the children of the earth, Odongi and butchers, merge bull blood in the ground, saturating its blood system. And at this time a new pantomime begins in the theater ..
► In the original "sea" in the theater building, a prophetic pantomime was put every night. What the theater will show us in the new season?
The authors will save the atmosphere at all costs. The same applies to the characters of heroes and many dialogs. “Now, passing the old game again and again, you understand – this dialogue can be left without changing the letter, it is real, from there; But this one needs to be completely rewritten: they say on the right topic, but not at all, we pissed it off, ”Dybovsky explains it.
► unlike a guspik and impostor, two other playable characters, Bachelor prefers to act from the position of logic. Odongi in this case is very, very illogical.
Direct speech
About the image of a woman
“Women are magical creatures who know a special magic of sensitivity and direct, non -verbal and inactive influence on circumstances. Women, like bees or silkworms, sometimes unconsciously (or sideways, setting themselves completely different tasks) create the same life -giving, nutritious atmosphere in which it becomes possible to create polyhedra ”.
► “… Women think that they lead men, but in fact they are guided by the Earth, the plague, the steppe, the city and other main characters of our game”.
But what seems to change is the style. Judging by the first screenshots, visually the "Mor" becomes like some kind of work about London of the XIX century. However, the “ice axes” are advised not to draw hasty conclusions-the visual part is still being discussed, and in the end, the game can be black and white in general. “The style in the“ sea ”cannot have any one core, conceptual idea (as in Limbo or Grim Fandango, for example),-Dybovsky shares his thoughts. – Rather, this is an attempt to find a point of ideal balance between documentary photorealism and stylization, a convention that emphasizes the irrationality of what is happening. When this point of equilibrium is found – again, it itself will begin to dictate the conditions and gives the principles by which one find will be rejected, even despite its steepness, and the other unconditionally accepted ”.
► Judging by the first gameplay roller and screenshots, we will find really global changes in some mechanics of the game. Convenient equipment, for example.
Direct speech
About music
Oh, this is a sore subject. Andriest Gandrabir and I have been looking for the musical concept of the old “Mora” for so long that now I can no longer imagine the game without it. On the other hand, we have been working with Vasily Kashnikov for so long and fruitfully (he joined while working on Turgor. – approx. Ed. ) that I just can’t help but give him a chance to make an alternative soundtrack. Andriesh is also ready to join the project. I believe that the situation will somehow be resolved by itself. So far, she plunges me into sorrow of a special kind – not from hopelessness, but from abundance of good options.
* * *
Above the first " Mor »For the most part, nine people worked, in peak moments – fourteen. No more than nineteen will work on the remake – at least, Nikolai Dybovsky calls this figure. Ice-Pick Lodge, as it were, separately emphasize their independence and "chamber". The fewer people – the more creativity, the higher the flight of fantasy.
The campaign on Kickstarter has been launched, at the time of the publication of this article, 106 thousand dollars have already been raised. Will they succeed? It depends on us in many ways. Everyone has a choice. And let each choice be right.
We will wait?
Perhaps the latest freethinkers from the world of Russian video games revive their very first creation. And since such creators simply cannot repeat themselves, in any case, something completely new awaits us. It's all about ideas that decide when to come, and when to leave.
Waiting rating: 100%