Hello, everyone! Now that you've all had a chance to get hyped about the Sengoku Japan setting of the next Expeditions game, and we've given you a few morsels of information about the story and characters, it's time to bring you into the writer's room and give you a peek behind the scenes of writing Expeditions: Samurai.
The writing of every Expeditions game begins with the selection of a touch-stone character from history - a real person whose deeds will provide a jumping-off point for our protagonist and frame the challenges and opportunities that will face you, the player.
Once we had settled on Japan as a setting, we knew at once that William Adams would be our reference character, as his story is both compelling and (thanks to the Shogun book and series) well-known. However, William Adams differs from the people we've based previous games on (Hernán Cortés, Ragnarr Loðbrók, and Julius Caesar) in that he was not a conqueror: he was a simple ship's pilot and merchant sailor.
After the grand-scale strategy and politics of Expeditions: Rome, we wanted to return to the more character-focused adventure vibe of Expeditions: Viking. Thus, we set out to make Expeditions: Samurai a story about your character, Captain Flynn, and those who follow you on your journey.
An initial concern of ours was that we might fall into the "White Saviour" trope - a story where "enlightened" outsiders show up and save the day for locals portrayed as hapless and inferior. We wanted to avoid this not only because this is an offensively condescending cliché, but also because it is wildly inaccurate to the historical William Adams.
At the same time, an RPG needs to give the player meaningful decision power in order to be interesting: The real William Adams had no significant impact on the outcome of Japan's civil war, but in an Expeditions game, we always want you to feel like you can change history.
William Adams was granted a small territory when he was made hatamoto, which presented us with an opportunity to give you some real agency by giving you domain of a small village again, as you had in Viking. However, we also wanted this to feel properly earned. We always felt that being made Legatus in Rome and getting control of Legio Victrix happened too fast and felt too easy.
In Samurai, in the first act you are less than nothing: an untrustworthy outsider to the Japanese, and a dangerous heretic to the Jesuit mission. You spend this time fighting for your crew's survival and gaining allies. Then, in our second act, you catch the attention of powerful people and are invited into the political circles of Osaka. Only once you have proven your value will you earn the title of "hatamoto", and your choices will begin to affect those outside your close circle.
A major focus for us in writing Expeditions: Samurai was to give you tons of roleplaying choices. Rome's player dialogue for the most part painted within the lines of what you'd expect from the fantasy of being a Roman aristocrat. In Samurai, you are a pirate - sorry, a privateer - and that gives us a lot more freedom in what kinds of personalities we can offer you. Of course you can still be stoic, kind, or cruel, but this time you have more options for being a cheeky little shit, a manipulative bastard, or even a piously proselytizing Protestant who can't decide who disgusts you most, the Papists or the Pagans.
We also brought back character skills, not too dissimilar from Conquistador or Viking: skills have a variety of uses, which we will get into in the next dev diary about our character system, and one of their purposes is to unlock new dialogue options. We have a set of dialogue-focused skills (Persuasion, Authority, Manipulation, and Insight), but we've also gone out of our way to ensure that other skills such as Survival or Tinkering are occasionally checked in dialogue as well.
One thing this has allowed us to do is to use dialogue as a genuine gameplay element to solve quests, bridging the gap between gameplay and narrative. Many quests offer a diplomatic or deceptive solution, allowing you to use your skills to talk your way around a problem instead of using violence. One particular quest even allows you to challenge your foe to a drinking contest.
Interacting with your trusted companions hinges on our Approval system, which in Samurai is the deepest it's ever been. As in previous Expeditions games, companions will gain or lose approval based on what you say or do. This time, we wanted Approval to not be a purely narrative element, so hitting certain thresholds now grants bonuses to each companion - even if the threshold is negative! Our intention is to reward you for interacting with your crew, even if it's just to piss them off.
Companion approval can have major consequences, however. Leaving someone on Mutinous long enough may cause them to up and leave your party, or you may even find yourself fighting one of your companions to the death. On the other hand, getting a companion to Devoted long enough will cement them as your Friend. It's been important to us that friendship should be as meaningful a relationship as romance.
Speaking of romance, our goal is that romance in Samurai should feel important and grounded. Every companion character is romanceable, but each of them has specific sexual preferences. This was done to make them feel like real people that don't just exist entirely for the player's sake. We also wanted to make sure that you never feel like everyone is always jumping down your pants - every romance option is clearly marked, and successfully flirting with a companion does require that their approval is positive - otherwise they'll turn down your advances. But don't worry, a single failed flirt will not lock you out of a romance: We don't want our romances to feel like a guessing game where one wrong move is all it takes.
All of this is to say nothing of how co-op affects the story and character interactions. If both players decide to romance the same companion, things can quickly become competitive; and just to head you off at the pass: none of our companions are polyamorous.
Our chief goal throughout the writing of Expeditions: Samurai has been to create a deep narrative RPG with more roleplaying choices than ever, and a much greater focus on the player character and their companions.
Hopefully all this has made you excited to play the game and experience the story for yourself! We're sure we've left you with lots of thoughts and questions, so why not join our Discord server and jump into the discussions there?