Signet City: Playing the City
Welcome back, residents.
Today is the final of four newsletters on Signet City's influences, and some of the media and ideas that have helped shape the game. The previous posts can be found in full in the newsletter:
Reading the City - Literature and poetry
Visualizing the City - Film, comics and photography
Listening to the City - Music
This newsletter is Playing the City, and talks about a set of video games and tabletop games that have helped shaped the development of Signet City from when it was an idea, to where it is at today, past the halfway point of its development. This list is non-exhaustive, but a curated peek behind the curtain. We'll talk briefly about one here, but for the full list, be sure to sign up to the Jump Over the Age newsletter.
I don’t know if there is a series of games whose cities have fascinated me more than the Dishonored games. So richly layered, so elegantly stylized and so cleanly refracted from the capitals of empire of our own world, they feel deeper than any other simply in vibes alone. Dishonored and its sequels are deeply connected to Signet City, in the same way that Mass Effect 2 is connected to Citizen Sleeper 2 or In Other Waters to Metroid Prime: not in pure replication, but instead as a springboard towards my own creation.
If I were to choose a single element of Dishonored that feels like it sparked something in Signet City, it would be The Heart, an equaippable item that you only need squeeze to be fed a poetic whisper straight from the soul of Dunwall. You can point it at places or people, and it gives them all a sense of interiority or history. “The ale here is sweetened with honey to hide the taste of river brine,” the heart might hiss. I love the idea of pulling threads out from the city like this. Its a magic act repeated again in Death of the Outside with its rat whispers, and in Signet City it is the starting point of the idea of a whole game where you search for these reasonant moments in a decaying, layered city.
That's all for now - for the full post, be sure to sign up to the Jump Over the Age newsletter. and make sure to wishlist Signet City to find out all the latest news from Gareth on the game.