Lost Records: Bloom and Rageis planned to release in early 2025, bringing with it the mysterious story of Swann and her former friends who are reuniting despite a 27-year-old promise to never see each other again. With many Don’t Nod Montreal developers having a history with the narrative adventure genre throughthe well-knownLife is Strangeseries, longtime fans and newcomers are going to see just how far these particular games have come in the last ten years through this new experience.
At Gamescom, Game Rant spoke with theLost Records: Bloom and Ragecreative directorMichel Koch, executive producer Luc Baghadoust, and producer Cathy Vincelli. Throughout the conversation, it was very clear that the team at Don’t Nod Montreal wantsLost Recordsto find a home with the fans of narrative adventures that have watched the studio thrive over the years. All the while, they hope fans enjoy a new, intriguing adventure with brand-new characters.This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.
Lost Records: Bloom and Rage as the Studio’s First Brand-New Narrative Adventure Game
Q: Narrative adventure games encounter a very common criticism that often they’re not interactive enough. Do you feel like withLost Records: Bloom and Rageand other recent games that this criticism is something the genre is moving away from?
Koch:Definitely. I mean, video games are always evolving, and I think that old creators out there are trying to challenge themselves to see, “OK, how can I do something new? What is the novelty? What are the new innovations and new gameplay in storytelling that we can bring to our games?”
We know that, on our side, we tried to innovate on some story paths and the dialogue. We still want to tell a story with interactive dialogue. That is some of the core of what we like to do, making you talk for the character and having choices. I think how that shows innovation is having variations, and I think in a story that’s branching, that’s still at the core for us of what’s important in those games.
We want to try to make these games in a way that feels more interactive. Yes, make it more like the game is reacting to what you do as opposed to navigating you more linearly, almost like an interactive movie.
Q: What lessons do you feel likeLost Records: Bloom and Ragetakes from Don’t Nod’s long history for these narrative adventure games?
Koch:Lost Recordsis our new narrative at Montreal, our new narrative adventure. It’sa new IP that we are building from scratch at Don’t Nod Montreal, published by Don’t Nod as well. Through that, we have the chance and are lucky to be able to build a new IP and new characters from scratch so that we can do whatever we want with them and make all the games in the franchise ourselves.
Of course, this is made by a lot of the teamfromLife is StrangeandLife is Strange 2. I was one of the game directors ofLife is Strange 1andLife is Strange 2, and Jean-Luc Cano, our writer, wrote all of those games before. This game shares a lot of the DNA of what we did before. We love adventure games, we love storytelling, and we love telling stories of characters. You will find everything like that again in this game. But we learned a lot from those previous games, so each time we’re trying to renew the genre, try to improve the interactivity, and improve the player urgency…That’s what we’re trying to do withLost Records: Bloom and Rage.
I say that the player will definitely feel at home because of their experience with Don’t Nod’s previous games, especiallyLife is Strangegames, but you will see that we have a lot of new mechanics where we try to make the game feel more reactive and more interactive.
Q: How often does the game balance the present day versus the flashbacks for the summer?
Baghadoust:I would say there will be like 20-25% of the game in the present timeline and the rest in the past. You don’t when you go - you see that in the demo - you don’t choose it when you go to one time or another. But the story will be like this: you start in the present, you dive back into these memories, we can start the discussion and go through these kinds of memories and the game will be structured around these moments. You come back to the present, you talk about the past, and you dive back into these memories.
Q: As a whole, can you talk about how the choices inLost Records: Bloom and Rageaffect the narrative’s direction?
Koch:There are different things we like about choices. We like short-term consequences, medium-term consequences,and long-term consequences. We’re working on it in the same way in this game. You’ll see a lot of variations first directing the scene, based on what we were talking about earlier, trying to get more reactive. What you’re feeling, who you’re talking to, the choices you make, and we don’t always have some small effects in the scene where people are reacting to what you’re looking at or saying something different because you had made a choice a few minutes before. This is really important for us to make the game feel real. How you play a scene would really make it feel reactive and organic.
Maybe you’ve seen the hearts when you have the actual effects, positive or negative. This is a much more medium and long-term thing that we are building all over the game. It’s really going to put you in the shoes of Swann as she’s trying to fit in, in this group, and she’s trying to navigate through this friendship. Like… “Do I try to please all of them? Or do I try to say what they want to hear, or do I say the truth? Do I stay true to myself? Maybe stay a bit in the back,” and all of this will advance through the game and create bonds with some of those choices. You cannot please everybody, so maybe some will be less close to you in the end than others will.
This will definitely affect a lot of the scenes coming next in the game, but especially the ending at the end of the summer of ‘95 as well as the endings in the present time based on how the reunion ends up. We also have some more classical choices, like inLife is Strangewhere some decisions would definitely have some trickle-down effects down the line. The major point in this game is that your choices made in both the present and the past will really reshape those stories, but at the end of the summer, the reason why they promise to never see each other again and even the content of the box that’s right in the present time… they will all be different based on all those choices.
Q: Can you talk a little bit about why you chose the heart icons and the growing plant icons for those specific choices?
Koch:We’ve played a lot of other games, like I loveBaldur’s Gate 3and I love watching the gamification of making sure that I looked at the fact that this character liked what I said, but this is what this other one liked. We were inspired by that, of course, but we wanted to make it a bit more organic. Something that I felt about weird withBaldur’s Gatewas that I was looking at the dialogue and then I had to look up somewhere else to see the reaction. We tried to do something where we could put the feedback directly to where you were already looking - at the dialogue options.
That’s why we have those hearts appearing right after we choose the dialogue where the dialogue was, and we don’t have to say exactly for whom the positive heart or the negative heart is because we wanted to put you more in the shoes of Swann. You’ll find you’re getting the feeling that you’ll say something good or something bad based on the reaction of the others, but you’re not completely sure of who really disliked that. For example, I could say something to you right now and you could dislike what I say, but I wouldn’t know. I could just feel like maybe I said something that would please them, but I wouldn’t know exactly who.
We wanted to do it this way, but you will definitely see that because, just like with the negative reaction of the others, some will get closer to you and will be nicer to you. We will continue to have the recap screens at the end of part one and part two, where will have a much more data-centric explanation of your walkthrough that you will be able to compare with the world and with your friends.
Q: This game seems to be leaning into this slightly paranormal mystery, so I was kind of curious how you went about crafting this mystery but also sort of realizing this paranormal vibe?
Koch:We always loved supernatural stories and their mystique. I mean, some of our favorite TV shows wereTwin PeaksorX-Files, especiallyTwin Peaks, and I thinkTwin Peaksis a strong reference for the kind of supernatural vibes we’re going for in this game. What I love inTwin Peaksis that it’s first a very good character-centric story and a good drama. It has some comedy and some dark humor, but then you have this magical place, magical vibes around different characters inTwin Peaksthat are creating some weird things all over the story.
We have the same kind of approach here. When we start the game, we know that we made a pact - a promise - 27 years ago, but the characters have already started to forget. We don’t remember exactly everything, and even this kind of memory… it feels a bit weird. It’s a bit… why did they forget everything? We don’t know at the beginning of the game, but as the game advances, you will see why and you saw some of that at the end of the first demo. There are those weird things that are happening around them, and it will get more and more important as we advance. And of course, we get linked to the end of the summer. I don’t want to say more than that.
Lost Records: Bloom and Rage Aims to Feature a Real World and Real People
Q: Swann is such a ’90s kid. What was the inspiration behind choosing the ’90s and dealing with all these truths and secrets in that time period inLost Records: Bloom and Rage?
Vincelli:Well, I think a lot of our creative team, among other team members, grew up in the ’90s. It’s definitely like a time when it was very formative for a lot of people, their dreams, and discovering who they are, trying to make friends. We pulled a lot from that. I think I can also say we’re pretty big fans of mystery and sci-fi, and it’s also what we’re trying to convey with the game as well. It wasn’t too hard to dig deep into our own nostalgia to put things intothe game that are very the ’90s vibe. There was research done. I mean, you’re able to tell by just being in this world, right? There was definitely research done to make sure things were historically accurate, but again, we’re trying to make the ’90s that is pulled from our own nostalgia.
Like people mentioned they had Troll dolls, so we said, “Yeah, we have to make one for the game.” You played the demo; you can feel the ’90s vibe in Swann’s room. There are some things in there that I had as a kid as well, so it wasn’t too hard to pull from my own experiences.
Q: Swann’s body type isn’t one commonly seen in video games, especially for a playable female lead, and that’s a great thing for body positivity. I was kind of wondering, when you’re looking at designing these sorts of characters, the ’90s, body archetypes and all that, what was your approach there?
Koch:I think we just wanted to create characters that felt real. That could have been real people who could have been our friends when we were a teenager or in high school. We looked at album pictures and pictures of our friends, like class pictures. And yeah, we looked at who we were. We all had different body types, and we definitely didn’t feel like supermodels. We were just normal teenagers with skin issues, who were badly clothed, and we had weird photos. We just wanted to create those characters and [have them] feel like real people we could have met in our teenage years.
Q: And what can you say about representation as a whole inLost Records: Bloom and Rage? What’s your goal there?
Vincelli:I think it ties back to what Michel was talking about: we just want our characters to be real and relatable. I think diversity is very important, not only in the team that’s building the game, but also in our cast of characters. Again, it all ties back to seeing the everyday people we knew back then or even now. I don’t think it’s a main selling point of the game that we’re trying to be diverse; to us, it’s just second nature to be inclusive in our games and have different people within it.
Koch:We also have a very diverse teamat the studio at Don’t Nod Montreal. We had the chance to build the studio almost from scratch when we moved to Canada four years ago, and we are very lucky that we have a team that is almost without gender disparity. We also have people across North America working with us, not only from Canada, but we also have people who moved from Mexico. Yeah, I think we are left with a very diverse team and they all brought their ideas toLost Records. We play the game often with the team making sure we are listening and getting suggestions.
Q: How did you go about designing the camcorder? What does it provide to the story, and how did you approach incorporating its use?
Vincelli:Choosing the camcorder, I think we wanted something dynamic. We wanted something still quintessentially ’90s, especially since it was…I feel like when camcorders came out, people were very excited about this new technology. It’s kind of the same thing for Swann; she’s also an aspiring videographer and director. In terms of using it as a gameplay mechanic, we use it to progress the gameplay, so filming specific things to create a memoir. When you make that memoir, you have a little home video with Swann’s voiceover, and it’ll allow you to get to know more about the world and her character. But then we also added things like dialogue choices that might only appear from filming certain things.
In the garage yousee in theLost Recordsdemo, for example, if you start filming a pizza, you’ll trigger a dialogue between the girls about “Is pizza good cold or not?” And that’s something you wouldn’t normally trigger unless you were filming that thing. Characters also might react to you filming them. There will also be puzzles tied to your camcorder, and then there are memoirs where some will be tied to achievements for things like filming birds, like a collection of birds at some point, and other things in the environment.
It’s a main gameplay tool, but it’s also something we want people to get creative with because you can do things like switch out a few shots to finish creating the memoir. We’re hoping people will share their creations because I think, for each of us, the way we use the camcorder is different. Like, Michel has a very cinematic eye or Luc’s very chaotic when he uses the camcorder. I do a lot of tracking shots when I’m using it, so it allows the players to get to know Swann better with the things that we’re asking them to film, but also gives them some creativity with them to kind of make the whole experience last longer.
Baghadoust:I don’t know about you, but I love the feeling of just using the camcorder wherever you are because there’s the gameplay paper trail with the memoirs. You see something you like? You still have a way to record it, and then you can look at it again. I love the fact that it’s just a tool to express yourself or a focus on something you really like, whether it’s a small animal or the fluorescent kind of stuff. I really like that freedom.
Q: When you make a new IP, obviously you have to convince the player that yours is worth playing. If you could talk directly to them and say this isLost Records: Bloom and Rageand this is why you should play it, what would you say?
Baghadoust:That’s a good question. That’s a really relevant question because it is a new IP, and we basically madeLife is StrangeandLife is Strange 2, and now, this new game…For us, it’s a continuation, but for a lot of players, they have no idea what Don’t Nod is. Lots of times, Square Enix would show theLife is Strangename and they’ll play the game. The big part is that we would love for them to know our game exists and of course, play it.
I would say that if you enjoyLife is Strange, like we said at first, it shares the same DNA and the same willingness to create the authenticity of real-life emotions. I think it’s in the craftsmanship from the whole team and all the attention to detail, really, that bring this to life. These details are what we like, you know? I’ve seen Michel working with the lighting artist for a long time just to adjust the details of the lighting in Swann’s room. This is more detail you don’t notice as a player, but I think we create this authenticity from that to the character’s voices, in everything. We love the attention to detail.
Ifplayers loveLost Recordsand theLife is Strangegames, I’m sure they will find many similarities.
Koch:I would say the same thing. I would say that if the player, if they likeLife is Strange,if they grew up withLife is Strange—like us, as we grew up working onLife is Strange—they should playLost Records: Bloom and Ragebecause they may also discover something close to the games that they already love. Now that we can also play as adults, we have some more reflections on what older characters will say about teenage characters. We’ll see that across generations now when the story we were telling back then was only about teenagers. We are telling stories from different points of view, and I really hope they will love Swann, Autumn, Nora, and Kat as much as they loved Max and Chloe or Sean and Daniel.
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