InSeason: A Letter to the Future,players are swept away on a journey over lush, rolling hills and fields of flowers that whisper faint memories in the player character’s ear. The world is dotted with plots of land that have been recently abandoned except for the personal items that have been left behind, and the goal is to document the lives of those still left as they teeter on the edge of an ending season. Though the world appears largely devoid of people, a handful is still left for the main character to discover. This becomes the crux of Scavengers Studio’s narrative in their new, compellingindie gamein which the characters don’t give the quests—the characters are the quest.
Game Rant spoke with creative director Kevin Sullivan to discuss the studio’s unique take on character development, andif players take their time and exploreSeason: A Letter to the Future, there is a world full of stories waiting to be told.
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In Season: A Letter to the Future, The Characters Are the Quest
It’s not uncommon for in-game missions to be. sometimes, a total slog. InFinal Fantasy 7: Crisis Core,players take Zack on a whopping 300 missionsthroughout various points in the game. Though they can be completed relatively quickly, those 300 missions are relatively insubstantial, and they don’t contribute in a large way to the narrative of the overall game. This may be an extreme example, but many other games follow a similar format: the player meets a character, the character gives the player a mission, the player completes said mission, and then the player is rewarded by the character. At the end of all of these missions is usually something in the way of money, valuable items, or some combination of both.Seasonasks the question, what if the goal was not a thing, but a person?
“We didn’t want it to feel too much like a job or like a task where we’re saying like, ‘oh, this region has this number of birds. Go take a picture of five birds because the game says that’s important.'”
This is exactly whatSeason: A Letter to the Futureachieves in its distinctive approach to player quests. From the beginning, it’s made clear to the player that they are going on an intrepid journey to capture as much as they can of the world outside the main character’s village. Rather than take the player’s hand and tug them through quest after quest, Scavengers allow one to discover theworld ofSeason: A Letter to the Futureat their own pace.
This is sometimes indeed in search of paraphernalia of the unknown world; players can encountermany secrets inSeason: A Letter to the Futurefrom wistful letters to loved ones and melancholic music boxes singing in the rain to a trophy on a cow farm for best moo. While these items help give the player a glimpse into the lives of those now gone, the real goal is still to seek out the stories of those who remain and what it is they’re leaving behind as the current season comes to a rapid close.
“I think one thing that helped a lot was just that we had this very soft context that, like, well I remember at some point one of the designers said ‘the characters don’t give you the quest—the characters are the quest.'”
By sending the player off on a quest to find people rather than items, players still feel a sense ofaccomplishment as they come across each unique personalitythat’s left behind. Additionally, in having the player and the player character coexist in the game, the main character acts as a mirror for the player to witness the humanity of the world around them.
That experience alone is more gratifying than finding a rare item or obtaining a sack of cash as there’s an unmeasurable value to aSeasoncharacter’s individual storythat can’t be so easily quantified, but the player feels it as they walk away with the new knowledge of someone’s life, what was important to them, and the invisible weight of what it is that’s being abandoned. Rare items lose their luster over time and money gets spent until there’s nothing left, but the stories told inSeason: A Letter to the Futurecan live on in the main character’s journal and in the hands of each player who picks it up.
Season: A Letter to the Futureis available to play now on Epic Games Store, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, and Steam. It is currently 20% off on Steam, PS4, and PS5.
