Welcome to the new dev diary for November. In the previous entry, we shared sketches of the work leading to the creation of the Extractor, the entity responsible for bringing a new Raider into existence. Since this moment is so pivotal to our lore, we’d like to dive deeper into this topic today, exploring what happens immediately after the Extraction: the birth, which marks the very first sequence in our story.
Who remembers the moment of their own birth? Likely no one, yet it must be a deeply traumatic process, a moment when something entirely new is brought into existence. Translating this trauma into the experience of a mind trapped in cold, unfeeling metal was our primary goal when conceptualizing the birth of a raider. We wanted the first impression to evoke that sense of shock, isolation and loneliness.
You awaken in the dark and realize you are no longer you. You are a machine. Your first movements are a test to see if you can adapt to this body or if you’re destined to be discarded, a failed experiment sent to a distant galaxy.
This is the first moment. But it doesn’t end there. We wanted the initial sense of isolation to give way to a growing unease about your circumstances. So we envisioned a transition from a solitary room to a larger chamber filled with stations where the process of birthing other Raiders is repeated over and over, endlessly replicated for others who, like you, have been plucked from unknown corners of the universe and reshaped into biological machines.
A hive of suffering stands before you. Around you are others like yourself, cast into a cruel and unforgiving galaxy where they must endure the rest of their days. To capture this atmosphere, we also placed emphasis on sound: the distant echoes of screams, reverberating through hollow vessels animated by minds severed from their original bodies. This is what we call the Traverse, the starting point of your journey through Hell Galaxy.
Thus, a raider is born: into pain, loneliness, and a brutal existence. In this new reality, only those who seize power can hope to dominate, knowing there is no way back. A raider’s first instinct is to leave the Traverse, because it is the only light at the end of the tunnel. But the Traverse is a tainted womb, beyond which lies no salvation, only the dangers of the Galaxy of Neterun.
And so we conclude this dev diary. We hope you’ve found this glimpse into our creative process intriguing and look forward to sharing more with you in the next entry.
Farewell, raiders!
