Hello, and welcome to the first of my new “Dev Diary” segment. This isn’t going to be a weekly thing, but it’s just some more in-depth looks at what goes into the process of planning and building Mythos — a sort of “why the hell do you do the shit you do, Nine?” section. If there’s any aspect of making the game you think would be nice to be expanded upon, let me know! I may make it the subject of another Dev Diary in the future!

Today, we’re talking about the flow of plot points and scenes within each chapter. As you may have noticed, the first two chapters of Mythos Book One flow differently from one another. In Chapter One, it was linear: No matter which choices you made, the same scenes would happen in the same order (leaving out the intimate scenes if you chose to note indulge in that sort of thing).

There was a bit of non-linearity in some of the conversation, though. Recall the conversation in Rain’s house, where you could ask about the Bureau, the Convocation, and so on. You could do the choices in whichever order you wanted, with the answers being slightly different depending on the order in which you asked. Additionally, if you didn’t ask about Lisa “moving on” before the other three, you lost your chance to ask that question at all. This was a bit of a precursor to what would come next.

In Chapter Two, the scenes became somewhat non-linear. Other than the planning of the Unity Gala Heist, which was technically a collection of scenes that played out in different ways, you had the phone conversations. You could choose to call Tara, Rain, or Sophia, which would trigger their scenes in whichever order you liked. Much like the Lisa “moving on” question in Chapter One, if you saved Tara for last, it didn’t sit too well with her. The Unity Gala is a different thing altogether, which I consider more a “consequences of your choices” moment than “different scenes”. Tomato, potato.

So now we’re coming to Chapter Three. You won’t be finding any story hints or spoilers here, but the structure of Chapter Three is going to be quite different from the structure of Chapter Two. Now that all the characters are introduced, Ky is taking the investigation into his or her own hands. There are certain scenes which happen at set points within the chapter (ie – events that happen during certain times on certain days), but you can investigate various things in whatever order you wish, with each of those things playing out slightly differently based on what you’ve already done and what time of day you do it. In addition, certain scenes that aren’t under your control may trigger at different times based on what you do.

Before there’s any worry here, Mythos isn’t becoming a “sandbox” game. All of the scenes in Chapter Three will still happen. Since you’re still gathering information on the mystery, I didn’t want to “penalize” players for information they may not know. For example, not choosing to investigate the murderer first won’t result in them skipping town and you never solving the mystery — you don’t have nearly enough information to make a good guess at who the murderer even is at this point!

There’s also the division of screen time between the main squad. Each of the investigation scenes will have you taking a different one of your allies along with you. This won’t be like the Unity Gala; the girl that goes along with you is based on what it is you’re investigating (otherwise Chapter Three will take me a freakin’ year to finish). There will also be a little extra time dedicated to the remaining love interests who haven’t had their… private moments, yet. There’s only two left, and I’m sure you’re all smart enough to figure out who they are.

Just a warning, however: After Chapter Three, the training wheels come off. There will be scenes and information in Chapter Four that you can miss entirely, if you’re not paying attention. All the choices in the first three chapters bear weight (did the Cat sleep on your couch after delivering the invitation? ;D ), but Chapter Four will be where you really need to narrow your focus on who you think may really be behind the dastardly deed. 

Let’s hope you don’t go chasing the wrong leads…

That’s all I got for this Dev Diary. I know I said last week that I’d be going over the “points” and what’s going on with them, but I’m saving that for a future installment. My goal is to have something go up every Tuesday, and next week we may see our first of the Chapter Three interviews. There’s some brooding dude with bad eyeliner kicking about in the parking lot, waiting to talk to Jessica Lee…

Keep the Legends Alive!

– Nine 💜