Interview: Aphelion's Dimitri Weideli and Florent Guillaume Talk Gameplay, Inspiration, and Emotion

3 weeks ago 13

Published Feb 19, 2026, 4:30 PM EST

Shane Limbaugh (He/Him) is a Contributor from the US. While he hasn't been writing about games for very long he has certainly been playing them. His degree in Game Design and Criticism let him better understand the fundamentals of the industry and the games themselves. There aren't many games he hasn't at least put hands on thanks to his time working at GameStop.

Aphelion, the newest game from DON'T NOD, is coming out sometime soon, and based on some early experiences, it feels like it'll be something good. This stealth-based game comes from the makers of Life is Strange and Jusant among many others, so it's a pretty experienced team.

I got an opportunity to sit down with Dimitri Weideli, Executive Producer, and Florent Guillaume, Creative Director, and ask them some questions about what I'd seen and played. Aphelion was a little different from their traditional games, so it was an interesting conversation about how they were bringing some of their design philosophy from past games to this one.

Both Dimitri Weideli and Florent Guillaume gave some spectacular answers that really dove into the meat and potatoes of what I was asking. It was an incredibly enjoyable conversation that you can read all about below. You can also check out my preview from the short time I got with Aphelion.

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Interview with Dimitri Weideli and Florent Guillaume

Q. So Aphelion is a little different from some of the other games you've put out, like Life is Strange, Jusant, things like that. They're much more artistic in their sort of art design. And I was kind of curious, what led you guys to use a more realistic design over the kind of more artistic design that your brand is known for?

Florent Guillaume — Yeah, sure. That's a great question. Arno is not here. So it would have been great for you to meet Arno, our Art Director. I think that he would have liked that question. What I can say, well, look, here, I have like, Tell Me Why behind me. And the team working on Aphelion is basically the team from Tell Me Why. Obviously, there's a mix and match because, you know, we have different teams. But still, it's a kind of human-sized company.

So people join from one project to another. So we have people from Life is Strange, from Jusant, so it's a pretty varied team, but still it's kind of Tell Me Why's team. And after working on Tell Me Why, which was a narrative branching experience, we wanted to do a game that was different.

First, in terms of setting, in terms of gameplay, in terms of story. We wanted to explore different things. And that's a great thing at DON'T NOD is that we have quite a lot of room to propose different experiences. So that was really inspiring for us. And I think in the team, we were all fans of sci-fi. And actually, for Tell Me Why, that's also something that we explored at the time, thinking about doing something sci-fi.

In the end, it was a different project. So we kept our intentions to say, okay, one day we will do a sci-fi game. And that was it for Aphelion. We got that chance to be able to propose this game. And doing a new world in the sci-fi genre and starting working on the story and on the setting, it's some kind of like near future kind of contemporary sci-fi, it's not like sci-fi fantasy. So we thought that in terms of aesthetics, you know, given the themes we were going to explore and the setting, the planet itself, and the technology and all that, we thought that it would be a great fit to go a bit more realistic, especially in terms of emotions with the characters.

Because the game, as you've seen, as you will see, playing the game is very centered on the characters. We only have two characters, Ariane and Thomas. This cast of main characters also has the planet itself, which is in between them. But still, it's pretty minimalistic in terms of cast. So we wanted to be as close as possible to the character. We had this new facial technology with MetaHuman that we could do performance capture for the first time.

So yeah, we thought it was a great fit to really feel connected to the characters.

Q. That's really interesting. The connection to characters is always really important, because a lot of games really struggle with sort of getting to that point where you're attached to the person you're playing, rather than them operating sort of as a camera for you to view the world through. Speaking of the story, you talked about the story being the focus and that there are only two main characters. What kind of difficulties arose from just having those two? I mean, they're not having tons of conversations. There aren't a lot of ways to get information across. So a lot of it seems to be like monologuing, which is an interesting take. So I was kind of curious about what sort of difficulties maybe came up from that, or if you guys had any interesting takes just on kind of the whole process.

Florent Guillaume — That's a great one. I think narratively, for sure, that was the most difficult aspect of the game. One of the challenges for sure for the whole team is how do you write a game like this, and how do you tell a story where everybody's alone? Even if we have two characters, there's Ariane on one end of the planet, and Thomas is somewhere else. They are trying to find one another, but still, they can't communicate.

So that was a very difficult, challenging thing to do. And last week, when we talked about the game, you saw these audio loads that Ariane recorded, and Thomas did just the same. So we found different ways to tell the story that are a bit less conventional in a way. You know, because we are so used to dialogue in games and, like in Tell Me Why, again we had a cast of, like, 20 characters always chatting. And we made this game with two people playing at the same time. You always had a sidekick, so always chatty-chatty.

So this game was going to be different. And what we wanted to drive, to let the player feel in this game, was also solitude and loneliness, because these characters are stranded and isolated on a newly discovered planet, which is far away from anything that could ever be of any help to them. So we wanted to convey this sense of being vulnerable, being lonely, being isolated. That was something really important. And also the fact that they're separated, they know that someone else is there, they just don't know where, but they know there is this presence.

So it was important for us to have. Let's say you play Ariane. It was important to feel that Thomas was alongside her, even if he's not there, you know, and the same with Thomas. So that's why there are these audio logs, because they are able to talk to one another, in a way, even if it's not synced, basically. But they can express what they feel, without just speaking out loud, which is something you want to avoid. And an interesting thing is that we knew there would be supernatural elements in the game, like this, what we call the underworld, this hidden world, basically, on this planet.

So there was a great opportunity there to, I talked about that, messages in a bottle when they send these communications. There are some phenomena on the planet that allow them to bounce back some of these messages to access some of these messages. And it was great for the narration, but also for players, because with that, we had hidden messages in the game that could be anywhere. And that's for you to explore and to find these messages and to try to find information on your companion. So that was really interesting, and it forced us to approach narration from a different angle.

Dimitri Weideli — Yeah, and also we had a lot of production, not issues, but guidelines to focus on. You have two characters, so it was always a good idea to say, okay, we just have two characters, not 10, 20, or 30, so you can push the quality higher. That's also why it went more into a realistic way. We realized, okay, we can do like two characters, so let's push the limits that we're used to.

But in the end, it was about how far we can push it and how we allow people to push it. The fact that you have two characters means you need to have two types of gameplay, and it was not always a struggle, but we have to focus and to think about how we can keep the game balanced between both of them, as well as production for the budgets. Like, okay, how far can we go for each one? If we want to add this feature, it's a bit difficult. The goal is to have something balanced between the two of them, but if we add this and this and this and this, in the end, even if you have two characters, it becomes like a huge game. So yeah, it was always a struggle to do that.

Q. Ah, yes, bloat, and managing the budget, the game developers' natural enemy. Speaking of gameplay, you talked about them being balanced and them being very different. That's not necessarily new, but for the kind of genre I think that this game is, it is pretty different. Most games are a growth of the gameplay that you have when you start, but it sounds like they are fundamentally not the same. So I was kind of curious about what led to that point? Like, was there just someone who was like, how weird would it be if he was just totally different, you know?

Florent Guillaume — Yeah, so what we wanted with the two characters was to evoke different emotions. We obviously didn't want both Ariane and Thomas to just be the same. We always want them to be unique. Both in terms of what they tell you, but also in terms of what you play, you know?

With this game, we wanted players to feel emotions, not with the dialogues, because we knew we didn't have much dialogue. So we wanted players to feel emotions with the gameplay, with the conditions the characters would go through. So yeah, it was important for us from the get-go that they would have a different experience. We just didn't know how far that would go. And also, Ariane is still the main character. So we knew that there wouldn't be 50-50 between the two. We knew that Ariane would be the main character and Thomas would be the side character, or the companion character, basically.

So we knew it wasn't equal in terms of proportion, which is important because it gives more weight to do something different with the second character. You don't just want to do the same thing, but less well. So we knew Thomas would be injured, and we knew part of Ariane's quest would be to find Thomas and save him. So that gave us an opportunity to explore different gameplay that we couldn't do with Ariane. Because Ariane had to be this very robust character, because she's facing so much. She has to climb, she has to traverse a planet that is very deadly, in a way. And there's also this enemy that she's facing all the time that hunts her. So her experience wouldn't allow for her to be injured, for her to be out of breath.

And Thomas allowed us to explore different mechanics that we just couldn't do with Ariane. And so we thought that it was great to have this with Thomas. So, in a linear story, it's not an open world; you don't choose which part of the planet you're going to at any time, so the player doesn't have this incentive to adapt their gameplay, to change rhythm, or whatever else. It's more directed. We knew that that was an opportunity to switch from one to the other, to also play with reason, play with the emotions of the player. That's why Thomas, in the end, is so different.

And Dimitri also talked about the production value, production difficulties, or constraints. And the great thing with Thomas is that his best gameplay is basically our past, our expertise, because we are doing more narrative exploration with Thomas. I'm exploring an environment, I can interact with the environment, I can try to make sense of a mystery that's there, and I'm trying to piece together. All this type of gameplay we are pretty familiar with, so it was less of a struggle for us to have that as well, and Arianne was really the new character with much more gameplay than we ever did.

We never did a stealth game with stealth gameplay, and the same for climbing. We did Jusant, but Jusant was also very different in terms of climbing, so we had this expertise, but still, we had a lot of new things to achieve, so Arianne was much more of a challenge for us, and Thomas was much more reassuring gameplay-wise, also in terms of production for us. We knew where we were going with Thomas, so that was interesting as well to balance out the production.

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Q. Awesome answer. Really in-depth. I love that. That's a really good look into kind of the background of it all. Now I got so wrapped up, I stopped looking at my questions. So you just talked about kind of how they're both important, but not created equally, of course. The game is relatively short, in the span of a story game. They usually sit at around 20 or so hours, but this one's only sitting at around 12, based on chapters and all that kind of stuff. And obviously, we talked a little bit about bloat and how you've got to make a game to fit the budget, and you've got to keep your people in line. Was there ever really a time when you really wanted it to be longer, where maybe it was closer to that 20-hour mark, and you were like, this just isn't going to happen, we're not going to make that finish line? Was that ever a problem that you ran into, or did you just know off the cuff, you were like, it's going to be direct, it's going to be shorter, and we're going to get you there?

Florent Guillaume — Yeah, so definitely, I would say that it was actually maybe the contrary. Because when you start writing, you start thinking of your game, projecting yourself into what it could be. You have a lot of ideas. So you start writing, you start giving ideas, and because we're talking about sci-fi, there are so many places that you would like to see, so many types of gameplay, so many types of things.

And I think the way we started was to write a story about these two characters, with also maybe more room for exploration. Like at some point, I remember we had different places you could go, and you could do it in a different order, which was great, but it kind of diluted the story, kind of gave more problems than we wanted. I think basically what we did was write a story, realizing that it would take probably 20 hours to write the story, and that the reason wouldn't be as good.

So we kind of like reduced the scope based on not so much the production constraint, but really, do we want the story to be that long? And is it worse for it to be that long? Because there's, you know, there's so much you can delay things without feeling empty or feeling it's been a bit long, and you're not even sure what I'm trying to achieve there. I think we did a lot of scoping with that, and just because we had too many ideas.

Like, we wanted to put, like a base underwater that could be sunk, and that you had to do this and that, and you're like, well, that's a lot, we probably have to fill, so, it's too much. So, okay. What do we cut? Not just to cut budget, or to cut time, but to do it better, which is great in itself, but also just to have a story that works for itself, that is consistent with itself, instead of just trying to add things on top of each other.

Dimitri Weideli — Yeah, as you said, it was like a mix of production and stories, ideas, and we had some playtests at the end, and for example, some of the scenes that were a bit longer, we decided to cut like five minutes here, 15 minutes there, in order to make it more relevant and concise, and yet to improve the feeling of the story and to be sure that, okay, it's not that long, or it's not too short. So it's always like a mix of everything to try to do the perfect game, but it's always difficult.

Florent Guillaume — Yeah, that's right. I mean, with the same game, we could have done, like, two more hours, and we did, at some point, have a lot more. But as Dimitri says, if it just feels too long and the rhythm is not good, then there's no point in just stretching something. It's better to add for a good reason; indeed, we actually removed some parts that were just redundant. They were good, but it was a bit of what I did just like half an hour before and what I will do like half an hour after, so it's a bit too redundant.

Q. Sometimes it's better to have something concise and to the point versus something that just reiterates the same thing over and over, so I definitely get that.

Florent Guillaume — If you're doing an open world, that's one thing, also because I mean the gameplay and the system behind it is meant to be repetitive, depending on your game, but it's totally fine to repeat something because you have a system behind it. But when you're talking about a narrative-driven experience, diluting the story is actually creating less quality. So you really want to focus on the story of your character, and their journey, for what feels right for what they have to do. Otherwise, you lose the narrative focus.

Q. 100%. It does depend on the kind of game you're making. But yeah, I think keeping it interesting and keeping it evolving as the game goes on is what's usually the most important. You did talk about some other ideas for other areas. So that leads me into this one. We only got to see and play Ariane's gameplay. But I was kind of curious about, from a level design perspective, a lot of the beginning seemed to be nothing but ice, mountains, and snow. Does that ever change? There are definitely some images on the Steam page of other environments. I'm kind of curious now, because does she ever at any point get past that? Like a new environment with new kinds of stakes and new kinds of difficulties.

Florent Guillaume — Yes, sure. And that's very important, because you need a novelty to re-ignite basically what you're doing. So yes, for sure. We'll just talk a little bit about the planet itself, because obviously, why we are showing the icy environment is because the planet is an ice planet. So that's the starting point for their journey. They are going to explore this planet, which is supposed to be covered in ice entirely. It's supposed to be like a snowball that they are going into. When they arrived there, they realized that for sure there's ice, like the planet is covered in a thick, well, not singular thick layer of ice, but many layers of ice, basically. And they arrived on top of the planet.

So imagine you're on this icy ball and you land on top of a glacier. But they realized that the planet is much warmer than they thought. So the ice is melting, the planet is melting, there's liquid water, there are rivers, and even a place where there's no ice anymore. And so the fantasy, in a way, of exploring a world that is covered in ice, is to ask the question, what's beneath the ice? It's like, okay, I'm on top of it, there's a mystery beneath this ice, I want to reveal what this mystery is.

So basically, the trajectory of our characters is coming from on top of the ice, and digging into the planet's different layers in order to arrive at the core of the planet, basically. You will have different environments, starting from the ice sheets to the melting rivers and melting glaciers going under the ice in the cave systems, and accessing later on in the game the surface of the planet. And even going below the surface, going inside the planet to discover what's at the core of the planet. So, you will have different environments. And each environment comes with, obviously, different mechanics, different dangers that you will have to avoid, and also different opportunities for your gameplay.

Dimitri Weideli — There's a B-roll video of a section of Thomas Gameplay. Without spoiling anything, you will see that he's at a base on the planet. And so you have a human technology area for investigating stuff, and it was also part of what Florent said before, in the idea to switch between Ariane and Thomas. It changed the gameplay, like doing something new with your hands. While you're playing and also seeing something new. Ariane's beginning of the game is more like in the icy world, but Thomas's will be more like in the melting area at the beginning. And when you switch characters, you also switch environments.

Florent Guillaume — Yeah, and that's something that we really played with, because you know that they are at different places and switching from one to another, without giving too much of the story, we can really play also with, or I recognize that, like I was there with Thomas, or I was there with Ariane. And so you can kind of... it's interesting to give, you know, to play with the mystery to try to understand, okay, I know he's somewhere, you know, don't know, with ice or without ice or with that feature that I've seen. So what does it mean? And you can see that feature. Right. So, it was really interesting for us to play like a puzzle with that, like trying to understand who is who, given the environment, also given the time of day, and all that. So that was really interesting.

Q. It's all very interesting. The sneak peek you guys gave was really, really intriguing. This isn't one of my questions, but I just want to compliment you, because I'm a little gamer nerd. When the Nemesis showed up, I felt like it was, and this is a problem I see in a lot of games where they have a design that doesn't necessarily dictate or sort of show how the thing works. But when that showed up, it became painstakingly obvious, especially when it flashed to her cracking the ground, and its reaction to that was very definitive. I was like, oh, wow, that's really impressive to have something so determined, like that it's based on sound and not sight or anything. So I just, I really wanted to compliment you guys because when that happened, I was wigging out in my own little world because it's just so rare to have.

Dimitri Weideli — Yeah, no, absolutely. Thank you so much.

Q. Okay, so back to the questions. You guys got to work with the ESA, which is very cool. But I'm sure their focus was primarily on, I call it space talk, the way that they talk, how they would say things, like, Ground Control to Major Tom, all that kind of nonsense. But was there anything that they contributed that maybe really structured the game, or something that maybe changed the way that you were thinking about doing something?

Florent Guillaume — Yeah, so talking about ESA (pronounced phonetically), you say ESA (pronounced by letter)? Yeah, I'm not sure about the pronunciation, but I would say ESA (phonetically). For us as space fans, you know, drawing up as kids and seeing ESA or NASA sending rockets, I mean, we've grown up with that. But I think we would never have imagined that we could do a game with them when we started, because we were looking for partners or consultants.

We ended up being able to work with them, so that was really instrumental in understanding the real aspect of sci-fi, and I would say the first thing that I was surprised with ESA was the fact that they were not only about science, which is great. But maybe one of the worries you can have as a developer, finding partners to work on something, is that their approach would maybe limit you in a way, because doing science fiction, not only science, but they totally get that.

They're also really big fans of sci-fi, which is really interesting, because you expect that you will only be talking about facts, about science, but the first thing they said is that we're all fans of sci-fi because there's no science without fiction, you know. So they really understood that it was important to base yourself on facts and then make it bigger, make it better. In the end, I think what they want is just for everyone to enjoy space. Because their objective is not just to do marketing, or just to place names everywhere in the game. That's not what they are after. What they are after is that everybody understands what space is and why we are connected to space.

And for us, it was great, because our story is about ecology. It's about thinking about what we are doing. We are on our own planet reflecting on all these notions. So that was really important to have done. And to answer your question, they helped us with many things, especially I would say with the technology, with an understanding of what it takes to go so far away in distance to that planet, what the stakes are.

I've read a comment or a question on the Discord event about the size of the ship being big for two astronauts. And of course, it's a big ship. But it's big not because there are two people inside, it's big because they have to come with so many materials, so many tools, with everything, basically, because when you go that far, you go for, I don't know, like a two-year travel to that planet and to come. It would be like a five to six-year mission.

And all these details, all this thinking wouldn't have been possible without ESA. So for sure, they really helped us. We talked about visiting space stations on the planet to scope things out, but it was really difficult. So to know that you're not having like a big stretch with reality, that was very important for us.

And something I would say as well about the Nemesis, because we talked about the Nemesis. Of course, the Nemesis is fiction. I mean, we haven't seen the Nemesis yet, maybe one day. But of course it's fiction. But they really gave us a lot of insight into questioning ourselves on what life is. What is life? As we know it on Earth, life can take many forms. And the fact that the nemesis is blind, the fact that it doesn't see, the fact that it can feel its environment, is really something that they gave us insight to think of life in a different way, not just like what you can see around you. Yeah, we were so grateful to have them.

Dimitri Weideli — And it was really like a consulting relationship, like we had questions, and they talked with us, but they didn't give us a stop or something like, oh, you do this, don't do this. They were really open-minded about it. And maybe it's because the game was already science fiction and space themed to be realistic, but a video game at the same time. It was maybe like a perfect match with them, but it was really like, let's talk about what could be possible. But yeah, very fluid.

Florent Guillaume — Always giving options instead of just saying no, this is not possible. Don't do it that way. That would have been difficult because we needed to have fun as well. That would have been a pity. We want to propose great things for players, and someone says no, this is not realistic, don't do that.

Dimitri Weideli — Maybe, for another example, the one thing they tell us, okay, you shouldn't do that, is like don't do military stuff with the brand of the ESA, because they really, like, Florent said, about research, about space, about discovering stuff, and especially we asked them what about the Nemesis because we don't have gun to fight it, and they were really like in that case, that's okay.

Because it's like if you go to Africa somewhere in the park, and you get attacked by a lion, if you don't come in with your gun, like I want to kill a lion, it's just like you walk, and you're on its territory, and it attacks you just to survive, in the end, it's the same for the Nemesis. In our story, we don't go to this planet in order to colonize it and to conquer it and to kill everybody on it; it's more like, okay, oh, crap, there is this monster or thing. How could we deal with it?

Q. This is such an interesting conversation. You guys keep wrapping me up. It's so much fun to listen to. I keep getting lost. Let's change gears a little here because we're kind of running on a clock, technically, but there are a couple of questions I really want to get to. You guys at DON'T NOD are really known for some pretty emotional games and emotional writing. A lot of the indie gaming community, for writing and emotional moments. So, for Aphelion, what really makes it emotional for you?

Florent Guillaume — I like this question. I like that because we're doing this job to tell stories. And I would say not in a way that we tell stories, we don't do games. No, we tell stories for players to experience, not to watch, and that's so important to us. And I was just this afternoon working with our composer on the scene, and there are so many moving moments in this game. Even to us, when we watch the game, and it's still in development, it's difficult not to cry at some point.

But yeah, so why is it emotional? Well, the game is about Ariane and Thomas. I said at the beginning, it's very minimalistic, two characters only, and they are a couple, basically. There are two people who love each other and who are separated by life in a way. So, obviously, their life is complex compared to ours. They're trying to save humanity. They're going through space, billions of kilometers away, and trying to do something great for the good of humanity.

So we talked about that in a video yesterday. In another interview with someone, they were asking what our inspirations for the story were, where it came from, and what I said is that with this one, we went with a lot of references that we love. You probably know them. The first one was Greek Mythology, Ariadne and Theseus, Ariane and Thomas. You know, the story with the labyrinth and the Minotaur. That's also part of the inspiration behind the story, because it's two characters who are divided basically by fate, by drama, so are Ariane and Thomas in the game.

And the other example I gave is Romeo and Juliet, because it's also a kind of love story where these two characters that can't be together, they can't find what want. They can't live the life that they want because there's something in between them. So the whole idea of the story was that these two characters are separated, they are isolated, and there's something in the middle. In our case, the something is the planet, the difficulty of crossing this planet, of finding the other. And the Nemesis, of course. So yeah, I think I gave you a few, a small idea of why you can be emotional. But it is a real drama, where the fate of our character depends on the fate of others, because they have to save everyone. So, I mean, that's quite the jump.

Q. Man, I would kill to be a fly on the wall in this writing room. We'll move in a little different direction, because if I don't, I'm going to just talk about writing. I'll talk about that for, like, four hours. You talked about this a little bit during the Q&A, but I really wanted to get into some more of it. The game is pretty high intensity right from the jump. You've crash-landed, things are happening, you don't have time to think, you have time to go, you have time to just do. I was wondering, does that intent sort of stay from mission to mission, or is it more like where you'll have those big sorts of high-intensity moments followed by some lower-intensity ones where you're just kind of like dealing with it, and then we're back. We're up, and we're down a lot. Is it more like that, or does it just stay like you are just gripping your chair the whole time, like you don't know what's going to happen next?

Florent Guillaume — It's not as frantic as that. You know, every time in games, it's always like a roller coaster. So, whenever there's a high, there will be a low, et cetera. It's always about reason, both in terms of gameplay and in terms of story. If you try to go over the top all the time, it's very hard to sustain being as high because people get exhausted from that. So the game is very diverse in terms of reasons. It's very important. And that's something that we always try, is to balance out things as you go.

So, it starts with a pretty high intensity because we really wanted to get players as soon as possible into the shoes of the characters, especially with Ariane waking up in this kind of everything that's falling apart spaceship. So we wanted people to feel immediately like, okay, I'm with her, I'm in her shoes, trying to survive and trying to get the stakes of what she's doing. So that was important. We skipped a little bit, a little part at the beginning. You haven't seen the full beginning yet because we skipped the intro, so as not to give away too much of the story. But you will see, there's like a small section at the beginning that you haven't seen.

But then, indeed, pretty intense. We go with Ariane and the roller coaster. But then, don't worry, there will be moments where it's much quieter. Something that we really wanted to do with this game, and we probably started with that, was the relationship between the planet and the scale of the planet. Because we are talking of two explorers, two tiny dots on this planet, tiny people facing an entire world. And the first concept art that we did was huge panoramas of this totally empty world.

Imagine you're alone on one planet. I mean, the planet is huge. So, what we really wanted was the idea of man versus wild, in a way. I am stranded on a deserted planet, not an island, but a planet. It's an even bigger matter. I can see huge landscapes in front of me, like every block of ice is, like a skyscraper, basically. So we really had this idea of facing immensity. So there will be moments where you are very small, and there's a long distance to cover.

And that's really great as well to feel. You will feel the danger as the beginning of the game is very high intensity, and then you will be walking for very long distances, and then the intensity picks up, et cetera. So that's really something we want to offer players to feel like they're exploring a planet. Like, okay, I'm fresh on this planet. What can I see beyond the horizon, beyond that rock, beyond that mountain that I see over there? So that's something we are trying to do with the horizon.

Q. Well, I like it, so I can't say it's bad. I definitely think you're doing a successful job there. I've got at least two more things I kind of wanted to cover. We did talk a little bit about The Nemesis. And having a sound-based enemy in a stealth game is more or less unique. I've seen it maybe a handful of times, but not to the prominent point where it's like a staple of the genre. Since most stealth games are primarily kind of focused on NPC pathing, having something that is solely based on sound is pretty interesting. Was that a choice that you came to relatively early on in development? Or was it something that sort of happened? Maybe it had eyes at one point, and you were like, hmm, we don't like those, let's just, no eyes, all sound.

Florent Guillaume — It was always like that. Ever since, we thought about needing this figure of adversity for the story and for the gameplay. I think for several reasons. First, because it was, as you say, original. Some games explore this, but way fewer games that play with stealth and not only like visual occlusion. So, that was something that we thought was unique and very interesting to explore.

And also to try to avoid games that we really love and that we add as references to, obviously, Alien Isolation is a great example. I love this game; many people in the team love that game too, and we didn't want to just do the same, so that's one reason. And talking about stealth, we've all played many stealth games, with always the same greatness and also the same pitfalls. Like waiting for a patrol to go and just trying to stay behind the cover is really something that we wanted to avoid.

We thought that with the mechanics that we had, climbing, the tools that you're using, the scanner or the Pathfinder, and all that, we had different new opportunities, not just to play with covers. So that was an interesting take to explore there. And also the fact that we are in space and sound, you know, plays a role as well, because we are not in a vacuum of space. Obviously, here, but the fact that Ariane has, you know, like a helmet, that's also a great thing to play with sound, because she can talk, she can make noise, it doesn't reveal our position, because she's in a bubble, basically. So that's practical, and we try to play with that notion.

It's not only sound, but it's like vibrations, movements that trigger the Nemesis, so some of the moves that you have, for example, climbing, will make noise. Of course, there's no way to avoid it. If you have to climb a wall, so that, the notion of risk, rewards, like, I know I will make a sound, I know I can be visible for some time, and I will have to play with that. I will have to play with the timing, I will have to play with the distance, to wait for the nemesis to go. To be able to make sound without being heard.

That was interesting, because sound is not only a notion of distance, it's also a notion of traveling, because a sound bounces basically off obstacles. So we are talking about occlusion, and we'll still also have an occlusion, sound occlusion, because if you're behind an obstacle, the sound will have less effect. So there were many notions that we could explore with game design. It was interesting to have another take, a different take at the stealth approach.

Q. Okay, so with only a handful of minutes left, I do have many more questions, but I'll stick with my last one.

I want to make it something fun, a little enjoyable, since we did get kind of emotional. In terms of space travel, where do you land on the life on other planets debate? Do you think that there are? I mean, obviously, the game has its own life, although it's probably a little different from what we might expect. But for you personally, do you think there is life on other planets in whatever form that might be? Or are we really so alone in the universe?

Florent Guillaume — I have my answer. Dimitri, do you want to get it?

Dimitri Weideli — Yeah, that's a good question. I don't really think about it, but I'm more like a scientific guy. So, in my studies, I'm an engineer, so I'm more into math and stuff like that. And to answer, I think yes, but not particularly. I don't think you will find another Dimitri on Mars or anything like that. But for sure. To have, like, I don't know, bacteria, stuff like this, anywhere else, it sounds like it makes sense. Just the idea of focusing everything on Earth and nothing on the rest sounds weird to me, but then what shape, what form, and so on? Yeah, I don't know. But I guess having bacteria or something like leaves somewhere makes sense.

Florent Guillaume — Yeah, well, I would say first, I think the game has a take on this question. So obviously, by the end of the game, I hope the game will allow players to reflect on that notion. Is there life outside our planet? If there is, what is it? And what's our relationship to it? So I think that's an answer there. And for my own answer, I think there's life everywhere.

Q. Great answers. All right. Thank you so much for doing this. I know we're almost out of time. I am super eager to get more time with the game and to finally get to play it whenever it's done, whenever that might be. This was such an interesting conversation. So I look forward to seeing where this goes, and hopefully I'll be hearing from you sometime soon for reviews or something.

Florent Guillaume — Yeah, thank you so much. Thanks a lot for your time. Those were great, great questions. And I hope you enjoyed the review that will come soon, maybe.