Originally published at: Author Interview: Brennan Gilpatrick, “God of Chaos” - Choice of Games LLC
Defy nature’s laws and avenge your slain pantheon! Humanity once feared and hated you, but now, awakened from a thousand-year slumber, you are their only hope. Will you liberate them from the tyrants who now rule over them, or let the world burn? God of Chaos is a 325,000-word interactive dark fantasy novel by Brennan Gilpatrick. It releases next Thursday, September 3rd, and you can wishlist it on Steam today! We sat down with Brennan to discuss the game.
You’re coming to Choice of Games with a lot of videogame-writing experience, most notably for the first-person shooter Payday 2. What was it like writing for an established franchise? How did you approach writing within the boundaries of an already-created property?
Payday 2 will always have a special place in my heart. My friends and I played that game to stay connected during the pandemic, so joining that narrative team not long after was incredibly exciting. It was also a big responsibility. The Payday franchise has a devoted and vocal fanbase; they’ll let you know if you get something wrong.
When writing for an established franchise, my first priority is to understand the characters. I study their personalities, histories, relationships, et cetera. Through this, I receive crucial insights about the storyworld. Personalities show me the story’s tone. Histories reveal the rules and mechanics of the setting. Relationships teach me what behaviors are “believable”. Characters are the first aspect of a story that audiences connect with, and Payday 2’s ensemble cast is particularly beloved. Once I felt I could write those characters, everything else came together.
In God of Chaos, you’ve created the potential for a massively powerful PC, which had to be a lot of fun! How—if at all!—did you constrain the PC’s power? And conversely, what’s your favorite wacky thing that the PC does with their power?
Writing the PC in God of Chaos was a blast! Whenever I read about different mythologies, the trickster deities always seem to have the most fun. I really wanted to capture that free-spirited mayhem here.
However, I knew the PC’s power couldn’t go totally unchecked. The stakes would feel nonexistent. My solution was not to nerf the PC, but to raise the danger of the world around them. Early in the story, an Alchemist faction develops an arcane crystal that can, among other things, kill a deity. When they conquer the land, the Alchemists integrate this crystal into their weapons, their machines, everything. The one thing that can harm the PC becomes woven into the very fabric of civilization. Boom! Stakes galore.
My favorite flex of the PC’s power happens near the middle of the story. During a ballroom fight scene, the player receives the opportunity to: A) present themself as a massive cosmic entity, B) take command of the gruesome undead soldiers present, or C) hypnotize the Alchemists into a group dance Beetlejuice-style. Each of these scenarios was so much fun to write, and I think this moment really captures the PC’s versatility. You can be epic, horrifying, and downright absurd; all are equally valid to the character.
There’s some fascinating worldbuilding in God of Chaos: you’ve got Fey creatures and divine magic on the one hand, and railroads and flying ships on the other. What’s the dynamic between magic and technology in this world?
The dynamic is combative to say the least. In the beginning of the story, Vildmara is a land of gods, monsters, and everything in between. The human race grows desperate for some sense of control, and they use technology to achieve it. In classic human fashion, they overstep. Vildmara becomes the Iron Shelter, an empire of machines and industry.
Technology in this world seeks to eradicate magic, and vice versa. As the last living god, the PC has a chance to decide how things play out. They can favor chaotic magic above all else, or embrace technology and the control it represents. Or, they can strive for balance. Or ignore the struggle entirely and just wing it. It’s up to them!
In addition to your extensive game-writing career, you’re also a novelist! Your debut novel Battery Life is set in a sci-fi dystopia–a very different world from the one in God of Chaos. Where did the seed of that story come from?
It’s so funny you bring this up! I was recently comparing Battery Life to God of Chaos, and while the settings are very different, I noticed some thematic overlap. Both stories concern the painful transformation of a world. In Battery Life, it’s our Earth plunging into a neon-soaked dystopia. In God of Chaos, it’s a fantasy world forced into an industrial revolution. I must have dramatic, world-shifting cataclysms on the mind. Wonder what that’s about!
I wrote Battery Life from a story that I outlined with my best friend since high school. It’s an amalgamation of all our favorite sci-fi concepts from books, movies and video games. It’s also a meditation on the unreliability of mentor figures; something I was working through while writing. The story involves a young woman whose remote space station crashes back to war-torn Earth, landing her in the path of a charismatic and untrustworthy scavenger. It’s a love letter to post-apocalyptic roadtrips. If people like God of Chaos, they should check it out!
What are you working on next?
Great question! I’m currently doing narrative design for an RPG project in its early stages. I can’t say too much about that yet, but the team is very talented, and I think we’ll have something cool to share soon!
Regarding personal projects: I have a few ideas for a new interactive fiction game, and I’m about to DM again for the first time in ages. I also have an outline for a dark romance horror novel, inspired by my strange late-night drives while living in LA. I’m very excited about all of these concepts; I just need to decide what to tackle next. Stay tuned!
