Thank you both! i appreciate it! those are my two favourites anyways, so I’m glad! really excited to replay it knowing that 
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Wonderful, I hope you enjoy!
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I’m drafting a retrospective blogpost about making Noblesse Oblige (the one I did about Creme was fun and I’d like to do it sooner than 3 years after release) and it’s reminding me of some of the feelings I have about it and how much fun I had writing! In the interest of not simply writing a post that’s pleading-face emoji all over the place, are there questions you have about the writing process or anything else to do with the game that you’d like to see me talk about?
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What was it like writing a story that took place in the same world but was so tonally different?
Why did you decide to write a game in which all the ROs were not merely flawed, but sinister at best and full of dark secrets? Was it difficult to write characters that were both ominous and appealing?
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Give us some insight into the development of this story! What were the unused elements and why this darker setting?
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And here is my six-month Noblesse Oblige retrospective! It includes how the writing process went, inspirations, structure thoughts, and some things I learned from making it. I hope you enjoy reading, and I’m happy to answer anything I missed, or any other burning (heh) questions!
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Thank you for sharing this!! It’s so cool to see what your gothic influences were – so much love for those picks, especially Jackson (not sure if this is a direct link, but I felt some Merricat DNA in Pascha). Were there any specific gothic motifs that you knew you wanted to incorporate while you were writing?
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No wonder I love this game so much - the list of inspirations is pretty much half “things I loved” and half “things I desperately want to read.” And it’s a special treat to read about the creative process that went into a work for which I feel such affection and connection.
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A lot of it was environmental atmosphere - storms, isolation, crashing waves, and crumbling grandeur. Making the estate very mazelike and forbidding (with some snug bits) helped with that. I think the major characters all have elements of some gothic archetypes. Pascha has some spooky-isolated tones (Merricat makes sense - entertainingly I don’t think I consciously drew on her when writing but they’re very much of a type), Danelak has elements of me prodding at the “devoted servant of the castle” figure, and Rys is a shameless example of a very specific trope I adore of “a flirty stranger turns up at a sinister mansion to upend things”. (Certain MCs would fit this too!)
Also I feel like you can’t have a massive mansion in this kind of story without at least the threat of a fire somewhere 
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Just finished reading. It was delightful! It was such a treat to return to the setting of Crème de la Crème. I completed Pascha’s route for my first playtrough.
Summary
I went for the path where they set the manor on fire and escape. I am not sure if there are any other ways to complete it. But it kinda felt like I was enabling Pascha in order to stay on his romance route? To me, it felt as if he might be bipolar(?) because even in the epilogue he still seemed kind of erratic. It just made me not feel very secure about Pascha’s and MC’s happily ever after because the MC seems like a bad influence for him.
I will try to do other romance routes next. But, honestly, I would probably feel bad leaving Pascha by himself ahah. He just seems so enigmatic, and I really like him as a character. I just want to hug him and proteccc him forever lol.
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There are.
I’m so pleased you enjoyed it, thank you so much! There are a variety of ways to finish the game, on good or bad terms with various characters - and you can finish the game close with Pascha while taking different actions than how you did it - though the way you did it is perfectly valid!
I didn’t write Pascha with specific conditions as understood/diagnosed in our world in mind (though of course folks are free to interpret as desired)… but they do have a lot going on, bless them. I’m very fond of them and always enjoyed writing their scenes!
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Is it possible to get an achievement guide for Noblesse like there is for RA? I’m strugglin’
Bought this game in the recent sale; it’s certainly very Brontesque, gothic and steamy, with striking characters. I’m content for it to remain a mystery whether it was Pascha or one of his chums that actually killed Frantisek, and also with the comparative lack of development for the countess; it’s realistic that some people don’t allow themselves to be known, and are just plain crabby rather than lumbered with a tragic backstory to part-excuse their crabbiness.
It does seem that there was a clear path to persuading Rys and Pascha not to Do Their Thing, but not one I could find for
talking Danelak out of running away from indentured servitude. Specifically, it doesn’t seem possible to convince them that accepting the just legal penalty for their crime is necessary and redemptive, if you believed Crime and Punishment. It does helps to have the love of an unbelievably saintly Russian prostitute, or in Danelak’s case, an MC who might be happy to spend five years on a miserable island with the one they love, rather than do for Danelak what will very possible ruin them finally.
Not everyone agrees with Crime and Punishment, but fixed-term indentured servitude isn’t chattel slavery. Danelak hasn’t been unjustly convicted; eight years is harsh, but presumably the same as another Jezhani commoner would get. They don’t seem to be in the kind of lifetime debt slavery where their labour would only pay the interest and never shift the principal. It is corruption that the countess can buy Danelak’s labour from her friend on the court, but going where they don’t want to, and doing what they don’t want to, are the same punishments that any prison labourer would face.
There are two good reasons for giving Danelak what they want and don’t deserve; one, their vulnerability to exploitation. Danelak claims to be ‘okay’ with nobles ‘taking advantage’ of her, but is she really? If she wasn’t, or isn’t, she may not have the right to complain, and almost certainly doesn’t practically have any legal protection from rape. Being compelled to labour without pay isn’t the same thing as being reduced to a non-human chattel; RL prisoners have human rights and Jezhani indentured criminals may have them, or may be as practically deprived of humanity as historic indentured persons were, for life, and more unacceptably unpersoned as modern jailbirds who may be viewed as criminals even after paying for their crimes. Dehumanisation is the more serious problem with servitude than getting stuck on a rock. Perhaps because it’s such dire subject, the game doesn’t go into this as much as it might, but were Danelak’s stories of grabby nobles in chapter 4 meant to suggest this issue?
The game leans on the second issue harder. Rather than a repentant Raskolnikov, Danelak is Dimitri Karamazov in his final chapter; their punishment isn’t redeeming them from the crime they haven’t accepted that they are being justly punished for, but rather understandably driving them insane. It isn’t unbelievable that Danelak can’t yet be brought to truly accept responsibility for harming others and themselves; getting them off the island is the most practical way to stop them doing something desperate, and end (until they get recaptured) the suffering that would affect a Danelak-loving MC more immediately and powerfully than a pure appreciation of justice. It is also ideal that the choice to help Danelak escape is as difficult and dramatic a choice as it should be, considerably less mad than burning the mansion down, which I could only justify by putting a marvellous lunatic such as Lise Khokhlakov (Karamazov Brothers again) in the MC spot.
Characters in Gothic and classic fiction are generally self-centred disasters who never learn from their mistakes even when they recognize them (exhibit A: Pascha), so it’s quite alright that the three stooges , while showing some change in behaviour, have barely begun to change deeply. The spirit of the Beggar’s Opera pervades COG; make the wrong choice a hundred times, and you’ll finally get the happy end you don’t deserve.
As always, I’m very sorry that this has probably all been gone over; what are the author’s thoughts on Crime and Punishment, indentured servitude, Danelak as a victim of rape, or not, and redemptive justice?
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@dinobatacorn There isn’t a formal achievement guide in the game, but I can probably help you out - which ones are causing you trouble?
@Ghostfriendly I really appreciate your thoughts, I love when people do a deep dive like this - it’s one of my favourite things! It’s been many years since I read Crime and Punishment, and I haven’t read The Brothers Karamazov, so I can’t speak to those references very eloquently I’m afraid. (Though I feel very flattered by and interested in the comparisons.)
Re Danelak’s punishment, while their sentence is one that the average Jezhani citizen would raise their eyebrows and say “that’s quite harsh” at rather than be intensely outraged by, I disagree that it’s just. Their crime (jewellery theft) wasn’t “victimless” but it was nonviolent and didn’t cause significant harm, particularly as the items were recovered; eight years of servitude without pay is not, I think, a proportionate response, and there was no restorative or rehabilitative aspect to it. That contributes to Danelak’s internal sense of bitterness and injustice about the situation, especially because at the point of Noblesse Oblige they’ve been living like this for a number of years and have reached a point where they can’t bear it anymore.
I could have included a path where the PC convinces Danelak to stay and live out their sentence with them, and I did start sketching it out at one point, but I found it difficult to envisage Danelak choosing that, even with the push of an intense romance or friendship. It felt equivalent to the idea of trying to persuade Rys to stop investigating their brother’s death - they’ve reached a crisis point where they can’t see any other options.
By contrast Pascha has an ending where the PC persuades them to stay and that felt more possible for the character, as Pascha does feel a huge amount of remorse about what happened with Frantisek - whatever exactly happened there - and I could picture that bringing some peace, and together the characters perhaps gaining some equilibrium in a bittersweet sort of way. With Danelak, an ending remaining together on the island felt more bitter than bittersweet, and it was hard to picture Danelak actually wanting to stay in a romance or friendship with someone who thought so strongly that they should remain there.
With all that in mind, it became a case of scope: I wanted to focus my attention more on endings where there was connection in some way with the characters, rather than disconnect. Perhaps with more time and energy (at the time, I had a lot on my plate) I might have expanded into paths like that.
Sexual violence and coercion isn’t something I explore in my games, and when I talk about it outside of the game, I’d like to be very precise: the situation isn’t one between equals, and at the same time when Danelak talks about it they do not consider it violence or coercion. For Danelak, it’s a chance for them to have some excitement, but others might well see it differently (as would I, if I came across someone in real life in an equivalent situation).
I don’t think any of the paths/endings are perfect: various are enjoyable, certainly in the short term. Danelak and the PC (if they go with them) probably have a decent chance of disappearing and making a go of it, if they can be smart about their money situation; they don’t loom large in the wider Jezhani police interest.
I could see characters growing and changing over time in various directions, after the game is over. None of them have it together by the end, particularly, but at the start all of them were at a point where they were very desperate for change: how things were going for them wasn’t sustainable. Really the true villains of the game are “the justice system and lack of mental healthcare provision” but that is not very exciting-sounding.
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Honestly, the biggest thing I’m struggling with is the injuries. I haven’t managed to get a single injury despite my best efforts and I’m not sure what I’m doing wrong.
That’s all reasonable, especially that Pascha would be more likely to change their mind about The Thing They Do, than Danelak or Rys.
Raskolnikov getting exiled to Siberia with his improbably saintly love interest in tow wasn’t very restorative or rehabilitative either; his redemption through repentance did lean on Christian ideas Danelak certainly can’t be blamed for not sharing. There is another idea that even unjust laws should be followed, especially by reformers of law, or else the whole concept of law breaks down, which I think holds true up to absolute moral unacceptables such as genocide or chattel slavery. Of course, Danelak would have a different perspective, and the story would be less convincing if they didn’t. Royal Affairs has a lot more great material about reforming an unjust system, including the impressively blatant corruption of the Prime Minister making money off every protester she sends to her lumber farm.
Punishments that undermine human dignity, like indentured servitude, are indeed not socially rehabilitative. It isn’t any good to ‘learn skills’ if ex-criminals are viewed as less than human, ie. if a particular effort isn’t made to emphasise their human rights. A decent prison ironically might have the spiritual counselling, legal support and supportive inmate society that Danelak doesn’t have on the island.
That’s fair enough about sexual violence; as with homophobia and sexism, they should have no place in the real world either. The endings as you say certainly aren’t perfect, but a happy ending can be just stopping the story in a moment of reasonable loving happiness, instead of having everyone hanged, raped, eaten, degraded or disappeared, before I recreate them as a COG MC. So I’m very glad you’ve written these rich and enjoyable games.
I get the “Cult Favorite” achievement popup but it does not register in the collected achievements list. This problem is unique to that achievement–I have earned other achievements and they registered correctly. I was playing on the omnibus in IOS.
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Hmm, I had a look in the code to check, and can’t see what would cause it. It’s worth sending a report to support (at) choiceofgames (dot) com I think. Thank you for flagging this up!
Hi, it’s me again, if you remember me from the Crème thread. I hope it’s okay if I write something about each game as I play it. 
This game was a delight to play. The atmosphere was masterfully crafted: somber and melancholic, but without being overly tragic and depressing. I really enjoyed it, although I’ve only played one route so far, so it may feel a bit different on other routes. I will definitely play other routes later as all the characters are very intriguing. I also loved the way you described the locations and weather – it really helped me to visualise the story which made the playthrough very immersive.
I chose to be part Jezhani, which was fun because I had to figure out what kind of name to use for my MC since I wanted it to make sense in-universe. So I named my MC Silviu Burke (the name is Romanian, and the surname is from dad since mum influenced the name choice, haha.) My Crème MC had questionable morals, so this time around I decided to be good, and everyone ended up liking Silviu, even Countess Iravan. But, of course, nobody liked him as much as his RO Danelak.
His romance was lovely! My favourite moment in this playthrough was when I chose that my MC wants freedom the most, so I thought that the perfect ending for him would be to leave Teteriuk Hall with Danelak and see the world as much as they can. And then after that I discovered Danelak’s secret and that he has to serve there for five more years?! Honestly, it really got to me, I was so worried for their future together! This revelation was very effective. Thankfully, the ending was great, just like I envisioned it. Their life will be difficult - being lower class and poor (and on the run), but at least they’re free and together. 
Another beautiful game from @HarrisPS, and I’m looking forward to play the next ones! 
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