Based on Lee Youngdo’s fantasy series The Bird That Drinks Tears—novels being published in English for the first time this June—Project Windless and its big, beautiful bird berserker will offer an international audience an opportunity to explore a unique and celebrated fiction firsthand.
But for creative director and Krafton Montreal studio head Patrik Méthé, Project Windless is a different kind of opportunity: In an interview with PC Gamer, Méthé said it’s a chance to build a kind of world that his more than 10 years as game director of Far Cry and Rainbow Six games never offered.
As the lead developer on what will be the initial entry point for many into the fiction of The Bird That Drinks Tears—a setting he says is “mature, serious, and gritty” and filled with its own mysteries, philosophy, and history—Méthé said the project is both “a great honor” and “a huge responsibility” for Krafton Montreal.
“It comes with pressure, self-imposed pressure. We have the responsibility to introduce this world to a market that doesn’t know it,” Méthé said. “But we also need to understand and embrace that we’re not trying to replicate the novels.”
In focus groups both in and outside Korea, Méthé said fans who’ve read and loved the novels told the studio not to be afraid to embrace the fact they’re telling their own story.
“There are some specificities that work in the novel that in the game, if we stuck to them too closely, would hinder the overall experience. So that’s the balance we need to navigate. But it’s a huge honor to have this opportunity,” Méthé said.
The game’s place in the fiction, however, offers it the best of both worlds for achieving that balance. It’s set more than 1,000 years before the novels, following the life of a mythical champion of the rekon people—a race of giant, nomadic avian warriors. Because of its distance in time from the novel storyline, it allows the studio relatively free reign to explore stories suited to a videogame adaptation while staying anchored in the worldbuilding already established by the books.
Adapting The Bird That Drinks Tears, however, is a twofold opportunity for Méthé. He’s had a long career in game development, during which he worked as game director on Far Cry 3, 4, 5, and New Dawn, as well as Rainbow Six: Extraction. But it wasn’t until Project Windless that he was finally able to explore his decades-long fascination with fantasy as a game developer.
“Basically, Stranger Things is my life. I discovered tabletop RPGs in the 80s, and my life changed—drastically changed. I played like crazy,” Méthé said. “Even before joining the videogame industry, I had my own game store. Tabletop miniatures, collectible card games—I was crazy about it. And then I started in videogames, but I never had the opportunity to work on a medieval fantasy setting.”
While Méthé said getting his long-awaited chance to get his hands on a fantasy setting has been the most exciting thing about working on the project, he’s made an effort to underline how unique the opportunity is for everyone at Krafton Montreal, too.
“It’s something that people can take for granted, but because I have a long career I know it’s a rare opportunity to create something new: not with a follow-up, not with a sequel, not with a copy of something else—to have the means and the support to say, ‘You know what? Here’s the universe, create something new,'” Méthé said. “The team, it’s a mix of veterans and young people. Sometimes I tell them, ‘Guys, enjoy. It’s not often that it happens in a career.’ And we’re enjoying it a lot.”
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