When This War of Mine first launched in 2014, it offered a raw perspective on war and its horrors. Developer 11 Bit Studios is releasing a series of downloadable content tales that will shift the focus to personal stories rather than just trying to eke out an anonymous living in a city under siege. The first episode, Father’s Promise, is out today for $2 on Steam, and players can also purchase a season pass for all future DLC for $5. Two other episodes are coming sometime in 2018.
Father’s Promise riffs on an audio drama by Polish author Łukasz Orbitowski, who’s also known as the Stephen King of Poland. He won the Polityka Passport Award in 2015 for literature, and frequently writes in horror, science fiction, and fantasy genres. The DLC follows Adam as he attempts to rescue his daughter and escape from the city.
“When I have read the story — and few other folks from 11 Bit — we were amazed by how Łukasz portrayed the dissonance between what you think is the challenge for a person to survive in war times and how to actually understand what is happening in the person’s soul,” said 11 Bit partnerships manager Pawel Miechowski. “That’s where the real challenge is. I’m talking about the protagonist of the Father’s Promise. Without major spoilers, the twist in the story is based on understanding, not on overcoming hardships, although it is a challenging experience.”
As a civilian, your role in This War of Mine isn’t to shoot enemies, grab loot, and claim glory. Your goal is survival. However, Father’s Promise and the other two episodes anchor players in a specific perspective so it’s not just about the mechanics of making it out of the war alive.
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“This very change of perspective takes us from more personal experience into more movie-like story and that allows us to penetrate wider field of emotions,” said Miechowski. “I’m not saying it’s a marriage of games and films, but something that surely connects both a bit in a form of drama story. It’s a story about a father, so a gamer may now experience this particular point of view.”
It’s not the first content update that 11 Bit has released for This War of Mine. When it was released for Xbox One and PlayStation 4 in 2016, The Little Ones expansion added a child survivor whom the player had to take care of. It also released a scenario editor, and players could share their custom creations on Steam.
