Approximately one year ago, we were building the foundations of what you can see now on the Kickstarter campaign - a vision of three new standalone Chronicles of Crime games called The Millennium Series. In these short articles, I want to share with you some of the most interesting moments of creation, from the development team’s point of view.

In the final part of our article, we travel to 2400 to meet our third protagonist - Kalia Lavel.

Three Faces of the World

2400 is definitely the most unique game from the whole Millennium Series. It plays and feels really different. It is because of the very special setting, quite far in the future, in which we could sail far away with all our crazy ideas! And we did!

Futuristic Paris is, perhaps surprisingly, not as nice as 1400 or 1900 Paris. Social inequalities escalated making part of the city an exclusive dream world. Covered by the giant dome, BelCor district is home to rich members of corporations ruling the entire country.

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On the other end of the scale are slum districts, ruled by gangs and fist-law. Kalia Lavel knows both worlds. She used to be a BelCor agent but left the organization and came back to the streets of Paris to help people solve crimes.

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This duality creates nice story opportunities but it is not the only thread we have to make the narratives richer. There’s a third realm you can step into. A very different one, a...

Cyberspace

Some locations in the game are located in cyberspace. It creates very interesting, new game dynamics. First of all, when Kalia enters cyberspace she does not look like her. All the other people we meet are only avatars as well. So we can never be sure who we are talking to and where this person is located in the real world!

Maybe this sweet and cute purple unicorn you just chatted with is a mob boss. And this three-headed dragon might be your grandma, seeking fun online. You never know!

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Matching avatars with characters in reality is one of the coolest aspects of investigation in the future and means you’ll need to be extra careful to ensure you have the right person when questioning suspects.

Implants

The second foundation of 2400 mechanics are implants. They are the continuation of the Special Action mechanism, from the Noir expansion., but they are very different.

First of all, we wanted to bind them with the setting so the price you pay for using implants is energy. Various implant actions consume some amount of the energy you have. When you run out of energy you have to go back home and recharge. So using implants is not an automatic thing. You have to be smart to decide when to use an implant.

Secondly, they are connected directly with the story you are playing. Kalia was stripped from her implants when she left BelCor. So usually, you start each scenario with one or two implants your current customer gave you to help solve the case. This way we are sure that the implants you have are really connected with the story and each of them has many possible purposes to use.

I don’t want to spoil things but some implants really make a difference in the experience. Let me just say that some of them will allow you to see different things in Virtual Reality scenes, scan characters you meet to check their medical conditions and implants, or detect lies on a go!

I look forward to you diving into the dark and surprising world of Paris in 2400.

Read Part One - A “Vision” for The Millennium Series

Read Part Two - Piecing Together Puzzles in The Millennium Series

Filip Miłuński
Creative Director
Lucky Duck Games