It all started with an idea, scrawled on a post-it note and put to one side. The nature of the idea, Supermassive Games creative director Steve Goss still refuses to tell me. But little did he know when he jotted it down some ten years ago, the idea would become a key narrative pillar in a very special partnership. More specifically, it's the studio's first ever collaborative project: The Casting of Frank Stone, an upcoming horror game set in the world of Dead By Daylight.
"As a writer, you kind of want three or four pillars to hold on to," Goss explains of his holistic process. "There is a conceit within The Casting of Frank Stone's story - something that was on a post-it note for a long time. But it's only a conceit. It's an idea. None of the thematic narrative existed before we started work on Frank Stone." Just a conceit, sure, but an adaptable one. Whatever it is, it found a home in none other than Behaviour Interactive's Dead by Daylight universe, proving that there's more similarities between these two studios than first meets the eye.
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On paper, the two developers might not sound like compatible bedfellows at all. The Casting of Frank Stone is a cinematic narrative horror game, featuring an ensemble cast whose lives hang in the balance as the player makes butterfly effect choices, ultimately deciding each character's fate. It sounds like a classic Supermassive game in the vein of Until Dawn, The Dark Pictures Anthology, or The Quarry. Conversely, Dead By Daylight is an online multiplayer horror game where the story plays second fiddle to a strategic, bloodsoaked loop of cat-and-mouse.
But this meeting of worlds is exactly what Behaviour Interactive's Mathieu Côté, game director of Dead By Daylight, wanted when he and Goss began discussions in earnest. That's precisely what The Casting of Frank Stone is: "a deep dive into the lore and aspects of Dead by Daylight that perhaps have not always surfaced in the core game," says Goss.
"Another facet was the idea that there are lots of people who love Dead by Daylight, but don't actually play Dead by Daylight, which I found fascinating. I do get it, actually," Goss reasons with a laugh, likening it to his own interest in Formula One despite not being a racer himself. "It'd be a disaster if I were. So, it was a really interesting idea that there's an audience who loves the idea of the universe of Dead by Daylight, but aren't playing multiplayer games. So, could [Frank Stone] be another way for that audience to gain another access point to the universe?"
Given Supermassive's renown as a key studio in the single player narrative horror scene, Goss is aware of the added expectations the team has to contend with. "The story had to work on two levels," he says of Frank Stone's dual functionality. "It had to be a story that would work in the same way that a traditional Until Dawn or The Quarry story would work on its own, in and of itself, and still be interesting. And then there was another type of player - a Dead by Daylight fan - who would come to this and want something different out of the experience. It was a [question] of how to write those two elements into one.
"As we started to craft that story with a lot of support from Behaviour, with massive amounts of documentation and secrets that no one knew about Dead by Daylight that we were becoming privy to, we started to thread those two narratives together." This was no simple process for Goss, with or without his little post-it note of narrative conceit. "I spent a lot of time reading poorly formatted text documents, and that's just the nature of doing the research – bringing it all together, picking themes. And once I came across two or three things, it wasn't like I needed everything. The important thing about DBD lore is there's so much of it, you can't possibly shine a light into all the corners of it. It's about picking key things."
I try to squeeze Goss for a little more information or detail on what exactly we can expect from our ensemble cast and their film set mishaps, but Goss is careful not to go into spoiler territory. "There are three mythologies in this game," he hints at the overarching narratives. "There's this weird story that was a post-it note that I put on a wall, literally about 10 years ago. Then there's Dead by Daylight, which kind of gave us all of the reasons why this story happens, all of the structure around the narrative. And then there's a third narrative, and that's the hidden narrative of Frank Stone and what has happened to him - who he is, where he's come from, and where he's going to."
Lore of the worlds
Horror is very inclusive. It's very other, and I think you see both of those values present in the audiences for both Supermassive's games and Dead by Daylight.
Steve Goss
These mythologies form the basis of The Casting of Frank Stone, and the intrinsic importance of myth, lore, and analog horror is where Supermassive and Behaviour find the most common ground.
"One of the things that we like a lot in the games we make is an existing myth, story, or reality, and we like to pull those into our game. So if you look at Supermassive's work, often the stories are rooted in either legend or myth, and all of them have a touchstone," Goss explains, using Until Dawn's Wendigo as an example of the studios' penchant for metatextuality. "To my eye, that's what Dead by Daylight gives us. It gives us a reality. It gives us a set of truths that we can then use in our story in the same way."
But with Dead by Daylight's lore-heavy narrative underpinning its more mechanical gameplay, it makes sense that perhaps some Supermassive fans might be confused about the partnership with Behaviour and how it makes sense for the developer.
"I think there are two types of reactions I get," Goss explains animatedly when I ask about player response. "I get one which is, 'well, of course, why wouldn't [this partnership] make sense? There's clearly a window into this universe that you are opening that hasn't yet been opened. Brilliant, that makes sense.'
"And then there is another group that goes, 'you're taking an asymmetrical player-versus-player online game and turning it into a story? How does that work?' And I think many people who look at it superficially – and I do think it is the superficial view – do not understand that actually Dead by Daylight has been building a massive repository of lore for its entire duration." Goss isn't wrong, with over 30 tomes of Dead by Daylight lore currently out in the wild and another accompanying each new chapter release. "Because that exists, there is truth and character and mythology within the world which isn't exposed every time you play it. It doesn't exist in the foreground. It's in the background, and we've just reached in and pulled that out."
Perfect disharmony
The important thing about DBD lore is there's so much of it, you can't possibly shine a light into all the corners of it.
Steve Goss
So is The Casting of Frank Stone just a Supermassive Game with a twist-by-daylight? Nope, and steps have been taken to avoid it feeling that way, though the gameplay shape itself will tread familiar tracks. This effort to root the player in Dead By Daylight's lore goes right down to the game's interface.
"The way we present some of our choices and skill tests will be reflective of Dead by Daylight," Goss explains of the in-game stylistic elements we can expect. "I think it's important to tell you that you are in Dead by Daylight, not in the Dark Pictures. Our UI and everything evolved. There are a couple of new, absolutely brand new mechanics within the game around character interaction and the interactions between them," he adds. One mention of a camera mechanic, just one of the new features to be implemented in the game by Supermassive, particularly excites me – but whatever it involves, Goss isn't spilling. "That's a completely new system, and I'm not going to give that away because that's a really fun part of this," he teases."
"Within that control system, within the mechanics, you've got moments where we absolutely acknowledge they are part of each other's traditions. And therefore, when we use them and play with them, we hope that resonates." Does this mean that Supermassive players will be treading some unfamiliar waters, then, if they're new to the weird and wonderful world of a Dead By Daylight skill check? "From a Supermassive player's perspective, yes, it's evolutionary. And from a Dead by Daylight player's perspective, it's a different way of engaging with things that perhaps appear familiar."
At the end of the day, Goss knows Frank Stone offers a cheeky, unexpected premise. "There's a level of irreverence to some of the things we're doing, which we hope allows people to understand that we are enjoying this odd relationship. We understand that there is a dissonance here," he says of the union's face-value oddity and the fun that's being had with it.
But then again, what is horror if not odd and irreverent? And what's a partnership like Supermassive and Behaviour's if not both of those things, too?
"My view on horror is that it's a fantastic vehicle for stories about people," Goss says of his great love of the genre, as both a writer and a fan. "Horror offers real contrast, real light and dark, terrible situations with awful outcomes, and therefore, the choices that people make within them are very interesting. But it's also a very transgressive genre. It's a very accommodating place, a safe place for a lot of different types of people with a lot of different interests. And so horror is very inclusive. It's very other, and I think you see both of those values present in the audiences for both Supermassive's games and Dead by Daylight. That makes this [collaboration] a really interesting marriage: you're talking to people with similar interests, who are looking for similar things out of the gaming experience."
As long as I don't have to experience being slugged at four gens by a particularly nasty Nurse in The Casting of Frank Stone as well as in Dead by Daylight, it's sounding like this partnership really could be a marriage made in hell. In the very best of ways, of course.
Here's our picks of the best horror games ever if you're looking for a reliably scary-good time.
