In 2016, lawyer Nick Pearce gave up his career as a lawyer to develop his popular Skyrim mod “The Forgotten City” into a standalone game. Today, the game has nearly 7,000 positive reviews on Steam.
What kind of game is this? The Forgotten City is a narrative adventure that sends players back to ancient Rome to uncover the mystery of the title city. To do this, the player must talk to numerous characters and utilize the game’s time travel mechanic.
The Forgotten City was released in July 2021 for PC, PlayStation, Xbox, and Switch. However, the story of the game began nine years earlier, with a completely different game. Originally, The Forgotten City was a mod for the RPG Skyrim, and its creator Nick Pearce sacrificed a career as a lawyer to turn it into a standalone game.
Fallout mod turned out to be a “revelation”
In 2011, Nick Pearce worked as a lawyer for a large tech company in Melbourne, Australia. In his spare time, he wrote a novel and played video games, including Fallout: New Vegas. There, he stumbled upon the mod “New Vegas Bounties” by someguy2000, which left a deep impression:
“It was a revelation that a mod can be as good or even better than an official DLC – and a way to tell a top-notch story,” Pearce said.
The idea of developing his own mod was born, and when Bethesda released the Creation Kit for Skyrim in 2012, he taught himself how to mod through tutorials.
From a dwarf tunnel, the ruins of an entire underground city eventually emerged. But Pearce was not satisfied with “another empty, decaying place.” He wanted to give players the opportunity to travel back in time to interact with the former inhabitants.
The rest then just fell into place.
Colleague advised him to give up the “nonsense”
For the next three years, Pearce worked on The Forgotten City alongside his demanding job as a lawyer. It evolved into a time travel crime story with a 35,000-word non-linear script, voice acting, and musical accompaniment.
In 2015, Pearce released his mod and was overwhelmed by its success: The Forgotten City was awarded a prize from the Australian Writer’s Guild as the first mod. By 2021, the mod had also been downloaded over 3 million times.
However, after the site Kotaku referred to The Forgotten City in an article from 2016 as “ambitious enough to be its own game,” a new idea took root in Pearce’s mind. He received encouragement from the Australian developer team League of Geeks, who are behind the board game-like strategy game Armello, and, of course, from the fans of the mod.
However, it became increasingly difficult to reconcile his passion for developing with his work. Pearce recalls how a colleague approached him after learning about his modding hobby:
He told me that every waking minute of my life should be dedicated to my career. That was his way of telling me that I should stop this game dev nonsense; it wouldn’t lead anywhere.
Nick Pearce to Noclip via YouTube
Pearce decided to take a bold step: he gave up his career as a lawyer to make a full-fledged game out of The Forgotten City. This was a significant risk, as he explained that it is very difficult to return to the profession after taking a long break. No one would hire him again, as the skills and experiences he had accumulated would no longer be useful.
So a lot was at stake for Pearce.
From mod to standalone game
Pearce not only gave up his profession but also dipped into his personal savings to hire a developer who had the experience he lacked. Additionally, artist John Eyre, who had worked on the dungeon crawler Hand of Fate 2, came on board.
Transforming the mod into a standalone game brought with it several challenges. The setting changed from the fantasy world of Skyrim to the more historical setting of ancient Rome. This makes sense in the context of the plot but also meant that Pearce reached the limits of his personal historical knowledge.
He worked with Dr. Philip Matyszak from Cambridge University – a passionate Guild Wars player – and Pompeii expert Dr. Sophie Hay to create the “forgotten city” as authentically as possible – including the dubious hygiene of public toilets.
The characters also had to be revised to fit into the new setting of a Roman society. Pearce incorporated the sense of justice and the treatment of disabilities by ancient Romans.
Each character received their own background story and motivation, which impacts the decisions the player must make. Additionally, the original plot was significantly expanded and altered.
Existing possible endings were expanded, and new ones were added. The script grew from 35,000 words to more than 80,000.
Pearce worked 80 hours a week for years
Another challenge was the animations. After all, even Bethesda, the AAA studio behind the Skyrim template, is criticized for the facial animations of its NPCs. The Forgotten City focuses on interacting with exactly these figures.
Going down the path of other indie games and avoiding dialogues with NPCs was therefore not an option. Thus, it was all the more important that they looked good. However, Pearce and his team lacked the budget for a professional animator.
Everything was taken into account, from lip movements to blinking frequency to subtle head movements while speaking. A task that was “stunningly difficult,” according to Pearce: “I think it’s a miracle that the game’s animations look as good as they do.”
To manage all this, Pearce worked for 4.5 years at 80 hours a week. The consequences if the project failed would have been fatal; after all, he sacrificed his career for it.
However, he emphasizes that this way of working is neither healthy nor sustainable and that he would not recommend it to anyone, not even his employees. Pearce took on these many hours to protect his team from the notorious crunch.
Developer was prepared for disappointment
When The Forgotten City finally released in 2021, Pearce braced himself for disappointment: “I thought maybe we would get scores in the 60s or 70s, and I prepared myself to be satisfied with that.”
Instead, The Forgotten City received numerous ratings in the 80 to 90 point range. IGN rated the mystery game 9 out of 10, and The Guardian awarded it 4 out of 5 stars. On Steam, the title has a 97% positive rating, marked as “overwhelmingly positive.”
Additionally, The Forgotten City was awarded an Australian Game Developers Award for its storytelling and was nominated for Best Indie Debut at the Game Awards.
Pearce’s bold decision paid off. However, since the success of The Forgotten City, it has become somewhat quiet around his studio Modern Storyteller. On Twitter, Pearce wrote in May 2022 that they were working on the next adventure. However, he did not reveal what it would be about this time.
Bethesda itself is about to release its next major RPG with Starfield. The sci-fi epic is the studio’s first new franchise in 25 years, making fans especially curious. However, only one person is allowed to leak new information:
