Nightingale Kicks Off Its New Video Series With A Brief Look At Design Inspiration And Lore

Inflexion Games has started a new Nightingale preview video series called the Nightingale Journal that offers some insight into the upcoming game. The series kicks off by delving into the design inspiration for the shared world Victorian-era survival game as well as the history and lore surrounding the Fae Realms.

Inflexion Games CEO Aaryn Flynn revealed that the inspiration for the game came from a book called Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, an alternate history novel written by Susanna Clarke that tells the story of two wizards who rediscover magic around the time of the Napoleonic Wars and use it to change the course of history.

“It’s based around the idea [of] what happens if you pierce the veil effectively between worlds and what are the decisions that arise as a result of that,” Art Director Neil Thompson said. “Once we started to pair those things together [with a] multiplayer world, multiple worlds, and this Victorian setting, that was really the birth of Nightingale.”

The team also offered bits of lore and the dynamic between humans and a magical race of beings called the Fae and how humans started out worshipping these beings and learned magic from them. Eventually, humans began thinking that they were almost equal in power to the Fae who then left humanity to fend for themselves, taking most of the magic with them.

“Fast forward hundreds of years, and the magical city of Nightingale has been this city where humans from all over the world have come to study magic and understand it and build portals out to these magical Fae realms and learn about that, and that’s the genesis of our Realmwalkers,” Flynn recounted.

Nightingale’s story starts when a mysterious cataclysmic event called The Pale began to surround the Earth. In a desperate attempt to escape The Pale, survivors decided to use the portal network to get to the city of Nightingale, which they believed was the last bastion of humanity that’s able to hold back the apocalyptic event. Those who went through the portals were thrown to random realms and found themselves lost within the Fae realms.

In each of these realms, players will face various challenges as they try to make their way back to Nightingale. These include grotesque creatures called The Bound that the Fae have sent to eradicate humanity. Along the way, they’ll be guided by a benevolent Fae named Puck who was inspired by the mischievous fairy in William Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

As an alternate history, players will also get to meet various personalities and characters from real-world history and fiction, including the first computer programmer Ada Lovelace and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.

“When we started making Nightingale, it was our ambition to invest a lot into world building, having a survival crafting game that had lore and richness in the NPCs, and quests, and things to discover and it all sits well together and gives you a sense of reality, gives you a sense that this is a real set of places that you’re going to, so I’m really hopeful that you discover all that when you play,” concluded Flynn.

Nightingale was first announced as full-fledged MMO at The Game Awards 2021 back in December although it’s since been scaled down a shared-world online game. Early Access launch was initially planned for the end of the year but will now be launching sometime in the first half of 2023.