Zaire Lanier, writer at Compulsion Games, revealed some details about the protagonist of upcoming action adventure game South of Midnight. Speaking during Future Games Show Spring Showcase – Live from GDC (transcription via GamesRadar), Lanier spoke about how the story of Hazel, the protagonist of South of Midnight, will not use the “chosen one” trope.
According to Lanier, Hazel’s state of mind is “in this weird liminal space between [being] a kid and becoming an adult.” Lanier also says that Hazel is a normal kid focused on finding her mother, and that she is “not a superhero.”
Lanier said that the revolving the game’s story about Hazel being a weaver worked better than having a “chosen one” narrative because the studio liked the idea that “anyone can be a Weaver, it’s something that the land will choose for you, when you’re in a time of deep need. So Hazel, when she’s chasing after her mom’s trailer in the hurricane, the land chooses her.”
“It’s kind of at random, she blinks and you can see the strands in the sky,” Lanier explained. “Weavers are able to see the fabric of the universe – we call it the grand tapestry – and they’re able to manipulate those strands to do various types of spells. Their mission is that they heal stigma in the land where bad things have happened.”
“[Weavers] are able to see into your traumas. They don’t fix your traumas for you, only you can do that, but they listen to your story, they see your story, they get to see those memories, and I think sometimes that’s what you need.”
South of Midnight is coming to PC and Xbox Series X/S on April 8. The title is seemingly on track for this release date, since the studio announced earlier today that it has gone gold. This essentially means that the primary development on South of Midnight has been completed, and that a copy of its build has been sent to platform owners for all the certification that is typically required for a game launch on consoles.
While the majority of the development work on South of Midnight might be done, the studio is likely still working on the game behind the scenes. This work will then be released in the form of day one and post-launch updates that likely fix any major bugs that made it through the QA process.
PC players looking forward to play South of Midnight can check out the hardware requirements revealed back in January. The title’s hardware requirements are relatively reasonable, with the recommended settings needing either an Intel i5-7600K or an AMD Ryzen 5 1600X CPU, either an Nvidia GeForce GTX 2060, an Intel Arc A580, or an AMD Radeon RX 6600 GPU, and 16 GB of RAM.
Players interested in getting their hands on South of Midnight before its release date can pre-order the Premium Edition of the game, which comes with 5 days of early access, along with the game’s soundtrack, a digital art book, and a digital comic book.
