Why Hyper Light Breaker Tells Its Story Through Comic Book Panels

Posted by By our-little-miss-is-home January 6, 2025 8 Views 5 Min Read
Why Hyper Light Breaker Tells Its Story Through Comic Book Panels



Hyper Light Breaker will be entering its Early Access period soon. After earning high praise and finding success with 2016’s Hyper Light Drifter, developer Heart Machine is returning to the setting and taking the franchise in a new direction. Hyper Light Breaker marks a shift from the original entry’s retro 2D pixel presentation and isometric action into a fully 3D “open-world roguelike,” along with a change in art style that more closely resembles the studio’s 2021 outing, Solar Ash.

Similarly, but not exactly like Hyper Light Drifter‘s story delivery, Hyper Light Breaker doesn’t communicate its narrative or information directly to the player. Hyper Light Breaker instead relies on illustrated comic panels in lieu of standard dialogue to create a “show, don’t tell” effect. In a conversation with Game Rant, narrative director Laura Michet and lead producer Michael Clark further detailed why this device is so effective, and how Hyper Light Breaker will continue to utilize and integrate it to convey its story.

Hyper Light Breaker’s Unique Narrative Presentation

One of Hyper Light Drifter‘s most fascinating aspects is that the titular Drifter or most NPCs ever utter a word. Still, players can learn a great deal about each character’s past and current state from interactions with them that are communicated through a short series of pictures.

Clark stated that the team took the maxim of “show, don’t tell” to heart, noting how doing so instead of explicitly spelling everything out can draw players further into the narrative.

“It operates on a different level than text or speech, and plays very well into the worlds we create. We create deep, interesting worlds, and our players enjoy discovering them and discussing them.”

This was certainly true for Hyper Light Drifter’s world, leading to satisfying and meaningful moments for fans, as well as feeding the lore and history of the setting itself, much of which is up for interpretation. By doubling down on showing and not telling, Hyper Light Breaker will allow players to again absorb the story on their own terms, inviting them to share their reactions and connect with the wider community as they do.

Fittingly to the above, Hyper Light Drifter also contains a series of inscribed monoliths that were eventually transcribed through fans’ careful decoding of in-game glyphs.

Hyper Light Breaker Will Expand on Its Predecessor’s Storytelling Sensibilities

Michet explained that Hyper Light Drifter‘s use of enigmatic images provided the grounds to apply those techniques in Hyper Light Breaker. Presenting Breaker‘s story components in a similar way to the first title, while accounting for changes in design, will aid how players discover and unravel the new narrative:

“We wanted to try and lean on and extend the storytelling techniques from Hyper Light Drifter in Breaker. We think that there are some cool structural opportunities available in breaking up the story this way and in challenging the player to speculate and investigate as they start to put the story together from different perspectives.”

With its distinctive narrative interactions inserted into a procedurally generated world, Hyper Light Breaker sets out to follow Drifter‘s established storytelling conventions while incorporating them into a fresh take on the previous formula. Hyper Light Breaker adheres to the “show, don’t tell” philosophy for its story, promising to create memorable experiences for players as they uncover its mysteries and likely foster lively discussion around them.

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