‘Beyond A Steel Sky’ director talks on the themes of the game

Revolution Software and publisher Microids have revealed a brand new developer diary for Beyond A Steel Sky.

The Dev Diary features Charles Cecil, CEO and game director at Revolution Software, who goes into great depth to talk about the themes of Beyond A Steel Sky.

“I thought it would be very interesting to work out where a society would go once an A.I. had done as much as it could to create this sense of happiness, and ultimately of wellbeing,” says Cecil. The CEO talks about how he based this idea on Maslow’s ‘hierarchy of needs’ pyramid theory, which starts from the bottom with basic human needs, psychological, and then self-fulfilment.

In the game, this Maslow pyramid concept is embodied by ‘The Council’, made of five ministries: the Ministry of Plenty, the Ministry of Comfort, the Ministry of Safety, the Ministry of Aspiration, and the Ministry of Wellbeing.

You can check out the full Dev Diary below:

Cecil also spoke on how aspiration is another major theme in Beyond A Steel Sky and, in the game, this translates to a currency called Qdos, which is rewarded to people for doing something that an A.I. believes is beneficial to society. “The problem, of course, is that the A.I. is the one that decides what’s good, and conversely what’s bad, and that might not be the best of ideas.”

Beyond A Steel Sky launched on November 30 of last year for PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, and Nintendo Switch. The game features an adventure set within a sci-fi world, dark conspiracies, a 3D comic book art style, puzzles, and more.

In other news, Microsoft has acquired Activision Blizzard, in a deal that is estimated to cost around £50billion ($68billion USD).