During E3, a new upcoming game was showcased, NERO. It’s being developed exclusively for the Xbox One console by a new studio full of veteran talent, Storm in a Teacup. Today we asked co-founder Alberto Belli about NERO and here’s what he had to say:
“NERO is a wonderful journey in a world of incredible beauty where a kid is the key to all locks and the night is not as frightening as we all could think. NERO is about love. NERO is about faith. NERO is about feelings. NERO is about questions that need to be answered.”
What inspired the development of NERO?
NERO is a story about love mostly and a personal one. It is the result of two years writing and in terms of reference, the inspiration comes from masterpieces like Final Fantasy VII, Studio Ghibli movies and Sigur Ros works. Merge everything and you’ll have NERO.
Where will this story take us?
The story is actually top secret to avoid major spoilers. We’ll go on with more details soon.
Describe that day when someone on your team said; “I’m ready to start making this game”.
The founders of the team come from a long experience in the industry. I’m from publishing (Eidos, Midway, Bethesda and more) and Carlo Bianchi, the other founder, worked on many Triple A too (Hitman, Crysys, Batman, Assassin’s Creed and more). We met during the summer 2013 and spent a few time making analysis and thinking about things to do. It has been fast. We started the company in September 2013 and started hiring people across Europe. We entered the office in February, StormVille and 4 months later we were at E3 with Microsoft to present the game
I read in your company overview, that quality is very important. Where do you place quality versus launch date?
NERO is a project we planned to be top quality with a clear release date in mind since the beginning. We’ll have time to go on with the QA to deliver a great product
For some reason, when I saw NERO’s screenshots, the first thing that came to my mind was Myst. Is that the type of feel that NERO will have?
Cool! We pitched the game as a merge of Journey, Myst and Avatar. You’ve got the point. It’s Journey because you’ll have to think about your experience even when the console will be turned off. It’s Myst because of the puzzle solving, exploration and first person. It’s Avatar because of the mood. Easy as it seems.
