Steelrising Interview: We spoke to Jehanne Rousseau about Steelrising about resurecting ancient Paris and killer robots

Steelrising is a 3rd person, combat-focused, souls-like game set in an alternate Paris in 1789, during the french revolution. Mechanical monsters are tearing through Paris killing everyone and you’ve got to stop them.

You play Aegis a deadly, female automation and living weapon with tools, weapons and equipment directly integrated into her elaborate, mechanical body allowing you to alter her body to best suit your playstyle.

Her job is to put and end massacres carried out by the robot army of the insane King Louis XVI and along with the way will make choices that will affect the outcome of the story.

While running through the battered Parisian streets, you’ll be cutting your way through other dangerous machines, using your robotic abilities and incredible skills, as combat is fast and fluid and unforgiving.

This representation of Paris is not only beautiful but utilises and impresses amount of verticality, allowing you to scale buildings and scout out the enemy as well as explore the crumbling metropolis.

We sat down with the Producer, lead writer, CEO and co-founder of developer Spiders Jehanne Rousseau.

What is Steelrising and when is set?

It’s an action RPG and I really stress the action compared to our previous game! It is set during the French Revolution… well it’s not the real historical French revolution because as you may have seen, there aren’t huge Automoton’s everywhere in Paris.

How did working on Stillrising compare to your past projects like Greedfall?

Oh, it’s very different for many reasons. First, of course, is the type of game it is, the team really wanted to try to develop a more action game closer to the souls-like type of RPGs.

So it’s a different way to write from my point of view, but also a different way to develop the game and so we had plenty of challenges to make sure we could be able to solve, also balancing and the combat system make sure to bring some new things to our gameplay.

The writing and creation of a universe aspect is also very different because you can’t have as many people talking all the time, it’s the type of game where some story needs to be done in other ways.

There is a lot of environmental storytelling there is also lots of information to find. In fact, it’s a bit like a huge puzzle where you find those pieces to understand the whole story, and yeah, it’s very different than writing for Greedfall.

What is your main character and how does she differ from the other automatons in the game?

Part of this is a huge spoiler, so I will try not to say too much. But she was created as a unique masterpiece, she was created to be a dancer, just to be entertainment, designed to be the most gracious dancer in the court

But because the king was really I would say worried for his wife, Marie Antoinette’s safety he has changed and transformed her into a living weapon.

So this automaton is first unique because of her design, but also because of her story. Because a lot of the automatons that you will meet during the game’s progression have also been transformed, some gardener’s automation are transformed into weapons

But from the beginning, she’s a masterpiece and of course, there are also very specific differences, but I don’t want to spoil too much.

How did your team design Aegis and the other automatons? what were their robot influences?

One was really historical, some engineers and clockmakers, although it was mostly clockmakers. Back at that time they were really creating these automatons for the courts to entertain the kings of Germany or France.

We are very fond of this strange mechanical look and there are still some automatons that you can see in some museums, for example, in Switzerland or even in Paris.

In Musée des Automates, there are some incredible automatons. One is playing the piano and the other one is writing, and he really can write, and you can switch the letters to make him write something different. You can, in some ways program it, which was completely incredible to think they could make a machine do that all the way back in the 1800s.

And the look of these automatons is really unique, they give them muscles, and a kind of ivory skin, they were doing the hair with real hair. It’s completely creepy and also amazing in many ways.

These real automatons were, an inspiration, another was the gigantic figures created by a team of artists, which is called Royal de Luxe, they create huge, puppets more than automatisms that they make move inside the city.

They are five or six meters tall, and then they have plenty of different giant puppets, one looks like a little girl. But there is also I think there is a minotaur, these completely crazy puppets, which are made of wood and metal and look clockpunk were an inspiration.

Is it challenging to make the human players invested in playing an automaton and can’t necessarily feel or react?

Yeah, it was challenging, mostly to decide how she would evolve through the game. Because at the beginning she can be a bit cold. I mean, she’s a machine, we want her to become different depending on the player’s choices and, yeah, this was not easy to write.

It was not honestly also easy to play for the actress, so yeah, it was challenging but I can’t say too much without spoiling the game.

How do you go about recreating magnificent buildings, because the version of Paris you have in the game is slightly different to the real one? And how much artistic license did you use with these recreations?

It’s really a mix of real historical buildings but some of them disappeared because you know, Paris had changed a lot, since the revolution.

We had Haussmann destroy part of Paris and Napoleon to allow the army to go through, so a lot of very old ancient buildings were destroyed.

We had to go back to some old plans of Paris, some paintings, and even ink drawings, to try to find all these buildings, it was very entertaining because we even discovered some buildings we didn’t know about, by looking and saying “what is this stuff?”

It was really interesting for the team and afterwards, we had also to make a choice, because it’s not an open world. It’s, it’s not an open Paris tour, we needed to choose the most significant places, ones that would be the most, amazing, the most strange and also connected to the choices we’ve made towards all these automatics and so on.

So, it was really a mix between gameplay which is, you know, is the most important part and staying historical, but we also needed to have some elements that never existed in Paris, just to reflect the fact that automatons are highly integrated into the city, which also changed the face of the city.

So it’s a mix between these three things and the reason that it’s beautiful is you’ll still be able to recognize some part of Paris some buildings and which still exist yet it’s also travelling to a completely crazy setting.

So you’re telling me that huge giant automaton robots didn’t exist in Paris?

I’m afraid so.

My History teacher lied to me. Oh well, I learned something today.

Why set still rising in a real historic setting with an alternate history, rather than a complete fantasy or sci-fi world?

We wanted to create an original setting and we realized, by working on GreedFall that using history as a Canvas, then bring some fantasy elements or magic or you know, whatever, would create something different.

But mixing fantasy with reality, you’ve got also something that is, in some ways, reassuring for players, there is also discovery and surprise. To not be completely lost in something that is completely out of nowhere.

And I think that when we’re mixing is well done, and I hope that is the case. It’s always something that is real. And using the French Revolution was also something that was interesting for us because we live in Paris.

So by using things that were around us and saying “we could use that building” is amazing and mixing it with, you know, some more fantastic elements was also a way to reinvent our environment and share it with people around the world.

The French Revolution is probably the moment in French history. It’s the most famous. So it’s a way to say well, you all know, for example about Marie Antoinette so let’s share a different story about them.

There’s a certain amount of customisation with your main character picking up upgrades, can you explain how this works?

She is a female automation, but you can still customise the face features, you can also change the wigs that she’s wearing, as well as the colour of the materials you’re using, ivory, copper, there are plenty of different materials. It won’t change the gameplay, but it will at least make your automaton more unique.

And through the game, there are these RPG mechanics. You will be able to collect a lot of equipment., new hearts and boots, and also plenty of weapons to choose from.

There are also these alchemical elements that you get that can be used to infuse weapons with elemental damage. So depending on the type of enemies you will confront.

You can for example add fire infusion to your weapons so it’s really a mix between the choice of weapons from the lighter to the heavier, so from the fans to the halberd, but there are plenty of different types of weapons.

There are plenty of different special weapons to discover hidden around the game, there are also the tools that you will unlock through the game. So through your combats, again some bosses, you will gain three tools that we will use to explore and traverse the city differently like the grapple for example

So with all these, these tools, you can really discover the city differently. At the beginning of the game, you will be on the first floor and then with a grapple and all these tools, you’ll be able to reach some higher places to discover a new path.

There are always hidden paths where you will find some more stuff to improve your character. It’s a very vertical game. We really wanted to make sure that the high streets of Paris would allow the player to discover the city differently.

Each time you return to a neighbourhood, it will be seen from a different view and different points of view.

The last way to customise your character is the usual skills, attributes, and also some modules, which are some small pieces, I would say, that are connected to equipment that you can place into some slots that allow you to have a passive bonus to the character.

So you can really customise her to make sure that she’s responding exactly to suit your gameplay style.

Steelrising will be available on Xbox Series X|S on September 8