A look at 'Aphelion'...

Added: 2026-05-06

[00:00:00]So today we are doing something very different but kind of exciting for this video. This video is sponsored by Don't Nod, the developers behind the brand new game Aphilion. Aphilion is a cinematic storydriven sci-fi action adventure game that's out right now for Xbox Series consoles, PlayStation 5, and Steam. And in true Don't Nod fashion, it is a narrative focused game that will make you feel things. And they've built the whole thing specifically trying to keep it grounded in reality. And the way they've done that is with a partnership that they developed with the European Space Agency, which is why this video is so different from any other one that I've honestly ever made. You see, they actually gave me the opportunity to interview two European Space Agency astronauts and one of the developers for the game. And seriously, like when was I ever going to get the chance to interview astronauts? Like they reached out like, "Hey, we have this game that we'd like to talk to you about." I'm like, "Okay, that sounds cool. Let's talk about it." like, "By the way, do you want to talk to a couple of astronauts and one of the game developers, too?" I was like, "Uh, yeah, of course. That sounds awesome." And they were just as amazing as you could possibly imagine. It was really, really cool. Like, one of the genuinely coolest things I've ever had the the privilege of doing. And uh they were very generous with their time. They sat down for an hour. We talked about a bunch of different stuff as it pertains to the game. I actually opened up questions to the community on my social media and a bunch of you guys submitted questions that we asked them about. So, we talked about the game, we talked about their training, we talked about what it is to be an astronaut in general, what got them interested in it. It was genuinely really, really cool. But in this video specifically, I want to talk about Affilion and I want to discuss the collaboration between Don Nod and the European Space Agency. But once again, thank you to Don Nod for sponsoring this video and making it possible. I mean, genuinely one of the coolest things I've gotten the chance to do. So, thank you to them. And with that said, let's just get into the meat and potatoes of the video. To give you a brief rundown, Ailion is a game where you're playing as two different protagonists that have been stranded on a foreign alien planet, separated during the crash. They are forced to find each other and survive while being hunted in a way by an omniresent threat. I'll keep it vague because obviously this is a story focused game. It's coming from Don't Nod. I mean, if you know Don't Nod's games, it's not going to come as a surprise. This is the team behind like Life is Strange and Vampir. I mean, they are focused on story. They are focused on emotions, and that's really at the core of everything that they do. And when it comes to Aphilion, that's still very much the case here. There is gameplay, don't get me wrong, but at the core are the characters and the story.

[00:02:38]While you're getting to know the two protagonists and you're trying to find each other as you swap between their perspectives, you'll be traversing this foreign planet, climbing, exploring, and solving puzzles within the environment.

[00:02:49]But for me, the real standout, at least in the time I've gotten to spend with the game, has been the music. It's been absolutely stellar, and they did some amazing work when it comes to the vistas. And also, again, the collaboration with the European Space Agency has been very intentional.

[00:03:03]everything down from like the psychology of the astronauts and how they would deal with the situation at hand to like the tools and materials that would be used in the ship and everything. All of that's been considered. I actually asked them about this specifically in particular like what training would astronauts have to undergo to prepare for a mission like this and how did that impact how they designed the game and maybe how they wrote it or set up gameplay systems. I think it's it's really hard to prepare specifically for that, right? Because it's an environment we cannot simulate on earth. We can simulate parts of it, but you cannot ever simulate all of these uh variables all together. So, uh I think for for isolation for example, uh you need to experience it, right? And and we have some some training like uh Rose probably will go to cave soon. It's a training we do for a week in a in a cave where you are uh completely alone or during our survival training we had to sleep one night completely alone as well to do our shelter and sleep away from each other.

[00:04:09]So, uh, that's also a unique feeling, being a, you know, in the middle of a forest and digging your a hole in the snow and and being aware what was happening to you and your surroundings when you're alone in a let's say hostile environment. Although, you know, it's a bit controlled and it's a little bit prepared. It's still a trainum. Uh, but I think all this really prepares you for that. I think this is really interesting because um I mean Pablo's just mentioned you know during our survival training for example it was certainly unfamiliar hostile in some senses but also somewhat controlled because it's a training environment and that really ties into okay how do we do a training that is you know there's really this kind of life or death stakes you might say I think what I found very interesting recently was we've just finished the first part of our piloting training And um I don't come from a piloting background. I have never flown uh a plane before. And we've just spent 4 months getting our private pilots's license um and for the first time actually being alone, being solo in a small aircraft and navigating between between different airports. And this for me um of course you know it's it's controlled in the sense of the whole idea is that we get familiar with being very rigorous in what we do following checklist following safety procedures but it's a it's a real situation you know we do have to have complete control of that complete confidence in what we're doing in the aircraft and I found that a particularly good way I think to train for something that is both very high kind of value in terms of simulating a space environment but also something very measurable very Well, I guess one of the first thing that Spy kind of basic is that the start the game starts with the spaceship crashing. I think that's a scenario that uh that feels like a little common in the the collective imagination. But uh we start from there. Uh we try to put ourselves in the shoes of the astronaut dealing this situation like what do you do? What do what are the basic steps you take to ensure that uh the mission is still on on track and how to survive to complete that mission? And so in the case of Ariani, it would be like evaluate the situation, find your teammate, get a sense of where he crashed, where you're supposed to land, how do you get there, and that type of stuff. How to keep the mission on track.

[00:06:31]Uh for the case of Thomas though, uh he starts his journey on a more precarious position. So there's always a sense of immediate survival like pat yourself up, administrate first care, and make sure that you can actually leave the next day. Then also for Thomas as well, there's a a kind of an oxygen mechanic we try to add to the game. That's something that feels really uh inspired from reality. Like I guess at some point you have to manage that. And in our game we try to implement that in a way that feels yeah grounded. And I'll be honest, it was like really kind of fascinating to hear that when they were designing the game, like sitting down and working on the story, trying to figure out what the dialogue would be, that they actually were talking with real astronauts undergoing training and stuff, figuring out, okay, how would they be trained? What would they be prepared for? What would their mindset be if this actually happened? And how would that reflect itself in like their problem solving abilities and how they would go about overcoming this challenge? And it was just fascinating because it's one of those things I never would have really considered. I would just assume that when you're writing a video game, you just write the video game and you don't really worry about that too much. But no, like they've made a really active effort to work with the European Space Agency and these astronauts to figure out what makes sense and keep it grounded. One of the other interesting tidbits I remember from the interview was I asked Edois, the game developer who was generous enough with his time to sit down and talk with me. You mentioned that they actually consulted with Issa on what like the space suits make your voice sound like. So when they recorded audio and put it through all of the processing to make it work for a video game, they actually balanced it based on what voices sound like within those actual space suits, which is like attention to detail that I would have never considered or thought to even begin with. But like that's the level of care that they put into this. It's really impressive. Could you speak a little bit to that collaboration to some of the things that they helped you with? Maybe things that were unintuitive or that you didn't expect in the development of the game that maybe they were like actually we should do this, you know. Could you speak to the collaboration?

[00:08:35]>> Yeah. Yeah, I can do that. But uh not to drag either. The truth is that we actually got a lot of stuff right from the start. just yeah >> collaboration with Eza was like one of those dream teamwork where it all clicks and no to be fair they they did help us figure out some questions we had like I know that for instance our lead sound designer and our sound design team like B Marta he wanted to know how the outside world sounds when you're inside a space suit like question like you wouldn't have the answer to maybe and like you wouldn't you want to have like a a specific answer because you're actually yeah I've never been inside a space So how does it sound like? And actually something else like how does the space suit sounds like when you are actually running or moving around like what specific sound does it does it take? So we could take our realistic approach of the of the game to the next next step. And that's some sort of example like it might sound silly uh but we do not have those answers on our own.

[00:09:34]So yeah, that's a kind of like little uh insights that were really helpful into making uh and adding more realist more realistic um elements into our game.

[00:09:45]>> But like I said, one of the standouts for me so far has been the music and the ambiance cuz like obviously when they put a game in a foreign planet, they want you to feel uneasy but also appreciate the beauty of the environments. And they did a very good job with these big like vignettes and big set pieces that just are visually striking. And they paired that with the music and they did a really really good job of it. And they actually talked to me a little bit about the musical direction and what they were doing here.

[00:10:12]>> In terms of narrative Koreans though, it was uh we needed to work in a different way in a n asymmetrical way because we need to keep track of where each character would be at any given time. Uh where was the other how and when their individual story lines would cross again. So it was a tricky a tricky work to to to lay out but the naric team did a great job in that. I think that finally uh the music as well uh play a very important part of that uh made by Amin Gua. I think it helps cult uh the emotional states of the characters where they at and uh and yeah his beautiful scrolls add so much depth to the storytelling and uh it really wouldn't be the same without his work and uh yeah it really highlights uh the character's emotional journey.

[00:11:06]That's amazing.

[00:11:12]But backing up a little bit, like I said, even though this is a narrative focused game, it's about the story. It's about the characters. There is still gameplay. And as with any video game, you have the astronauts going through like pretty rigorous physical activity.

[00:11:26]They're going through problem solving.

[00:11:28]Of course, this is a pretty stressful situation. Like, if anybody was justified in having a mental breakdown, it would be somebody after their spaceship crashes on a foreign planet.

[00:11:38]Like if anybody was okay with having a a moment, it would be these guys, right?

[00:11:43]But I actually like I never really thought about it that much. But they actually spoke to how astronauts, especially with ISSA, are specifically like recruited and trained to build up a psychological toughness to deal with very difficult situations like this. So if you get into a really bad situation, you can handle it. They're not just hiring anybody off the street. like they are specifically training and finding people who are like perfect for these types of challenging situations. Pablo and Rosemary had really interesting insights in this and I I'll just let some of those play cuz I thought it was fascinating.

[00:12:21]>> Yeah, to me it's I think it's like a a skill you can pray, right? We we prepare for the known risks that we have like emergencies that we know may happen. Uh but then there's some things that are also unknown and unexpected and uh and you need to be able to be versatile and let's say yeah prepare uh to for yeah to thrive in those uh scenarios by being exposed to them and as Rose said that's that's why we keep piloting planes not only piloting but stalling them and spinning them and doing all sorts of things also in survival training. or why they send us to these caves to do some speliology or all the trainings like I don't know last year I was in a ship crossing the Atlantic for uh uh for a month. Uh so those kind of things gets get you exposed and and trained for a huge variety of scenarios and you never know when something will become handy later on. So you need lots of resources and I also saw the characters in the game having lots of resources to to also survive and tools and yeah it looks very very nice and real from that point of of view.

[00:13:41]>> Yeah. No I completely agree. I think during the selection um we had a lot of psychological kind of steps, questionnaires, interviews with psychologists um and I think they already try and select people who they think are most likely to be able to kind of thrive or operate in those situations. Of course, as Pablo says, some things really need to be experienced. Um, and there's certainly an interest as well, I think, in selecting people who have already had some sort of experience, either from a military background or, for example, scientists in Antarctica, you know, get to experience that sort of environment as well. And I think we do quite a good job of simulating on Earth. As Pablo says, there's this uh caves um project run by issa, which I'm hoping to do later this year. And it will be living in a cave. It will be kind of dark and it will be unfamiliar. It will, you know, we will not be able to to just say, "Oh, I've changed my mind and step outside back onto the surface." It will be um, you know, a few hours from getting out. There's safety issues there. You need to be sure about, you know, decision making, being confident about going further in. So, I think we do do quite a good job of uh, having very interesting and realistic environments to start working this with on Earth. I think the most important aspect of training would be the fact we're we're trained to expect the unexpected and you know as we've talked about to kind of almost expect the impossible. You know we are incredibly well supported by all of the teams on ground and that I think is such an important part of a mission that we don't often talk about. you know that confidence we have when we embark on a mission knowing how well supported we are in terms of kind of mission control how well we are supported in terms of that training that we've got and I think really you know once we're so far out thinking about a mission like this where you can't perhaps get in touch with mission control the teams on ground in real time yeah what would really really be important is this prepared for anything do as much as we can on Earth and just stay open-minded to what you're going to experience and be ready to solve problems left, right, and center that you've never seen before. I think that's that's fascinating. A really challenging part of the job, but I think that's what it really rests on. It's real time problem solving and and how we're trained to do that.

[00:16:10]>> Yeah, like they said, I think there is like no not enough prep time and not enough preparation and not enough training that you could do to to to make sure that everything goes on track. like at some point something is going to go wrong and uh you have to hope that it's not the worst but uh even if it is what do you do and then uh that kind of is a affilion story so let's play it >> when players are playing Affilion what do you think will surprise or excite players the most and at the same time like what are you most excited to have people experience >> I think that people won't expect how in Affilion that how the gameplay connects to the story and how making a linear story in a dump net game that does not affect players agency like the game play in our games gives agency to our players to allow them to yeah connect to the characters um and u I think like that I personally like that how such a modern and near futuristic setting and our narrative themes are deeply influenced by um like tragedy ancient tragedy and mythology and dramatic stories and without without saying too much because I do not want to spoil the story but like um there is some some sort of universality to the to the story and uh and I personally love it and for Dut's fan all times fine I think they will love that uh think that in ailion um it kind of is a sum of all of D previous game like it's a rich narrative experience with relable characters and emotionally deep and contra contemporary themes sorry and it's a real adventure though with active traversal action mechanic and for the first time we also added some stealth mechanics as well.

[00:17:53]All in all like it's kind of a new don't game experience and I I'm pretty sure that uh that yeah player will love it.

[00:18:00]But after all of this, again, my takeaway is just that they put a lot of time and care and love into many little bitty details, and it's just really cool to see like so many things I never would have thought of, like balancing audio for the helmets or like what music do you pair with an alien world to make it feel strange but also beautiful. Like all of those little things that when you play a game, you just kind of take for granted. You don't really think about it. It it was really refreshing and interesting to hear how much thought and effort and energy went into all of those little bitty details. It was really cool. And then also just again getting the opportunity to speak with Pablo and with Rosemary was so so cool. And they're so passionate about their work.

[00:18:43]And you know they're very busy like very very busy undergoing training to prepare for their missions. They are apparently preparing to go up to like the ISS in the next couple of years which is insane. like it's just casually, yeah, we're going to go up there in a couple years. It's going to be crazy. It's it's absolutely mindboggling. But the fact that they were willing to sit down for an hour and talk about all this so openly and share their story and their passion, it was really really cool. And again, I just want to say thank you to Don't Nod for making this possible for of course again Pablo, Rosemary, and Edois's time. It was so so cool and I'm very very thankful for that. If you want to check out Affilion yourself, I recommend that you do. It just launched.

[00:19:22]So, if you want to check it out, I'll have links in the description box below and in the pinned comment. You can check it out there. And if you want to see the full interview, let me know in the comments section. We might be able to hook you up with that. Thank you for watching the video. Check out the game in the description box below through that link. Much love. I'll see you in the next one. Hugs and kisses. Bye-bye.