Developer Blog: Creating Dawn

Before Dawn was Dawn, the protagonist of Selaco went through several major changes.

Back in the Project Ominous days, our unnamed protagonist, known simply as Ominous Dude, started off very much like Doom Guy. And, considering we were still a Doom mod, that’s to be expected. As the game grew and progressed, we wanted to give him a little more personality and wrote up some test lines for voice actor auditions. We were tossing around the idea of giving the player a choice whether they wanted to play as a male or female (Ominous Dude and Dudette, respectively), so we opened the auditions to both male and female VAs.

The auditions started rolling in. While the male auditions were mostly lackluster, the female auditions were filled with different personalities and potential. This, along with budgeting constraints, led to the decision to just have a female protagonist. Ominous Dudette had won out.

When writing for Ominous Dudette began in earnest, she was originally your typical badass retro FPS character. She had one liners she’d yell at enemies as she slaughtered them, a demonic laugh track that would play over the gore, and other typical clichés. Many of her lines were call backs to old action movies and video games and things like that, but they lacked real substance. This all changed when art development for the character began.

Once we found an artist whose style fit perfectly with what we had in mind, we started working with him on test sketches. We had a pretty good idea of how we wanted her to look, and he filled in anywhere he thought there was room for improvement. Our excitement grew with each new iteration he sent as he brought our character to life. By the time the first artwork was finalized, we knew this character had to be something more than just quips and callbacks.

As the character was changing, both in design and personality, so too did the voice actress playing her. The first VA didn’t quite fit the new character and we went through the casting process again to find someone who better fit what we had in mind. We cast a new VA and got the first round of new lines written and recorded. Unfortunately, however, when we sent over a second batch of lines to be recorded our new VA was very slow to respond and kept pushing back their delivery date. Deadlines came and went without any word from them and it got to the point we decided to cut ties and move on. All of this finally led us to Melissa Medina, a wonderful VA who has really given a proper voice to our character. She’s insanely professional and has been an absolute pleasure to work with.

And so Dawn was born. We got rid of all the retro FPS clichés in her lines and strive to make her feel like a real person and not just some badass that loves killing. Her past (which will be elaborated on in the future) built her into the person you play as in Selaco. She has her own motivations, hopes, and fears. She isn’t some invincible maniac, just a person trying to get by and survive.

Sometime after we went public with Selaco, and in particular with Dawn, we decided to redesign her armor a bit. There were some comparisons floating around between her armor and that of another female FPS character, ones we didn’t notice in our excitement. The changes were for the better in every sense, though, and we’re thankful that we made them.

Selaco has gone through so many changes since the early days and Dawn is definitely one of the things we’re most proud of. A lot of work has gone into making her feel as real a person as possible, something we feel is often lacking in this genre of games. Her personality shines through the tense action of the combat, and we really think you guys are going to love her.

We sure do.

In a later blog post, we will dive deeper into the thought process of her character design and show designs that didn't quite make the cut. Stay tuned!