Character Design

Morgan's role in our story was always going to be active. We know who she is, where she wants to go and how she'll go about it. As a protagonist, she came into the design process with a firm style and attitude all her own, ready to forge ahead through a narrative driven largely by her whims, desires, and faults.

Her rival, District Attorney Emma Rockford, had to be ready to stand firm against her.

Because we knew we were designing a character to contrast with Morgan and we had already solidified her look, we went through relatively fewer design iterations with Emma.  Where Morgan was suave, stylish, put together and presentable, Emma was clumsy, disheveled, exhausted and disorganized. While she knows about fashion and can recognize quality, she’s lacking when it comes time to actually put together the energy to get everything pressed and ironed. Her more neutral palette and “wallflower” bangs and glasses place her firmly on the opposite end of the scales  against the bright and energetic Morgan. 

If Morgan’s a finely polished hand-me-down watch, Emma’s the latest designer handbag buried at the bottom of a closet.

Writing & Synthesis

To be a good District Attorney, Emma had to be intelligent, driven, considerate and calculating- and to be a good video game rival, she had to do it all without breaking a sweat. Emma walks into the prologue and immediately upturns everything the player and Morgan achieved over the past hour or so- and she does it while yawning. This immediately establishes her as a real threat and a serious challenge to overcome, so we’re hoping players look forward to clashing wits against her when they step into the courtroom in the next chapter.

As a formidable intellectual rival for the protagonist and Heartbreak, Emma has to be smart, but she can’t be smart in the same way Morgan can, because we don’t get to actually see Emma’s gears turning processes or hear her trains of thought. She progresses through puzzles in leaps and bounds, spurts of energy and insight that can at times, leave the more methodical Morgan in the dust. She’s always one step ahead in a frustrating game of catch-up…until she isn’t, and the player gets to revel in the joy of besting her, right alongside Morgan. 

Two-faced in a different kind of way, Emma’s all business when it comes to the adversarial process. She’ll push Morgan, HK, and players to their limits in high-stakes games of legal poker in chapter one: an idle mind.

As an aside: Morgan doesn’t like people calling her Evangeline because she thinks it’s too flowery- and truthfully, too friendly.

Emma doesn’t like people calling her Ms. Rockford. Why do you think that is?