As the follow-up the studio’s acclaimedÂFirewatch, Campo Santo’sÂIn the Valley of Godsquickly drew a lot of attention withits reveal at The Game Awardsin December 2017 thanks to its haunting and evocative trailer. However, after the recent news thatthe game’s development has been put on holdin light of other projects that the studio is working on at Valve (such asHalf-Life: Alyx), the future ofIn the Valley of Godsremains uncertain, with a writer on the project sharing some more details on what could have been with the game in its original form.Duncan Fyfe, a former contract writer for Campo Santo who had worked onÂIn the Valley of Gods, shared a few details on the gamein an extensive thread on Twitter. Specifically, Fyfe elaborated a bit more on some of the broader themes and ideas thatÂIn the Valley of Godswas aiming to address, beyond what was shown in the game’s initial reveal trailer two years ago.Fyfe explained that the game “was kind of about what we lose when we die,” tying in to its setting of 1920s Egypt where two explorers journey though “a mystery adventure story.” He added in relation to that theme:
“There’s what we think will happen, and there’s what does, thousands of years later: people forget the basic facts of our existence, and our bodies are ground into fertiliser, displayed naked in a museum, or crushed underfoot in a dash for something pretty in our tomb.”
Specifically, Fyfe hinted that an aspect of the game’s story that would have looked at how “the 19th and 20th centuries twisted race science to assert that the Egyptians who actually created all that good stuff were themselves white,” in reference to crediting “the beautiful art and advanced technology of ancient Egypt to a black, African race.” Fyfe felt that this was a narrative that would have been “an important thing to think about in a game about two black women in a world of white Egyptologists.”
Fyfe also added a few other points in the thread about some of the other ideas and research that he embarked on in preparation forÂIn the Valley of Gods, such as a story thread he wrote about “a secret society of camel fanciers who convene in the desert at midnight to dress camels up in human clothes and paint their portraits.” Likewise, he also spent a large amount of time “with 19th century maps and guidebooks, cartouche diagrams and tomb plans, theses and excavation reports,” and more as research for the game’s Egyptian setting and to build out its story and themes.
However, as made evident by the game’s stalled development at Campo Santo, Fyfe explained that it is “unlikely that I’ll work on it again” and that he was “disappointed to be done with a game that I really cared about.” Given what we saw fromIn the Valley of GodsÂin its reveal trailer, it’s clear that the game was aiming to address some intriguing themes and ideas, and hopefully we will be able to see some of that come to fruition if the game’s development resumes at some point in the future.
