Introducing Nacon Studio Milan (That's Us!)

Hello!

Within the next little while, we’ll begin the first showings of what we’ve been working on for the past couple years, including in-engine gameplay, content previews, and a generous helping of time spent behind the scenes with our staff in the studio. Terminator: Survivors has been a passion project for us at the studio, and we’re excited to finally be looking forward to sharing that work — but, while we were blocking out our calendar, it occurred to us that most of you don’t actually know who we are yet, either. So, before we get ahead of ourselves and start talking about Terminator: Survivors, we hope you’ll allow us a moment of your time to introduce our studio (plus a bit of the game, because we’re not that cruel). Hello (again)! We’re Nacon Studio Milan, a group with three titles and nine years of operation to our name. Like any studio worth their salt, we’re nerds and gamers from top to bottom: from the executive team to our most fresh-faced juniors, we’ve come up on everything from the likes of System Shock to The Last of Us, and we haven’t stopped since — and if you’ve been paying attention, you might have already guessed where we’re located! 🇮🇹

Milan is a curious city to take in, as a place where you’re simultaneously at the forefront of design and industry, and also always just around the corner from the accumulated millennia of cultural heritage (to say nothing of the lunch options, muah 👌💋). This intersection of the classics and the new age is so often the inspiration for artists in their creative process, but every now and then it can also grant us an opportunity to revisit some exemplary works to see them in a new light. The Terminator is one such series, and we’ve been ecstatic to get to work on Terminator: Survivors: not only are we huge fans in our own right, but it’s also a massive franchise by any measure, and one of the first movie licenses of this caliber to be adapted into a video game within our country. … But of course, this isn’t the first time that the Terminator has found its home here in Italy — in fact, it was born here, on a pad of ordinary stationery at a hotel in Rome. It was here that James Cameron (director of The Terminator) first sketched the now-iconic villain (and sometimes hero) after a feverish nightmare: a chrome skeleton with unwavering red eyes, bisected at the waist yet still dragging itself forward with one metallic hand — the other outstretched and poised to crush. It was a vision which would become a cultural phenomenon, and we’re so proud to have the responsibility of carrying it forward in a medium that allows us to truly experience what it means to survive Judgment Day.

Our Aim with Terminator: Survivors

From the beginning, we set out to create an authentic Terminator experience — but what does that even mean? What is it about this universe which captures us so? For us, it’s the relentless threat of an enemy which never sleeps, and feels neither pity nor fear. It’s the desperation and brutality inherent to a war against an impossible foe: Skynet, an artificial intelligence created by man, now gone rogue and turned against its creator; the clash between cold predictive logic and human ingenuity, and the resilience of mankind’s spirit in defiance of it. It’s being on the wrong end of the hunt, with an enemy that can predict all of your carefully constructed plans long before they’ve even entered your mind. It is rising again and again to face that monster, knowing all the while that the odds are against you — not because you expect victory, but because you cannot afford defeat.

… But mostly, it’s Arnie one-handing a shotgun on a stolen motorcycle, and how unbelievably cool that reloading spin-trick is. We won’t believe you if you say you’ve never wondered if you could pull it off, but we’ll (begrudgingly) allow that Terminator has a special meaning for everyone. For us, our work in translating it to the medium of games has been focused on three key pillars: Firstly, we wanted to create an open-world experience. We believe that a seamless and handcrafted world is a critical component to demonstrate the cause-and-effect of intertwined fates, and shows what “changing the world” really means — for you, and for all those around you. Secondly, though we do want to tell a new story in a new timeline, we still wanted it to feel like a natural extension of the fundamental lore set out in the first two Terminator movies. That meant exploring not only what the themes of the original films were, but also how the pacing of the narrative and the judicious use of cinematic effects built towards such a visceral experience. Thirdly, while each platform in Skynet’s arsenal should project lethal force, we wanted to pay extra attention to the design of the T-800. It needed to properly embody the unstoppable menace it was always meant to be, necessitating extensive testing to hone its lethality as the cutting edge of Skynet’s forces — in both past and present.Capturing the proper balance between punchy action and meaningful story is as important for us as it was for the original films (if not arguably greater), but that becomes a bit more complex once you’ve given the player the freedom to go where they want, when they want, and to then do what they want — the implications of an open world can be quite far-reaching. In turn, this means we’ve had to invest a lot of care into making the world feel as though it’s moving around you, just as much as you are moving through it; from how you navigate and traverse the open-world (whether on foot or by vehicle), to the way that Skynet patrols the wasteland and hunts down those who have lingered on in the wake of Judgment Day, and the many points of interest scattered throughout.

So, whether you’re wandering the open world or leading that last charge against Skynet, you get to decide how to approach every encounter; although Terminator: Survivors does let you shoot your way through the world, we wanted an experience which could be tailored to each player and their unique style of play. We feel you should have the opportunity to use everything at your disposal, from long range sniper rifles to short-barreled shotguns, pistols, or light machine guns, to makeshift explosives and specialized tech designed explicitly to thwart machinery — or to avoid a firefight altogether, and take the stealth option to escape. … Though, if your enemy’s footsteps do ring metallic, then perhaps your best option is simply to run.

What's Coming Next?

In our next post, we’re planning on diving deep into the world-building of our take on the Terminator universe, covering some pertinent topics such as the choices we’ve made when it comes to establishing our timeline, how they affect the game, and the world you’ll come to explore when we launch. By now, we know you’re eager to hear more about Terminator: Survivors, and we’re pretty keen to show it to you, too — but you’ll have to wait just a little while longer before we can start rolling things out. Of course, us dotting our i’s and crossing our t’s shouldn’t mean that you have to wait to be heard, and many of you have already been asking some great questions about Terminator: Survivors, both here on Steam and on the Discord; we’ve had to be tight-lipped about everything thus far, but that doesn’t mean we haven’t been paying attention! For a while now, we’ve been collecting your questions and curiosities so that we can answer them with blog posts in a more elaborate fashion (coming soon™) — but if you want to be extra sure that we’ve seen yours, we’ve set up a Google Form to which you can submit all your burning questions to (potentially) be answered at a later date. We can’t guarantee a response to every single one, but we’re going to hold onto them for the long haul, and so you may see it pop up at some point anyway.

And Finally…

All of that leads us to where we are today: gearing up to show what we aim to deliver with Terminator: Survivors, and to give you some peeks behind the curtain of development. We hope this brief introduction to our studio and our game has been both illuminating and informative. Going forward, you’ll be hearing (and seeing 👀) from us much more often; from time to time, we’ll also be joined by some of our development team, who will be happy to share some early previews and insights into their various works. In our next post, we’ll be diving right into it with some choice topics across our world-building, including the urban and rural environments of our game world, some key cinematic inspirations, and most importantly, how we’ve brought The Terminator’s universe to life within it all.

If that sounds like something you’d like to see… Well, good news! You’re already here, where it’ll be posted early April. On top of that, you’ll find us popping up here and there on the Steam forums from time to time, although we can’t promise an answer to every question you might have (what even is grissini? A breadstick, or is it really just a sorry pretzel?). You’ll also find us on the Terminator: Survivors Discord server, and on both Bluesky and Twitter/X. For now, we’re signing off — but first, to fulfill what amounts to an unspoken obligation to use this line: … We’ll be back (and sooner than you might think!). With warm regards, Damian, Dusty, and Ghislain (respectively, community managers for Terminator: Survivors, and NACON community manager) P.S. If you haven’t already, now’s a great time to register for the upcoming play-testing for Terminator: Survivors!

[dynamiclink href="https://store.steampowered.com/app/2617340/Terminator_Survivors/"]