Fading Echo has caught my eye for a few reasons: its desert punk setting, fast-paced and fluid-looking combat, and its mixture of both Japanese manga and American comics for its visuals. French developer New Tales’ debut title is an impressive-looking action-adventure game, but what has most surprised me about it is seeing so many names attached to it that I recognize from the tabletop industry. But as it happens, that’s no coincidence–from the very beginning, Fading Echo has had a connection to TTRPGs.
“Before joining the video game industry, I used to work in the TTRPG industry,” New Tales co-founder and Fading Echo co-director Emmanuel Obert told me. “So eight or 10 years ago–something like that–I created a TTRPG setting for a group of friends [that] I met in the ’90s and 2000s in the TTRPG space.”
He continued: “At some point each of us was a Dungeon Master for [our home games] and when a campaign was done, it would switch to another Game Master. So when my turn came, I was a big fan–and am still a big fan–of the Chronicles of Amber, but it’s hard to play in worlds that are super well set. It’s hard to move stuff around. And it’s a diceless system. Some people in the TTRPG [space] hate systems [like that]. And so then I thought, ‘Okay, let’s take some inspiration from that [instead]. Let’s build something [new].'”
