In a star-studded evening at The Game Awards, the video game industry’s equivalent of the Oscars, celebrities like Anthony Mackie, Jordan Peele, and Matthew McConaughey graced the stage. But the end of the night was truly wrapped when Dune star Timothée Chalamet announced the coveted Game of the Year award (a well-earned trophy for Baldur’s Gate 3).
Chalamet was introduced by TGA host Geoff Keighley as the star of movies like Wonka (and also as the owner of the long-dormant YouTube channel ModdedController360), but gamers may have also recognized him as the apparent inspiration for the lead character in the hit 2023 video game Lies of P.
In the Soulslike game based on the story of Pinnochio, players control a living puppet who looks an awful lot like Chalamet. Lies of P developer Neowiz has never admitted to basing the character on the famous actor’s face, but studio head Jason Park told Inverse that Chalamet is his top choice if the game ever gets adapted for live-action.
“We definitely hear that a lot,” Jason Park said in comments translated from Korean. “In the future, if we make a Lies of P show or movie, he could be the main actor.”
While Lies of P didn’t win at the Game Awards, Neowiz was up for two categories, giving the developer the confidence boost it needs to keep working on new stories in this twisted fairy tale universe. The game ends with a scene that a Wizard of Oz-inspired sequel could already be in the works, and Park admits to catching a performance of the musical Wicked in South Korea. But there are clearly no limits on where the Lies of P franchise can go next.
“The world of lies is ripe for expansion,” he says. “You can take it in a lot of different directions. We’re going to explore a lot of new things with both the DLC and future titles.”
Then again, don’t rule out a trip to the Land of Oz just yet.
“More recently, going back into the stories, reading them in more detail, I realize that they’re much more deep and mysterious than I had originally imagined,” Park says. “A good example of that is Wizard of Oz, where a lot of people just think of the movie, but in reality, there’s like 14 books of source material.”
Park also grew up playing the Dark Souls games and considers himself a hardcore fan of the genre, which he acknowledges is known for its high difficulty. With Lies of P, Neowiz tried to take that Soulslike formula and make it slightly more accessible.
“Almost all games in the genre don’t have any difficulty settings, so the entry barrier is quite high,” he says. “When we were developing the game, we were trying to think about beginners or people who are maybe not as familiar with the genre, and look for ways to make it a little bit easier or by adding checkpoints in front of bosses.”
However, he admits that Lies of P’s epic boss battles still aren’t exactly easy, even for the developers who created them.
“Every time we hold a ‘Game Day,’ the entire studio becomes chaotic and full of wailing from those who lost during the boss fights,” he says.
Looking at the rest of the industry, Park says he’s encouraged to see more games leaning heavily into storytelling and character. He points to Persona 5 Royal’s additional characters and side stories, along with the incredible detail clearly poured into Game of the Year winner Baldur’s Gate 3.
“I see an interesting trend where a lot of games are focusing on more subcultures and the stories and characters have very deep meanings tied to them,” Park says.
As for whether Baldur’s Gate 3 is setting the bar too high for everyone else, Park doesn’t see it like that.
“It’s not a problem that can be solved with money,” he says. “Experience is very important. Hard work and dedication are paramount. If you don’t have an extremely high degree of those qualities, then making a game like BG3 can’t be done.”
Finally, when we asked if players had already found all the Easter eggs in the game, Park took a second to confer with his coworkers before answering that question.
“I think everyone's found everything,” he says. “Maybe we'll have to hide some more Easter eggs in future titles and in better spots.”
