Chris Cunningham

The first time I saw Bastion’s proposal for Chris, he was an asshole and a bully. His dream alter ego was going to be based on Jigsaw from the Saw movies. Take a moment to imagine how different the story of Lantern Cove would have been with that kind of Chris. I don’t know about you, but I think the group would have fallen apart.

Fortunately, Bastion changed his mind and went with a kinder, gentler Chris - still with anger issues, fight clubs, and an abusive father, but not turning that outward in such a toxic way.

Chris’s resilience, amiability, and team spirit have done as much to hold our little group of teenagers together as anything else has. In a way I feel like his and Atticus’s energies kind of oppose each other in a weird sort of balance, which could be because they have some key similarities in background.

Chris’s alter ego, King, has interested me from the beginning. The choice to make him silent has definitely had an effect on our dream sequences that I didn’t expect, and I love it. It’s funny, when I was working out the parameters of the game back in the beginning, it never even crossed my mind that someone might choose a character in a fighting game - an RPG, sure, but a fighting game? I love it when players throw curve balls at me like that.

Having Chris in the game meant I had to learn about lacrosse, a game I have never seen played in my life. So I proceeded to read Wikipedia articles, watch videos, and generally throw myself into learning about it - an endeavour which I spectacularly failed at. I understand lacrosse just about enough to kind of fake actually knowing about it, and fortunately that has been enough. It’s been cool adding that aspect to things, doing scenes at Chris’s games, that sort of thing. I think it adds flavor to the game.

Sera