In the high mountains, there is a village safe from the disturbances of the changing seasons. No one has gone in a generation, no one until Estelle. In her world, a season is a historical period, an era. This season is coming to an end. Going into the unknown, she leaves the house to try to capture this moment for the future. Estelle navigates through an unfamiliar yet familiar world, witnessing life on the brink of an impending but mysterious change.
The gameplay of Season: A Letter to the Future focuses on exploring, documenting, meeting people, and exploring the strange world around you. At any point, you can get off your bike and equip a tool from your bag. Each captures a different layer; sound and music, art and architecture, voices of old people, disappearing religious practices, traces of bygone seasons. Your tools help you peel back these layers until you can grasp the culture, history, and ecology beneath everything.
Your camera can capture anything you see. Your microphone can pick up and play back anything you hear through directional recording. The act also fosters moments of reflection and inquiry as you understand your surroundings, sparking thought and investigation from Estelle. Use recordings of the present to open up answers for the future.
Your time with others is very important. You help them get through their quiet moments of crisis. In their lives, the change coming to the world is not abstract, it is immediate. They are trying to navigate, to survive, to find a way to live. You help them. You remember them. The choices you make have resonance, and the importance of what you’re doing becomes increasingly visible. Showing your recording to these characters you meet can also yield helpful information or a moment of connection.
It all boils down to your diary, a letter to the future, where you assemble the fragments of the season into a whole. Through snapshots and audio recordings, you build your own evolving expression of what you’ve seen and done on your trip. Through the act of recording, your exploration and investigation is rewarded throughout the story in surprising ways.
With the PlayStation 5 DualSense controller, you’ll feel the terrain under your tires, thanks to the feel of the controller. As you ride, you’ll feel resistance in the controller’s adaptive trigger as you pedal up steep hills, and then enjoy a relaxing downhill ride on the shore. You won’t have to stick to the main road: cycling off the beaten path will lead you to hidden places and new discoveries.
Your quest leads you into the world of Season as you search for meaning for yourself and for your diary readers. You do your best to answer the big questions: what is this season? And why did it end?
Season: A Letter to the Future will launch on PS5 and PS4 in the fall of 2022.
