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Relationships and Characters
March 17, 2026 at 07:46 AM
Initial relationships and characters guide
Nivalis features more than 135 fully voiced characters, each with their own personality, history, and opinions about the city they live in. The game contains roughly 200,000 words of dialogue, making conversations a major part of the experience. Who you talk to, what you say, and how you treat people all feed into a relationship tracking system that shapes the story and gameplay opportunities available to you.
The Relationship Matrix is the system that tracks how every character in the game feels about you. It is visualized as a Cartesian plane with four axes: Enemy, Friend, Business, and Romance. Every character exists somewhere on this plane, and your interactions push them incrementally along these axes.
A single conversation can shift a character's position in multiple directions. Helping someone with a personal problem might move them toward Friend while a sharp business negotiation with the same person might push the Business axis higher and the Friend axis down slightly. The system is not binary. Characters do not simply like or dislike you. They have layered, multi-dimensional opinions that evolve over time.
The practical consequence of the Relationship Matrix is that it gates certain opportunities. A character who sees you as a trusted friend might offer you information or assistance they would never share with a mere business acquaintance. Someone who views you as an enemy might actively work against your interests, warning others about you or sabotaging your businesses. Romance opens still other possibilities, and the game confirms that romantic relationships with certain characters are fully developed story paths.
Conversations in Nivalis are fully voiced and play out through a dialogue system where your choices matter. You are not just picking from a list of pre-written responses; you are shaping how characters perceive you. A dismissive response to someone asking for help might save you time in the moment but costs you standing with that person and anyone they talk to.
The voice acting scope is enormous. ION LANDS held over 8,000 auditions to cast more than 100 speaking roles. The result is a city that feels populated by distinct individuals rather than interchangeable NPCs. People have accents, speech patterns, verbal tics, and emotional range. A conversation with a nervous shop owner feels different from a negotiation with a confident crime boss, not just in the words they say but in how they say them.
The characters of Nivalis are not isolated individuals. Many of them belong to or are connected with one of three major faction types, and your relationships with individual members affect your standing with the broader group.
Faction Type | Description |
|---|---|
Corporate Enforcers | Corps Sec and affiliated corporate interests that maintain order in the upper city. Allying with them gives you access to protection and legal business opportunities, but it may alienate those in the lower levels who see you as a sellout. |
Underground Syndicates | Criminal organizations operating in the shadows. They offer access to black-market goods, protection rackets, and energy trading opportunities. Working with them carries risk: if Corps Sec catches wind of your involvement, the consequences can be severe. |
Grassroots Neighborhood Groups | Community organizations trying to improve life in Nivalis without corporate or criminal backing. They value loyalty and community spirit. Their rewards tend to be social rather than financial, but the connections you build can open doors that money cannot. |
While the full cast numbers over 135, several characters play particularly important roles in the story and gameplay.
Character | Details |
|---|---|
Thaddeus Carminus | A 92-year-old man who has run a noodle bar in the lower city for decades. He is retiring and leaves the business to you. His history in the neighborhood means he is well-known and well-liked, and inheriting his bar gives you an instant connection to the local community. |
Banor | A 64-year-old former restaurant owner who becomes your first employee when you take over the noodle bar. He knows the food business inside and out and serves as both a mentor figure and a capable worker. His own restaurant closed years ago under circumstances he does not like to talk about. |
Ava | The narrator of the story. Ava provides context and commentary as events unfold, giving the player a grounding voice in a city full of competing agendas. |
Salt Pete | A character connected to the lower city's social networks. Salt Pete knows people and knows things, making him a valuable contact for anyone trying to navigate the web of alliances and rivalries in Nivalis. |
Nixxy | An IRL streamer who wears AR glasses. Nixxy sees the city through an augmented reality overlay and lives her life as content for her audience. She represents a particular kind of modern life in the cyberpunk setting, always on, always performing. |
The Aseptic | An android serial killer that operates without leaving any forensic trace. The Aseptic is featured on wanted posters throughout the city and represents one of the most dangerous threats to life in Nivalis. See the dedicated article for more. |
Relationships in Nivalis are not built through a single grand gesture. They develop incrementally, conversation by conversation, decision by decision. Someone who starts as a stranger might become a trusted friend over the course of many in-game days, but only if you consistently make choices that align with what they value. The slow burn is intentional. The developers want relationships to feel earned rather than purchased or cheated.
Your business activities also affect relationships. Hiring a character's friend as staff at your restaurant earns goodwill. Opening a competing business in someone's territory creates friction. Pricing your food so that lower-income residents can actually afford it builds community trust, while gouging prices might increase your margins but cost you social capital. Every business decision is also, in some way, a relationship decision. The business management and relationship systems are deeply intertwined.
