Everyone hates escort missions. Or at least I do.

Juna isn't one though. And we shouldn't treat her like one.

The Problem with Escort Missions

Escort missions suck because of a few key things.

Sometimes it's because the AI is terrible. Sometimes the game makes it purposefully hard to handle them in the name of difficulty. But that's what's wrong mechanically.

As a story, it kills your agency. You are a guardian now. And they are a child with no agency. And I want you to sit with that second part, a child with no agency, because there's a difference there. I'm not saying that being a guardian or a parent is a shitty experience, and there is a place where that matters in games and stories. But oftentimes those add back the agency, because when you remove it the stakes just seem... artificial.

This is not what I wanted for Juna.

She's Not Helpless

Juna isn't a burden. She's a person with a complication.

Her faulty commlink causes Hazard to rise when she's near you. Red zones become more dangerous. Guards' scanners pick her up.

So yes, she makes your life harder. That's the surface read. That's the escort mission read.

But she's not useless:

• Brace command: She halves her emissions while stationary
• Environmental dampening (high Trust): When she's close, hot props (cameras, kiosks) have reduced impact
• Proactive warnings (high Trust): She'll call out spikes before they happen
• Route suggestions: She learns the city. She'll point out blue lanes if you're about to do something stupid.
• Communication disruption: Being close to Cal disrupts guard communication and sweeper requests from guards.

The escort mission formula is: you are strong, they are weak, drag them to the finish line.

Juna flips that. She creates problems and solves them. The question isn't "can you keep her alive." It's "can you work with her."

As a player this can be good. I now have moments where I could miss a piece that will help me into a blue lane, or migrate me to better red zones. When we are in neutral areas, and I can breathe, she is already thinking about the next step in our route before I even have to and that is perfect.

And of course there's a key thing here. She isn't annoying about it. Cause sometimes you have characters who do. No offense to Atreus from GoW: Ragnarök but this was a common complaint from players. It didn't annoy me but I can see where the discourse was coming from.

Love the game, but there is a point where you as the designer don't want to treat the player as a child and being a little too like Navi can cause people to get mad. And as I develop Crosstalk this will be a design point to keep navigating via feedback.

The Real Design Question

I'm not making this game to "fix" escort missions.

I'm making it because the question "How do you protect someone without controlling them?" is more interesting, to me, than "How do you kill everyone quietly?"

In real life, when you guide someone, they aren't some idiot, usually. They make choices, sometimes they listen, sometimes they go their own way. You lead, but they make the final decisions.

She's a person with the same goal as you. This is about what to do when the methods may or may not align.

If she doesn't trust you, she's gonna show it. She will stay farther away. She won't warn you. She'll be quiet sometimes but set hard boundaries elsewhere.

But as she grows on you, and as you grow on her, she'll reflect that in her behavior. She'll let you know what she feels. She'll say something like "I don't think the area up ahead will work out for us." But she may also trust you enough to see where your idea will take her. Because in the past you showed it works out.

This is her choice. Not yours.

What Happens When You Get It Wrong

Juna is not a quest objective. She's a person caught in a system that treats her as an anomaly to be deprecated. Any collateral damage is within acceptable parameters.

Your job isn't to save her. It's to give her the tools to save herself.

And if you fuck it up... if you ignore her boundaries, if you prioritize mission efficiency over her safety, if you treat her like a tool instead of a partner, the ending reflects that.

Low Trust ending: She survives, but she leaves. You kept her alive. She'll never forgive you for how you did it.

High Trust ending: She survives and she stays. You gave her agency. She chose to trust you.

Not an escort mission.

A relationship doesn't work like that, and now we show it.

In the end, Crosstalk.

What's Next

I'll talk more about the Trust system, the Hazard mechanics, and how routing decisions work in future devlogs.

For now, if you're curious what Nuevo Bay feels like, check out the Stories from Nuevo Bay. Mack's bar stories give you a ground-level view of the city before the game starts.

And if you want to know when Act I launches, sign up for updates on the homepage.

See you in the next one.

- afro

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