Character A guides Zahra through the tutorial mission in RIFT's gym. So their role is the Trainer.

Character B is the brilliant mind behind some of Zahra's tools, such as the grappling hook ('proton slinger') and the technology to travel between different Earths. So their role is the Inventor.

Character C takes care of the prison where Zahra sends the villains she arrests. So their role is the Warden.

Character D didn't have a clear secondary role, it was just a character we needed for a certain part of the investigation (that ended up changing later on). We decided their role could be the Janitor.

The Trainer was quite straightforward. On each NPC’s bio we had a reference section with several characters from different media that showcased what we imagined them like. The Trainer’s reference section was just a large picture of Terry Crews. Quite straightforward, as I said! We started calling the Trainer Sgt. Swole.

The Inventor quickly became Dr. Sam Squatch, a sasquatch. Our art director, Takashi, had joked about having a character by that name since pretty much day one. In Sam's Earth everyone is a sasquatch or other cyrptozoology creatures, who sometimes accidentally cross portals to our Earth. We all liked the idea and he fit really well with the Inventor's role. We gave him a personality based on James Bond's Q and X-Men's Beast.

The Warden was soon assigned a clue related to some weapons Zahra was trying to identify. So we came up with a character that fit both as a warden and a weapon enthusiast — Sir Gunsalot, an Arthurian knight who always carries a bunch of weapons with him. We thought this was unique and would help players realize that he was the one to talk to about the weapons. His personality was that of a noble, stereotypical medieval knight.

The Janitor became a comedic relief character in our paper prototype — a grumpy man who complains about Zahra getting the newly cleaned floor dirty. He pretends to be a full RIFT agent on his free time, but RIFT keeps him on cleaning duty because he's actually the Best Janitor in All Dimensions. We also toyed with the idea of having several of him in RIFT headquarters — RIFT hired alternate versions of him at every dimension. He was still “the Janitor”, as we didn’t come up with good names for him yet.

Sgt. Swole didn't change much. We were fine with any gender or species, but we knew we wanted Swole to be large and muscular. It was suggested that Swole’s species could be something that you wouldn't usually expect to be large and muscular, such as an insect. I believe Buzzwole from Pokémon Sun / Moon was brought up as an example of what we were aiming for. And Terry Crews was still a big reference.

Dr. Sam Squatch was one of the most defined characters we had so far, as we already knew what we wanted his name, species, and gender to be. However, the artists noticed that we were planning several buffed characters with large silhouettes, such as Swole, and explained that they they wanted to make Sam a smaller size.

Sir Gunsalot's main change was the she became Lady Gunsalot. A warrior character similar to Game of Thrones's Brienne of Tarth or Vikings’s Lagertha sounded much more interesting, plus we already had a buff dude in Sgt. Swole. A problem with Gunsalot that the artists had to tackle was that we wanted a character that looked like a stereotypical knight, but we were trying to make characters as different from humans as possible to showcase the world we were building.

The Janitor, we realized, had become an obstacle. Some changes in the game's story required a clue that could be solved by a computers expert (which we didn't have) and no clue required a janitor. So we scrapped the character and came up with a new one — a Hacker who worked for RIFT. Art was given a lot of freedom with the Hacker. Some of the suggested ideas were an arrogant robot, a young girl who loves cats, a guy with a computer as a head (inspired by Saga's Prince Robot IV), a Lovecraftian being from a fully-digital Earth...

Sgt. Swole, after several sketches that made him everything from a butterfly-person to a broccoli-person, ended up becoming a very muscular flower-person. This picture of myself as a kid might have had something to do with it.

Dr. Sam Squatch was still a sasquatch, but smaller than what the big sasquatches in popular culture. I was initially skeptic about that, but our artists proved, as they often do, that I was wrong about judging art ideas before seeing the end product! Sam Squatch feels unique and full of personality.

Lady Gunsalot had some really awesome designs and was quickly becoming the favourite of several of the team members.

The Hacker's design followed the idea of the young girl who likes cats... Except actually making her a cat! Her new personality quickly became apparent, a memer with a weakness for everything cute, and with a cat's mean streak.

Sgt. Swole wanted a new name. After discarding Press Johnson, Hammercurl Harry, Dirk McBarBell, Ham Beefhead, Greg Strongjaw, and many others, we ended up staying with Sgt. Sprout Ironbulk. I'm not a gym person myself, but some others at 13AM are, so for his dialogue I tried to copy the way they talk about lifting, protein and gains. During the dialogue review, Alex helped give him a more specific accent.

Dr. Sam Squatch's name is perfect and needed no changes. We gave him verbose sentences full of scientific terminology that even Zahra doesn't always understand. Our lead designer Tom, who has a background in Civil Engineering, was very helpful in getting the right tone for Sam.

Lady Gunsalot's name had two problems. The first one was that after some recent school shootings in the US, we didn’t feel comfortable with her name anymore, as it could feel insensitive. Furthermore, her visual design didn't suggest the Arthurian knight we had initially thought of. Due to both factors, we decided to change her name and backstory to make her an Amazon warrior. After doing some research on what Greek writers told us about the Amazons and reading about several of their warrior-queens, we decided that Helena Lycastia was a cool Amazon-sounding name that wouldn't be a mouthful for English-speakers. Her dialogue tone stayed as we had imagined it — overtly formal and knightly.

The Hacker, one of the last characters we named, is now Ada Lovepaws, a reference to Ada Lovelace, the first computer programmer in History. When writing her dialogue, I often looked at how our technical director Marty, a man well versed in Internet lingo, talks about memes and computer stuff. I also added cat puns to every single line she speaks in the game (à la Nepeta Leijon). But the crew felt like it was a bit too much, so I removed about 30% her puns… Which felt weird, because almost every single one of her lines is written to fit a cat pun somewhere in it!