There’s a moment at the very beginning of El Paso, Elsewhere, where the protagonist James Savage leans over the hood of a car pulled over in the middle of nowhere and makes a plea directly to the player. “I need you to believe…that I’m going to get back into this car, on the count of three, and stop my ex before she destroys us all. I need to know that you believe, so I can too.” He slowly counts to three, and in a blink, he’s in the El Paso hotel where she lies in wait. “Well,” he says, as if pleasantly surprised. “Here’s to believing.” The parallels between this specific moment of James’ opening monologue and the story told to me by Strange Scaffold studio head Xalavier Nelson Jr. of the game’s development aren’t lost on me. He’s worked on over 80 projects in the past eight years, he tells me over a video call, across video games, comics, and tabletop, AAA and indie, licensed and original IP. His studio, Strange Scaffold, was founded out of a “deep passion for advocating to make g