Chris Avellone, may the tea-strainer smile on him, discusses video game writing

[Pavlos]

Source

 

Chris Avellone, lead developer of KotOR II and Planescape: Torment, will be updating his blog "when possible" with answers to questions about "narrative design and getting into the industry". This first post is on the subject of "Do you feel that video game writing, and video game story creation differ from other forms of creative writing? If so, how?" Which sounds rather like an exam question.

 

Graham Linehan, creator of Father Ted, once said that when it comes to video games, everything but the writing has got progressively better and until such time as video game developers pick up a book, this is unlikely to change. The scripts of most games remain somewhere in 1985 only without the whimsy of pixelated graphics and floppy disks. Then again, why write System Shock 2 when you can make the sensitive and thought-provoking 50 Cent: Blood on the Sand a game so mind-numbingly daft that I think it may be an exercise in post-modernism: where does the game start and the idiocy stop? (Those with sensitive ears may wish to decline the option to click on that link).

 

The via, vita, veritas himself doesn't have much to say on the matter of the state of video game storytelling but he does note that "In short, the game 'story' can end up being less important than the player's experience in the game, whether they are actual story events are not." I think, perhaps, it highlights a flaw in many people's attitudes towards games that MCA identifies story as being in competition with gameplay. The two should surely operate in tandem, story delivered through what I see on my screen whilst playing the game, not via a long stream of text in the "Galactic Codex" or an extended cut-scene. The visual symbolism of the real world flooding in torrents of water through the lofty ceilings of Rapture speaks with more gravitas than ever an experience point-providing scroll in Jade Empire did, though both have that shared purpose of "immersion" about which the critics seem to wax lyrical.

 

"I wonder if a single thought that has helped forward the human spirit has ever been conceived or written down in an enormous room." How true Kenneth Clark's words seem in an industry of large budgets but limp and lifeless thoughts.

[Lynk Former]

The Princess has been kidnapped, are you a bad enough dude to save the Princess?

 

*insert hours of great gameplay in here*

 

You have saved the Princess. The End.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

But yeah, when you have a game with a very compelling story, such as Bioshock, it creates such a rich world for you to explore. I also like the way Metroid Prime chose to tell its story through logs and scans instead of a traditional narrative or dialogue.

[Jeff]

There are very few games (relative to how many I play) that I care at all about the story, because I just don't think storytelling in games is "there" yet. Not that I am always only interested in gameplay, as there are many games where I feel like the characters are excellent but the overall story is garbage. I do love how in BioShock and Half-Life 2, there are no actual cutscenes and all the dialog takes place in-game and definitely think more games should start to head this route. I suppose a lot of games are going the Uncharted 2 route of wanting to feel like a movie and so place a large emphasis on cutscenes.

 

I agree with Lynk about Metroid Prime as well and another recent game to do something similar that I liked was Halo 3: ODST, while I couldn't care less about the overall Halo "lore", I liked the inclusion of audio logs to give you an idea of what happened before you arrived, and how little clues you found while exploring the hub world told the story through flashbacks.

 

(I realize this doesn't mention Avellone once but w/e he's awesome)

[Det. Bart Lasiter]

Then again, why write System Shock 2 when you can make the sensitive and thought-provoking 50 Cent: Blood on the Sand a game so mind-numbingly daft that I think it may be an exercise in post-modernism: where does the game start and the idiocy stop? (Those with sensitive ears may wish to decline the option to click on that link).

 

bitch tooked his skull

[Q]

As much as I adore Chris Avellone and his creativity, I really wish that he worked for a developer that doesn't fumble every ball that's handed to it.

[DarthParametric]

You can't exactly say Avellone is blameless in that. He is one of the big wigs at Obsidian after all and has had a pretty major hand in all the "balls" in question.

[Pavlos]

Source

 

Chris Avellone continues his attempt to answer those questions that people frequently fire at him about game development. This second update looks at the amount of background material written for the average companion in party-based RPGs, using the document written for Kreia from KotOR II as an illustration.

Also, one thing I've found often can bog people down is they want to keep exploring the abstracts about a character, when I think sometimes the best thing to do is charge in, start swinging, and find a voice and attitude for the character. There's even times when I write a sample short story for how the player specifically encounters that character and see if that helps me to get rolling on themes and the spine of the character (I'm doing this on our current project, and it's a new approach).

Good stuff, I only wish there were more.

[Darth InSidious]

He does seem to prefer talking in general terms, rather than actually including practical information, which this update has a nice amount of. It's also interesting how... trite Kreia sounds in her original description, and how much changed in the development process. Also has an interesting bit about Sion's role which evidently never made it past the initial ideas stage.

[Pavlos]

Source

 

Chris Avellone, sie he hal, has updated his blog with a third set of answers to questions people have sent him about the industry. This one deals with the various skills a designer needs and whether being a gamemaster is a good character trait, or if people would be best off choosing "natural leader" or "Stephen Fry" at character creation.