Everybody and their grandmother* has been talking about ME2 lately so I may as well chime in too. A bit late to the party perhaps, but I only finished it this weekend.

There has also been some discussion on whether ME2 is an RPG, whether it is the future of the entire RPG genre, whether is is a completely new genre, etc etc. As is the standard for internet debate, such discussions have been polite, respectful conversations between gentlemen and ladies of the highest intellectual caliber. **

Luckily, I am here to offer you a viewpoint so insightful that it should resolve such issues once and for all, allowing us to move forward in the spirit of enlightenment and intellectual harmony.***

I think I’ll talk about that in a follow-up post though or this one will be too long. First, before the shenanigans begin, let’s just talk about ME2 itself, how it rates as a game. Let there be two parts, he declared, and lo, the post was divided in twain.

You might recall that I didn’t like ME1 much at all. Regardless, I tend to give Bioware games the benefit of the doubt so I went forth and bought ME2, ignoring the part of me that was screaming that I was sending good money after bad.

But I was wrong. Horribly, horribly, happily wrong. This statement may shock some but I really think ME2 is the best Bioware game since BG2. In the space of 2 weeks it has climbed into the hallowed ranks of the games I will remember fondly for years to come, sitting alongside BG2, Deus Ex, Thief, System Shock 2, Vampire:Bloodlines and the rest.

It is so rare for me to encounter a game that gives me that ‘crap, is it 2am already? Well, just 1 more hour then I’ll go to sleep…’ feeling these days. Most games feel stale, been there, done that. Which is a problem for someone who struggles to find time for gaming amongst their other hobbies, I rarely finish games these days. Dragon Age for example, while competent and polished, failed to hold my attention past the halfway mark. And that was more time than is usual.

But ME2…I need a picture to describe my feelings while playing this game :

Just this great, entertaining ride, from beginning to end.

The intro sequence gave me goosebumps of the kind that only Blizzard cinematics do with regularity, and the ending where you assault the Collectors is one of the most enjoyable sequences I’ve played in an RPG to date, largely because the whole game focuses on preparing for that Dirty Dozen suicide attack on the Collector base and the ending brings all that preparation to a smashing conclusion, all the upgrades you’ve made and characters you’ve recruited playing their role in the sequence. It just gives this fantastic weight to the things you’ve done to get to that point and losing party members in the assault has emotional impact (I lost Tali, for reference. I’d been pursuing her romance option for a while but then chose Miranda instead of her. Later, I sided with Legion over her and she’d gone cold to me. Then she loses her life defending the door in the final battle. Watching my character touch her coffin in farewell in the epilogue sequence was…well it had emotional weight.). I can honestly use the word ‘Epic’ here without a drop of irony.

While I’m generally fairly sceptical of the heavy focus on voice actors, digital acting and ‘cinematic’ sequences that mainstream games have these days, as that focus can conflict with the drive to provide actual compelling gameplay, Bioware have delivered a game which shows that such a focus can deliver a dramatic storyline while still being intertwined with player agency. While the storyline is largely linear, ME2 is constantly giving you the ability to make little choices along the way which serve to personalize the experience. In a way, ME2 is not as much about the larger backstory but the smaller ones woven into it, the characters and scenarios you’re presented with. The renegade interrupts in dialogue in particular are highly enjoyable; shooting a villain while they’re delivering their gloating speech or punching out someone who is sarking you is immensely satisfying.

Possibly one of the biggest factors in making this game so compelling is that it feels like ‘fresh’ fantasy. By creating their own sci-fi setting they have given themselves leave to explore new ideas, species and settings. Exploring the background of the Korgan, the Quarians and the Geth first hand is deeply enjoyable. I wish developers would do this for fantasy settings, it is simply impossible to make elves and dwarves feel fresh like that anymore, even with clever twists. Do yourself a favour and explore Mordin’s dialogue about his part in the Korgan Genophage, especially during his loyalty mission. It is really top notch writing, exploring difficult moral choices and how individuals handle that with a deft touch.

Enough gushing about the story and setting, let’s talk mechanics. Because there is another shocker there. This is probably the first game I’ve experienced where streamlining has actually dramatically enhanced the gameplay. Streamlining is generally seen as a dirty word with gamers, code for ‘we’re making the gameplay simpler and easier’. That isn’t what streamlining actually is. Streamlining actually means removing elements which interfere with or are unnecessary for the experience you’re trying to create, whether it be gameplay or an efficient GUI system. Proper streamlining requires that you understand what your gameplay is fundamentally about, what makes your game enjoyable, so that you don’t cut out bits that support that gameplay.

Playing ME2 I get the strong impression that they analysed the original, discarded or pruned what didn’t work or wasn’t the focus (tedious inventory, repetitive and boring side-quests, needless skill ranks) and put all their resources into polishing the core focus of the game (3rd person shooter/squad combat, ‘digital acting’ and a fast-paced, cinematic storyline with lots of fun renegade/paragon choices.). And by Jove, it worked wonders. I don’t miss what they have removed at all and the whole experience flows much more smoothly.

Before I continue discussing mechanics I’d like to talk about how I classify western RPGs. In my mind (and this is just how I look at it) they can be divided into two broad categories based on the form of exploration at the core of the experience.

Bethesda games are an example of Type 1. They focus on allowing the player to explore a large world, to discover ‘what’s over that hill/down that alley’. Games like these tend to take their hands off the player, leave them to poke around at will. The joy is exploring the landscape/environment. These games tend to have a back story rather than an active, strong narrative. The player makes their own story as they play. It’s more personal but it also tends to be a weaker narrative, overall, of the ‘and then I went into the forest, and killed some wolves, and I nearly died, but I didn’t luckily, and then I found this cool bow, and then I went back to town…‘ variety.

Bioware embodies the other type. Bioware games tend to focus on exploration of narrative/characters, not the environment. The narrative is active and drives the whole experience, pulling the player along with it. The player gets to explore that narrative through interacting with characters and playing the storyline but the demands of said narrative generally limit their ability to explore the environment and do things out of sequence.

Now, games don’t have to be 100% one or the other, it’s a spectrum with the two approaches mentioned above sitting at the extremes. There are plenty of games which sit in the middle somewhere. Baldurs Gate 2 offers what I think to be a great balance between the two types. However, it seems to me that Bioware have decided that the narrative/character focus is what their games are about and they’ve been strengthening that focus on that in their games, to the detriment of environmental exploration. I’m fine with that. I like both types as well as the varieties in-between. The point is, I don’t really think one approach is more valid than the other, but I do understand how some people prefer one or the other type. That’s ok for them, but it doesn’t make the other type of RPG ‘bad’.

Back to ME2. In ME2 they’ve made a bold and risky design decision. Someone decided ‘fuck it, let’s concentrate just about everything on the narrative and combat’. The environments aren’t particularly interactive or open, they are small sets, backdrops for combat or plot-points. There aren’t a large number of side-areas to explore. Things you can interact with are rare and highlighted so you don’t have to explore for them. The areas actually play out like FPS missions with a post-mission summary at the end and everything. You don’t loot enemies. You simply acquire ‘resources’ and credits during a mission to research new upgrades for your squad and ship when you get back aboard the Normandy.

And it is leagues better than ME1. I really, really don’t miss stopping to loot every enemy just so I could take their junk back to the shopkeeper to sell for the money to afford something I really want, or turn it into omni-gel. You just get money and schematics, which you can use to research the squad upgrades you want. The missions flow quickly and smoothly, tightly woven around the narrative. There are some side-quests but they are fewer in number than other Bioware titles.

Which, again, I don’t really mind at all. I’m a dude on a mission of vital, galactic importance. Stopping to rescue space-kittens who’re stuck in space-trees seems kinda arb, given the context. There are enough side-quests to add a little variety without giving you a laundry list of chores to finish in each area. Mostly, the things you’re doing are either important to the main plot or one of your team mates.

Combat in ME2, while similar at it’s core to ME1, has received a number of improvements which make it a much more enjoyable experience overall. There is no pointless filler combat in ME2. Each is a unique mission, many with interesting twists and all of them in beautiful sci-fi locations. My favourite so far is the world where the ozone is fried and direct solar radiation will eat at your shields. So you have to run from shadow to shadow, fighting Geth all the time.

The abilities, though fewer in number, are solid and useful. The unique ability each class gets helps ensure that each feels different to play, my Vanguard and Adept were two completely different experiences. There seems to be more variety and intelligence in opponents in this game than there was in the original too, keeping combat from feeling stale.

I want to come back to the inventory thing again, because most people have taken it as ‘Oh no, the inventory is gone, but I liked inventory management!’. No, it hasn’t. It has been transformed into something interesting.

The usual RPG inventory mechanic works like this : Equip your guys with the best gear you have. Go around killin’ dudes and opening chests, picking up all the junk. When you find something that is an incremental upgrade, swap it in to your equipped gear. Haul the rest of the junk around so you can sell it for money that will let you buy something that is (hopefully) better than what you currently have equipped.

ME2 has streamlined this mechanic in a clever way. You see your ship, the Normandy, is equipped with a research lab and manufacturing facility. Instead of the fight-loot-sell-upgrade cycle, you pick up money and schematics directly on the battlefield then, when you get back to your ship, you can research upgrades to your squad or Shepard directly. It circumvents the scavenging aspect while leaving the loot progression intact. A really, really good example of clever streamlining as hauling junk to sell to merchants isn’t the exciting part of loot progression, getting new upgrades at regular intervals is. I’m hoping they expand on that system even more in ME3, allowing more intricate customizations and trade-off choices, a branching ‘tech tree’ instead of a linear progression. Let my upgrade my guns with scopes, silencers, enhanced heat sinks, recoil dampeners…

What they did with the Normandy is great, overall, it is essentially a mobile town. Your quest givers, primary NPCs, communication and the ‘shop’ (upgrades research) are all in one place, following you around the galaxy. There is very little traipsing back and forth in this game, it is refreshing. I love RPGs with all my heart, but this experiment of Bioware’s in removing drudge-work and leaving only what is core to the experience is really refreshing.

Though they failed with that philosophy in one notable area, the mining mini-game where you probe for resources on planets in order to fund your research. While I didn’t loathe it quite as much as others have, it violates the rules I laid out for mini-games, in that there isn’t actually any gameplay there, no challenge at all. It is simple busy-work. As Yahtzee put it, Commander Shepard should be shooting resources out of the faces of his alien adversaries, not mining for them. Given the fate of the driving side-missions from ME1, I doubt it will be returning in ME3, Bioware seems to be working hard on fixing the criticisms in the series.

While we’re on the subject of flaws, I do need to point out that ME2 is not without a few more. I encountered a collision bug where my character climbed up onto a table or something and couldn’t get down a few times. They overused the 3 mercenary bands in the game as enemies in the missions a bit. The final boss was fairly silly in concept and execution, even if the sequence leading up to it was awesome sauce. You also couldn’t leap over cover without first ducking down next to it.

I need to conclude this post, all this gushing probably got boring a while ago. ME2 is a great game, for once the hype didn’t disappoint. I know without a doubt that some will absolutely hate it for all the classic RPG mechanics it cut out. But I honestly think Bioware have done something bold and interesting with this title. While most of the mechanics aren’t original, the incredibly tight focus on the core mechanics is, and I think it challenges notions of what ‘needs’ to be in an RPG for it to be engaging. Do we include these mechanics because they support the gameplay we want to create, or because of the legacy of older titles in the genre? Are there better ways? I know when I sat down to create SoW I came up with a laundry list of standard RPG features I’d need to program and I didn’t even think about whether an inventory was necessary or not. I simply took it as a given.

Bravo, Bioware. I eagerly await ME3.

* Sentence may contain slight exaggeration.
** Sentence may contain a moderate amount of exaggeration.
***Sentence contains no exaggeration whatsoever. But perhaps a trace of irony.

I’ll come clean. I didn’t get much done this week. Well, I didn’t get much SoW work done. Plenty of ME2. And the drawing of naked ladies. But that can be discussed later! I’ve finished ME2, fortunately, so that is out of my system now. The next update should be more substantial.

Enough sheepish excuses. What did I do this week? Walls and windows. Scott pointed out last week that the buildings looked stupid without windows. Agreed. But I hadn’t forgotten them, it was part of my design that they weren’t part of the base models. The intention is for the windows, like the doors, to be separate modules you can attach to the base building models in a mix-and-match fashion. You’ll see that in a moment.

First, walls! Invisible walls in games suck ass, visible walls are infinitely superior, I think we can all agree.

Why have 5 different length sections of each wall type? Because laying out straight lines of small models is pretty tedious in the engine. Instead of laying down the small section 5 times, lining them up carefully, I can just plonk down a longer section.

Onto the windows. I’m not sure I like the pale blue window panes, but I’ll experiment, see what I can come up with.

Of course, they aren’t intended to float in midair, no sir! The side of buildings is where they belong.

Let’s see all the modules working together now.

So someone at Ubisoft is a total genius. In case you’re too lazy to click the link, it says that the new Ubisoft DRM which is shipping with titles like Assassin’s Creed 2 will require you to be constantly connected to the internet to play. Your connection drops and the game boots you to the menu, losing you your progress since the last checkpoint.

Awesome.

I’ve defended DRM before. I really have. I understand the motivation behind it, even if I also understand how futile it is. But this is just batshit fucking stupid. Not only does it require a complete lack of knowledge of computer software to think this will work, it requires that you actively ignore the advice of your technical leads. Who must, at this point, be eating their hats in sheer exasperation as they try to explain to the exec who is playing with his office golf set that his cunning idea, isn’t.

You see, the idea kinda makes sense, unless you actually have a clue. Let’s ignore whether it is mean to your paying customers or not, let’s just look at the technical aspect. MMO’s are very resistant to piracy. People have to be connected to play MMOs. Thus, logically, if we force people to always be connected then our game will gain that piracy resistance, right?

Wrong. The reason being that the game logic is sitting on the servers for MMOs. The software client that players have on their computers is responsible for rendering graphics, playing sound and handling input, etc. It doesn’t do the actual ‘thinking’. When you cast that fireball spell, the client sends a message to the server saying ‘I’ve done this, what happens now?’ and the server says ‘oh, well the monster takes 500 points of damage and begins casting Ice Blast in response’. That game logic isn’t on the client. It is impossible to hack code you don’t have. To hack an MMO you need to hack into the servers it is running against and copy the software running there, which is usually in multiple parts handling logic, db comms, player login and load management. It is very difficult to do this.

So back to Ubisoft. They think forcing their single-player games to be constantly connected to a server will prevent piracy. But all the game code is sitting on the client machine. Which means that all the pirates need to do is find the piece of code checking for a live net connection and surgically remove it. Which is identical to how they crack any other single-player game. You’ve made it not one whit harder for them to pirate your game.

But you’ve REALLY pissed off anyone who’d considered legitimately purchasing the game. Even MMOs aren’t this draconican. If your net connection goes down you don’t lose progress. Your character might die if you dropped in the middle of the fight. But otherwise, you’re good. Implementing a system that is worse without the justification of multiplayer is a mind-bogglingly stupid business decision.

I was going to buy AC2 btw. But the net is pretty unreliable here in SA, in terms of the internet at least this is the 3rd world. So scratch that plan.

Finally, Guide Bot goes into Beta, it should be done soon. I’ll be replacing my SoW AI with this system. While it looks well designed overall, it is really the Navmesh technology that sold it for me. The dynamic cover seeking in a physics-enabled environment is pretty wicked too. Bought!

And the ever energetic Josh Engebretson has created a wicked cool embedded web browser for T3D. For SoW, I’ll probably be using to so that people can register the demo without actually leaving the game. Also, a way to up/download custom modules and browse through the module database, again in-game. Niiice, thanks Josh!

I love new toys!

I wanted to share with you guys something that a friend recently introduced me to.

TED talks

To quote the site…

Our mission: Spreading ideas.

We believe passionately in the power of ideas to change attitudes, lives and ultimately, the world. So we’re building here a clearinghouse that offers free knowledge and inspiration from the world’s most inspired thinkers, and also a community of curious souls to engage with ideas and each other.

Basically, they find interesting and enlightening people across a broad spectrum of disciplines and ask them to give a 10-20 minute talk on their area of research or expertise. Then they post them up for free, with the simple goal of spreading ideas.

And boy, are they interesting! I’ve watched a couple now and I just can’t get enough. From how sounds affect our bodies, to surprising research on motivating your staff, to understanding the maths of symmetry, to East vs West cultural contexts; the topics are fascinating and mind-expanding. If I had the bandwidth I’d be greedily downloading them all. Luckily people at work have got a bunch of them, I’ll trickle down the rest as I go.

I particularly recommend the talk on Augmented Reality Maps. Incredible. Imagine the possibilities of such a system with public content creation ala Wikipedia, with people contributing images and video and blogs and information posts into a vast, evolving, content-rich 3D map like that. Imagine being a child growing up with that available to you, the entire world in your hand. Imagine being a tourist in another country with such a system on your mobile. The potential embodied in such a tool is simply exhilarating.

The future is now.

I’ve decided to start numbering these things. It’ll be like watching an RPG XP bar fill up…exciting.

My records show this is Update number 6. So we’re 6 weeks down the line now. I must say, this public commitment to weekly show-and-tell is working out nicely. It keeps me focused, less likely to let a week fall to procrastination. I find myself blocking out time in my calendar and being very protective of that time in the face of social events or what-have-you. I know I need a certain amount of time in a week in order to make progress worth talking about. So thanks guys, your continued attention and comments are directly contributing to SoW’s progress.

So! Update! Just more modeling this week, I ran into a snag in the story work and left that percolating in the back of my mind, sometimes you just have to wait for inspiration to strike. No need to lounge around though, plenty of other tasks in the mean time.

The output this week is : 3 more building bases + 1 modular add-on piece + 1 decoration. I’ll show you the models separately then how they come together in a scene.

Building 1 is very simple :

Building 2 :

Building 3 is quite large :

Access ramp/platform add-on module :

Decoration – Trash wooden plank pile, for decorating alleyways etc :

Now let’s put them together. This is building 2 & 3 + the ramp + the pile of planks + a few doors. Note, it’ll look better once I get them into the engine and some proper shadow casting adds depth. :

Things are starting to come together nicely now. I’m fairly happy with the number of base buildings for this area, I’ll be working more on the add-on modules and decorations that connect/enhance buildings and bring them to life. There is a pressing need for window add-on modules, for example.

“Work it harder, make it better, do it faster, makes us stronger; more than ever hour after our work is never over.” – Daft Punk, ‘Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger’

Ladies, gents, I am sorry to do this but due to WAY too much ME2 playing and a social commitment this evening, I’m shifting the Sunday Update out by one day to Monday. Work has been done, fear not, but I am not going to have the time this evening to post about it. I could cancel my social engagement to meet my blogging commitment but…wow, no, not going to do that. You’d really have to be some kind of uber-dork…

‘Till tomorrow then. Gareth out.

“I do not think there is any other quality so essential to success of any kind as the quality of perseverance. It overcomes almost everything, even nature.”
-John. D. Rockefeller

I’ve completely spoiled you guys with game dev posts recently. Completely spoiled. Time to compensate with another rambling post about personal development! You, in the back there : Shutup and take your medicine.

I want to share something inspirational with you heathens. It absolutely blew my mind the first time I saw it and it shows the power of dedication and practice.

This awesome thing is this. A thread I found in the bowels of ConceptArt.org one day, while idly drooling over all the pretty pictures. Started by a fellow who calls himself MindCandyMan, aka Jonathan Hardesty.

His own words probably explain it best :

Hi Everyone,
If you didn’t see my last post(s) on www.conceptart.org then I will bring you up to speed. Basically I have been inspired by the art produced and the work ethic of Jon Foster, Andrew Jones, Jason Manley, and my brother “Smeagol71″ (among many others) and have decided to learn how to paint (primarily digitally). I am starting from rock bottom and I am going to paint at least one painting and do at least one sketch every day…probably two on the weekends. The order you see them in is the order that I am painting and/or sketching them…every day starting on 9/15/02. I am bearing my soul to everyone. I will post everything I do…whether it is awful or not. Most of the paintings and sketches, in the beginning, are going to look like crap but hopefully over the days/weeks/months/years they will start to get better. I have no formal art training but have signed up for classes this semester. I have a passion to paint and welcome any encouragement or critique that you want to give. Any feedback you want to give me you can leave in the threads I or just email me.
Thanks.

So. This guy is inspired by the cool artwork he sees others producing. He doesn’t think ‘well, that’s beyond me, I just wasn’t born with the talent I guess’. He commits to working hard, prepared for it to be a long haul. I was very lucky in that I stumbled over this thread years after he started so I got to see the full picture. Let’s have a look at some samples (I can’t post all of them as there are ton), starting in 2002.

His very first piece :

Clearly, a child prodigy born with natural abilities no one else has, no? No.

Some more :

Let’s skip forward in time a bit…

Right, enough pussyfooting around, let’s head to the end. 2007, 5 years of hard work and many, many updates later…

I think you’ll all agree with me when I say : Holy crap, that is fucking awesome.

Now, ConceptArt.org is littered with threads where beginners post up some pictures of their work and claim they are dedicating themselves to getting better. What separates this guy from all those others? About 70 pages of updates. He doesn’t show any more ‘talent’ than anyone else does when they start out, his work is just as fugly. The difference is that he set out to put in the hard work and he actually did it.

And 5 years later his works are up in exhibits. It’s worth noting that although directly witnessing his progress is fantastic, ALL good artists go through this process. It’s so damn easy to blame genetics for why we can’t achieve our dreams or lose weight or whatever, it makes it ‘not our fault’. Difficult to face the fact that what is lacking is not ‘talent’ but something infinitely rarer : Dedication. Focus. Perseverance.

“Nothing in this world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful people with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan “press on” has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race”
-Calvin Coolidge

I promised myself I’d only use two quotes for the footer and header, but this one is just too appropriate not to end with it. Bugger it.

We would accomplish many more things if we did not think of them as impossible.
-Vince Lombardi

I said I’d talk about why I was rewriting some of the backstory/intro for SoW, so let’s do that.

I’ve made a mistake, you see. That mistake has been bothering me and I’ve decided to do something about it, on two fronts. But before I talk about that, let me illustrate the mistake with a simple exercise.

If you read this site, odds are you’re probably interested in my game/looking forward to it. For this exercise I want you to imagine you’re describing Scars of War to a friend. No reference to pictures or the web. You’re trying to convey to him why you’re interested in the game. You want to try to ‘sell it’ with a simple phrase or sentence describing the core idea, the foundation, what the game is about. Can you do it?

Probably not, or at least not easily.

My mistake is that I haven’t done enough to convey the core idea of the game clearly and concisely, in a way that allows a new person to immediately ‘get’ what the game is about. I’ve talked about game systems and showed random concept art and lore. But ‘The Message’ is fuzzy, unclear. If you’re a hardcore roleplaying enthusiast then what I’ve talked about may be enough to interest you. But not conveying the Core Concept of the game in a clear manner is a weakness I need to remedy.

I’m not a marketer, you see. I’m just some amateur stumbling around, stubbing his toes on rocks. ‘Marketer’ and ‘PR’ and ‘Salesman’ might seem like dirty words to some people but they are important roles. They’re really about communicating with your audience, your potential clients. I haven’t done a good enough job of telling you why you should be interested in my game. I haven’t done enough to sell it.

So I’m thinking hard about that, looking at ‘The Message’ that I’m presenting to the public, to you. Working to present the Core Concept clearly, strongly, to present that hook for people’s interest and attention. It would be easier if I was working with an existing licence. I envy Scott of ITS a bit, just say the word ‘Cthulhu’ and you invoke a vast library of context from the public consciousness. Tell people you’re working on ‘a Cthulhu RPG’ and they get it immediately. A Zombie Survival RPG? Again, people immediately get it, the Core Concept is strongly evident, obvious.

For me, that means working to present the Core Concept of SoW more clearly, to focus on it, what it means for the gameplay and setting. It means working to create concept art that captures the mood clearly and immediately, writing copy that conveys this theme directly. It’s a tightening of my focus from the rather haphazard manner I’ve gone about things. I am looking at what I’ve shown in public with a critical eye, asking myself ‘If I was completely unaware of this game and stumbled onto the website, would I ‘get’ it?’

The Core Concept of Scars of War, the single sentence which sums up the premise is thus :

In the uneasy aftermath of a devastating war, a scarred veteran will find themselves drawn into a web of intrigue, conspiracy and betrayal. The scars of war are slow to heal…

Hell, to put it even more simply :

Intrigue, conspiracy and betrayal in the aftermath of a devastating war.

Pick out the keywords to understand where my focus should be when presenting ‘the message’.

Aftermath
Devastating War
Scars
Intrigue
Conspiracy
Betrayal

That line, those keywords, those are what SoW is about. The PR I create, from the website to the concept art to the text copy, they should paint a picture of those things, emphasize them. When someone thinks ‘Scars of War’ these are what should spring to mind, just as ‘Sanity-Rending Horror from Beyond the Stars’ springs to mind when thinking ‘Cthulhu’.

I’ve got my work cut out for me. I’m going to need to grow a few more heads to support all these hats I wear. Oh, for the days when I thought like a programmer and only a programmer.

I said there were two fronts of attack in regards to this problem, yeah? Yeah. The other is the introductory part to the game, the initial plot. I’ve committed the same mistake when it came to the story. There is a complex story to SoW which is, I think, interesting and engaging. But you don’t come on it directly, the game starts with the player doing Stuff which leads to Other Stuff which draws you into the core plot.

The problem is I kinda hid it too well. Games these days all talk about being ‘cinematic’. I don’t think that it is a good idea to completely emulate cinema in an interactive medium but we can take away some of the lessons. One of them, and this applies equally to books, TV shows and games, is the idea that your story should try to immediately grab the attention of the viewer/player. Generally you do this by presenting them with a scenario which immediately invokes questions in the viewer’s mind and which ties into the core idea/story. I’ll give an example.

I’ve just started reading Joe Abercrombie’s First Law series, starting with ‘The Blade Itself’. How does it start? Not with a lot of exposition. It starts with Logen Ninefingers in desperate combat with Shanka, who he calls ‘Flatheads’. The combat is frantic and ends with him sliding over the edge of a gorge, a Shanka clinging to his leg. He hangs there for a moment before falling into the chasm below, praying he avoids the rocks and lands in the water.

Identify the questions. Who is Logen Ninefingers, and why do we care? What happened to his tenth finger? Who are the Shanka, and why are Logen and his men fighting them? Will he survive the fall? Just what the fuck is going on here?

Another great example is the TV show Flash Forward. It opens from the view of a man crawling out of an overturned car. He’s dazed, bleeding. He stumbles out into chaos. Everywhere around him are crashed cars, people crying. He sees a man on fire. He calls out to someone, doesn’t see him. Moves to help some people, finds his friend. Hears a crash, turns around to see an explosion coming from the side of a skyscraper where a helicopter flew into it. It’s clear that whatever happened, it affected the entire city. You’re immediately wandering what is going on. The show then rewinds 4 hours, shows the characters and introduces their storylines leading up to that point. The core concept of the show, the chaos of this Event which disrupted the lives of everyone on the planet is presented to the viewer right from the start.

Mass Effect 2 does it well too. You don’t faff too much with character creation. You’re simply thrust into the Collector attack on your ship, the desperate evacuation and then that moment as your character gets sucked into space, flailing in panic as his oxygen runs out. AFTER that happens you go through standard character creation and are then thrown into another scenario which presents the player with another ‘what’s going on here?’ question. I thought it was excellently done. I didn’t really like ME 1, nor did I really care for Shepard, but going through that sequence that gave me chills, I very much wanted to chase the plotline from that point.

Ironically, RampantCoyote even wrote about this recently, pointing to tips from a successful writer of pulp stories. While I wouldn’t suggest creating plots from a formula, the idea of immediately putting your protagonist into an intriguing scenario is solid. Most RPGs fail at this, mucking about with tutorial quests and “Now equip your training helmet!” help messages.

I’m rewriting the intro plot because I don’t think I succeeded in that goal. It was ok, but I need it to reach out and grab the player by the balls. I need to present some of the strength of the Core Concept to the player right from the beginning, to sell the storyline to a player within the first 20 minutes of playing. That doesn’t mean giving away all my secrets in one go. But it does mean creating a stronger and more direct ‘hook’ to the story in the intro plotline. Look at that list of Keywords again. I need to hit the player with as much of that as I can in a short space of time. Not clownishly, obviously, but I need the starter plot to provide a strong introduction to the themes. I don’t think what I had did that adequately, hence the rewrite.

(One of the ideas that came out of these thoughts is that character creation is going to have you pick a war wound that your character carries, a wound that carries with it some penalty. A bad leg, facial scarring, deaf in one ear or blind in one eye, that kind of thing. This will be mandatory and serve as a literal reminder of one of the core themes of the game, that the characters, nations and societies are ‘scarred’ in some way from the war, no matter which side they were on. )

And now you know why. Carry on about your business then.