Author Topic: Writing in video games  (Read 12597 times)

Clockwork

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Writing in video games
« on: February 28, 2014, 12:26:15 PM »
So I posted this on the Pillars of Eternity forum, don't believe they found anything to like about it but I thought what the hell I'll post here too so someone can tell me where I'm going wrong. With regards to the third line: I realise that actually I can't write to save my life but on the internets you need extra unsubstantiated credibility to be taken even semi seriously.



"So I was reminiscing about the days slaughtering darkspawn alongside Sten and Alister. Dragon Age Origins was released back in (I think) 2009 and yet it still holds some of my fondest memories of gaming. The reason: the NPC's.
 
This game much like Pillars of Eternity is centered around a believable world and having it populated by a variety of characters, akin to real life. As a writer myself, characterisation isn't an easy thing to do. On the one hand, you have the job of making the NPCs that the main character is interacting with as relatable and realistic as possible, on the other you also can't make them too complicated for people to keep up with if there are new characters all the time.
 
The bit that requires (in my humble opinion) the greatest amount of thought is the judgement call on how fleshed out and how much writing can be assigned to any given person. Is this character going to be doing anything even slightly important (vendor level or above really)? If yes then a backstory is helpful (even if it isn't added in game). The layer that the player (or reader) sees is where they are now and how they react to them at that moment of interaction, but the reason that this particular character is, for example, hateful towards the PC doesn't have to be revealed in game specifically but the writer is aware of it all the time throughout the writing process. This helps get into the mindset of that NPC and forms their language, how they specifically structure their sentences and their facial expressions (again, not seen by the player necessarily but kept in mind).
 
This topic is actually huge and I was planning to and could write more but I doubt anyone is interested honestly."
« Last Edit: February 26, 2015, 11:55:39 AM by Colossus »
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Jubal

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Re: Character writing in games
« Reply #1 on: February 28, 2014, 04:36:45 PM »
That all looks very reasonable to me - NPCs are often under-cooked in games, though I've not played any of the specific ones mentioned.  :)
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Clockwork

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Re: Character writing in games
« Reply #2 on: February 28, 2014, 06:48:16 PM »
Thanks mate, I was pleased when I'd finished it lol. I've written another more relevant part to this topic, which I can post as well.

"Thought I'd add to this regardless.
 
What makes an NPC memorable? For me it's the voice acting.
 
Characters like Leonardo Da Vinci and Torquemada from Lionheart: Legacy of the Crusader; Morrigan, Alister and Sten from Dragon Age; Bastila, Malak and HK-47 from KotoR 1 and Kreia and Atton (HK-47 again too) from KotoR 2 all had great voices which suited the character perfectly without being cliched.
 
On the other hand Wynne and Oghren (Steve Blum is a great voice actor, but typecast so much), Carth and Canderous, Disciple, Handmaiden and Visas were all weaker characters (to me) because they were too generic for my tastes.
 
However I think that actually it's a pretty unusual line to take and more often than not it's the writing that carries whether a character is a success.
 
I'm going to prefix the next couple of lines by saying that for non-fiction I prefer films to books. For the writers of a book or game with no voice acting its more difficult to appeal to the portion of the audience I'm representing so the writing has to really carry it and give accents and nuances to the characters. In a book its much easier with a (terrible) line such as 'In her thick Glaswegian accent', which is sort of immersion breaking at the time because when talking to people the first thing you think about them isn't usually their accent but in the long run benefits the story by not having to keep a Glaswegian to English dictionary beside you while reading.
 
However in a game it's not usually possible to add exposition as background is told via imagery. In which case it's the dialogue that needs to convey accent, relative intelligence level both to other creatures and to others of its own species, state of mind and nuance to indicate things like possible deceptiveness or loss of free will."
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Jubal

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Re: Character writing in games
« Reply #3 on: March 13, 2014, 10:31:11 AM »
I prefer writing, generally most of the games I play the voice acting is very much secondary, though I can see that for modern RPGs it'd be important. And yeah, getting over all the exposition in vocal nuance does take a very good actor indeed.
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Othko97

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Re: Character writing in games
« Reply #4 on: March 13, 2014, 12:44:42 PM »
I believe it's probably a mixture of both voice acting and the writing. For example, almost every character in modern FPS games have the same backstory, and it's just gotten terribly boring to play. This causes major problems with the story, as you don't actually care about any of the characters involved, like where you have to choose a person to save (also getting boring, games industry). It's similar in the Fable games - you can marry anyone you want, but there's no point because they're all identical.

However, voice acting is important, because otherwise the below happens:
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Re: Character writing in games
« Reply #5 on: August 05, 2014, 04:38:24 PM »
Oh... My.... God....

Someone else played Lionheart!

I used to love that game, but sadly my installation disc broke and I haven't been able to install it on any of the newer computers. :(
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Re: Character writing in games
« Reply #6 on: August 06, 2014, 04:46:04 PM »
Canderous

I thought Canderous was awesome and his stories were portugaling amazing! :P

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Re: Character writing in games
« Reply #7 on: August 29, 2014, 09:07:12 AM »
What about the characters in the Elder Scrolls? I find their lore is very good but I find the characters very bland and one-sided.
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Clockwork

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Re: Character writing in games
« Reply #8 on: August 29, 2014, 12:44:49 PM »
Oh... My.... God....

Someone else played Lionheart!

I used to love that game, but sadly my installation disc broke and I haven't been able to install it on any of the newer computers. :(

I've played that game to death a hundred times over, just re-rolled another character last week :D

Maybe like yourself I'm clueless as to why it got such bad reviews. Too much walking I think was one reason but....c'mon....Morrowind??!?

I have no idea why I thought this but I could have sworn KS was asking for funding for a sequel but now can't find any evidence of it. Probably dreamt it.

Canderous was well written but imo, the voice didn't do it justice and also failed to etch any sort of nuance half the time apart from 'I'm well 'ard, and I hate you, and I hate everyone else'. I think someone like Mark Strong would have owned the character, British accent would have been a little different, he has great nuances in films such as Rock n Rolla.

For the ES games, picture this: You're a writer and have just finished writing about an archetypal hero who saves a land from civil war, trawls through dungeons, shouts trolls off cliffs and slays dragons. Good times. Now you're asked to write this 'A Gazillion Lines of Generic Fantasy World Conversation'. Then you think how the hell do you start that? So you just write 'I saw a mudcrab today, horrible creatures' along with one less than a gazillion other lines and never expect the developer to put it into a game. Even the best VO can't make that sound good :P

The writing for a game like ES is different. ES has no cutscenes after you start the game. With kotor for example, they can force you to talk to someone you need to by making a cutscene where you character walks over there and starts it. In ES, the player has to find quests themselves by walking up to someone so the questgivers have to be 100% obvious* with lines so bad it makes your ears bleed. 'Torolf, Torolf, have you seen my Torolf?' Shut up lady, I'm here to sell you a necklace of fortify block, go find him yourself.

*They don't have to be at all, but Bethesda/Zenimax/Whoever thinks they do, because we're all morons obviously.

This is another topic of conversation though. I could do a webisode on it but EC already did. These guys are awesome https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCCODtTcd5M1JavPCOr_Uydg

And just for lols http://www.totalxbox.com/36456/features/skyrim-15-most-annoying-npc-quotes/
« Last Edit: October 08, 2014, 09:10:26 PM by Colossus »
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Clockwork

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Re: Character writing in games
« Reply #9 on: October 08, 2014, 09:04:49 PM »
Double post but hey, its completely separate from my last.

Prince Arthas Menethil is the best videogame villian ever.

Starting out as the protagonist in the game Warcraft 3; through your actions he strives to save his people, the dwindling human kingdom of Lorderon. He investigates first of all an Orc trying to bring back deamons which were banished fifty (or so) years prior (foreshadowing for a later storyline but not relevant to this particular tale) and secondly a mysterious plague which his turning his people into the undead. The harder he fought, the more undead were created from his fallen warriors which frustrated him greatly. In his travels trying to find the source of the plague, he comes across a town already infected. To prevent the spread of the plague from killing more of his people, he decides to slaughter the entire town. At this point his friend loses faith in him and his mentor casts him out, he now has nobody from which to draw council and has only his own voice to heed.

From here on its all downhill for our noble prince but its an awesome setup for a bad guy :D

EDIT: I would also add that this change happens over the course of hours of gameplay not just a badly written paragraph.
« Last Edit: October 08, 2014, 09:45:30 PM by Colossus »
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TTG4

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Re: Character writing in games
« Reply #10 on: October 08, 2014, 10:21:37 PM »
What about the characters in the Elder Scrolls? I find their lore is very good but I find the characters very bland and one-sided.

Agreed there, I've lost count of the amount of time I've spent digging through lore pages, but I can't care about the characters. They're just vehicles for giving quests most of the time.

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Re: Character writing in games
« Reply #11 on: October 23, 2014, 07:09:07 AM »
But occasionally there is that one character you fall in love with.
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Re: Character writing in games
« Reply #12 on: October 23, 2014, 12:59:10 PM »
The dead guy in the background?

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Re: Character writing in games
« Reply #13 on: October 23, 2014, 03:24:54 PM »
But occasionally there is that one character you fall in love with.

Yeah agreed. For me it has to be:

Clockwork

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Re: Writing in video games
« Reply #14 on: February 26, 2015, 12:19:46 PM »
I'd like to talk about another boring topic! Pacing!

Pacing in games is absolutely critical. As Order:1888 has shown just recently, it can kill a game. But no bandwagons will be leapt upon and I'll refrain from mentioning it further. What really made me look at pacing is: Dragon Age: Awakenings, the sequal to Dragon Age: Origins both by BioWare.

Now, I'm a huge fan of Dragon Age: Origins and that is a game where pacing is done really well so I'll use it as a contrast. Which is handy because the rest of the game is very much the same.

In a typical Origins main quest you'd go to a hub area like a city or a forest, pick up sidequests of which one or two can be done within the confines of the hub area for small rewards and the rest you travel some distance to get to and complete before returning to the hub area to be congratulated and adored, maidens fall on you and swords are bequeathed etc, etc. The difficulty ramps up both naturally and artificially the further you progress to complete the main quest and the side missions would provide you with a boss battle, a treasure hunt or a dialogue (or mix) before confronting the main evil/misunderstood party at the end of a quest at which point there is a battle of epic proportions followed by a slow walk back to town and a nice chat about how things went with party members and various NPCs.

In Awakenings, there is the hub, there are sidequests of which one or two can be done within the confines of the hub, there is loot, there are maidens, there is difficulty progression. So how does Awakenings fail? It leaves out the walking and you go from one fight straight into the next almost without pause. It's almost like someone said: walking is boring, combat is fun: let's replace the walking with combat. That'll get people psyched. No. For combat, dialogue and treasure hunting to be fun, there needed to be something that was comparatively boring. If you set the excitement to 10 all the time then you just get used to it and it becomes boring.
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