When people talk about game writing,
they usually talk about it as if it's one monolithic thing.
It is not.
It's actually three monolithic things!
*Mario Bob-Bomb BattleField Remix*
Real quick up top, say hi to our guest artist for this episode, Extra Sci Fi's own David Hueso.
Thanks, David!
There are three distinct pillars that make up what we offhandedly call
game writing:
Plot,
Character,
and Lore.
Not all games need to focus on all of these equally.
In fact, some of the best written games
come from teams realizing which of these their games should focus on,
while some of the most expensive failures in game writing
come from teams that never stop to separate these out, and just try to deliver on all three.
And even in those rare cases where you knock it out of the park on all of them,
it's virtually impossible to do so without breaking your narrative down
into these pieces
and thinking about which aspects of your game are going to be used to deliver which.
So let's define these three pillars of game writing.
Plot is simple.
It's the actual storyline of the piece.
It's what you get if you strip away everything but what happens.
It's also one of the easiest to confuse.
Take Final Fantasy games, for instance.
People usually talk about Final Fantasy as if they were plot-driven games.
But nearly every Final Fantasy game's plot
boils down to "A big bad threatens to destroy the world,
and a group of heroes band together to stop it."
Some are slightly more complex,
like in 10 (Final Fantasy 10) where a young man gets teleported through time by an atemporal demon fish
that has to be held at bay by religious rituals and sacrifice, but fundamentally
It's big bad,
end of the world,
hero saves the day,
ride Chocobos off into the sunset.
That's basically the plot to most of them.
But the best Final Fantasies are the ones where the writers realized
that Final Fantasy games aren't actually about plot;
they're about character.
Character writing is the aspect of game writing that fleshes out the characters
and focuses on their lives and their struggles.
It's the part that gives them personality,
makes them feel holistic, and that makes them relatable,
or people you want to be.
It's the aspect that makes villains not just seem like props,
and heroes not just be generic do-gooders.
It's moments like when you find out
Mordin likes Gilbert & Sullivan
or that Kratos had a hard time embracing his son.
And as a writer,
the interesting truth about these moments is that they often come at the expense of the plot.
These sort of tiny touches
where characters sit around a campfire and talk about their dreams or their family
don't actually move the plot forward.
Which is completely fine,
as whole games can seem amazingly well-written
even with the paper-thin plot if they deliver characters to us we believe in and love.
But games do have a finite amount of narrative space, and it's important as a writer to
understand which pillar is the most essential to the experience you're looking to convey.
Which brings us to the third pillar:
Lore.
Lore is everything that makes the world feel vibrant and alive.
It's the stuff that makes it feel like the world you're playing in
existed long before your characters got there, and
that it exists outside of whatever your characters are doing.
It's the item descriptions in Dark Souls, the books in Skyrim, and the mouseover text in Battletech.
It's also a lot more than those, but we'll talk about that as we answer this question:
What are the keys to delivering on each of the pillars well?
Most importantly, we have to realize that what people call "game writing" isn't just about the written word.
It's everything from level design,
to combat mechanics, to how the characters look.
What's usually termed "game writing"
is actually equal parts writing and narrative design.
So for each of these pillars, we'll consider both.
Let's begin with Plot.
A game focused on Plot has to do one of these things:
be a story you haven't seen before,
which actually is quite a lot of stories in the game world
such as Firewatch or Gone Home,
have a twist à la Bioshock,
or have something to say,
like This War of Mine.
If it doesn't meet any of these criteria,
you're probably not making a plot-focused game.
Plot luckily has the most overlap with traditional writing.
So if you are making a plot-centric game,
just write a summary of your plot and share it with people.
Do they think your twist is amazing, or your story novel, or your tale meaningful?
If not, it's back to the drawing board.
And while plot is perhaps the most divorced of the three pillars,
if you're going to have a twist ending, and especially if there's something you're trying to say with your game,
try to incorporate it into the mechanics as well.
Papers, Please would be ineffective as a narrative
if it weren't a narrative about knowing when to break the rules,
told through a game entirely about strictly following rules.
To add character to your characters on the other hand,
it's essential
every part of your team is working closely together from the get-go.
A player's first impression of every character is going to be the visuals.
What do they look like?
A bold warrior?
An effete mage?
A roguish space pirate?
that look will guide your players first impression of them.
Along with that,
how your characters move,
how they dress,
and how they hold themselves will say a lot about who they are.
Now, that doesn't mean you shouldn't ever play against type.
In fact, you should a lot of the time.
But the visuals will still be a big part of defining what type you're playing against.
No matter what you're doing, though,
your art department can literally save you thousands of words
when it comes to giving personality to your characters.
So make sure you're in sync with them.
Next there's mechanics
We've talked about this before,
but your player is going to spend a vast majority of the game not in text boxes or cutscenes,
rather, they're going to be out there doing things.
What your character does says a lot about who they are.
Imagine if Tracer had Reinhardt's mechanics.
The character wouldn't be remotely the same.
Along with that, think carefully about your voice steps,
the things your characters call out during gameplay.
Those are not throwaway lines.
Your players are gonna hear those more than anything else in the game.
Lastly, but perhaps most importantly,
spend time thinking about who these characters really are.
Not just what they do, or what their role is in your world,
but who are they?
What are their hopes and dreams?
What are their failings?
Who was there before they got swept up into all of this?
And what do they think about what's going on?
Then think about how they would embody all those things.
Do they speak out about their problems, or do they bottle things up?
Do they act too quickly, or do they think about things too long?
It's the small details,
not the broad strokes, that give characters
character.
So you have to find them.
Finally we have Lore.
If the game is more about being a part of a living world than actually having a traditional narrative,
you simply have to find all the space you can to work lore in.
This means not only item descriptions, in-game books, and loading screen text.
The very world of your game itself needs to deliver that lore.
Have a ruined castle?
It can't just be any ruined castle.
It has to have a history and a reason for being in ruins,
and your level design should reflect that.
Have a suit of armor from an old knightly order?
Well, it better have their insignia on it.
And so better everything else that comes from that group.
Everything has to be specific, and consistency is key.
This is where a story bible helps.
I've found that when delivering plot- or character-driven games,
writers can
at times
actually get distracted by going too deep into the world
and come up with enormous backstories that they'll never be able to deliver in-game.
But if you can avoid that pitfall
and always remember that the player doesn't actually know all the headcanon
that you've never actually shown them,
then story bibles are very helpful no matter what type of narrative you're creating.
But in lore-driven games, they're essential.
Write out everything,
know your world inside and out,
put in as much detail as you can, and
most importantly,
put it together in some easily searchable way
so that anytime anyone on the project is working on
anything, it all remains consistent.
So those are the three pillars of game writing:
Plot,
Character,
and Lore.
Almost every game will have some elements of all three,
but I'd wager 80% of the games
you've played that have great writing really only focused on one or two.
See everybody next week!