Developing Narrative and innovation of game (11th August)

The big issue that I have faced with this project is how to make my game more innovative and unique. The plan with this project was to build a game that was designed around environmental story telling, mainly focusing on having a game that uses the environment to lead the player instead of hit markers or waypoints. I am really happy with how the game is turning out with respect to this, as without markers I have made a clear path for the player to follow, and through my testers reviews navigating through the level hasn’t been a problem.

Having achieved the purpose of using environmental storytelling as the primary means of navigating my players, I was still aware that this game was still lacking in its innovation as multiple games have already been produced that rely on environmental story telling to navigate players . I needed a way to push my game in its innovation and after a discussion with my tutor we talked about how the enemies are wearing ski masks and classed as ‘terrorists’ and we could manipulate the story so that it was more realistic in terms of the fact that in real life things aren’t black and white and there aren’t good guys and bad guys. To do this we discussed how over the course of the game you’d get a better understanding of who the ‘enemies’ were and humanise them over the course of the game, even to the point where you’d understand what they were trying to do and giving them more depth then ‘they’re evil’.

In my narrative usability testing people liked the moral dilemma with the story but found that the use of nukes was a bit generic. Over the past couple of weeks I have been refining the story, taking notes of elements players liked, like the moral dilemma of the game and pushing these elements. I am really happy with the narrative I have for the game now and think it adds way more depth to the game.

The Narrative:

The Pheonix group is a renowed terrorist group that smuggles weapons and more importantly people from war torn countries and sells them to other terrorist groups. They have recently captured a Egyptian politician Jasmine Course, who has became the poster child for the hate towards the group. More pressingly though one of the groups leaders Zane Malaris and his daughter Max Malaris has managed to get there hands on a drone control console and is planning on using it to bomb innocent civilians. You know that Zane is operating in a fort in Sweden but you team has yet to figure out how the group has been smuggling supplies into the fort. Your also given the intel that Zane has a house not far from the fort. While the rest of the team surround the fort it is up to you to go to the house to hopefully find the device and the where abouts of Jasmine along the way.

You’ll fight your way into the house looking for the control console, once in Zane’s office you’ll be notified that he has just escaped out of the house. You’ll chase him to a second house, in which after searching you’ll find leads to an underground mine network. Fighting your way through the network you’ll encounter Max who informs you that the group doesn’t sell people but reunites them with their families. And that it’s your government that’s organised the attack.Not believing her, she then tells you to go and search one of the rooms, which is filled with pictures and notes thanking the group for reuniting them with their families.

The player is then given a choice,

1. They can call off the assault realising that your leaders have lied to you.

2. Can kill Max and continue to stop Zane.

If you choice option one the game will end there

If you choice option two you’ll give the green light for the assault and exit the cave which leads into a secret entrance into the fort. Once here you’ll be notified that the drones are 5 minutes away from there destination which means you have 5 minutes to stop them. You’ll fight your way through the fort kill Zane and cancel the last orders for the drones.

Endings:

Ending 1#:

If you call off the strike in the caves you’ll be told that what Max was saying was true and that it was your leaders plans to kill Jasmine as a means to frame the Pheonix group and demonise the group further.

Ending2#:

If you kill Zane and cancel the last drone orders, you’ll be notified that Jasmine was killed in a drone strike and that by canceling the last orders of the drones you caused them to attack the civilians. You’ll then know that the government lied to you and that they organised the attack.

There is another way to end the game, after killing Zane if you search the last room were the console to cancel the drone orders is you’ll fined an image of Jasmine with her husband with writing on it saying ‘Thank you for saving me ‘ ,this tells the player straight away that the group doesn’t sell people at all thus you’ll know that your leaders were lying to you. You’ll then be given the option to call off the mission or cancel the last drone orders.

Thoughts:

I really like this story as it not only flips the perspective on the player but gives them full control over which ending they get. The purpose of this narrative was to highlight the fact that in real life there are always hidden agendas and there is rarely a scenario where one groups bad and the others are good. In this case calling off the assault is the lesser of two evils but you’ll also be told how the group continues to smuggle weapons to other extremist groups.

The main concern I had when implementing this complex narrative was that I didn’t have the means to provide appropriate voice acting, as I know if I was to do it myself that it would most likely take away from the games experience. After discussing this with my tutor we talked about how the lack of voice acting could be used as an advantage and another means of making the game more innovative, using other means aside from audio to communicate the narrative, whilst keeping environmental story telling at the heart of the game.

The idea to use floating text and simply displaying the words was given to me by one of my peers, originally I thought this wouldn’t work as it would disrupt the flow of the game. But then we started talking about how books can be more effective at communicating a story then films and how we create a more deeper connection to characters when we read about them in books, as we create their features and back stories in or minds as apposed to simple being told, which is what happens in films. He then proceeded to give the example of how a lot of Animes use subtitles and how this doesn’t affect the pacing or emotion given off from the story.

With this I decided to give it a go and included floating text into my game, to my surprise this had much more of an effect then I thought it would. The fact that there were words instead of voices had no effect on the pacing of the game and in some ways enhanced the user experience as you the player would create these voices in your head (much like you would do with a book).

How this affected my game:

With my game I was trying to create an FPS that would reward the player for playing the game slowly, which is a total flip on the head to how FPS games are traditionally played. The use of text allowed me to further enhance this experience as it would make the user stop and acknowledge more about what was being communicated to them. By having the text appear in real time and not forcing the game to stop while the text is displayed, puts the power completely into the players hands. For example when in the cave you’ll turn a corner and be confronted by one of the main antagonists, who proceeds to tell you about the Phoenix groups innocents with people smuggling, throughout this entire conversation the player can simply shoot the antagonist whenever they want. Though if they take the time to listen to what she says then the player will have a deeper understanding of the narrative and the true storyline will be revealed. Additionally my narrative still puts environmental story telling first, as it’s only by observing pictures and notes dotted around the environment that the player will reveal the true narrative of the game.

Overall I am really happy with the direction my game is taking and game is already quite innovative not only because of the environmental story telling, but due to its resistance to transitional FPS norms such as the bad and good guys narrative and in the way it communicates information to the player .

#Gam705MajorProject