But at least one thing in this crazy world has remained constant, and that’s my willingness to (under reasonable duress) actually write Good Robot. <\/em>Which I did–all the way back in 2013. Now three years later one thing in gaming really has changed, and that’s Good Robot<\/em>, because the old script is now completely useless. <\/em>As in, nothing could be saved–not even the model of storytelling. The changes we’d made to the game meant a total rewrite was necessary.<\/p>\n Let’s talk about why.<\/p>\n This is actually the first of a two-part series, but you don’t need to read either one to understand the other. That’s important, because this post–and only <\/i>this post–is absolutely one hundred percent farm-certified Spoiler Free. The next one will hint at the context of the new game without, I think, spoiling anything, but consider yourself warned. Now–let’s hop right in.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The story of a game isn’t always important. How the story is told, however, is absolutely crucial. A game with good mechanics and no story can still get by; a game with a good story can be appealing; a game with a good story that doesn’t jive with the mechanics <\/em>is awful, and I’m not just talking about your ludonarrative dissonances–I’m talking about cases where getting a narrative across crudely or inexpertly steps on players enjoying themselves. Let’s give an example.<\/p>\n I like Morrowind. <\/em>I’m fascinated by Dunmer mysticism and politics at the game’s heart, and learning about them makes exploring and dungeon-crawling that much more fun. But at the end of the day, exploring and dungeon-crawling are what I’m there to do, and if getting that story meant the freedom to do those things was taken away from me, I’d have resented the intrusion. Morrowind’s <\/em>story and gameplay work because they’re both based on freedom to do what you want; you pick what topics you explore with NPCs, you pick what books you read, you pick what quests you do. Having the story happen in pre-scripted cutscenes or infolink conversations or what have you would break the flow of the gameplay, take away the player’s freedom, and do more to frustrate than entertain.<\/p>\n This brings us almost directly to Good Robot<\/em>.<\/p>\n Even back then, approaching the game from Shamus’ rough story outline was a dicey proposition. The idea was to include a rough arc to the story–nothing too fancy, but something that would noticeably change how you see your character and the setting over time. It would introduce a conflict, introduce another perspective on that conflict, then resolve it via the final boss battle. So how do you tell that story through a twin-sticky shmup?<\/p>\n More than it could be about any idea or story, Good Robot<\/em> is about:<\/p>\n So how to tell that story? Cutscenes are right out. We can’t use audio logs, because those will either distract players from robot sounds or–worse–will force the player to<\/em> stop blowing up robots. <\/em>That’s not really what they need from this game, and having large text dumps would make things even worse.<\/p>\n Furthermore, the only location where we know that a player is going to be on a linear straight-and-narrow channel is the exit and entrance areas of levels, right after the bossfights, and constraining all of the game’s story to those small areas (to make sure nothing important was missed or experienced out-of-order) would leave the game feeling a little lean story-wise–even though, in retrospect, that might have been the best way to approach that build of the game.<\/p>\n*Shamus has already guaranteed me a lock on this year’s Goldun Riter Awward, but I’m also gunning for the Horace Peasmasher Wrote Man’s Pennant, a prestigious prize granted thus far only to Wizards of Wor<\/em>, CD Boggle (Sponsored by Kellog Cereals!)<\/em>, and Seasons of Mystery: The Cherry Blossom Murders. <\/em>And even–dare I say it–a Writer’s Guild award, that I might join The Force Unleashed<\/em> and Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood <\/em>as the premier storytelling achievements of the modern age.<\/a><\/h6>\n
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