Do the choices made in the game result in branching
narrative paths? If so, how? If not, how are the choices
meaningful?
Fallout 2 having the mechanic of modifying your character's traits to be more diplomatic or combat based allows for different styles of gameplay. However the beginning sequence of Fallout 2 is still rather linear, as the only way to unlock different dialogue options is to increase intelligence or other speech enhancing skills, and the only way to progress is to complete a linear mission. There is no alternative way to complete the first mission, However there are multiple pathways that can be completed in this open world. However only a few endings are considered 'canon' as a continuation of the series, thus there are only a few select events that truly have happened, that the player should set out to achieve. Likewise there are still only a few 'happy' endings and thus few of the endings are actually impactful to the overarching story of the series.
Thursday, 17 March 2016
Monday, 14 March 2016
Thursday, 10 March 2016
Final Script of Bugger Off/The Bug, by Lauren. To be used to develop storyboards
THE BUG
BY Team Meemers
CUT IN:
1 INT. STUDY
The room is cluttered with boxes and papers, and a
solitary desk lamp lights the room.
LOW ANGLE SHOT:
PERSON is sitting at the desk, hunched over a pile of
papers, scribbling away.
The camera refocuses, shifting the focus from the PERSON,
to a pile of soaked napkins, and a dripping bottle of
soda, sitting on the edge of the desk. The split drink
pools on the floor.
PAN DOWN AND ZOOM IN:
MIDSHOT:
Under the table, we see a large BUG scuttle forward,
curiously peering at the split soda.
BUG stops and sips the liquid, perking up in delight,
peering around.
BUG begins to scurry around the floor.
TRACKING:
BUG runs about, jumping from box to box, peering around,
until it stops, paused in delight, staring intently at
something in the distance.
CUT TO:
LOW ANGLE CLOSE UP:
Sitting on the table, we see a full bottle of soda, lying
on its side - the source of the original puddle.
Light glows from behind the bottle, giving it an ethereal
look.
CUT TO:
POV SHOT (PERSON’S):
The BUG jumps onto the desk, scurrying towards the bottle.
PERSON raises up their book, and slams it down violently
on the BUG, splattering it across the desk.
(CONTINUED)
CONTINUED: 2.
There is a small pause, and the splattered mess reforms
itself into four, smaller versions of the bug, all staring
up at the PERSON.
CUT TO BLACK.
BY Team Meemers
CUT IN:
1 INT. STUDY
The room is cluttered with boxes and papers, and a
solitary desk lamp lights the room.
LOW ANGLE SHOT:
PERSON is sitting at the desk, hunched over a pile of
papers, scribbling away.
The camera refocuses, shifting the focus from the PERSON,
to a pile of soaked napkins, and a dripping bottle of
soda, sitting on the edge of the desk. The split drink
pools on the floor.
PAN DOWN AND ZOOM IN:
MIDSHOT:
Under the table, we see a large BUG scuttle forward,
curiously peering at the split soda.
BUG stops and sips the liquid, perking up in delight,
peering around.
BUG begins to scurry around the floor.
TRACKING:
BUG runs about, jumping from box to box, peering around,
until it stops, paused in delight, staring intently at
something in the distance.
CUT TO:
LOW ANGLE CLOSE UP:
Sitting on the table, we see a full bottle of soda, lying
on its side - the source of the original puddle.
Light glows from behind the bottle, giving it an ethereal
look.
CUT TO:
POV SHOT (PERSON’S):
The BUG jumps onto the desk, scurrying towards the bottle.
PERSON raises up their book, and slams it down violently
on the BUG, splattering it across the desk.
(CONTINUED)
CONTINUED: 2.
There is a small pause, and the splattered mess reforms
itself into four, smaller versions of the bug, all staring
up at the PERSON.
CUT TO BLACK.
Never Alone
Chosen question
Do the story nodes in your chosen game(s) work well to support gameplay and gameplay objectives? Why or why not?
Story nodes in the beginning of Never Alone take the form of cut scenes and exposition.
The initial cut scene introduces the world and the characters, however keeps it very vague, as we the players are constantly encouraged to explore deeper into Inuit mythology by the owl giving us the option to view certain clips and images to explain the mythos. However, as the developers understood that not every player would be as invested in the mythos and providing so much information could be distracting from game play, the choice to make this information optional is much appreciated.
Each cut scene and narrated segment we are given provides an objective, and dictates the mood of the scene. 'The girl was devastated' at the destruction of her village or 'The owl man was delighted' to have his drum back. It's a bit like taking a walk through this linear story book, only you can feel real tension in tense areas of the story because you, the player are capable of failure and dying, unlike in a story book where the survival of the main character is presumed to be guaranteed. However I feel as though narrated events where the player is still able to move, such as the bear den, could be better narrated to support game play rather than 'it is not easy to outsmart a bear', as this is a bit of trivial commentary basically telling the player 'here is a puzzle, you're on your own.' The moment the antagonist is chasing the girl is also narrated as 'he was more enraged at the sight of the bola' which tells the player blatantly the objective of the antagonist, and his emotion. However I felt like this was a bit too expository, and could have been better shown as later in tat same chase he cries 'stop, give me that bola!', essentially showing the same thing twice. These cut scene, or event nodes work well to keep the story in focus, but do not otherwise add much to the game or the game play itself. Overall, Never Alone uses nodes well, but not exceptionally so.
Do the story nodes in your chosen game(s) work well to support gameplay and gameplay objectives? Why or why not?
Story nodes in the beginning of Never Alone take the form of cut scenes and exposition.
The initial cut scene introduces the world and the characters, however keeps it very vague, as we the players are constantly encouraged to explore deeper into Inuit mythology by the owl giving us the option to view certain clips and images to explain the mythos. However, as the developers understood that not every player would be as invested in the mythos and providing so much information could be distracting from game play, the choice to make this information optional is much appreciated.
Each cut scene and narrated segment we are given provides an objective, and dictates the mood of the scene. 'The girl was devastated' at the destruction of her village or 'The owl man was delighted' to have his drum back. It's a bit like taking a walk through this linear story book, only you can feel real tension in tense areas of the story because you, the player are capable of failure and dying, unlike in a story book where the survival of the main character is presumed to be guaranteed. However I feel as though narrated events where the player is still able to move, such as the bear den, could be better narrated to support game play rather than 'it is not easy to outsmart a bear', as this is a bit of trivial commentary basically telling the player 'here is a puzzle, you're on your own.' The moment the antagonist is chasing the girl is also narrated as 'he was more enraged at the sight of the bola' which tells the player blatantly the objective of the antagonist, and his emotion. However I felt like this was a bit too expository, and could have been better shown as later in tat same chase he cries 'stop, give me that bola!', essentially showing the same thing twice. These cut scene, or event nodes work well to keep the story in focus, but do not otherwise add much to the game or the game play itself. Overall, Never Alone uses nodes well, but not exceptionally so.
Thursday, 3 March 2016
Her Story
Chosen Question
How does your chosen game(s) tell its story? Is it successful?
Her Story starts off with a search engine inviting you to initiate gameplay, and prompts to search up the term 'murder'. This quickly establishes a mystery element that intrigues the player, as they are invited to solve this mystery on their own path and own queries, based on evidence from the first 5 clips each result turns up.
A story unfolds as you play the clips left to right, sorted by date, which was possibly intended for linear storytelling, but allows the player to watch them out of order if they so wish.
The story unfolds by providing tangential stories to the case at hand to drop subtle clues and big name drops for the player to follow like a bread crumb trail to find their next relevant search term. A good example of this could be 'Hannah' mentioning names and places like Peter, Helen, Florence, Glasgow, the attic, the cellar, the mirror several times in several clips. Allowing for broader search terms to still eventually lead to the same revelations. It's up to the player to pick up on suspicious, or new details to progress the full story. The first term 'murder' already sets up Hannah, or at this point in time 'the woman', as a suspicious figure, wherein the last video she asks to speak to a lawyer, saying that all the previous details we have yet to uncover are merely 'stories' and there was no concrete evidence, thus setting her up as the immediate suspect. Due to the 'stories' comment, her accounts from this point forward are taken with a grain of mistrust, and installing a suspicion on falsehood in her words.
There is no clear instruction for the next search query, but going off what little information the prompted search gave us, I looked up 'Simon' and find out about his work history.
Interestingly enough, these videos the woman speaks of Simon in present tense, suggesting that nine days before the 'first' clip, Simon was alive.
We're then introduced to more characters, Peter and Helen, as well as a location Rockington Arms 'The Rock'.
The game is interesting in that it can clearly play out in a non-chronological order, that everyone's play through can be different if they pick up on different words or cues. To ensure similar pathways are taken, a lot of the cues relate to each other to flesh out certain details, like the events on a certain weekend, encounter, or relation to a person, for example Hannah and Eve's relation to Carl.
Interestingly, if the player chooses to pick up on seemingly random cues and word drops, as I like to call the deliberate dropping of a name in the middle of an otherwise unexciting sentence like the word 'palindrome' early on, a good portion of tension building gameplay can be skipped, right into the reveal that Hannah has a twin sister named Eve, as both women have palindromic names.
This open pathway leaves the risk for a particularly observant player simply missing half the story, and potentially missing the child's name, Sarah completely.
However I took a step back to look up less important details to get a more complete story. That's an excellent detail about mystery games such as this, even if you reach the ending, and find the correct conclusion, the mystery element of the game compels the player to find all the details, to find out all the secrets and see the story in it's entirety. There is nothing driving the player for 100% completion other than the simple satisfaction of knowing. However after a while of 8 second clips about what Hannah/Eve did at a party or something equally menial, one could get tired and end the game early on, especially if they did unearth one of the 'big' reveals earlier than intended.
The game assists the player in taking certain queries by giving visual or audio cues to crucial information, such as screen dimming, and distant siren wailing upon the 'pregnancy' reveal, or 'twins' reveal, or 'infertility' reveal, or Simon's ultimate death reveal, or even Eve's 'confession' video.
These cues are clearly meant to tell the player to pay particular attention to the current clip to pick out further search queries from.There are also musical cues with silence, and tracks changing upon certain videos ending,
Her Story uses repetitive clips and name drops to prompt progress, 'dropping' specific details like 'silver mirror', to bring detail to the time taken to specifically describe this object so that players can search up the term 'mirror'. Unusual behaviour such as Hannah tapping rhythmically on the desk is further presented as suspicious by following it up with the entry of the interrogator causing Hannah to sit up and ask to leave, calling further attention to the clip.
Her Story is successful at setting the mood for the story, and prompting further inquiry into relevant plot details, and succeeds in compelling the player to search more just for the pure satisfaction of solving the complete mystery. However I feel after all the main mysteries have been solved the trivial details lose their allure and get simply tiresome after a while, a simple collect all the clips chore and fails to hold my interest. This open path game play allows all players to reach the same conclusions through all sorts of paths, however I feel that if so much of the story can be skipped, is that really a a successful story? I feel like this story could have afforded to 'cut the fat' a little in some places, kept clips relevant and improving on the crucial clips to tell the story better. The two part song was a nice touch, but also added no extra search results that I could pull up, as the story of Hannah almost drowning Eve is all but unimportant seemingly, only revealing Hannah's earlier symptoms of instability. Also looking up the song will only get you the second half of the song, which is irrelevant if you've already managed to piece together all the detail the song outlines such as the blonde wig, and jealousy.However I suppose if you ran across the song first, your 'case' or mystery, would revolve around the song, rather than the song simply being a nice touch.
I like the game for setting up the story that compels you to play for the simple satisfaction of knowing, however I do not like that so much of the game can become redundant over a particularly observant search inquiry of smaller details.
How does your chosen game(s) tell its story? Is it successful?
Her Story starts off with a search engine inviting you to initiate gameplay, and prompts to search up the term 'murder'. This quickly establishes a mystery element that intrigues the player, as they are invited to solve this mystery on their own path and own queries, based on evidence from the first 5 clips each result turns up.
A story unfolds as you play the clips left to right, sorted by date, which was possibly intended for linear storytelling, but allows the player to watch them out of order if they so wish.
The story unfolds by providing tangential stories to the case at hand to drop subtle clues and big name drops for the player to follow like a bread crumb trail to find their next relevant search term. A good example of this could be 'Hannah' mentioning names and places like Peter, Helen, Florence, Glasgow, the attic, the cellar, the mirror several times in several clips. Allowing for broader search terms to still eventually lead to the same revelations. It's up to the player to pick up on suspicious, or new details to progress the full story. The first term 'murder' already sets up Hannah, or at this point in time 'the woman', as a suspicious figure, wherein the last video she asks to speak to a lawyer, saying that all the previous details we have yet to uncover are merely 'stories' and there was no concrete evidence, thus setting her up as the immediate suspect. Due to the 'stories' comment, her accounts from this point forward are taken with a grain of mistrust, and installing a suspicion on falsehood in her words.
There is no clear instruction for the next search query, but going off what little information the prompted search gave us, I looked up 'Simon' and find out about his work history.
Interestingly enough, these videos the woman speaks of Simon in present tense, suggesting that nine days before the 'first' clip, Simon was alive.
We're then introduced to more characters, Peter and Helen, as well as a location Rockington Arms 'The Rock'.
The game is interesting in that it can clearly play out in a non-chronological order, that everyone's play through can be different if they pick up on different words or cues. To ensure similar pathways are taken, a lot of the cues relate to each other to flesh out certain details, like the events on a certain weekend, encounter, or relation to a person, for example Hannah and Eve's relation to Carl.
Interestingly, if the player chooses to pick up on seemingly random cues and word drops, as I like to call the deliberate dropping of a name in the middle of an otherwise unexciting sentence like the word 'palindrome' early on, a good portion of tension building gameplay can be skipped, right into the reveal that Hannah has a twin sister named Eve, as both women have palindromic names.
This open pathway leaves the risk for a particularly observant player simply missing half the story, and potentially missing the child's name, Sarah completely.
However I took a step back to look up less important details to get a more complete story. That's an excellent detail about mystery games such as this, even if you reach the ending, and find the correct conclusion, the mystery element of the game compels the player to find all the details, to find out all the secrets and see the story in it's entirety. There is nothing driving the player for 100% completion other than the simple satisfaction of knowing. However after a while of 8 second clips about what Hannah/Eve did at a party or something equally menial, one could get tired and end the game early on, especially if they did unearth one of the 'big' reveals earlier than intended.
The game assists the player in taking certain queries by giving visual or audio cues to crucial information, such as screen dimming, and distant siren wailing upon the 'pregnancy' reveal, or 'twins' reveal, or 'infertility' reveal, or Simon's ultimate death reveal, or even Eve's 'confession' video.
These cues are clearly meant to tell the player to pay particular attention to the current clip to pick out further search queries from.There are also musical cues with silence, and tracks changing upon certain videos ending,
Her Story uses repetitive clips and name drops to prompt progress, 'dropping' specific details like 'silver mirror', to bring detail to the time taken to specifically describe this object so that players can search up the term 'mirror'. Unusual behaviour such as Hannah tapping rhythmically on the desk is further presented as suspicious by following it up with the entry of the interrogator causing Hannah to sit up and ask to leave, calling further attention to the clip.
Her Story is successful at setting the mood for the story, and prompting further inquiry into relevant plot details, and succeeds in compelling the player to search more just for the pure satisfaction of solving the complete mystery. However I feel after all the main mysteries have been solved the trivial details lose their allure and get simply tiresome after a while, a simple collect all the clips chore and fails to hold my interest. This open path game play allows all players to reach the same conclusions through all sorts of paths, however I feel that if so much of the story can be skipped, is that really a a successful story? I feel like this story could have afforded to 'cut the fat' a little in some places, kept clips relevant and improving on the crucial clips to tell the story better. The two part song was a nice touch, but also added no extra search results that I could pull up, as the story of Hannah almost drowning Eve is all but unimportant seemingly, only revealing Hannah's earlier symptoms of instability. Also looking up the song will only get you the second half of the song, which is irrelevant if you've already managed to piece together all the detail the song outlines such as the blonde wig, and jealousy.However I suppose if you ran across the song first, your 'case' or mystery, would revolve around the song, rather than the song simply being a nice touch.
I like the game for setting up the story that compels you to play for the simple satisfaction of knowing, however I do not like that so much of the game can become redundant over a particularly observant search inquiry of smaller details.
Thursday, 25 February 2016
Script Ideas
My initial log lines
- Toy car chase scene around a mundane office
- Human and a dog fight over changing the radio station.
- new 2D to 3D Virtual reality glasses that can switch the animated character between 2D and 3D.
- Humanised TV switches clothing based on genre of channel being watched.Box TV is 3D animated, and character TV is 2D. Personaility think humanised TARDIS.
- Skype call with an animated character that escapes the screen.
- Load page destroyer app. Destroys all Error 404s. Character is the app mascot.
Favourite ideas
- Humanised TV switches clothing based on genre of channel being watched.Box TV is 3D animated, and character TV is 2D. Personaility: think humanised TARDIS. Live action uses remote to switch clothing, Animation is trying to take remote away. Jokes such as change into an animal for Discovery Channel, princess get up, etc.
- Load page destroyer app. Destroys all Error 404s. Character is the app mascot.
Even though my favourite idea is the changing channel costume idea, this could provide difficult since changing the model so often and coming up with so many different costumes, and turning the character into an animal could be difficult. I could simply texture some static over a blank character model to shift from shape to shape, but that is probably more difficult than simply creating a single character with a single costume.
Rough script ideqas
Load page destroyer app. Destroys all Error 404s. Character is the app mascot.
Spoof of dumb commercials.
Cellphone app zap guns, swipe forward to fire a laser to destory the 404 error message which is like a 3D brick wall projected from the computer screen.
INT. an office with a computer in an office cubicle. Or just a bedroom.
LA Character loads up a page, Error 404 page not found/no internet connection screen pops up.
LA Character: Oh no! I just wanted to load up my favourite social media website, but now I can’t. And to check the internet connection, I have to go all the way to the next room. Whatever will I do now?
Phone has an alert with a swipe forward command, LA Character checks Alert
LA Character: Oh? What’s this?
LA Character swipes the icon, and out pops Animation!
Animation: Hey there frazzled human! You look like you’re facing some web page trouble there! Why restart your modem when you can BLAST THROUGH THE SCREEN
LA Character: What?
Animation: BLAST THROUGH THE SCREEN
Animation summons the 3D page block projection from the computer
Then using phones as laser guns they blast the error messages away, ad ends with a slew of messages like 'batteries not included each feature sold separately'.
Rough 2
INT. an office with a computer in an office cubicle.
LA Character loads up a page, Error 404 page not found/no internet connection screen pops up.
LA Character: Oh no! I just wanted to load up my favourite social media website, and to check the internet connection, I have to go all the way to the next room. Whatever will I do now?
Phone has an alert with a swipe forward command, LA Character checks Alert
LA Character: Oh? What’s this?
LA Character swipes the icon, and out pops Animation!
Animation: Hey there! You look like you’re facing some web page trouble there! Why restart your modem when you can BLAST THROUGH THE SCREEN!
LA Character: What?
Animation summons the 3D page block projection from the computer
Animation: Now swipe!
Then using phones as laser guns they blast the error message to smithereens.
LA Character: Whoa! This app is such a marvel! Page Block Be Gone is my best friend!
Animation: Remember, Page Block Be Gone is only a download away, no more loading screens
blast through a youtube loading wheel
Animation: no more page not available
blast through this message
Animation: no more no internet connection found!
blast through it, the tiny dinosaur burns slowly to death.
Animation: why call tech support to solve all your digital problems? JUST BLAST THROUGH THEM WITH PAGE BLOCK BE GONE.
The Animated character is now sad, that she has such a faceted appearance, but LA character comforts her by saying they represent each facet of her personality, and she doesn’t have to be one thing or the other,
My initial log lines
- Toy car chase scene around a mundane office
- Human and a dog fight over changing the radio station.
- new 2D to 3D Virtual reality glasses that can switch the animated character between 2D and 3D.
- Humanised TV switches clothing based on genre of channel being watched.Box TV is 3D animated, and character TV is 2D. Personaility think humanised TARDIS.
- Skype call with an animated character that escapes the screen.
- Load page destroyer app. Destroys all Error 404s. Character is the app mascot.
Favourite ideas
- Humanised TV switches clothing based on genre of channel being watched.Box TV is 3D animated, and character TV is 2D. Personaility: think humanised TARDIS. Live action uses remote to switch clothing, Animation is trying to take remote away. Jokes such as change into an animal for Discovery Channel, princess get up, etc.
- Load page destroyer app. Destroys all Error 404s. Character is the app mascot.
Even though my favourite idea is the changing channel costume idea, this could provide difficult since changing the model so often and coming up with so many different costumes, and turning the character into an animal could be difficult. I could simply texture some static over a blank character model to shift from shape to shape, but that is probably more difficult than simply creating a single character with a single costume.
Rough 2
Animation: why call tech support to solve all your digital problems? JUST BLAST THROUGH THEM WITH PAGE BLOCK BE GONE.
UPDATED
Changing channels idea
LA Character: I wonder what’s on tonight?
LA Character flips about 3-5 channels, underneath a couple news reports and boring infomercials, MTV etc it gets stuck on a witchcraft channel, and the remote cannot change the channel until the witch has cast a spell that causes the TV to glow and spit out a humanisation of the TV, because the occult channel is still on, she comes out as a witch.
LA Character is in brief awe, drops the remote. It lands buttons down and changes channel to an epic quest. The animated character changes into Game of Thrones get up, and is in shock.
LA Character is feeling giddy and changes the channel in quick succession to Childrens Cartoon, to News Report, to Cooking show, and in her frustration she knocks the remote out of LA Characters hand, and shakes her head, like “No no no, stop”
Both characters look at the remote on the floor and both scramble to grab it. LA Character grabs it first and runs around the room and onto the couch occasionally changing the channel to MTV, a live in show comedy, the Amazing Race, Discovery Channel, History Channel, with music cues. During the chase the LA Character falls behind the couch to better hide the transitions as they commence a cartoony wrestle behind the couch. Finally in a scramble to get the remote the LA Character breaks the remote, a flash happens resulting in the Animated Character wearing an amalgamation of all the previous channels in a disgusting mess.
The Animated character is now sad, that she has such a faceted appearance, but LA character comforts her by saying they represent each facet of her personality, and she doesn’t have to be one thing or the other,
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