Effective talk: Constant NPC narratives occurring in the background
Year of Talk: 2023
Video Link: The Secret Lives of NPCs: 'Wayward Strand'
Throughout the game of Wayward Strand, all the NPC will continue existing no matter where or what the player is doing. This means that NPCS seem to be acting like normal human beings doing a variety of tasks. The player could easily enter or leave different story plotlines and it will have progressed further without player input.
Intertwining stories:
The main concept that the team wanted to target was how life and stories evolve throughout a day or set of days. Especially on how it can be quite messy and things can quickly change without realizing or being near it.
The narrative team wanted to make sure to include a wide variety of characters with different backgrounds. This meant that they would need to have various consultants to help work on the characters. Instead of having the consultants join the team near the end of production, they would be part of the team from the start. This helped as the characters could be fully fleshed out from the start and there wouldn't be any need to redo as much by the end of production.
Some of the consultants include:
Bunurong land council
Dementia Australia
Family members working in healthcare
Actors
Simultaneous stories:
Having multiple stories that continually evolve and continue without player interaction means that each playthrough can have players create a very unique story. As players miss certain moments or see other moments it means that they will have a FOMO feeling as they play and incentivize them to play again to experience other characters' stories.
This type of storytelling was originally inspired by interactive/immersive theater where multiple stories would be occurring at the same time. Where the audience can decide which parts they listen to and build their own stories out of the play.
A pivotal question the team was consistently struggling with during production was how to properly deliver a satisfying narrative journey. As production moved on the team decided to have moments of excitement and emotionality while also having more calm and boring moments.
Types of scenes:
Most of the scenes were divided into two types of scenes; Scheduled scenes and incidental scenes.
Scheduled scenes are certain scenes that have predetermined locations and times. These scenes will occur no matter where or what the player is doing and many times occur at the same time as other scheduled scenes. Having scenes occur at the same time in different locations of the game is one of the main contributing factors to allow for a unique story and FOMO other story information.
Incidental scenes are moments where different characters appear throughout the game/maps and can be interacted with for different story beats. Scenes like this give more context and story for the major story beats and can help connect major cutscenes. At the same time, it helped players piece together the storyline of other cutscenes that they might have missed. This could help push any feelings of FOMO as they realize that as they advance through the game other content has occurred and they can only hear about it through secondhand storytelling by other characters.
Relationship Matrix
A mechanic the team made to help map out the relationships between all the characters was a relationship matrix. The matrix is set up to be NxN with however many characters there where. In the position where two characters are intercepted, there would be a sentence or two talking about how one of the characters perceived the other one. Allowing for a quick way to look up how different characters would treat each other.
Meanwhile, in the squares where the same character intersects the text is replaced with how that character sees themselves. Which helps with planning how the character might grow or change how they perceive themselves.
When the team started to write some of the stories out they realized that before determining if the style of storytelling would work they would need to create a large portion of the storylines and quests before deciding. As the team was able to make more they realized the different ways they could have the stories intertwined with each other and allow information to be revealed after multiple playthroughs.
By structuring the game into certain times of day, the team helped highlight different character traits depending on where characters are found and what they normally do around that time. It also helped determine certain ‘quiet’ periods when there wasn't a lot of action and players could explore and talk with NPCs in a more leisurely manner.
A challenge the team had when writing dialogue was that they only had two writers and one editor. A strategy the team took was to have each character have one writer work on the majority of the writing (60-80%) while the other writer could write the rest. This allows one writer to have the character written in one direction and the secondary writer to come in and get inspired by what was already written and add new lines that complement what already existed.
As there was only one editor, they could ensure that the characters had the same voice. If they found anything that seemed off, they could have the writers remake the writing or do it themselves.
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