Writing a Kick-Ass Script 3: The Meat and Potatoes

Posted on Mon 12 May 2008 by Keira Peney under Design , FPS , Horror , Theorycraft .
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Once you’ve introduced the characters, trained up your player (if needed), and opened your story, you are faced with a daunting question. How do you progress your story? What is the structure of your game?

Now, there are some common ways that games progress story. The ’sequential missions’ structure is fairly common. At it’s most simple (linear), the player is given a goal, sets out to accomplish this goal, and when successful rewarded with the next ‘chunk’ of story. As you get more complex (non-linear) you give the player more choice over what order events happen in, or even what events happen at all.

The current trend is for games to head away from linear stories, and into the realm of emergent gameplay, (sandbox). The Grand Theft Auto series is the most well-known example of sandbox gaming. This is where the true potential of games as a medium lies - and where they are completely separate from books or films.

Of course, it also makes things much more difficult for the writer. How do you create a plot, or numerous plots, in which your central protagonist has free will? Let’s take a look at what a plot actually is.

“Plot refers to the series of events that give a story its meaning and effect. In most stories, these events arise out of conflict experienced by the main character.” - Elements of Fiction

Now, most plots have what is called rising action which reaches a climax. After the climax there is falling action, or resolution. Essentially, things get worse until some dramatic event, and then all the loose ends are tied up.

With a happy ending, the world or character is changed for the better, with a sad ending, the world or character is changed for the worse. In a ‘thought provoking’ ending, you’re not quite sure, or there is a bit of both, and you’re asked to question your own values.

Happy Ending:
A virus breaks out that causes a genetic mutation that basically produces ‘zombies’. These zombies spread quickly, as they murder or infect other humans. Our protagonist must protect a hospital from invasion long enough for the doctors to discover a cure. He does, they do. World is saved. Valuable lesson is learned about messing around with viruses.

Sad Ending:
A virus breaks out that causes a genetic mutation that basically produces ‘zombies’. These zombies spread quickly, as they murder or infect other humans. Our protagonist flees with a group of others, but gradually they are whittled away until only he is left standing. Finally, realizing he is the last human alive, and with just one bullet remaining, he shoots himself in the head. The world is not saved.

Thought-Provoking Ending:
A virus breaks out that causes a genetic mutation that basically produces ‘zombies’. These zombies spread quickly, as they murder or infect other humans. Our protagonist holes up in a small house that he converts into a fortress, and stocks up on canned food. At night, he listens to the sounds of the ‘zombies’. Over time he realizes the zombies are at war with each other, and they seem to have rudimentary speech and organization. Venturing out, he discovers that one faction of zombies has a new mutation that gives them a certain amount of higher intelligence. They are the evolution of the human race, a stronger, more vicious, harder-to kill ’super-human’ with forethought and imagination. They offer to infect him, telling him he joins the new order - or dies.

As you can see, all three of these stories could easily be turned into a pretty dramatic game. The question we need to ask though is how do we create sandbox gaming?

What we need to do is find the rules of the story. In all three, we have an outbreak of zombies, that spreads in the form of a virus. So let’s give our player a choice. At the start of the game, besieged on all sides, he can head to the hospital, he can flee towards the country, or he can start barricading himself. To make it fun, we can give him some other places to visit as well - he can break into an army barracks and pick up better weapons/ammo, or a police station, or he can raid a supermarket and get food supplies. Everything is optional, he can even stand still. We give him information via emergency news broadcasts on televisions (in shop windows, in his house, etc.), on his car radio, from people in the street. However, the rule is that the more time that passes, the more zombies there are, the more evolved they are, and the more difficult it is to stay alive.

Depending on where he chooses to go, different things will happen. The doctors at the hospital are researching a cure - that can be a nugget of info he receives from somewhere. Without the protagonist to protect them, however, they will die fairly soon - so no cure.

If the protagonist does go to the hospital, he can utilize different strategies to fight them off. This is gameplay rather than story, but with the progression of time there are more zombies (rising action) and the doctors get closer to a cure (resolution). If the player succeeds, we get a happy ending.

If the protagonist chooses to flee towards the country, we can involve other refugees, more zombie outbreaks (perhaps in small towns or outlying suburbs), and meetings with other characters. The more interactive elements there are, the better. Make every house unique, and possible to enter, and have different people in each one. Have the people give rewards if he helps them, have them be territorial, or panic. If he’s being chased, they can buy him time, or they can try and trap him so that they have time.

In this case, the final ending could be on some remote hill, watching fire break out from every direction. The sun has set, and the whole sky is orange from the flames. The protagonist has seen people die, and he has one bullet left. The player can wait for the swarm of zombies heading up the hill towards him, or he can use the bullet now….

Finally, let’s say he chose to hole up somewhere, stocks up plenty of food and ammo, and plays a waiting game. You still have to keep it interesting, so there will be frequent attacks, and continual replenishment of the barricades. Outside, there will be occasional events which show the ‘evolution’ of one set of the zombies (they start wearing real clothes, or begin using more sophisticated weapons), and gradually they start attacking other zombies. After time, they try and negotiate with the protagonist, and eventually he’ll agree to go with them. They take him to their HQ, and show him various things they’ve created or invented. He realizes they are superior to humans, and when they finally make their offer, there is a lot to persuade him. The player makes the choice, and the result is either an ‘execution’ scene or a ‘transformation’ scene.

In all three scenarios, the basic game play mechanics stay the same. The zombies do what they do, regardless of where the protagonist is. The player can even move from one scenario to another - let’s say he protects the doctors for a while, and then decides the position is hopeless and heads back towards his home - he can run into the mutant zombies then. Or he could give up and head into the country.

The game play itself is simple First Person Shooter, player versus zombies. The game gets harder, because the zombies increase in number, they ‘mutate’ to become more intelligent and with the ability to use weaponry, and the player himself will begin to run low on ammo and food (health replenishment).

Supermarkets, police stations, army barracks - all ‘levels’ with their own designs. If the player doesn’t see half the game because he holed himself up in the flat right at the start? Well, it gives him an incentive to play again. Throw in plenty of other stuff, like infiltrating the army barracks when they are defending against the zombies, or meeting up with other survivors and getting information from them - such as their observations of the mutants, or their comment that they tried to save the doctors, but couldn’t - and you have a pretty good sandbox game.

Okay. So we’ve created a pretty interesting game, but we have to generate the script. We’ll have to do this based off two factors - time and location.

Time

Let’s divide our time line into three ‘waves’. During wave one, the doctors are alive, there are no mutant zombies, the army base and police station are still protected, and the countryside is relatively safe with lots of survivors.

We decide on our locations, and we write a script for each one. For example:

Wave One: Country House

House is ornate and well-decorated. Inhabitants are fairly wealthy. They are turning their ‘panic room’ into a safe-spot. On seeing the Protagonist.

Man: Hands in the air!

(Player complies)

Man: Alright, you’re not a zombie. But you can’t stay here. There’s not enough food. Get out.

(Player leaves or robs them or shoots them).

Wave One: Hospital

Hospital is large, and mostly abandoned. Doctors are on top floor, in research lab. They are standing around petri-dishes. Hearing the door open, one knocks one to the floor.

Doctor Jones: Oh God! I thought you were… thank god. Who are you?

Protagonist: What are you doing? This place isn’t safe.

DJ: We’ve created a genetic copy of the rogue DNA that is at the heart of the zombies difference. If we can just figure out a way to reverse it… we could stop all this! It’s our only hope!

P: Hmm.

Doctor Williams: But we need more time. The police were on the ground floor, trying to stop the zombies… how did you get in?

P: The police ain’t here any more.

DW: Then we’re doomed (weeps).

P: (Option) I’ll buy you some time.[I'll get some barricades built. There's a lot of them but they're dumb.]
(Option) Looks that way. [I'm outta here].

And so on.

You repeat this for each location during each wave. For example, in wave two, if the player goes to the country house (for either the first time or the second time) he’ll find the inhabitants all dead bar one, who sobs out his story and then gives him an item such as ammo.

The second wave will be more complicated, since it will depend on what happened before. For example, in the hospital during wave two, the doctors might be dead, or, if the Protagonist got there during wave one and protected them, they will still be alive. So you will get:

Wave Two: Hospital

(If player has protected the doctors)

DW: We’re so close! Look - if we can use pyrithianzinc to stabile the solution then -

Zombie breaks through window with machete.

DW: Argh!

(Boss Battle)

DJ: Capture him alive if possible!

(continuation of boss battle)

Protagonist manages to defeat and chain up zombie.

DW: Fantastic! (examines skin cell) But what’s this? The DNA? It’s still changing! It must be an on-going mutation!

(If player has not protected hospital)

Doctors are dead on the floor. As Protagonist walks around the room, he sees spilled petri dishes and smashed computers. Suddenly, a zombie leaps out from the shadows. It was feasting on one of the doctors heads and blood and brains drip from its mouth.

(DW is zombie): Argh….

(Boss battle with zombie and DW zombie).

And so on.

Obviously, your dialog will be a lot more witty and dramatic than my rather clichéd choices. Your scenes will be more detailed, and more subtle. Your characters will be more in-depth and more interesting. But what we have here is the structure, the outline of your story. Once you’ve established your three waves, and all your locations, you can continue fleshing them out forever, and adding more and more scripted events for each one. The more options and locations, the bigger the world, the more choice the player has.

Sooner or later, the player will get to one of the three endings. The game is huge, however, and he can explore almost indefinitely.

So now you’ve got your idea, your characters, your story structure, and your events. What could be next? Find out next Monday!

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23 Responses to “Writing a Kick-Ass Script 3: The Meat and Potatoes

Patrick Says:
May 12th, 2008 at 2:35 pm

So the big question with this design, which seems pretty compelling, is: how do you constrain time and space to suite the pacing? It’d be prohibitively expensive to create a truly open space between the town and the countryside. Likewise, holing up by youself would need to have time breaks in order to be compelling.

Courtney Says:
May 13th, 2008 at 10:55 am

I found your blog by re-visiting the comments on some of the articles on Breakout!, and instantly bookmarked it after seeing the content.

I find this idea very compelling, and I admire how you’ve weaved gameplay and story so closely together. So many designers/writers focus on one or the other and end up with a game that has potential but cannot meet it.

I’d love to link this series (and your blog) from my own game writing blog, if you have no objections?

ND Roundup « Narrative Design Portfolio of Courtney Keene Says:
May 14th, 2008 at 11:46 am

[...] Writing a Kick-Ass Game Script 1 2 3 [...]

Keira Peney Says:
May 14th, 2008 at 4:09 pm

Patrick - that’s a good question, and pacing is important for a video game (though perhaps less so than for a movie or book).

The three ‘waves’ correspond to a beg/mid/end, which keeps it simple. You could get more detailed within your plan. I think a game like this would be fairly short, in ‘real-time’, but I think you could keep it compelling - the events don’t need to line up against each other exactly, and there could be a number of ‘timer based’ events, like if the player had been locked into one room for a certain amount of time some kind of scripted event could occur after fifteen minutes of pure gameplay. I’m sure there’s better ways to play around with this too. You could probably look at MMO quest lines for inspiration.

Courtney - I would love a link - I took a look at your website today, and it looks really good, so I’d like to do a reciprocal link, if that’s okay?

Aaron Says:
May 21st, 2008 at 5:26 pm

I’m not far into it, but GTA IV seems to have two separate and (perhaps) competing stories: the developers’ story and the player’s story. So far, there seems to be little to no interaction between the cutscenes and the player’s choices. Perhaps that changes later in the game, though.

“…he can utilize different strategies to fight them off. This is gameplay rather than story”

No, it’s story… or, at least, it can be. How the player chooses to respond to encounters defines his or her character’s personality. This happens naturally as long as a scripted story does not impose personality traits on that character to counteract the player’s choices.

I think games are only beginning to realize the potential for making gameplay and story one and the same.

In response to Patrick, sandbox games seem to have both advantages and disadvantages compared to linear games when it comes to pacing. Generally speaking, the more sandbox-oriented, the more the player, rather than the designer, controls the pace of gameplay.

This is good in that it allows for each individual player’s changing, unpredictable interests. If I’m tired, I’m going to play a game differently than if I were bouncing with energy. If I’ve just finished watching a horror movie, then I might gravitate toward the darker elements of the game for a while. This level of control and personal reflection is, I believe, the reason sandbox games dominate the PC bestsellers chart.

But, of course, the player’s level of control is also bad in that it severely limits the dev-storyteller’s ability to control the building of tension, to control mood, or count on the player receiving all necessary information and in a particular sequence.

Simply put, the more the player’s individual will is empowered, the less possible traditional storytelling methods are. I think game storytellers should have not only different methods, but different goals. A sandbox dev’s storytelling must be more subtle and behind-the-scenes. More showing, less telling… and more through environmental design and implied commentary than through words and scripted events.

Phper Home » Blog Archive » GameSetLinks: Bring The War, Bring The… What? Says:
June 14th, 2008 at 12:40 pm