We recently had the chance to sit down with Uncharted: Drake's Fortune™ director Amy Hennig to talk about an aspect of game development that's all too often ignored by most developers: the game's story and dialogue. Here's what Amy had to say.
1. As far as the narrative that holds Uncharted together, did you guys have a story in place and then built a game around it? Or did you have a game in place, and then built a story around it?
The story and the game design were pretty much built up in parallel. We started out with a high concept – we wanted to use the power of the PLAYSTATION®3 hardware to really capture the look and feel of a classic pulp adventure, re-envisioned with a contemporary hero.
So first off we really studied the genre – everything from the old pulp magazines and adventure serials of the ‘30s, to more recent retro-style action/adventure movies like the Indiana Jones series, and contemporary historical-mystery thrillers like National Treasure and The Da Vinci Code.
When you look at all these sources, certain conventions crop up again and again – from narrative themes and motifs (cliffhangers; fallible heroes; out-of-the-frying-pan-into-the-fire events; companions in peril; skin-of-your-teeth escapes), down to specific styles of gunplay and hand-to-hand fighting. Embracing all these conventions not only gave us a backbone for our story development, but a set of principles to structure the gameplay around.
2. Was a traditional script written for the game? If so, how long is the script? (Number of pages?) Did anything get cut from the script that you guys wish you could have left in the game?
We write all the scripts for the game in the standard screenplay format (including stage directions for the actors, since we capture the scenes on the mocap stage). But otherwise writing a script for a game is pretty different than writing a traditional screenplay for a movie. Rather than starting with complete script, we’ll write a story treatment first, then develop the scripts for the scenes as we go. This allows us to adjust and adapt to any game design changes during development.
By the time we’re finished, the script for Uncharted will probably be almost 300 pages, between cut scenes and in-game dialogue. And of course we’ve made lots of changes and cuts and adjustments as we’ve gone along; it’s just the nature of the process. There are always ideas that you get attached to, but the classic advice to writers holds true – you’ve got to be willing to "murder your darlings". Inevitably you look back and realize that all those difficult edits strengthened the work.
3. Have you, or anyone else on the writing team, written for TV, movies, comics? What sort of experience do you have? If you have written for other mediums, what is different, or unique, about writing for a game?
Our writing experience has mostly come from working in games. Of course we’ve read all the requisite screenwriting books, and attended different writing seminars – and I was an English major, so that actually turned out to be useful. Before coming to Naughty Dog, I headed up the Soul Reaver series at Crystal Dynamics for eight years, so that gave me some great in-the-trenches experience in story development and writing.
Writing for games is different than any other medium, because we’re sort of at the mercy of the gameplay. We may want a tender scene between two characters at a certain point, but will it work if the player’s just mowed through a dozen enemies? We may sprinkle narrative exposition throughout a level, but what if the player skips over it? We have to contend with a lot of if-then scenarios that more traditional "linear" media don’t have to consider, and make sure our dialogue covers every contingency we can think of.
4. Where did you go for inspiration on Uncharted? Were there specific movies or games or books that you turned to? Did you ever experience traditional writer’s block while working on the game? If so, where did you turn to get the wheels of creativity turning again?
We really scoured everything in the adventure genre for inspiration. We read a bunch of old pulps, especially Doc Savage; watched some of the old black-and-white movie serials, like Jungle Girl; and watched classic adventure films like Gunga Din. Movies were a big part of our research – in addition to obvious inspirations like Indiana Jones and the Mummy movies, we also dug up some old classics like Secret of the Incas and Plunder of the Sun.
Even with all these inspirations, yes, it’s easy to get writer’s block. When we’d get stuck on a story point, it was sometimes helpful to look at a specific book or movie and think, “how’d they get around this problem?” When you’re just having trouble getting the dialogue to flow, sometimes it helps to watch a movie or read a script written by someone whose style you admire. Or it helps to imagine your actor’s voice while you’re writing, to get the rhythm or cadence of their speech.
5. Is there anything in the hardware of the PS3™ that makes it possible to perhaps tell certain kinds of stories via games that simply were not possible on the now last-gen PS2™?
The power of PLAYSTATION®3 enables us to create much more authentic, believable characters than ever before. Part of what goes into creating a relatable, memorable character is the ability to convey personality through subtle gestures and expressions – the look in their eyes, the wrinkles on their face – delicate stuff that the previous hardware just didn’t have the fidelity to convey.
For Uncharted, we also felt it was really important to capture the humanity of the hero. This isn’t a superhero or a heavily-armored space marine, this is an “everyman” hero – a guy in a t-shirt and jeans who’s capable and resourceful, but massively outnumbered and probably in way over his head. We needed his animation to express emotion – fear, exhaustion, panic, alarm, anger, frustration. We needed to see him wince, grit his teeth, and curse under his breath; we needed to see him duck when running under gunfire, and flinch when a bullet ricochets off the wall inches from his head. We needed to see him scramble for cover, lose his footing sometimes, and get out of breath. None of these things would’ve been possible without the layered animation system we were able to develop on the PS3™.
6. While working on the game, what kind of thought process goes into deciding where and when a cut-scene is going to take place? Are they “shot” and edited like traditional films? Who decides on camera angles, etc.?
Once we’ve got the story treatment all blocked out, we identify where our major narrative events need to occur, and how it all lines up with the overall gameflow and level progression. If a scene is important for character development, or needs to convey some crucial story exposition, then we’ll make it a cutscene – that way we get the full benefit of the actor’s performance, and we can use our shots to establish important emotional or narrative events.
Because we’re using motion capture, each scene is shot kind of like a stage play, and then edited like a traditional film. It’s not necessary to break your scenes into shots for mocap, because of course the entire scene is getting captured from all angles simultaneously. But it’s good to keep your shots and camera angles in mind, and block the scene accordingly.
Depending on the scene, we may have our cameras roughly blocked out ahead of time, or we may block them when we rehearse the scene. For simple scenes, we usually just work out the cameras later, once we’ve got the mo-cap data back and we can play with it.
7. Half-Life, and its unique way of relaying narrative details without breaking away from gameplay, stands as one of the great examples of storytelling in games. What are some other examples of games you admire for their stories and/or storytelling capabilities? Have you ever played a game and thought "Great game, too bad the story sucks?" Or vice-versa?
Well, there are a lot of great ways to tell stories in games; I don’t think there’s one "right" way. Games like Half-Life that don’t break away from the gameplay can be really effective, and I think we should strive to tell as much story in-game as possible – but that’s got its pitfalls, too. I don’t see a lot of point in giving the player a false sense of interactivity (locking them in a room, or locking their feet down while something plays out around them); or in giving them just enough interactivity to screw with the cinematic event (looking the wrong way while something important happens; throwing objects at the person talking to you, just because you can). I also think this method is easier to pull off in first-person games – it’s much trickier in a third-person game like ours.
For me, two of the best examples of storytelling in games are Ico and Shadow of the Colossus – ironically, since there’s very little in the way of dialogue or traditional storytelling techniques. But that’s why they're so effective – the player is actively engaged in the interpretation of the experience, rather than just being a passive observer. Not sure what the rest of us developers should take away from this (other than "less is more", I guess) – and I don’t think you could (or should) apply the same storytelling aesthetic to all games. But I do think, with all our next-gen bells and whistles, we could stand to leave more to the player’s imagination, and let more of the story unfold through inference rather than outright exposition.
8. Tell me a little bit about your background. Where did you go to school? What sorts of things did you study? What sort of training does someone need to put him or herself in a position where he/she can be hired to write for games?
I studied English Lit. at U.C. Berkeley, and then got partway through the Masters program in Film Theory & Production at San Francisco State (before dropping out and getting a job at EA). In grad school I also studied a little bit of animation, and learned some basic CG (Wavefront).
It’s hard to say what training is best for someone who wants to be a game writer. A literature or creative writing background helps, and there are all kinds of great books and courses out there. But mostly you just need to write, and voraciously read/watch all kinds of media (books, comics, TV shows, movies). Studying the stuff that inspires you is probably the best way to learn.
9. Dialogue is a tricky business. Countless games have been spoiled, or nearly spoiled, by poorly written (and poorly voiced) dialogue. Do you see that trend reversing over the past few years? Has the dialogue gotten better? Are developers starting to hire actual writers instead of just making things up on the fly?
I think the quality of writing in games has been improving. More companies seem to have writers on staff, or hire professional writers to consult on their games. I also think a lot of game writers have just gotten better at their craft; this is still a fledgling industry, so we’re all still learning.
For good dialogue, it’s also crucial to hire great actors – more and more companies are getting this right, too. A good actor can make mediocre dialogue sound great. On Uncharted it’s really helped to have all the actors performing together – and all the tweaks and improvisations we discover in rehearsal really improve the scenes. Lastly, working with a good voice director can make all the difference in the world; an experienced director can draw great performances out of the actors.
10. With Uncharted shaping up to be a blue-chip title on the PS3™, how well do you think the game would translate into a bona fide movie? Who would play Nathan? Who would direct? Most important of all, who would write it?
Because we’ve drawn so much of our inspiration from all the classic adventure movies, I think Uncharted would translate perfectly to the big screen.
And although I’m biased, I’d have to say our cast is already pretty amazing – they not only have the acting talent and the voices, they even look like their characters. But if I had to pick someone else to play Drake, it’d be Nathan Fillion, hands down. And since we’re fantasizing, I’d have Joss Whedon write and direct it. He’s the total god of me.