Writing for New IP - Professional Techniques for Video Game Writing - page 149

Writer Onboard
I was very lucky that Overlord already had a wonderfully fun sense of humor instilled
in its gameplay and level design. When I started on the project, my role was really
to help enhance that through the creation of a coherent story that held all the levels
and the player's journey together, plus help create a cast of suitably mad, bad, and
dangerous-to-know characters. From a world-creation perspective, it was about giv-
ing each domain its own unique narrative feel, its own story-within-a-story, based
around the particular hero who dwelled there.
Though hardcore RPGs are less common than they used to be, the benefits of
creating story webs (mini stories that link back and forth to other stories, as well
as helping describe the arc of an overall story) still reverberate across the genres and
are particularly important in anything that has quite a definite level-by-level, lin-
ear structure. Although in the case of Overlord , you could go back (and were, in
fact, encouraged to) and revisit previous levels. This was both through the needs of
the gameplay (harvesting the various colors of life force to keep your Minion horde
topped up) and built into the story, such as when the player has to pursue Kahn, the
Barry White soundalike warrior hero, as he rampages through several domains.
I also had to make sure that the less linear aspects of the world—for example,
when the player had a choice of domains to go to next—could be reflected in a
flexible storyline. In that instance, the narrative had to be constructed so it could
be experienced in various orders without confusing the player. Giving each level its
own feel and individual story was probably the most useful tool in achieving this.
That way, the game had an encapsulated mini-tale, along with nonlinear nuggets of
narrative about the overall story. What makes this particularly important for new IPs
is that it's all about creating a narrative world, rather than one single narrative path.
The desire to create a specific feel to the different areas was also echoed in our
casting choices. The halfling domain was populated largely with both American and
British rural voices, the elves became annoying American emos (a very deliberate
move, since I felt that elves get far too much good press), and the more urban areas
had tougher, American and British semi-city accents. Despite the fact that the Over-
lord world is a fantasy one, we really wanted it to feel as coherent to the players as
any real-world franchise, yet still keep the fun and humor elements very much in the
foreground.
Ambient and level dialog is also very important for capturing the essence of the
world and, perhaps more importantly, giving the player narrative feedback on the
results of their chosen path through it (just how evil they'd chosen to be). Some
quests, such as the much sought-after “maiden collection� quests, were deliberately
triggered as the result of the player marching around being very nasty to everyone
they met.
Although it's often left until last, the role of ambient dialog as a feedback mech-
anism, and a world-coloring tool, should not be underestimated. There's always a
certain percentage of players that may skip cutscenes (the brutes!), but almost every