Engineering the Story - Video Game: Storytelling - page 191

ample, knowing how far an avatar can jump is critical and must be predict-
able by the player, if he's to avoid falling into death pits!
So, for a physics programmer, it's especially vital to remember that the
narrative and its believability rely on many factors, and one of them is the
successful creation of an alternate world that holds together in all re-
spects. Look at the physics of the Halo series vs. those of the Call of Duty
games. They're both first-person shooters, and yet they feel very different
thanks to wildly divergent physics models. Would the relatively “floaty” feel
of the sci-fi Halo games, based on far-flung alien worlds, feel equally ap-
propriate for a modern-day, Earth-based military shooter? Or, switching it
around, what would change about the narrative tone of the Halo games if
the physics were more mundane, less fantastical—like those of the real
world?
What about the Uncharted series? While certain aspects of the physics
seem quite realistic, anyone who's watched Nathan Drake scale the side of
a dizzyingly high stone building has seen that character defy physics as we
know them (particularly gravity). But the rules are bent a bit; just enough to
make the game more fun without completely shattering the illusion that
Nate lives and has adventures in the same world that you and I inhabit.
Deciding how the physics of the game world will work and what (if any)
rules will be bent or broken should not be done lightly, and not without in-
cluding whoever is driving the narrative effort. Additionally, if the game is
to feature cutscenes, physics consistency between those scenes and the
in-game experience is also a subtle but important point to keep in mind.
Tools and Pipelines
The successful realization of the great narrative ideas and plans for a game
usually ends up heavily reliant on how easy—or frustrating—it is for team
members to implement narrative content into the actual game, and to up-
date it. Narrative development tools and pipelines are as varied as game
genres and even games themselves, but in the end, every game featuring
story content ends up with some form of them. The question is, do they
help or hinder?
The amount of thought, planning and energy that is brought to bear on
these technical tools of the trade can have an enormous impact on the
story content—how much there is, how slick its presentation, and how