The Three Pillars of Game Writing - Plot, Character, Lore - Extra Credits
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- čas přidán 3. 07. 2018
- Let's examine the elements that make up "game writing." Plot, characters, and lore all have to be balanced depending on the type of game you're making--knowing what to cut from your story bible is just as important as knowing what to keep.
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When people talk about “game writing” they usually talk about it as if it were one monolithic thing. It’s not. It’s actually three monolithic things…
So, I guess to break them down, it's: what happens (Plot), who the people are (Character), and what the world is (Lore).
Pick your focus carefully.
I kinda wish I could make a game just to build one about that lore book world. Nice art.
So what did The Witcher focus on? As a book adaptation, I'd say it's plot. Books tell stories, first and foremost. But maybe "all three" is the correct answer here?
You're really growing on me, Matt. I'm glad you joined Extra Credits :)
Runescape absolutely shines in lore. There were heros before the player, entire wars and ages. Every city, town, ruin and dungeon has an in-story reason for being there, and different cultures with in the game world have different customs and habbits. From broad things to little details such as "Trolls are named after the first thing they try to eat when they're born" I love micro bits of lore like that. I could go on for a book about the lore or Runescape. XD
These pillars are relevant to pretty much all forms of writing. There was some great writing advice.
Yes but you cannot achieve an experience like minecraft or shadow of the colosus just with writen words, at the same time you cannot make a game that gives you the same experience than the ceremonial by hpl or the fall of the huser house by eap, there are two different media.
Not... really. World building isn't a central pillar in any sort of writing I'm aware of. It's a component of setting design specifically relevant to speculative fiction works, but even then you're better served by just calling it straight up "Setting".
Their delineation of the pillars is also pretty painfully simplistic, given it completely ignores the role of tone, theme, (more relevantly to literature but still) and prose, which are all incredibly important concepts in any sort of serious written work.
Breaking it up as they've done feels a bit like the strategy gradeschool English teachers take when they narrow in on plot and character analysis because they know those two are the most obviously visible elements of a story for students to grasp, not because they're the most important.
@@raymondthrone7197 for a lot of comic books and some movie, world building is really important tbh
@@raymondthrone7197 I mean world/setting can be really important to a written story, like "lord of the ring" would probably not work in a "matrix" setting and Vice versa and Depending on the story you are trying to tell, "what the characters are doing" would probably not be as important as "who the characters are and who they want to become". look at batman or spiderman for example, Many writers try to dissect the character and think about how they would respond to certain situations and how they would realistically think. they aren't always action, drama, and explosion
Tetris
On the most broad level, this is pretty writing 101. That is to say that plot, characters, and world-building are pretty much the 3 fundamental pillars of all fiction, not just games.
World building is entirely irrelevant to almost all genres besides speculative fiction, so it's not exactly one to one. An actual "writing 101" lecture would almost certainly focus on plot, character, and theme, while slowly introducing concepts like tonality and structure as they become relevant.
Honestly I get that game writing is a bit different from literature, but this feels like a pretty ridiculous simplification even given that.
Wait, do you mean my comment is over-simplified, or the episode is oversimplified?
Exquisite Corpse Really? Most people I hear say characters are more important.
I think what Raymond Throne means is that video game writing is fundamentally different from writing in most other media, as it has a tendency toward fantasy and science fiction and thus video game writing would more likely have world-building as a major factor.
In most other media, most stories are set in the real world during the present (or whatever the present was when the story was finished), so there's no world-building necessary. For instance, how much world-building is there in Pet Sematary, Rocky, or Archie? Very little, because each of those have mundane, everyday settings that can be understood without an explanation. Stories like Guardians of the Galaxy, Blade Runner, and The Hobbit would have a LOT of world-building, by contrast, because they're set in strange, fantastic locations that need explanation.
(Even then, some speculative fiction have pretty little world-building. Star Trek, for example, focuses quite heavily on the characters, and they only do world-building where it's necessary to understand the plot or new characters. For another example, despite the world of Naruto looking very little like our own, the plots are very much focused on ideological conflicts, and so the stories are intensely focused on the characters with lore used only to explain how characters fight and how the characters are shaped by the history and politics of the places where they grew up.)
@@raymondthrone7197 There are works of fiction that are neither character driven nor plot driven, but world building driven, they are rare because for that to work you better make a long series of books but they exist
The plot of every JRPG ever:
A group of plucky children must band together and use the power of friendship to kill god.
Dragon Warrior 1 destroys your theory.
Fits very well for all Final Fantasy series.
Let me see... Vagrant Story. Final Fantasy Tactics. Nope....
I mean, Some of the JRPG's I've loved have departed pretty far from that particular mold. Depending on your definition of JRPG anyway. Eternal Sonata, the MARDEK RPG's (what we got anyway), Artifact Adventure...
I'm very surprised that no one seems to have caught the Yatzee quote. Even more surprised to see people bringing up Vagrant story, given it's an Action RPG. As in the exact opposite of a JRPG.
I love DHueso drawing skills, his drawings looks so alive
Yeah so much more detail than usual. Lovin' it
Thanks a lot , that just make my day :D
Thanks , I tend to overwork them a little bit but it pays off .
David Hueso Ten un lindo día! ~Jumanj1 ;)
At the risk of sounding like an obsessed fan (which, admittedly, I probably am), I think Tyranny did a pretty good job in all three of those categories--though I'll admit that the lore is probably what fascinated me the most.
General Luigi Obsidian games lately seem to be really good with Lore and Character.
Heh, it's widely acknowledged that Tyranny is well written. Don't worry. :)
I want Tyranny 2!
In my experience, Tyranny's very existence isn't especially well-known. Maybe I just haven't been hanging out in the right parts of the Internet...
Warning for those who haven't played Tyranny: there are spoilers below.
On a related note, I'm actually hoping for more expansions to Tyranny rather than a sequel. I doubt I'm the only person who wanted, among other things, quests for Eb, Sirin, and Kills-in-Shadow akin to what Bastard's Wound gave us for Barik, Verse, and Lantry. Sirin could have a quest to safely remove her helmet, Eb could have a quest that delves into either the Tidecasters' history or the fate of her daughter, and Kills-in-Shadow could have a quest connected to the Shadowhunters. I'm also pretty curious about the region Hunter's Respite is in, to say nothing of the Free Cities we hear so much about. Expansions could give us all that.
Narrative-wise, I'm not sure where Obsidian could go with a hypothetical Tyranny 2 without endangering the premise Tyranny is built on. If we're to follow the Archon of the Tiers in Tyranny 2, then unless the patched-in surrender option becomes canon, a confrontation with Kyros is probably the easiest path for the story to follow. As I mentioned in the comments section for the Extra Credits video on Cthulhu, however, Kyros has value as a character because they can't be defeated in-game. As with Cthulhu, once Kyros is given HP and the player is given a means of depleting it, Kyros stops being this inevitable entity and instead is reduced to a standard RPG final boss. In my opinion, Tyranny 2, if it is to retain the premise that its predecessor is built upon, would need either a new player character altogether (maybe the Archon's revolt against Kyros, if it's treated as the canon ending, could be crushed between games, for example) or a path for the player character that doesn't include the possibility of Kyros being defeated.
Tyranny did an excelent job on the three. But I would wager the developers focused more on the characters and lore elements. The plot is fairly good and it has a lot of stuff to say, but I would say it doesn't go too far beyond the standard good narrative RPG.
Great video. Personally I'd love a whole mini-series on game writing.
SeanBellWrites I 100% agree with that idea!
@@elijahclevenger10 Whoever made this video has never made a video game before. Would you really trust the advice of someone like that?
I would too, but by someone who has actually made a video game before. This YT channel is all bogus.
It should be important to note that music is a very good way to tell a story and blend it all together. If you have a main theme you made for a game you can use motifs of that theme in impactful moments like the beginning to set up the plot, during character backstories, or even have it pop up when exploring a new place. It’s a great way to give the player a clue that something important is here. I think legend of Zelda Breath of the Wild does this very well.
Journey. I have to give a shout out to Journey for this.
*cough cough* Undertale *Cough cough* Basically the whole game soundtrack is remixes of two or three songs.
Max payne 3 does this as well
In the name of the plot, lore, and character development amen.🙏
As Always Holy Trinity of Game Writing
in the begining there was plot... and plot then said "let there be lore" and lo(re) and behold, lore there became...and plot created the players, then plot sent them his son, character, so he could show them the games
Hail garfoof
@@armepos 😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂
"Whole games can seem amazingly written, even with a paper-thin plot, so long as they deliver characters that we believe in and love."
See also: The Last of Us
Don't see: The Last Of Us 2
@@Player-kg1ds most of the game wasn’t bad
@@Player-kg1ds I hate every character of the side of Abby
@@mateoreyes6921 that's exactly the point
@@Player-kg1ds LOU2 writing is amazing. Keep drinking that Joel cult juice.
yes, tetris is famed for its brilliant lore and well fleshed out characters
PALADOG that t block has such a interesting background
I agree, but the tragic fates of the two Z blocks makes me tear up every time
Well, Puyo Puyo Tetris introduced a set of characters for the Tetris side of the game, and I'm going to miss them, as due to the very strict terms of Tetris licensing, we are probably never going to see them again.
/necro
don't forget the character development, they end up together and then they die happy
“Deliver characters to us we believe in and love”
*Life Is Strange character appears onscreen*
You can also trick people into thinking a game is about one of these pillars, but it's actually other pillar. For example: in Dead Space Isaac Clarke is a silent protagonist, and it seems it's because of making him and the player seem like the same person, but the twist is that Isaac is slowly becoming insane and the moment he takes off his helmet we see his face with an expression of pain and sadness; later in the second game we explore his mind while he is fighting against the madness induced to his brain. The same happens in Undertale: the protagonist and the player seem like the same person, but it's revealed at the end that the protagonist has their own name and it's questioned why they climbed Mt. Ebott (the implications are really sad).
the implication is that they are a small child and small children like adventure and think they are invincible
Deltarune is even a better example, like at the beginning at the character creation and name giving screen and later when you lose control over Kris
Nice. I personally have 3 pillars for game development as a whole as well. I refer to them as writing(what this video discusses), presentation ( graphics, audio etc.) and gameplay (game mechanics). I tend to rate games by these 3 pillars as I find they encompass so much more than most reviews
I know this probably won’t get read but I’d like to thank y’all for all that you do, and though I may not make games your videos do inspire me to try and bring things from games to other parts of my life, as well as this video has made me realize what I’ve been missing in my D&D campaigns that always feel flat. So from the bottom of my heart I’d like to say thank you.
As a content creator myself, I must say Extra Credits never fails to deliver quality content.
And you never fail to spam
When Isaac showed up for character writing, it made me daww because the artist made Isaac so cuuuute!
One of my favorite characters to draw , Thanks !
If you want a good example of this, play the Trails in the Sky Trilogy. This is a masterclass.
Plot: While the first game starts off slow, it ramps up in the end, leaving a huge cliffhanger in the end, leading upto the 2nd game. This is basically the same game, it would just be too long it were one game. All hell breaks loose here, having a beautiful conclusion. Some loose ends are then tied in the last game, which is more of a spinoff.
Character: In the first game and especially the second, you can see that each character really has their own motivation for completing the end goal. There will be a few major bosses in the game who are actually tied to the development of some of you characters. For the 2 lead characters, they have some of the best growth within any game. Character development and plot are actually highly connected.
Lore: Admittedly, one of the comparatively weaker points but still strong. In this world, all technology and magic are replaced by crystals called orbments. The significance of this is actually touched upon at certain parts of the game. The plot is also tied to the lore as the key "evil item" in the game is actually tied to some very ancient civilization that more or less established the current world. Finally, a lot of the NPCs have their own stories you are not involved in. Just interact with them in some side quests or just by talking to them after every event.
This is the best way I can describe it without spoiling it but seriously, go grab it. There is still 6 other games apart from these 3. 2 are localized and available in Steam as well, 2 are having fan translations and the last 2 were just recently released in Japan. The story of all these are highly intertwined.
very nice episode as a final fantasy fan it always blows me away how many people miss the fact that most of the games are character driven stories not plot driven so it made me very happy to have you mention it here along with all the good tidbits of the other two kinds of story telling
I love the image at 1:44, showing the many different kinds of character writing all in one place. Well done.
I love this artist! Extra Sci-Fi was great and I hope you bring him back for more!
I would argue in many cases how effective each of them are can be very dependent on the others.
- If you fail to make the players care about the character, why would they care about the effect the characters have on the plot or the world? (I don't care what cities ended up getting destroyed and what kind of history was lost in FF15 since the characters themselves didn't sold me on it.)
- If you fail to make the players care about the plot, why would they care to read the background lore? (You can play the entirety of Dark Souls, Monster Hunter and Pokemon and thoroughly enjoy it without ever having to read a single item description, monster lore, or Pokedex entry)
- If you fail to sell the lore, sometimes the plot can lose much of its gravity on the finer details. (KH lore is such a convoluted poorly planned mess that I spend more time getting confused or not caring while the story clearly is trying to sell a big revelation.)
Skyrim has no main character for all I care and incredibly weak plot, but it's lore still captivates me and many others, many love Dark Souls and KH even though what you said about them isn't a lie, I guess it depends on taste, not every one is going to like every story 😊
It's not about not working on the other pillars, sometimes is about using the others to support your core pillar. Have your characters and plot structured in a way that you can show more about your lore. Or having lore that is directly related to a character's backstory, or plot that allows for that character to grow. Or to have characters/stereotypes which help on sending a certain message through the plot, or lore that embodies a certain theme presented within the plot or the reveal of some part of the lore being the plot twist itself.
A Song of Ice and Fire does this really, really, _really_ well. To the point that it's hard to tell which of the pillars is being emphasized at any given moment. I know it's not a game, but this kind of writing advice applies to any medium.
The plot of that series is absolutely bonkers, and it'd be ridiculous to claim that the plot isn't a major part of what makes it so engaging and popular. But the plot doesn't just trudge on by itself. It's not driven by fate or divine will or any external force at all, it is driven _entirely_ by the actions of the characters who inhabit that world. Even the ancient history of the world, like the existence of the Others (White Walkers), is character-driven.
So is it all about the characters? It might be, but what if the characters are simply archetypes chosen to fulfill a particular role in the story GRRM wants to tell us? Then the point wouldn't be the characters themselves, it'd be the story they're playing out -- a story about the wildly self-contradictory and often self-sabotaging nature of humans.
Although... A lot of the worldbuilding in ASoIaF reflects real-world cultures and their histories, including the power structures of those cultures. Every major character in the series is someone who's part of that power structure, and the plot is driven by the actions they are able to take as a result of their position. So perhaps it's not about the characters _or_ the plot. Maybe it's about the hazards inherent in giving any human being control over the lives of many others. So it'd be about the lore, then, and specifically about using the lore to comment on its parallels in our real world. Or is the lore only there to give the characters a sandbox, or the plot a setting?
The pillars play off each other so well that it's hard to say which of them, if any, GRRM is attempting to emphasize. We're engaged with the plot because we care about the characters and the world they're in, we care about the world because of the people in it and the interesting things that happen, we care about the characters because of the things they do in their world. You can't appreciate one without thinking of the others.
Thanks for coming to my TED talk.
That's what I said. It's not about "hey improve this pillar and everything will be solved!", it's about how the pillars can be dependent on each other and going 100% in a single pillar may not be enough to make your writing "good".
KH has an absolutely banal story with its "chosen one fights bad guy" and an absolute disaster of a lore even Nomura admitted he just winging it as he goes along without any actual future planning, but its characters are good with distinct personality(except for all girls not named Aqua) and if nothing else you can just enjoy the Disney characters from your favorite films.
Dark Souls, Monster Hunter and 90% of fighting games otherwise has a nonexistent plot since the player can ignore the entirety of the plot apart from them of going to fight progressively bigger enemies. And while they can have deep lore hidden behind it and make you appreciate the efforts put into it, it still failed in selling said lore in the moment of you playing and facing said bosses with deep lore. Gameplay is the main appeal of these games, not the writing, and that's perfectly fine for it.
You can try to convey messages and themes, but that alone is still not what make games writing good. Consider this, Mass Effect(first trilogy) is lauded for having a great story(1st and 2nd game anyway), but what is it's message? The message it's trying to convey clearly is not what people liked(if anything, the message is what killed it in the 3rd game), and certainly not what people goes back to praise when talking about Mass Effect after all these years.
TinoTino Faustino fallout is the same, the plot is boring, i like the twist, but the plot is pretty generic, the charecters arent great (except strong), but i love the lore, i love just exploring places in fallout
This is a well timed video. That 7 -10 minute window is the sweet spot + everything you spoke about fit in perfectly. Thank you sir.
David Hueso and his amazing art, nice! I love how detailed everything looks, while still retaining the Extra Credits simplicity. I actually took a few screenshots from Extra Sci-Fi to use as backgrounds, lmao.
David's art is so good.
1:51 I think that the bath tub is filled with isaac’s tears , instead of regular water
Thank you ! I've so missed these game writing episodes! Keep em' coming!
Still best channel when I have a problem of anything I come to this channel and it gives me some sort of clarity.
I’d love you guys to tackle how character can be changed by aspects of the design, focusing on Monster Prom. It’s a really good example in my opinion, as it has a unique combination of genres that raise some unique issues
Why does anyone realize that this is the first video with narrator or narrator voice #2
This video gave a reason to why i love the trails/kiseki series,it focus on all three and it stills manage to be good in its writing and the writers actually understand this because the writing is actually good with a lot of effort and passion.
THANK YOU SO MUCH for making this video it really made me look back on the game that I've been creating and trying to determine what qualities my game presents and if I can make it better by by adding the factors that I haven't put in like plot and again THANK YOU SO MUCH!!!
I'm a little confused. I can understand how you can have great character writing without much of a plot; the Animal Crossing games are a fantastic example of that. But the other way around makes no sense to me. Aren't all the best plotlines character-driven?
You've inspired me to try to think of games where I can't place what part of the writing I enjoyed. First that came to mind was Brothers. I'm not sure if it was the plot or the gameplay that ended up making that game so effective, but I guess the gameplay... actually became character writing, somehow...?
Other one I thought of was the first Bioshock. I've actually never played it, but the twist obviously became a meme right quick, so I know about it. Was that twist a character moment or a plot moment? Genuine question, I don't know!
I'm sure there's games that have successfully pulled a Planet of the Apes that I just can't think of right now, and surely that kind of twist would count as plot, without particularly great characters needed to make it effective. Like, the thing you thought you've been doing is actually something else? Although that particular kind of twist actually becomes lore... Gah, this is complicated!
Maybe we should agree that plot is necessary and sometimes has more or less presence, but it can't really be the focus unless your game is all gameplay and no story...?
I'd say Halo (1-3) is a good example of a game with good plot and basically no character writing for the main character. Same with Half Life (although they both have some great side characters). These stories tend to be the type where the main character is reacting to things happening, vs being the one that created the problems.
In Halo Master Chief has to go around and do all this stuff to defeat the baddies. (with some good character writing for Cortana). But what do we know about him? Basically nothing, he is a "doom guy" type of character. Even by Halo 3 we know very little about him.
Anyway I think "silent protagonist" stories usually lean more on plot/world building vs creating a complex character, although many create memorable side characters.
I think the other extreme of plot ahead of character would be something like Freespace, an old space-flight fighter sim game where aside from the intro, all the dialog is done trough text-briefings and voice dialog between pilots.
The amount of characterization of the player in the game is close to nil.
A lot of this dialog has to be very to the point too, due to how it's supposed to be a relaid conversation between military-personnel , but the writers (and VA's) were able to add some IMO good character/humanity to nameless NPC in some moments, precisely because where the plot has ended up placing those characters.
But I think the situation that a game that has a conflict between groups that is so wide in scope, that neither the main characters or any particular supporting characters can be said to be the focus of the story is fairly unusual for a game that cares a lot about it's writing.
Patrick Reding doom?
Patrick Reding my first instinct answer is that a game should be capable of having good plot writing with weak character writing if the skeleton of the plot is very original and utilizes very effective twists. It'd probably be a lot more feasible if it also supplemented the plot writing with strong lore writing, but in theory, this should be possible. Unfortunately, humans have been telling stories for millennia, so constructing a fascinatingly original plot structure is no small feat, but I find it hard to believe we have totally exhausted all original plot lines and all subversive twists as a culture. I wish I could think of a good example in gaming though
When I approach story for a game, I just try to come up with a story to make the gameplay make sense. Although it's fine to do it this way, I'd love to go about it the other way and have an idea of a world or set of characters I want to show off rather than having the story exist to justify the gameplay.
While neither way is wrong if you watch some of their videos in the past liking the making your first game series, they actually recommend not going into game making with a story in mind, and to actually go in with a fun mechanic and gameplay. It's what your players will be doing the entire time they're playing your game, and while narrative and writing are important nothing undermines an amazing gameplay experience. I've played lots of games with a great story but no real gameplay flare that I didn't enjoy, but I've also played a lot of games with a poor story and an amazing gameplay that I kept coming back to. It's why so many mobile games are so popular despite having almost none of anything talked about in this video.
I Was needing this video, thx Extra Credits
I really liked this video and think it went over it's main points very clearly. My favorite part is when you point to a specific game to illustrate a point. An interesting idea might be to take a few games and point out how they fit into this mold? Great job
As a fan of the "Tales Of..." RPG series, I've always loved how character-driven the games are. For anyone who has never played them, there are hundreds of optional "skits" that can be played depending on where you are at (physically), what part of the story you're in, and who is in your party, along with a few other specific possibilities. Once activated, the characters talk with each other based on what criteria were met. This is an entire feature of the game which delivers almost exclusively on the "characters" part of the writing. It's that kind laser focus which makes the characters so interesting, and it's also probably why I keep coming back for every installment in the series I can get my hands on.
A game is like food on the plate.
Plate is the lore, food is the plot and what you eat with is the character.
Never put soup on a flat plate and expect anyone to eat it with a fork.
I've used these pillars a lot even just running a homebrew D&D campaign :) it works on every level
My school used your video! So just wanted to say thank you for making this video on the behalf of our school
Here's the things things stories should focus on, plain and simple: Themes, arcs, and motivations. These are the things that make stories good, mostly, and things should generally feed into supporting these things more than anything. That goes for your lore, your chatacters, or anything.
It depends. While worldbuilding with a theme in mind can help, it can also backfire. Say if you have a message you want to convey, but every single character arcs is centered around said message and every conflict is revolved around said message then it can get annoying very quickly, especially if said message is overused(pro-diversity, environmentalism, anti-capitalism).
The real world isn't based entirely on a single social issue, so having some minor variations in said theme may help make swallowing the main theme easier.
Reito Shizaki Oh, yeah, that's definitely true, I agree with that. If you make everybody and every thing go through similar exact motions and express the same themes or messages on said themes, you're gonna wear things out real quick.
So it's not that plain and simple, is it?
Lodfield Kerman Did I say that everything needs to serve a single goal, or that the character's arcs needed to serve the same purpose, let alone the same theme, or anything like that? No, I didn't. I do like things being relatively holistic, but I didn't say anything like that, and I'm glad the other commenter brought up what he did.
I strongly agree with theming being important. I once heard an interview with Team Meat where they said they felt theming was more important than any other writing mechanic in games. Completely changed the way I look at Meat Boy, and it strengthened my opinion on Celeste, and on Bioshock, and on a large number of games.
Good point! I like Zelda: Breath of the Wild. And though it's plot is paper thin, and Link's character is a blank page, I've found it's lore is deep and satisfying.
Very interesting! I now realized that this also applies to writing custom campaigns/settings in Pen&Paper! With the addition, that the players take over a huge load on the character part.
Thank you. Im designing a game right now and the biggest part ive been worried about is the storytelling. This helped me figure out exactly where my game's story falls. So, yeah, thanks for this!
I havent seen an extra credits video in a while? What happened to Dan?
Idk m8
Dragon Age is more lore-focused, but they did a heck of a job on characters ! And the plot is pretty good.
loafhero Please, I love origins gameplay as much as the next guy, but the story? It's the one thing that stops me from constantly replaying it! I mean the whole plot is one big cliche and even the first time playing it I knew what was going to happen way before the reveal (and I think I was around 13 or something)... While both 2 and inquisition weren't masterpieces either plot-wise, they at least sometimes managed to surprise me
You know the writers of Dragon Age Origin had balls when you could kill off / not even recruit all the party members. It really lent weight to your decisions.
You can not recruit some characters in DAI.
GiggitySam Entz
Well, except for Origins. It's a massive game with maybe three interesting, characters and one halfway interesting NPC (Bhelen, naturally).
Deepseafish
"Love" is not a word many would use to describe Origins shallow, tedious gameplay.
You've got the story spot on though.
I'm writing some stories right now I hope to use for games in a few years. I try to balance the three pillars out as much as possible. I start out and make mental outline of the story, and try to think up a creative PLOT. Then, I add in a bunch of LORE to spice things up and make the world interesting. Finally, I actually get these things out on paper, and as I'm writing, I consistently keep strong CHARACTER with the characters.
I've never seen this channel before. And now that I have, I'm subscribing.
I was just about to write my application to a college that had a game writing course that I wanted to get into.
Ain’t that something.
“It’s the small details that give characters, character”
The narrator sounds like he's been listening to the suggestions and his narration is now much more calm and easy to listen to compared to the first few videos he recorded.
This man's illustrations are the best in extra credit.
This video ties in with an idea that's been knocking around my brain that I've taken to calling "The Modes of Fiction," where I tie the Aristotelian modes of persuasion to fictional creation.
First off we have Logos, which for fiction I called "World-building." This reflects a creators ability to explore the intricate details of their universe without becoming confused and contradictory. I typically offer up J. R. R. Tolkien as an example of great Logos and J. K. Rowling as an example of poor Logos.
Up next we have Pathos, which for fiction we both seem to have called "Character Writing." This reflects the creator's ability to explore the intricacies of the human condition with becoming either confused or dull. J.K. Rowling stands out as a master of Pathos, but I honestly have difficulty isolating a truly bad example for characterization. My guess is that bad character writing sticks out the most and people who suck at developing at least okay characters generally give up their dreams of being creators before they get too far.
Finally we have Ethos, for which I named the fictional equivalent "Story-telling." This reflects a creator's ability to convey the necessary information to the audience appropriately, while weaving an interesting, understandable, and satisfying narrative. I refer to Andy Wier's Ethos style in The Martian as a good example, and J. R. R. Tolkien's The Two Towers (really all of what I made it through of his) as an example of atrocious storytelling.
Anyway, thanks for the intersting video, and I'm glad to see that I'm not the only one thinking these types of thought.
You see this focus one one of the pillars pretty well in The Last of Us. The plot is your average postapocalyptic zombie story. There is only enough Lore to explain the absolut basics of the world and the game mechanics have nothing to elevate them from other stealth games. The writing focuses entirely on the characters and they made those so masterfully, that alone was enough to turn the game into one of the best ever made.
1) Awesome video: this is an aspect of story writing in general (not just games) that needs to be discussed more.
2) This a main source of confusion whenever I discuss game stories with people. Far too many people talk about the story for how much they like what happens in the story, without thinking about whether what happens emphasizes the essential themes the game was trying to convey or whether the gameplay reinforces that at all.
3)yes! Final Fantasy 10 is my favorite story of the ones I've played and I'm glad someone recognized it's pros and not it's memetic cons.
This is unbelievably helpful, thank you. I just ranomly came across a game designer who needed help writing the game as he had no idea how to. I write novels, so I jumped at the chance. We are working together to develop a cyberpunk themed universe. I really took note about how you should probably decide if you want lore, character or plot. I think the background won't be too detailed or explained, but the plot will have a lot going ont; therefore it seems plot and character should be my focus.
This made me thing about the story in Nier: Automata, and I think it nailed all three
SPOILERS AHEAD
1) a story about finding meaning in a meaningless existance
2)characters that not only struggle following what they think the meaning is, but also react differently at the loss of that meaning
3) and a huge lore completely unraveled in side material.
You just made me realize LOTR is basically characters + lore when it comes to writing.
Tolkien was a lore fiend. Though if I'm honest, Peter Jackson did most of the stuff I liked with the characters.
Hiya! My first video of yours that I watched and this was short, sweet, simple and too the point! I appreciate it! ALSO, shout out to the artist. It's a small thing but I appreciate the diversity in their work! It was pretty cool and refreshing. Cheers!
I'm no game designer yet but I've been struggling to write a story in a jrpg style, I think this video helped me greatly!
Hollow knight and cave story are fantastic examples of lore driven stories done well.
0:32 Firewach is my favorite game.
Loved the art in this episode, thank you David!
This is amazingly helpful with my D&D games. Thanks Extra Credits!
Spec Ops: The Line was probably a plot-focused game. It's got something to say, it's got twists, but I don't know if the mechanics serve the plot or detract from it because I'm not sure what they were aiming for there (pun not intended)
I dunno. It seemed pretty character-driven to me.
It's plot.
Well, to a point, mechanics do serve the game. One of the things that most made me realise the change in tone were the executions. In the first level, executions are quick and clean, usually a shot to the head and that's it. In the later parts of the game, the executions start to become more and more sadistic and desperate, with the protagonist smashing the enemy's heads against the ground with their rifle stocks and such. They really showed the protagonist's evolution.
The mechanics were pretty bog standard for a 3PS and I think that was on purpose cause they wanted to lull you into thinking it was a standard shooter game before it pulled the rug out from under you.
OnimaxBlade, agreed. Extra Credits actually did a two-episode analysis of Spec Ops a good time ago which is very much along those lines.
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I can't really say the Tales of serie have focused on any. They always offered super unique and fun characters, huuuuuge and interesting plots, as well as made completely original lores. And the fact that everything is so well done is why I love the Tales of serie.
I would say that the final point of this episode should have been that if a game is genuinely well written, fans will NOT be able to agree on which element of plot was the focus of the writers and developers, because each will have merits.
Tales don't really have much in lore aspect and these games plots are extremely character driven, I would say even more so than Final Fantasy. Doesn't mean series is bad, I love it.
I would indeed say that it's mostly Character-driven, but they do have lot of lore, mostly through all the skits you can find all around the world. In Tales of Zestiria, there's even Discoveries that always trigger skits explaining what it is they discovered.
I would say that Zestiria is worst Tales game, so it's not a good example - and big part why it's worst is how underused character part is. They pretty much tried cramping lore and gameplay explanation into parts which were about characters and their interactions (skits), to the detriment of both.
I'm not saying that Tales don't have lore, I'm saying that lore part in these games is rather basic - compare amount of lore you get in Tales with amount of lore you get in games like Arcanum or old Fallout games (to not use most popular lately Dark Souls example).
Unfortunately for you, I disagree and found Zestiria to be one of the best games, so it is a good example. Especially since it wasn't the only game to had that, Tales of Graces also had discoveries triggering lore Skits. But just about any Tales of game gives enough lore to let you understand about the whole fictional world.
Also unfortunately, I haven't played any of the games you mentionned, so I don't know just how much lore there is in those. I'd assume Fallout has as much lore as Skyrim, but Open World games are usually all about the Lore and little about characters and story. There's Tales of Xillia 2 that attempted to go the Open World path while keeping focus on the Character, but that ended being one of my least favorite Tales of since the story felt bland.
I can't thank you enough for this video as it opened my eyes on video game writing.
I kind of forget that this channel
is AWESOME
Planescape Torment is the best written game I know.
dookie_12 Yeah it's crazy just how hard it nails all these pillars.
I think "worldbuilding" is a more appropriate word to the "lore" pillar.
David Del Pozo Filíu World Building is the act of Creating Lore
Is it? the definition is "a body of traditions and knowledge on a subject or held by a particular group, typically passed from person to person by word of mouth.", according to google, so, generally speaking is about things that happened in the past, basically "history". If you make your NPCs have routines independent of the player (e.g.: they trade with each other, prices of merchandise changes) it makes the world feel alive, it builds relationships between other characters independent of you, but I wouldn't necessarily call it 'lore'.
"Lore" kinda makes it sounds more like "history". Whereas world building included geography, environment, economy, social systems, ethnicity, sciences, magic system, etc.
theyre kinda the same thing idk
Lore to me is the history, myths, and legends of the story milieu. It's part of world building, but world- building also encompasses the geography and geology. I've done enough planetvand star system design for some works in progress that I'm aware of it.
One thing to be aware of, whether it's for games, books, film, or TV, keep the "iceberg" principle in mind. You may spend ages developing you world in detail, and it will give depth to what you actually use in your end product, but 90% of it should remain unseen. One if my writer friends said a lot of ppl he knew fell into the "I suffered for my work, now it's your turn" trap. He was referring to thr types where half the end product was background.
Goal: you may need to know it all, but the reader/viewer/gamer only needs just what they need for the story to make sense. But that hidden part of your iceberg makes what's visible in the end more stable.
Alright this is going to actually really help, thanks man!
I've been waiting for some of the new narrative episodes!
Is there some simplified character creation method?
The whole thing is pretty daunting and having an easy and solid scaffold to help flesh out its personality, its ambitions and drives sure helps...
You can go for archetypes and then expand or contrast. The legend of heroes games does this well. Good first impression, then fill in later.
For example
_ Swordy Mc Sword Sword is a Sword guy, loves them, carries like 3-4 on his back but can't ever use them in a fight, too useless and never the time to use them. So he uses guns so he does not risk the urge to use them. - Literally just made that up but you could flesh out from there, the who and the way and the past.
Hope this helps!
Nelson Baietti One of the supplements for Vampire: the Requiem, I believe it was the Ordo Dracul source book, had a system where you would draw a series of cards (ordinary playing cards, that is), to get suggestions for a character.
It was a bit like a simple Tarot spread, you would draw (quoting from distant memory here) three cards for your character's past, three for their present, some for their Vices and Virtues, ambitions etc. Then there was a list of brief explanations of what the cards would mean.
I'm sure there are many similar systems to look up, but I recall that one as being both fun and useful. Of course, you would have to adjust it to your current setting.
I remember a spreadsheet I got from a writing workshop ages ago... I don't have it on me, but this was the basic framework that I remember:
- what's the name? what's the appearance? gender? age? (can be decided last, unless any of these influence them in-universe)
- their associates and family members (not only those who appear in story; what relations did the character have before the story begins? If none, why so?)
- personality: this was divided into four quadrants, IIRC
-- external strengths (ex. good at reading people)
-- internal strengths (ex. determined)
-- external weaknesses (ex. easily offended by others)
-- internal weaknesses (ex. low sense of self-worth)
- abilities (social, martial, supernatural - how important are they in this particular genre you're writing?)
- weaknesses (again, social, physical, supernatural - illnesses or low social status would also go here, if they matter)
- backstory (what happened before the story begun; should either inform all of the above or come from all of the above, depending on how you prefer to write your character)
-- the cliff notes version: what were the decisive moments of your character's life? What informs their behaviour, what haunts them?
- role in the story (protagonist? antagonist? supporting character?)
- what do they want?
- why do they want it?
- "other" (hobbys, habits, etc.)
Ideally, you can fill all those in in any order, but when you do, you should look at all the others to make sure they fit together fine, and if they don't - either fix it to match, or figure out why one person has such disparate traits.
i got a book a few years ago about using Tarot Cards to develop a characters traits and faults, and its not only an easy way to streamline its also a really fun method to use.
My "cheat" is just defining what a character wants and what a character fears. Then I make the plot about their wants and fears colliding, so they have to "choose" which is more important to them. I find a lot of personality just comes out of letting them play out that conflict.
As an example, My MC, James wants redemption but is afraid to face that he might be iredeemable. So he runs into situations where he thinks he can prove to himself he is a good guy but those are usually situations where his past is coming back to haunt him, so every misstep seems to prove his problem. So he tries to take easy ways out, which ends up backfiiring and proving his original problem, that he can't get what he wants. And it just goes in a spiral, from which his character emerges.
Most character frameworks rely on how a character is at the beginning. What they look like. What their job is. Unfortunately, the demands of plot are that these sorts of things are going to be challenged and/or stripped away. Gregor Samsa loses what he looks like the first paragraph of the Metamorphosis, so how would that help the audience learn about his character?
Instead, I feel, it is better to concentrate on strong motivations. What will drive a character in unfamiliar circumstances? What traits do they have that will guide them when they are insecure, out of their element, or feeling desperate. Because those traits will work at all points in a story. They'll be unconciously pursuing such things at the beginning, relying on them in the center, and working on resolving them at the end.
The other great piece of advice I've heard is that characters are defined by their ability to care. It is what they care about most deeply that will draw the audience in. Even an anti-hero who "doesn't care" does care about something enough to feel a need to act in the way they do. The "doesn't care" is just an attitude that they will overcome, fairly quickly, because their need to participate in the plot is greater. So, that would be my third peg to hang a character on. What they care about deeply enough to override their apparent surface character.
If you want a game series with great writig try zero escape
Wonderful episode, exactly what I needed to hear.
I'm getting
*Ned Kelly*
Vibes from this
*it's great*
Ned Kelly was one of my favorite series to draw :D
One of my favorite Extra History episodes man :D
I think Mass effect delivered on all three. Maybe the plot was a little thin. What do you think?
Mass Effect 2 did for sure, 1 and 3 could be argued either way
Plot is the weakest of the three pillars in Mass Effect, but they surely deliver on the world-building and character pillars.
Actually, I would consider Mass Effect 1's plot to be the strongest. If you strip away everything else as suggested in this video, it has the most drastic turns. The betrayal at Eden Prime, Saren as the big bad and you now must hunt him across the galaxy with his robo death army. That's the basis but in terms of twists we have the revelations on Virmire that Saren might not be the true big bad as Sovereign is revealed. The council grounding Shepard right as he's on the cusp of victory. Discovering the protheans and that "all" of them are dead. The possibility of Saren's last redeeming act.
Sure, it still isn't the most nuanced plot and it doesn't set out to say anything truly meaningful. However, it's twists solely related to it's main plot felt more influential into how you saw the story as a whole than in latter games. This is also ignoring the side plots, each with their own personal twists and turns that contribute to smaller parts of the main story while being self contained plots of their own usually with twists and turns.
Mass effect 1 certainly did. Mass effect 2 had quite a lot of plot problems, not least of which was finding out that in plot terms the entire game was a waste of shepherds time as the collectors were never a significant threat. Mass effect 3 had some plot problems that I think were a carry over from the wasted time of mass effect 2. The krogan and quarian sub plots could easily have been in mass effect 2 and in mass effect 3 I think they really impacted the story of getting asari/salaraian/turian support.
Siliuse You have a good point. However ME2's plot felt contrived to me. Colonies are disappearing. Must be the Reapers! Is a leap. Let's revive Sheppard like Jesus. Let's all go offboard at the same time so plot can happen. And ME3 is let's do side quests, cause Deus Ex machina will fix everything. I love those games to death, but only the first has a 10/10 plot
That said, out of the entire franchise I enjoyed the ME3 Krogan and Quarian missions with their amazingly nuanced meaningful choices
Claim: The Mass Effect 2 plot is very simple, most of your memories are about the world or the characters.
Absolutely, Mass Effect 2 is definitely a character driven game as there are 22 character missions (recruitment and loyalty) and ~5 plot missions.
But the other games ? I'd claim that Mass Effect 1 is lore driven and Mass Effect 3 is plot driven.
Mass Effect 1 is very much a story about stopping a big bad before he dooms the galaxy. Very original. The character interactions between missions are mostly to serve the lore as Tali mostly speaks of her people and not herself. Wrex spoke of his career as mercenary while also mostly speaking about lore. Kaidan speaks of his and others experience as human biotic. Garrus and Ashley might be the only ones speaking about their aspirations and histories.
Mass Effect 3 however focuses on plot right from where the beginning and does not stop. Every single mission and interaction on the galaxy map serves the plot. In fact the developers had to put in a separate DLC for all the "missing" character moments in contrast to the previous game.
Yeah it is actually really interesting how the series focuses on entirely different elements like that. But I think it's the right order to do it in if you are gonna do something like that.
Truth. I have always said it and I'll say it again. The ME2 plot sucked.
Antilli
There wasn't much of it, but what was there was good. The Revelation regarding the collectors, and the creation of reapers was amazing.
InfamousArmstrong That's Lore. Not plot.
I never thought of it this way before really. I like it.
Thank you! I was searching inside out and didn't even note someone outright saying "ya need biblez"
I'm writing a story and I noticed just yesterday, that I was into Lore focused stories (I was watching Minecraft Theories, don't ask)
This really helped me out a ton, hope I'll actually continue working on my story
The three pillar men of Game Writing : Kars, Wham and AC/DC
Is this a JoJo reference??????!!!!!!!!!!
No that I've started watching Jojo, Jojo references keep appearing like hell, tf
Man, going back to game writing after all these years (it was what the first episode was about) feels nostalgic.
Other than confusing "plot" for "story" - the latter is the overall narrative whereas the earlier is the specific sequence of events within the narrative and how they connect - and think "narrative" would've been more accurate, this does a great job at describing storytelling structure, even in general. A lot of these points can be applied, in one degree or another, to cinema and comicbooks as well.
Using Overwatch as an example of a game with great writing is, at the very least, extremely questionable.
While the plot is... debatable... it does have very distinct, diverse, and developed characters.
Dialogue: A+
Plot: Uh, we don't talk about that...
Plot is about Robot - Human relationship, conspiracy, evil organizations, envirioment hazzard and war.
In game lore is about pushing payloads, escorting a Holywood hotshot and fighting over a ghost base on the moon.
Reasonable enough.
well Overwatch is pretty much character sentric, there's little to no plot besides "good guys fight badguys" & most of the lore is just there to explain the characters
it's a good example of proper focus in the right aspect, it's entirely character driven, sure it has it's plot and plenty of people like the lore, but both of those are really just there as a setup for the characters
The binding of Isaac, samus and Geralt of rivia da man
That was really tight and to the point, I feel like I have to run of and start working right now. And I'm not even an aspiring game designer ^^
I liked this video a lot, the structure was super clear and it was easy to take in :)
Thanks for the shout-out to Battletech. I liked the pirate with a hook for a leg. Nice touch!
That's not how Final Fantasy works at all! You need at least 1 more big bad before you reach the final big bad threatening the world, probably 2 or 3. Like, FF2 is the only one I can think of where the villian stays the main villian throughout the whole game; even the purposefully simple 5 has the whole first world where human greed is the villian before it's revealed it's actually trees!
They definitely aren't deep plots mind you, but you oversimplify.
bring dan back?
S.Mehdi Mousavi what happened to him?
He went on to other projects.
@@Ajehy Projects on Extra Credits, or somewhere else? We want him back
This episode was drawn so well!
I'm running a D&D campaign. I found a lot of this super useful for creating a world to set a campaign in.
BAR BAR! BAR bar bar? BAR!
Babar the elephant king!?
Bar. bar bar bar bar.
Barbar.
Chase Strohm
Barbarian.
Bar.
Bar bar bar bar bar bar bar bar bar bar bar bar bar bar
And that is why Hollow Knight is so good. All 3 pillars are exploited to the maximum. The plot and environmental narration of the game is incredible, the characters (except the hero...?) are all incredibly well written, and the lore is just insanely good and interesting. While the game is hard and can be really frustrating, it also has amazing gameplay and graphics. If dying in video game is fine to you, definitely check this game out!
Félix Pinchon The genius of Hollow Knight is that there is an actual in game explanation for why the protagonist doesn't talk or have a personality.
Yes. Funny enough the reason the character is "poorly written" is not a failure in character writting but a success in lore instead
I haven't thought of it like this before.
This is great insight.
Together with a few friends of mine, I am working on a game right now and I am WAY too ambitious. In this video, I found out our game is plot-driven, and I literally have a Game Bible written with all the little details about the world and the universe the game takes place in. I know our game will never be as big as all those others, but still I really like just thinking out all the little details and creating my own world.
That Destiny roast makes me moist!
Character is a cornerstone of ANY good writing, whether it's games, film, or books/short fiction. You can have a killer plot, but if your characters have no more personality than a shred of used kleenex, and make cardboard appear 3D, you work fails. Same with lore. It's handled differently in "print" work than in games, but it's also needed. The Brother Cadfael mysteries wouldn't work as well as they do if Ellis Peters wasn't able to give readers the milieu of 12th century England that she did.
I strongly disagree with this. Whenever people make up rules like this it feels like they either just haven't seen any good examples that go against these rules, or it turns into a self-fulfilling prophecy where they don't even give works that don't follow these rules a chance.
Also, I would say that "writing" is far too broad of a term to make up this kind of rule for. While it certainly can have characters and probably even lore, I would say that poetry can also do pretty well without them.
True. Thx for reminding us
There are so many games where character is a lesser focus that are great games that I am forced to disagree with you. Most of these are RPG's where you make your character who you want them to be. Where is the character development in World of Warcraft, Skyrim, or Fallout? These games thrive on their lore driven plotline.
Adrienne Gormley What about stories where characters are more symbolic in nature, instead of having depth of characterization? These stories, like Homer's epics and Shakespeare's plays, proliferate our history, and these aren't bad stories.
If you're making a character-driven story, then yes. HOWEVER.
You don't necessarily need to have a compelling PROTAGONIST character. Games like Elder Scrolls, Fable, or just about any BioWare title (though Dragon Age and Mass Effet take the cake there) will often have scintillating, controversial, or just plain interesting characters, but a protagonist specifically designed to be a blank slate, someone who the other characters can bounce off of and who the player can insert themselves into.
Later BioWare games have given these protagonists their own voice and dialogue (i.e. the Inquisitor and Hawke from the last two Dragon Age games), but the CHOICE of words remains with the player.
I am stepping into my writer for videogames era, thank you so much
After watching this video I am convinced to make a game utilizing all three elements to make the perfect video game. With that aside, I agree with what you are trying to convey.
Wait, is Dan going away?
Dan's been gone for a few weeks now, aside from the episodes of Extra History and Politics they're still releasing.
He still associates himself with the channel, he's just rebranding some of their stuff. Extra Frames is now New Frame Plus, Extra Play is now Playframe, etc.
Alas, the voice of Squeaky Dan is no more.
D: