If narrative design is what narrative designers do for a living, what does that entail? A lot of things, as it turns out.
All the writing that goes into a game falls squarely on the narrative designerās shoulders. This encompasses not only all the dialogue and text the player might see in the game, but also all the story elements that go into the development of the game. These often serve simply to inform various members of the team as they create art, animation, gameplay, world design, and so on.
Oftentimes the narrative designer is assigned (or volunteers for!) many of the pre-production writing tasks necessary to create a solid design foundation for the implementation stage, when the game is actually created. These tasks include the concept document, game design document, level or zone design documents, scripts for presentations to upper-level management, and any other writing the team needs during pre-production.
Once production begins, the narrative designer begins writing character dialogue, text for notes and books placed in the game, and other writing-related tasks. Often, scripters and game designers place first-draft versions of dialogue lines into the game, ensuring that they convey gameplay-related content at appropriate times. Itās the narrative designerās job to find and edit all those lines, making sure they fit the tone of the game and the character speaking.
On many projects, a game development team will have a single narrative designer but a dozen or more others (scripters, game designers, level designers) adding dialogue and story-related content into every area of the game. Ideally, the narrative designer can track all the lines that have been added to the game (or modified) by others, and serves as the final set of eyes on every bit of writing that goes in. As the project nears a deadline, the team often adds content at a furious pace, and the narrative designer has to dash from one part of the script to another to put out all the fires.
Writing cinematic scripts is another of the narrative designerās responsibilities. These mini-movies are scattered throughout most games, at the start, end, and at various turning points in the plot. Game development teams use cinematics to convey story, events, or information that is difficult or impossible to present during gameplay. They can be mini-movies, like the cinematic of the playerās plane crashing at the start of Bioshock, or semi-interactive set pieces, like the elevator ride into the underwater city of Rapture a few minutes laterāboth have narration that establishes the themes of the game, written by narrative designers. (More on cinematic scripts in the narrative design assignments in Appendix C.)
Games change dramatically during production. The opening level of the first Red Faction game was thrown out and completely redone with only three weeks left until the gameās release. During production of the second Red Faction game, an entire level (1/13th of the game) was deleted with only a couple of months to go, as we realized we didnāt have time to finish it. Cinematic scripts can change dramatically as well. The first drafts of a gameās cinematic scripts are often created during pre-production and later rewritten to accommodate changes to the story and gameplay. Sometimes just an outline of the anticipated content of a cinematic is written up during pre-production, with the full version created once the gameās story and design fall into place.
As the game solidifies during production, and the story and gameplay information cinematics need to convey to the player become better known, more complete versions of cinematic scripts can be written. These are reviewed by the creative director and the leads of other disciplines within the development team. That feedback spurs further refinement of the scripts.
Once the cinematic scripts are approved by the CD and leads, a concept artist creates storyboards to block out the action within each cinematic. These are reviewed and revised until leads are satisfied with them. Then the cinematic team goes to work creating the first prototype of the cinematic, with the narrative designer contributing feedback and rewrites as needed. The team continues to refine the cinematics in subsequent passes until they are approved by all concerned.
If a game has spoken dialogue, the narrative designer faces a few more challenges. A voice recording script must be created near the end of production. This means gathering the thousands or tens of thousands of dialogue lines into scripts organized by character. The lines of each characterāno matter where they appear in the gameāshould be grouped into a single document or spreadsheet. These documents provide context to help the voice actor with their linesāvoice actors often have to imagine their characterās situation without access to the game itself. Each cinematic in the game also needs its own voice recording scripts (one for each voice actor) with each characterās lines highlighted.
Once the voice recording scripts are finalized, the narrative designer is off to a recording studio to help guide the voice recording sessions, usually alongside a voice director and an audio technician. The technician handles the mechanical process of recording and saving multiple takes of each line, and the voice director listens for speech issues. The narrative designerās part is to guide the voice actorsā delivery and determine which take of a line to use in the game, as no one knows the emotional and gameplay context of the gameās dialogue like the narrative designer.
When the recording sessions are over, the teamās sound designers work to get the approved lines into the game. The narrative designer then needs to play the game, listen to the voice lines, and call out any that are playing incorrectly or have other problems.
There are often pickup sessions built into the audio schedule, much like āreshootsā for studio films. These occur weeks later, to re-record any bad lines or account for places where the game has changed, making the original line irrelevant. As few voice actors as possible are called back to the studio to record new or revised lines. These sessions are expensive but are almost always necessary to ensure top-quality dialogue for a game.