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gziets · 6 years

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A Retrospective on the Mask

It’s hard to believe that it’s been ten years since Mask of the Betrayer… actually, at the time I’m writing this (in the final days of 2017), the ten-year anniversary has just about passed. After all this time, Mask remains the most fun project I’ve ever worked on, and I wouldn’t want to let the moment go by without spilling a few secrets about why the game worked pretty well (while others didn’t).

The story took a really long time to write.

I started work on the Mask narrative in late spring / early summer of 2006, while the NWN2 team was still in the “polish and bug-fixing” phase. The first few months were mostly brainstorming. I had freedom to do pretty much anything with the narrative, so it took me a while to settle on a hook that I really liked. For a while, the player was going to become a minor deity at the beginning of the game, and the expansion would focus on the travails of a new deity in the Forgotten Realms universe… but it quickly became clear that we didn’t have the budget to create all the new creatures, items, and game systems to support a deity-level campaign. So I kept thinking about other ways to make the expansion a unique experience, and I finally settled upon the spirit-eater curse – a magical affliction that would give the player some near-godlike abilities but could still take place (mostly) in the mortal world.

Even after that first major decision was made, I spent weeks reading through Obsidian’s library of Forgotten Realms sourcebooks, picking out elements that got me excited (the Wall of the Faithless, the lore of Rashemen and Thay), and then figuring out how to weave together a story that would incorporate them all.

That was a long and intensive process, with tons of rewrites, tweaks, and iterations. For the whole second half of 2006, I probably didn’t have a spare moment when I wasn’t thinking about the story, going over and over it in my head, and trying to think of ways to make it better. Mask’s narrative wasn’t truly finished until December 2006, when the first zone of the game (Okku’s barrow) was already underway.

Don’t get me wrong - that grueling, painstaking process was totally worth it – the story wouldn’t have been as strong if I hadn’t put in all that time. In my experience, memorable stories take a lot of deep thought and iteration, and if you don’t have the time (or your schedule doesn’t allow for it), your story may be decent, but it likely won’t be great.

I’ve worked on some games where the story needs to be developed in a very short time – e.g., a week or less. It’s possible to craft a simple, competent narrative in that time, but the chances are good that you’ll still need to iterate a lot during development to make it stronger, and your game will probably not be remembered for its story.

I find that the time required for story and world development are often underestimated in the games industry, though studios that have made a lot of narrative-focused games are starting to schedule more realistically. (Still, the realities of game development, like publisher contracts, don’t often allow for sufficient story development time, which is part of the reason that a lot of game stories aren’t that great.)

On Mask, it also helped that we dedicated one writer (me) to craft the high-level story AND write all the main story dialogues. Sometimes division of responsibility is unavoidable, but if one person has the high-level vision for the game’s narrative, it’s much easier for that person to write all the story moments. They know exactly what needs to be communicated and what the player has already learned, so they can carefully control the flow of information to the player. If the main story is divided up between multiple writers, information flow can become a major problem… and a source of confusion for the player.

Mask had the benefit of low expectations… and no external interference.

When “NX1” (Neverwinter Expansion 1) was first described to me, it was pitched as a simple hack-and-slash adventure. Neverwinter Nights 2 was expected to do reasonably well, and the expansion would be a quick, relatively low-cost way to provide a followup product to fans. (Expansions never sell as well as the original product, so their budgets are proportionately reduced.)

I was not particularly excited about making a hack-and-slasher, so I pushed back on that particular point. To the credit of our lead, Kevin Saunders, he allowed me to pursue a much more expansive vision that required more work and longer hours. (Our schedule was not going to change, but if we could get more work done in the same amount of time, we could deliver something grander. Of course, not every lead would have trusted their team enough to give them a shot.)

Also, because Mask was expected to be a simple hack-and-slasher, the publisher paid little attention to what we were doing. Effectively, we operated under most people’s radar. This was great because we were able to pursue a vision that was shared among the team and didn’t suffer from interference from outside.

As in any industry, outside interference is a reality of game development. Sometimes it works out fine, as when higher-ups are heavily invested in a franchise, understand the core vision, and give well-informed feedback that improves the product. But the more a publisher or executive is separated from the project, the more likely they’ll give direction that doesn’t strengthen the game.

Case in point. Years ago, when I was working on Earth & Beyond (a science fiction MMO) for EA-Westwood, executives would occasionally fly in from California to play the latest build of the game. On one of these visits, the executives decided that they didn’t like the existing story and wanted the main narrative to be focused on a war instead. This meant that the lead writer (not me) had to rewrite everything she had done so far. The resulting story was fine… but the massive change invalidated many of the quests that the team had already built. So with months left on the clock before release, we had to create all new material to replace what was lost, which meant that we didn’t have enough time to finish the rest of the content we had originally planned. When Earth & Beyond shipped, one of the biggest complaints was that we didn’t have enough quests and other things to do, a problem that could be traced directly to that outside interference.

Mask never had a problem like that. Everybody on the team knew the vision, it never changed (apart from minor improvements along the way), and our schedule played out as expected.

We were able to focus on quests and narrative… not new game systems.

Designing the core systems of a game has one thing in common with designing a story - it can take a lot of time and iteration to get it right. But unlike story design, systems design requires multiple people – designers to write documents defining the gameplay and programmers to implement those designs. Then they play and test… and iterate… over and over again until the gameplay feels fun. It can be a long and unpredictable process, and if you start designing levels and quests before that process is finished, you might have to redesign those levels and quests when the gameplay changes. I’ve seen many games run into problems because their gameplay isn’t finalized before the design team starts building levels.

And if the game systems are new, level designers may not know how to build fun content with the new systems. That’s why expansions are sometimes more fun than the original game. Over the course of development, the team has figured out what works and what doesn’t, and they can apply all those lessons to the expansion.

Dungeon Siege 3 is a great example of this. DS3 diverted from the standard gameplay of the previous Dungeon Siege games, and it took us a while to figure out how to make fun levels using the new systems. By the time we developed the expansion, we’d figured out the winning formula - but by then, most people had written off the game.

Mask of the Betrayer, on the other hand, had no new systems. The core design team (Eric Fenstermaker, Jeff Husges, Tony Evans, and I) had all designed levels, combat encounters, and quests for NWN2, and we knew what worked and what didn’t. Three of us (Eric, Jeff, and I) had shared an office. We didn’t have to worry about learning new tools or figuring out each other’s strengths and weaknesses. Instead, we could focus all our energy on creating great quests and narrative, and that gave us a big advantage.

We let the themes arise naturally.

Some writers will disagree with me here, but I’ve found that it’s better to avoid thinking about themes and deeper meanings until after your main story is written. On Mask, I didn’t write a “themes” document at first. I let the themes arise naturally from the work… as they almost always do. Your subconscious will seed your work with recurring ideas and motifs, and as long as you’re attentive to them, you can identify and reinforce them later.

For example, the most obvious thematic element in Mask – the idea of “masks” – didn’t appear until after I’d written the story and decided to set the game in Rashemen. I started to notice that masks – in various forms – were cropping up in the narrative I’d written, so I reinforced that element (in names, like “The Veil,” in dialogue references, in items, etc.) as I fleshed everything out. The title of the game didn’t appear until close to the end of development, when Kevin asked me to propose some names for the expansion. Until then, it was just “NX1.”

In my experience, starting narrative development with a theme – rather than a fun or emotional story hook – can lead to a story that feels preachy or emotionally empty. That may not be the case for everyone, but I do think it’s a harder road to tread.

Happy New Year, and good gaming in 2018!

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xseedgames · 6 years

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2017 End-of-the-Year Q&A Extravaganza Blog! #1

It’s time for our first 2017 End-of-the-Year Q&A Extravaganza! We’ve got a bunch of these we’ll be posting over the holiday break, so please look forward to them. Now, let’s roll right in!

We have answers from:

Ken Berry, Executive Vice President / Team Leader John Wheeler, Assistant Localization Manager Nick Colucci, Localization Editor Liz Rita, QA Tester Brittany Avery, Localization Producer Thomas Lipschultz, Localization Producer

Question: Has selling your games on PC worked out for you so far? I know supporting the PC platform is a relatively recent choice for XSEED. - @Nate_Nyo

Ken: Being on PC has been great for us as it allows us to reach anyone anywhere in the world regardless of region or console. We were probably one of the earlier adopters in terms of bringing content from Japan to PC as we first published Ys: The Oath in Felghana on Steam almost 6 years ago in early 2012.

Brittany: I love working on PC. The work involved is greater than working on console, but I feel like it's a bigger learning experience, too. For console, the developers normally handle the graphics after we translate them, and they do all the programming and such. For PC, everything falls on us. I wasn't that experienced with Photoshop in the beginning, but I think I've gotten a lot better with it over the years. We can also receive updates instantly, and since I talk with our PC programmer through Skype, it's easier to suss out our exact needs and think of ideas to improve the game or bring it to modern standards.

Question: What non-XSEED games do you praise the localization for? - @KlausRealta

Brittany: Final Fantasy XII. I love everything about Final Fantasy XII's writing. I'm also a big fan of the personality in the Ace Attorney localizations. I'm still playing Yakuza 0, but you can feel the passion of the localization team in the writing. There are some projects where you can tell the editing was phoned in, and then there are games where it's obvious it was a labor of love. All of these games have a color I aspire to.

Tom: Probably going to be a popular answer, and not an especially surprising one, but I've got to give props to Lost Odyssey. It's hard to deny the timeless quality and absolutely masterful English writing that went into basically every line of that game's massive script, with the many short stories being of particular note. That game really does represent an inspirational high bar that I think most everyone else in the industry will forever strive to reach in their own works.

For a more unexpected answer, I've also got to give mad props to Sega for their work on Monster World IV. As a Sega Genesis game released digitally in English for the very first time less than a decade ago, I guess I was kind of expecting a fairly basic "throwaway" translation -- but instead, the game boasts a full-on professional grade localization that's easily up to all modern standards, brimming with charm and personality. It's really nice to see a legitimate retro game being given that kind of care and attention in the modern era, and it makes it very easy for me to recommend (as does the fact that the game is actually quite fun, and is sure to be enjoyed by anyone who's played through all the Shantae titles and really wants to try something else along similar lines).

John: I played Okami on PS3 earlier this year (before the remake was announced), and I was awed by how skillfully the team handled text that is chock full of localization challenges like quirky nicknames, references to Japanese fairy tales, and regional dialects. I was especially amused to see a reference to "kibi dango," the dumplings Momotaro uses to bribe his companions in that famous story. We dealt with the same cultural reference with STORY OF SEASONS: Trio of Towns.

Nick: My go-to response is always Vagrant Story, because it’s the game I credit with getting me really interested in a career in localization. Before that point, I had enjoyed games for their story and characters, but hadn’t realized just how much the specific word choices and tone contributed to a reader’s perception of a story as a whole. The gents behind VS’s localization would go on to be industry luminaries, with Rich Amtower now calling shots in Nintendo’s Treehouse department and Alex Smith being synonymous with the highly regarded prose of Yasumi Matsuno’s games – including the cool and underappreciated Crimson Shroud for 3DS, and Final Fantasy XII, which as anyone who’s played it can tell you is a stellar localization. Having spent a lot of time with FFXII’s “The Zodiac Age” remaster this year, the care and attention to detail put into the localization still blows me away. The unique speech style of the Bhujerbans (with...Sri Lankan inflections, if memory serves correctly) sticks with me, because I knew that I myself would never have been able to pull off something like that so deftly. I guess you could say Vagrant Story started a lineage of games that’s always given me something to aspire to as an editor.

Final Fantasy XIV, which I’ve been playing this year, also has a very good localization, especially considering the reams of text that go into an MMO of its size and scope. Michael-Christopher Koji Fox and his team have done a bang-up job giving life and personality to the land of Eorzea, and I’ve enjoyed seeing how the localization has changed in subtle ways as time has gone on. The initial “A Realm Reborn” localization sort of cranks the “regional flavor” up to 11 with heavy dialects and vernacular, but in subsequent expansions, they kind of eased up on that and have found a good mix between grounded localization and the kind of flourishes that work well in high-fantasy settings.

And, while I haven’t played it in a number of years, I remember Dragon Quest VIII having a really great localization, too, with ol’ Yangus still living large in my memories. Tales of the Abyss was fantastic as well, and both DQVIII and Abyss delivered some really brilliant dub work that showed me how much richer one could make characterization when the writing and the acting really harmonized. I still consider Tales of the Abyss my general favorite game dub to date. The casting is perfect, with not a bad role among them. I also want to give mad props to Ni no Kuni’s Mr. Drippy, just as a perfect storm of great localization decisions. Tidy, mun!

Question: How hard is it to turn in game signs and words to English for Japanese? Is it as simple as going in and editing text? Or as hard as creating a whole new texture for the model? - @KesanovaSSB4

Tom: We refer to this as "graphic text" -- meaning, literally, text contained within graphic images. How it's handled differs from project to project, but the short answer is, yeah, it involves creating a whole new texture for the model. Sometimes, this is handled by the developer: they'll just send us a list of all the graphic text images that exist in-game and what each image says, we'll send that list back to them with translations, and they'll use those translations to create new graphic images on our behalf. For other games, however (particularly PC titles we're more or less spearheading), we'll have to do the graphic edits ourselves. When the original PSDs or what-not exist for the sign images, this is generally pretty easy -- but as you might expect, those aren't always available to us, meaning we'll sometimes have to go to a bit more trouble to get this done.

John: The best practice is to review graphic text very early in the localization process because it takes effort to fix and can throw a wrench in schedules if issues are discovered too late. On occasion, it is too difficult to change ubiquitous textures, especially those that might also appear in animation. This was the case with "NewTube" in SENRAN KAGURA Peach Beach Splash, which the localization team wanted to change to "NyuuTube" to make the wordplay clearer to series fans.

Question: With the Steam marketplace becoming increasingly saturated and being seen as a greater risk to publish on in recent times, what does XSEED plan on doing in order to remain prominent and relevant in the PC gaming space? - @myumute

Ken: It is indeed getting harder and harder to stand out as hundreds of new titles are releasing on Steam each month. We are working our way towards simultaneous release across all platforms to help leverage some of the coverage from the console version to get more attention to the PC release, so hopefully that's something we can accomplish soon. For PC-exclusive releases it continues to be a challenge, but at least they have a long tail and even if it's not an immediate success at launch we know it can continue to produce sales for years to come.

Question: What was your favorite film that you saw in 2017, and why? - @Crippeh

John: I'm way behind on movies this year (haven't seen Disaster Artist, Phantom Thread, or Get Out, for example), but recently I've enjoyed both Star Wars and Lady Bird. I expect I'll watch my favorite film from 2017 sometime in 2018.

Ken: Wind River. Mainly because of Jeremy Renner's performance and how many quotable lines he had.

Liz: Get Out for horror mindblowing amazingness, Spider-Man Homecoming for genuinely fun comic book movie, and The Shape of Water for Guillermo del Toro. Guillermo del Toro should always be a category.

That’s it! Stay turned for blog #2 later this week. Here’s a preview of the kinds of questions we’ll be answering:

Question: Have you ever considered selling the music CDs for your licenses stateside? - @LimitTimeGamer Question: If possible, would you please consider researching and localizing classic Korean-made PC xRPGs? - @DragEnRegalia Question: Do you have any interest in pursuing the localization of any of the large, beautiful Chinese RPGs that have been hitting Steam? Or are you focused exclusively on Japanese titles? - @TheDanaAddams Question: What inspired you all to do this kind of work in the first place? Also, what’s the story behind the company name XSEED? How did you all come up with it? - @TBlock_02 Question: What was everyone's favorite game(s) to work on this year? - @ArtistofLegacy Question: What's everyone's favorite song from the Falcom games you've released so far? - @Crippeh

#XSEED #Q&A #Localization

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barbosaasouza · 6 years

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Destiny 2: A Second Opinion

When the first Destiny came out, most gamers and journalists gave it a free pass, myself included. After all, it was an innovative game. A MMO meets first-person-shooter in a Bungie world! The game was interesting, introducing us to Strikes, Raids and the Crucible, where I spent most of my time. I eventually got bored, but this was after over seventy hours. The game had its faults, but it kept me playing and the game got better with DLC. The Taken King was particularly good and a step in the right direction. Three years later Destiny 2 was released, but it offered nothing new, different, or innovative compared to the first game, and the free pass is no longer in effect.

Destiny 2: Now With More Cutscenes!

One of my biggest gripes about the first Destiny was the story, or lack thereof. One Shacker, Wikus Van De Merwe, summed it up rather nicely "The game didn’t have time to explain, why it didn’t have time to explain…" Destiny 2 improved on storytelling, but honestly the bar was set so low it wasn't hard. The story in Destiny 2 is shallow, cliché, and boring. In a universe that’s very interesting (I read the Grimoire cards), Bungie seemingly didn’t give a lot of thought to the writing. Aside from the opening story mission, where you are fighting beside the three main characters, the rest of the game's story falls completely flat. The villain even gives the clichéd "You’re not so different, you and I" speech. The Speaker from the first game also dies in a very awkward way, if he did die. It’s not really clear. The writing just feels lazy. It's like Bungie begrudgingly added in more story in response to its community asking for it. The story is bad, the campaign short, and other than Cayde-6 and Failsafe, all of the characters are forgettable one-dimensional placeholders for you to turn in rep rewards to. Bungie told such an epic and awesome story with Halo series and set the bar high. To see them drop the ball so hard with Destiny is disappointing. A great story should leave you wanting more, but Destiny 2 is so preoccupied with trying to sell you what's around the corner that it misses the bigger picture. The Destiny 2 campaign felt more like a DLC add-on for the first game rather than a continuation of the story.

A Shallow, Hollow Shell of a Game

One of the better parts of Destiny 2 is the gameplay. It's Bungie, the people who made Halo. The gunplay is spot on, but after completing the single-player story and spending over ten hours in PVE, players will start to see how repetitive and shallow the game really is. The game loop is short. You shoot things and they die, which is the same that could be said for any FPS, however Destiny 2 lacks any depth, tactics or diversity in this matter. Games like Doom, Borderlands, and Warframe have strategies and tactics, while dealing with a variety of enemy types. However, in Destiny 2, there is no diversity or strategy to disposing of the enemies in the game. Except for the Raids, most enemies, including bosses, are defeated the exact same way. Shoot, reload, and occasionally take cover. It’s incredibly simple, too simple, with no meta or interesting abilities to spam. That’s not to say simple gameplay mechanics are bad. Take Super Mario World. Players can jump and run, but it’s the underlying mechanics that create a sense of precision, depth and strategy to the game. This shines when players take a look at the levels in Mario Marker. Destiny lacks this type of depth in every way, shape, and form.

The enemy AI is also painfully stupid. The combat simply isn’t deep enough, sorely lacking any type of diversity. The game does try to give you things to do including missions, patrols, public events, and more. Sady, all these things are all centered around dumping more bullets into the lackluster enemies. Ultimately, the game blurs together into a big mess of mindless, dull shooting. The game tries to spice things up with the the Warlock, Hunter and Titan classes, but they’re so similar it almost feels pointless to have include them. Since all of them DPS the exact same way (shoot, reload, repeat), there really isn’t a difference in play style. There’s also no penalty for death in the game. More could have been done to make the classes feel unique, like restricting Warlocks to Submachine Guns, or by giving classes roles, like having a Titan Tank/Hold Agro, so Hunters can get shots off on a strike boss. Anything to differentiate the classes beyond what Destiny 2 offers would have been welcomed. As of right now, the Destiny 2 classes offer only the illusion of choice.

The world gives you a lot to do, but it all boils down to shooting, reloading and more shooting. The only example of diverse gameplay I saw was using shade in the Almighty: 1AU mission, to avoid sun/fire damage. Why wasn’t more of this in the game? Less shooting and more environment interaction would have been welcome changes from the original Destiny. What the hell happened? Where are all the new features? Modes? Classes? Add-ons? Why can’t we do simple MMO things like transmogrify gear on our character? Why is there no crafting system? Destiny 2 severely lacked content at launch, and it tried to make up for by having players do the same things on four different planets, but it’s all the same. Shoot, reload, and repeat until everything’s dead. With very little incentive to explore, the game becomes a mindless chore.

The Ten Year "Plan"

Before the first Destiny was released, Bungie and Activision promised a ten year plan. I thought that this ten year plan meant that they would continue to support the game and expand the world internally. I was very wrong. The ten year plan was basically just a publishing deal with Bungie and Activision, promising four separate game releases as well as DLC for the Destiny IP. This means we have two more games to go. The plan was confirmed again in an interview with a Bungie developer at E3 2017 that "this is a fresh start…" with all your gear gone and all old locations unable to be revisited (even the Post Office). They simply rebooted Destiny with Destiny 2 and quickly used PR buzz words like “boots on the ground” and “action shooter” to try to pull away from the MMO branding the franchise had become known for. However, if they just planned on releasing four separate games each with a “fresh start” would that have flown with fans? Imagine if World of Warcraft started players fresh after each expansion and prevented them from visiting old locations and trashed all their gear. Players would revolt, but for some reason this is accepted by some of the Destiny community, and looks like it will be done two more times. Why limit your game? Why not just build and expand this universe? Bungie could have done something like WoW did in The Cataclysm expansion, and reflect the old locations in Destiny 1 with the after effects of the Cabal Invasion. What did the three years of developer time go to? It seems Bungie is making one giant game, breaking it up, and selling it to us in pieces, but the pieces don’t even connect, and they’ll all be stand alone games. I think gamers, including myself, were hoping for a massive sci-fi world at the end of the ten year mark.

The "Esports" Angle

The Crucible in the first Destiny was where I spent the majority of my time playing the game. Honestly, the mode was quite fun. The maps were diverse, the game types enjoyable, and the fight for the heavy weapon ammo spawns was always a rush. Crucible was one of the original Destiny’s high points. I expected the PVP in Destiny 2 to be just as good if not better. However, it ended up being a small step backwards. Vehicles are completely gone, despite the community demanding more of them. Space Battles were not included, another example of community feedback being completely ignored by Bungie. It was one of biggest and loudest requests from the Destiny community, and Bungie confirmed they have no plans for vehicles or space battles in any Destiny games in the future. Going back to the Crucible in Destiny 2, the PVP has gotten a little worse for wear. Players have been restricted to 4v4 battles down from 6v6. Another annoying change are the smaller corridor-like maps that feel half the size of most maps from the first Destiny. The most disappointing change was to the arsenal of weapons, which became even more limited. Sniper rifles, fusion rifles, and shotguns are now power weapons, meaning they require heavy ammo to use, which is spawned in limited amounts throughout the match. These changes made the already small variety of weapons and play style even more restrictive. I understand this makes the game a lot easier to balance, but in return this leaves a small amount of weapon options for Guardians. Abilities have also taken a hit, with grenades on an annoyingly long cooldown timer, and it’s been my experience that player's class super can only be charged and used once per match. Doing this lets you focus more on skill-based gameplay, but with such a limiting weapon set, it just makes the experience less enjoyable.

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The Light is Fading…

Destiny 2 is not a bad game or a good game - it's mediocre. The lavish marketing campaign, Bungie's legacy, and the extremely loyal community worked together to present the game as a genre-defining experince, but when laucnh day came around, the emporer had no clothes. We need to call developers out when they don't deliver on what was promised. The potential of the first Destiny still hasn't been reached with the sequel. Bungie gave players a mediocre game that they clearly chopped up to sell you (again) in bits of DLC. In total, players can expect to spend around $90 for the full Destiny 2 experience. How is this acceptable? Are they testing gamers to see how little they can put into a game and still be rewarded? The game-buying public should be smarter than this. Destiny 2 is a mediocre game that does not deserve the hype, positive scores, or the overly-forgiving community that it currently has.

Destiny 2: A Second Opinion published first on https://superworldrom.tumblr.com/

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barbosaasouza · 6 years

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Destiny 2: A Second Opinion

Destiny 2: Now With More Cutscenes!

A Shallow, Hollow Shell of a Game

The Ten Year "Plan"

The "Esports" Angle

youtube

The Light is Fading…

Destiny 2: A Second Opinion published first on https://superworldrom.tumblr.com/

0 notes