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On GDC Podcast episode 25 we’ve Justin Keenan, author and narrative designer on ZA/UM’s groundbreaking RPG Disco Elysium. We speak about world-building, writing on a crew, and his strategy to creating characters.
Music by Mike Meehan.
Try some highlights:On creating characters
“There are some characters within the sport [who] we all know exist as a result of they serve some necessary plot operate. After which there are different characters that we knew we needed to put in writing in as a result of we needed to have any person who embodies or represents some sure concept or idea. Some characters are jokes, frankly (laughs)…
“There are different characters who’re simply figures who we needed to fill out this world. The map in Disco Elysium shouldn’t be very big–I consider the world as not particularly broad like a typical open world RPG is, but it surely’s deep–there are many causes to shuttle and join with totally different characters and totally different items of the world. Some characters exist to type of fill within the texture or make the world really feel appropriately dense…”On working with a crew
“Quite a lot of us on the writing crew, we do not simply play video games. We learn a lot–novels, politics, historical past, all that. A part of writing from not simply the [vantage] level of various characters, however totally different worldviews, does require you to learn so much and be curious, and to sit down and suppose and stew in these concepts earlier than you perceive them…
“I feel the measure is all the time [whether] it really feel true and does it really feel actual, and we’ve an excellent crew of very, very considerate writers, and all of us do our work and do our analysis and we’re very sincere with one another about what we expect…
“You could not write a sport like this that asks a lot of the gamers and of the writers who’re writing it if you do not have that intense type of belief and dedication…
“We’ve an viewers and we’ve gamers and clearly we’re very appreciative for them, however in some methods that is additionally a factor that we make for each other. After I’m writing a brand new character, my first order of concern is not, ‘Is that this mass of gamers going to love this?’ however [rather] ‘Are my pals on the studio going to love it?'”On participant company
“In Disco, you’re each no one and any person…One in all my favourite components in regards to the sport is that it is not a traditional Fallout sport the place you enterprise out into the world and you discover out that every one the opposite forces on the earth are in good stasis with each other, [a world] that is ready for only one survivor or courier or vault-dweller to destabilize that political state of affairs to your personal profit.
“The type of mannequin there may be the film Yojimbo, the traditional Kurosawa samurai film the place you might have a number of forces you could play off one another, however it doesn’t matter what you are the indispensable determine…Spoiler! Harry shouldn’t be going to alter the stability of political energy on the earth. He’s not going to homicide the heads of the assorted political factions and set up himself because the ruler of Martinaise (laughs).
“We’re very clear about what the bounds of your company signify. And for us that is as a result of we take the politics of our video games very severely, and this can be a level about company in the true world–that at any given level you may solely have a lot company over the fabric circumstance of the world you reside in. However what you do have very profound management over is what that world represents to you.”
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