From Idea to Game - Narrative Arcs

We’ve given you some insight into our Narrative Arcs in the past and talked about what they look like from the player’s perspective including how they create branching stories that add depth and replayability to the campaign map. But today we thought we’d give you a look behind the scenes and reveal how a Narrative Arc gets from that first tiny spark of an idea to a fully playable, fun experience. 

Obviously, it starts with the idea. That can come from anywhere – academic articles, historical accounts of the war, letters or other documents, even a line from a movie or a story from a relative. There’s an endless amount of source material out there and often deciding which ideas not to use is the hard part. 

Which is where pitches come in. Once a designer or writer has an idea they like, they put together 2-3 pitches for how it might appear in the game. As well as the details of any story elements, the pitches can include everything from how it affects the ongoing narrative to how it’s going to branch to gameplay effects and campaign rewards. 

Then we gather feedback from the rest of the narrative team plus relevant game leads, mission designers, software engineers, even the executive team depending on the scope and complexity of the idea. There are usually several rounds of feedback and for the big narrative features the process can take weeks, or even months. 

An idea may well be abandoned at this point - if the pitches aren’t interesting, don’t sound fun or don’t fit with the vision for the game – but if a pitch survives the gauntlet it’s time to start putting it in the game. 

First off, we write placeholder dialogue in our narrative tool. This is just a description of what will be said rather than the actual lines. We also set up any branching at this point. When this content is exported to the game it’s actually split into four different types of data used by different parts of the game engine. 

Next up, we jump into the engine to build our “playbills.” These are sets of instructions that control things like AI, unit spawning, and player rewards. They’re the meat of a narrative arc and can end up being quite complicated. 

Finally, we decide when to trigger the arc. We have a whole system in the engine for handling this and a trigger can be as simple as which turn the player is on to whether the player has lost a skirmish within five turns of successfully completing the Pomigliano mission. 

Now we start testing. We’re looking for two things here – bugs and fun. The narrative team tests the content first but the whole team gets involved as well and feedback can come from anywhere. More iteration happens during testing and we may even end up cutting the content if it’s not working out how we were expecting.  

Once we’re confident the Narrative Arc is going to hit the quality level we’re aiming for then it’s time to create the final dialogue scripts. This usually takes a couple of drafts and includes a review by our ethics consultant to make sure we’re not misrepresenting cultures or accidentally reinforcing stereotypes.  

If there are new characters used by this arc then we create character bios. They’re used for the writing but also for casting actors if the character is voiced. Final audio goes into the game towards the end of development, but it takes several months to cast, record, and edit dialogue so we need to prepare early. 

Then we do our final testing and last-minute tweaks before we call the narrative arc “done.” Oh, and at some point the script will be localized into all the languages the game supports. 

This pattern is repeated across the game. Features, missions, units, in fact pretty much anything that goes into the game goes through a similar process often involving a dozen or more people. Even a simple Narrative Arc involves the work of at least 4 people to get from idea to the final game content plus everyone who gets involved to give feedback and help with testing and iteration. It can be challenging at times but it’s also fun and the feeling of seeing a new feature come together in the game is hard to beat. 

I hope you’ve enjoyed that little peak behind the curtain. If you have any questions or other things you’d like to hear about, let us know. 

Hi @Philip_RE ,

This is good insight to the amount of work put into every aspect of the game, it's daunting just to think how really there is never just one persons idea that makes it to the final end game but reality it's a group think tank that consolidates versions of an original idea and slowly becomes a group vision that evolves/metamorphs into its final implementation. I think the level of quality of assurance that is described here is obvious but sometimes having too many chefs in the kitchen can really minimize progress or some really good ideas, like how a panel interview there is always one person not impressed. It's also good to see @Munte still representing. 

Here are some narrative arc ideas that may or may not be worthy to this extensive pattern.

1.) Medal of Honor show on Netflix has story of Sgt. Sylvester Antolak pinned down by heavy enemy fire in a field near Cisterna, Italy but not until 1944 so not sure it fits the game timeline window. Perhaps having a tribute for this event in Italy.

2.) Saving Private Ryan Sgt. Horvath (Tom Sizemore) is seen gathering soil from Normandy and placing it in a tin. When he puts the small container in his bag, there's a glimpse of similar tins labeled Italy and Africa, indicating he's collected dirt and sand from those locations, as well. Maybe a Narrative arc voiced over by Tom Sizemore as a character you control in both Italy and Africa?

3.) Chuck "Commando" E. Kelly also earned a Congressional Medal of Honor, having 'picked up 60 mm mortar shells, pulled the safety pins, and used the shells as grenades, killing at least five of the enemy' while serving in Italy in 1943.

Thanks for reading my ideas, I am grateful for the peak behind the curtain. 

- Art of War

Hey @Munte ,

Thanks for sharing I reviewed your feedback and remember seeing some of it before. I agree with you on the grenades and the input on coh 3 infantry. That video from that kid Winter was funny, he talks like Obama pausing every 7th word for dramatic effect.....he made me laugh with his "a lot to be desired" or "best term I could think of is.....janky!" haha. Thanks for sharing your feedback in the easy to click three links, good stuff Munte.

@capiqua - that is a great idea. I cannot remember the game I think it was R.U.S.E that I had for platform, but it had a feature to put decoys out to distract opponent. It was very cloak & dagger in that regard, but I like how your idea creates implementing deception into the battle which I think is often really used in battles but never highlighted (or too hard to implement effectively).

- Art of War

Art_0f_War wrote:

Hey @Munte ,

Thanks for sharing I reviewed your feedback and remember seeing some of it before. I agree with you on the grenades and the input on coh 3 infantry. That video from that kid Winter was funny, he talks like Obama pausing every 7th word for dramatic effect.....he made me laugh with his "a lot to be desired" or "best term I could think of is.....janky!" haha. Thanks for sharing your feedback in the easy to click three links, good stuff Munte.

@capiqua - that is a great idea. I cannot remember the game I think it was R.U.S.E that I had for platform, but it had a feature to put decoys out to distract opponent. It was very cloak & dagger in that regard, but I like how your idea creates implementing deception into the battle which I think is often really used in battles but never highlighted (or too hard to implement effectively).

- Art of War

That guy is like 27-30 years old and he won some SC2 tournaments and he also did play a lot of other RTS games, so most likely he knows what's good and what's not in a RTS game (he can also be mistaken in some chases). If you leave all his jokes and think seriously about the points he is making, most of them are pretty good. I did also play AoE 4 and I did think about some of the same problems as he did, and those things are mentioned in the feedback I gave as I didn't just copy paste what he said.