Weekly Update #12 - The Narrative Development Process

Heyo, it's Youko and time for the weekly update. Since the majority of last week was dedicated to planning, it's a bit hard to explain without a few spoilers. We really want the beginning of the second game to be impactful so we're taking time to really think about it properly. Let's just say that there's lots of action and intrigue ahead, so look forward to that! Since we've been thinking so much about planning the game out at large, we thought it would be a good time to talk about our development process!

Before that, let's quickly go over last week's notable updates!:

1. Thank you to everyone who applied to our casting call! We'll get back to you as soon as possible as we go through each submission properly! There are currently 100+ submissions again so, uh, we'll do our best to finish going over everyone's auditions asap... ːtiredadmiralː We're also considering potentially voicing Arne, Dermot and Floris (the other CIC officers), but that's up in the air at the moment. ːjeanthinkː

2. We've been massively revamping the voiced-line playback system so implementing voices is easier and no mishaps happen (lol wouldn't it be awkward if someone came back from the grave to tell you that you did a good job in battle???)

3. We will be releasing Sierra Ops 2 in early access with arcade mode and story mode available from the beginning. Hopefully, this will be enough to balance the needs of all our players! Arcade mode in particular will feature a lot more parts, upgrades, and arsenal than in story and normal. The programmers are working hard to get the balance right on this and give you the combat freedom plus challenge you crave (if that's your thing).

4. Anddd your weekly AU Junius update!

(Click to enlarge)

Now, onto the main topic of the day, the narrative development process:

When we started working on the modern iteration of Sierra, we had several key points we had in mind for where the story and gameplay would end up and where things started. The question was how to actually get all the way to the end. ːjeanthinkː



Sierra is a complex game in both its narrative and gameplay mechanics. We aim to give players a sense of choice by making sure the world reflects your actions in a way that both makes sense and is engaging. That often means trying to consider what possibilities exist and how far we could realistically let them extend before things got unreasonable. ːallenshockː



If you're a fan of the Mass Effect series, you understand this struggle all too well. You want to give your players freedom, but you have to prioritise the best experience for most people with the limited amount of time and budget you have. Bioware decided to largely contain the impact of choices to its specific story beat/ mission. We've attempted to emulate that approach with the way we've structured our side missions, but the same can't be said for the main missions. ːtiredadmiralː



Unlike Mass Effect, we focus on dynamic and fluid character relationships that are both impacted by your direct actions and that specific moment in time instead of the more instance-based design of other games. As a result, we've had to consider all the possible range of reactions from each person for each moment in pretty much any combination you can think of. The end result is the script exponentially expanding no matter how much we try to streamline branches into something manageable. ːashtonglareː You can almost think of it like being the dungeon master of a role playing game, only instead of reacting to player choice in real time, you have to write every possibility out instead. Sadly, we don't have infinite amounts of time to flesh out every minor possibility, so we've settled on a few guiding principles to the narrative design:

1. If it's a major plot point that can potentially change the plot or story progression in a very major way, we will funnel players into making an informed choice as much as possible without being too rail-roady before we decisively split the branches.

2. If it doesn't fit the above, it's still possible to get to the end of the game as long as you try hard enough during battles, even if the end result isn't what's considered "ideal".

3. All "bad" results or endings will have some merit in terms of information revealed or narrative purpose, even if it may just be teasing at further events we are unable to make with the scope of the project.

We'll have to see how effective all these measures are, but we hope it's something you can be excited about!

That's the end of our brief development process blog for today! Thanks for supporting the game! ːaiheartː