Maxime Delansay
Narrative & Game Design
Skills put into practice :
My approach
1.)
First, let's talk about my thoughts on the narrative direction of the game. For this project, I decided to build the game's WorldBuilding around the theme of steampunk.
However, I wanted to get away from clichés and that's why I focused on the philosophical notions of nature and culture that Tolkien put into practice when he created The Hobbit.
Indeed, the county he created is a green space for hobbits, seen as the resisting image of the countryside in the face of industrialisation, in other words of nature in the face of culture in the philosophical sense of the term.
Steampunk is generally set between the 18th and 19th centuries, precisely the period when the confrontation between nature and culture was so powerful for the first time in human history.
Illustration by Marina Dejonghe
That's why, in a second phase, I created two races, one representing culture, namely the mechanoids, and a race essentialising nature: the loethians. And to add a challenge to all this and retain the spirit of confrontation of the preceding philosophical notions, I made the energy needed by the mechanoids come from the life force of the loethians!
So I've conceived of the main character as a personification of nature, giving her the name Gaia: the goddess of nature. It's all these elements that I've synthesised and given as guidelines to the character artist:
Illustration by Sofia Kirieva
3.)
I then had to refocus the universe on one story in particular, the one that would serve as the common thread running through the level we were to create. To do this, I first drew inspiration from an important figure in steampunk, Jules Vernes, and in particular his novel Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea. So the action of the game takes place in the heart of a submarine.
Once the foundations of the universe had been laid, I had to define a framework for the action and therefore a story for the main character, giving him motivations and a goal with which players could identify. So he's a bounty hunter who has no choice but to work for the humans who exploit his people, in order to raise money to help his sick sister.
4.)
The final stage of my work as Narrative Designer was to produce the narrative level design, based on the level design produced by a colleague. To do this, I did some staging work, thinking about space, light and sound. I also designed objects (posters, books, etc.) to help players learn more about the world of the game. I also took the opportunity to incorporate a number of cultural references. Here's an example:
Illustration of the submarine by Marina Dejhonge
Reference to Tolkien's Hobbit, when Bilbo receives the contract for his adventure.
The poster as a whole refers to the One Piece series created by Eiichirō Oda.
A reference to Western movie posters.
Reference to the Party motto in George Orwell's 1984 : "War is peace". "Freedom is slavery. "Ignorance is strength.
Illustration: Marina Dejhonge - Layout: Sofia Kirieva
The Narrative Design Document.
You will find other examples in the document below, with numerous references such as Plato's legend of Atlantis.
Area for improvement.
The areas for improvement are a set of elements that I needed to improve for my future projects.
As far as the gameplay mechanics are concerned, the scope of the project needs to be carefully considered so as not to be too ambitious given the time constraints and human resources available.
