Fools Rush In - Part Eleven

Let's take a break from property sheets, script files and custom packages for a moment. The last three events that will be triggered by the timeline are attacks from the enemy, the Ghost Warrior mercenaries of the Izanagi Corporation. We could just drop the pawns into the map and start on the scripts to send them rushing towards the bunker. To me, that's pretty much exactly what happened to them in the original Unreal 2 levels (bar a few exceptions) and I want to avoid that, maybe try and make them more interesting and engaging.

We've been talking about Creating Emotion in Games (CEG) a bit on the forum and some of the responses have been pretty negative about the whole idea. It could be that I misrepresented the intentions of Freeman's system so I'll try and be more specific here.

As far as I can tell Emotioneering™ is supposed to be a collection of techniques that can help you structure the way you write dialogue for characters and the interaction between them. In the introduction Freeman says:

"Obviously things aren't black and white. Many designers are hard at work trying to inject emotion into their games, and no doubt all of us, if we think about it, can recall one or more times we were moved while playing a game (with emotions other than excitement, fear or frustration, that is). The problem is that such game moments are far too rare, and no creative technology (no series of techniques) exists for producing rich emotional experiences in games over and over again.

"The solution certainly isn't a set of handy formulas; no artist wants the word 'cliche' emblazoned on his or her flag. The solution is an expansive palette of techniques that can be layered, adapted, mixed, and reworked in infinite combinations. Van Gogh, Rembrandt, and Picasso all dipped their brushes in the same three primary colours, but their artwork couldn't be more varied."

So it would be a mistake to think that the Emotioneering™ techniques are template solutions to all of the problems you might face trying to write game characters. Nor are they supposed to be Magic Formulas that write dialogue all by themselves, Freeman fully emphasises that the responsibility for the creative part of writing vests in the writer. What the CEG techniques appear to be (to me) are methods of structuring your thinking before you start to write dialogue.

Hopefully, that makes the intent of the techniques I'm going to try and interpret in this experiment clearer. Of course, you might still dismiss them out of hand, but at least I won't feel like I've misled anyone who hasn't read the book.

Turning back to the Izanagi Ghost Warriors then, there are two chapters in CEG that apply, the two techniques I touched on briefly at the beginning: Group Interesting Techniques and Group Deepening Techniques.

Freeman doesn't help to make his case by butchering words like 'interesting', 'Group Interesting Techniques' should be read as 'Ways to Make a Group More Interesting'. For the most part Group Interesting Techniques seem to rely on the NPC technique of Character Diamonds, something that I haven't explained yet in these articles. Freeman believes that by isolating a small handful of 'Traits' (usually four, hence a diamond, but not less than three or more than five), stand-out characteristics with which the character of an NPC or group is defined.

So a character might be defined by his Traits as such:

Which Freeman claims are the traits that define a cliched knock-off of Gandalf the wizard from The Lord of the Rings.

I can only see his point if I choose to look at the character diamond from Freeman's perspective. Magical, mysterious, good and wise could define lots of characters and I can think of plenty of additional words that might define Gandalf. Old, for example. Grumpy. It'd be tempting to dismiss Freeman's idea as snake-oil and leave it at that.

On the other hand, there is something very familiar about that particular grouping of words. Magical, mysterious, good and wise are the stand-out starting-point characteristics of just about every grey-bearded old goat in any off-the-shelf RPG you care to throw a rock at. And Freeman did say that it was a description of a 'knock-off' character. I asked the visitors to the forum to list as many traits as they could think of, with a pretty lacklustre response. Most of the replies were to do with theorising how much fun such thinking sucks out of writing.

I can have fun doing anything. I know this because I used to work in a bar, mopping other people's vomit up for minimum wage. Let's replace one of the traits listed above with one of the traits kindly supplied by the forumites:

Seeing a different wizard to Gandalf yet? How about:

Not exactly a common collection of traits associated with wizardly characters, is it? It's a magic, insatiable sex-robot that likes to play its cards close to its chest. It probably has a quest for you. Something about fetching something or other from some guy and then bringing it back.

The character diamond exercise didn't write us any dialogue but if I were to sit down and write the first character (magical, mysterious, good, wise) then I'd struggle not to waffle on about the moutains of Ooujar and the terrible doom of flib-flob that threatens the townspeople of whatever. And all the time I'd be stroking my imaginary beard and adjusting my imaginary pointy hat and treading the same old worn ground I've seen done a hundred times before.

Change two words and now I have to think like a magical, mysterious robot slut. In a fantasy setting, that would be... original. How I choose to interpret the relationship between those four traits is entirely down to my diseased mind but at least the road I'd start down was one less travelled and the exercise has served its purpose. I think I could make that work for me.

And so, as mentioned above, Freeman believes you can apply a similar technique to groups as well as individuals.

Let's look at the information given in Unreal 2 for the Ghost Warriors and see if we can divine their Traits. In Unreal 2 they are introduced with a couple of lines of text in a briefing on board the Atlantis. Here's what it says:

"The Izanagi is a broad-based conglomerate modeled on the ancient Japanese Kereitsu. They're into whatever makes money, and they protect themselves with an elite corps of Merc soldiers, fanatically loyal to the corporation, who call themselves 'Ghost Warriors'."

...and that's pretty much all we get to learn about the Ghost Warriors. Apart from the fact they like to wear red:

..and speak in loud voices with American accents.

So their traits are what? Fanatically loyal, for one. Militarily elite, maybe. Er, they like red. Are they Japanese? They work for a company styled after the Kereitsu (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keiretsu, I had to look that up), a Japanese cultural phenomenon, but there's little evidence to suggest they are (actually the face textures look Asian, but then we have the American voiceovers to counter that). Militarily elite, maybe. Er, they like red.

Cannon fodder, and that's pretty much how they act in the game, marching down rank and file to your waiting assortment of high-powered weaponry, no more engaging than cardboard ducks in a shooting gallery. Freeman makes another distinction, that sometimes what might occur to you as a Trait is actually a Quirk. I find his distinctions to be a bit arbitrary, to be honest. Traits are major perspectives that affect the way the NPC or group perceive the world, Quirks are supposed to be small but identifiable individualities that characterise but are largely unimportant to te outlook of the people in question. Liking to wear red could be a Quirk. I guess.

Basically, if we analyse the original presentation of the Izanagi, loosely using Freeman's system, they don't have enough interesting Traits. Let's resist the temptation to say "d'uh", yes, you at the back, if you've got something to say then share it with the rest of the class.

True to the Group Interesting Technique, we should work on increasing the number of identifiable Traits and also make sure they aren't a bland or cliched grouping.

1. Fanatically Loyal - This is alright, I suppose, fanatics are always interesting, especially if you're a moderate.

2. Militarily Elite - So they are good soldiers. Also, not at odds with the kind of opposing force we're looking for. Maybe we can get this across by having one or more of our Angels refer to the Ghost Warriors prowess in previous conflicts. Maybe one or more of the Angels are scared of them, because of their reputation as proficient fighters.

3. Japanese - See I /want/ to say the Izanagi are Japanese. It's obvious that someone deep in the bowels of Legend Entertainment wanted these guys to be Japanese, it's in the faces, in the 'kereitsu', it's in the names in the code 'MercJapMedium'. Something stopped them short and I'd hazard a guess it was probably issues of political correctness. In the volunteered trait-lists some wag put 'A random racial minority stereotype', which was supposed to be a joke (I think) but thinking about some of the diplomatic car-crashes of some videogame characters it's a real danger and something I want to avoid.

So let's say the Izanagi are not actually Japanese. Let's say that the corporation is descended from modern day Japanese commercial concerns but as humanity has spread out across the stars building new worlds and cultures, the roots of the Izanagi's corporate culture have taken on a mythical symbolism. The Ghost Warriors of our scene hail originally from all kinds of places and backgrounds, but the culture of the military organisation adopts a stylised and romanticised version of the history of its birthplace. The Ghost Warriors fancy themselves as Space Samurai, adopting a Bushido-style code of honour and duty, adopting affectations (Quirks! Say it like the noise a duck makes) in dress and custom that are reminiscent of the warriors of old. This will tie in nicely with the first Trait, fanatical loyalty, an expression of the samurai serving their lords.

4. Ruthless - This additional Trait is a bit obvious, but reading up on the samurai of old, they didn't treat their captives with a great deal of mercy. Indeed, the famous act of ritualistic suicide, seppuku, after a defeat in battle apparently stems from an unwillingness to be a captive at the hands of the side that beat you, suicide was the better option. Every day is a schoolday.

We can take this concept and colour it a bit to suit our developing story. We can assume that the Izanagi corporation has similar human augmentation technologies to that used by the Liandri corporation and the Angels. It's no great stretch to imagine that these two companies, like all companies together in a similar business, covet each others trade secrets and an Angel that finds herself a captive of the Ghost Warriors has only the ignominy of being 'reverse engineered' to look forward to, another source of fear for our heroines.

On the other hand, the Liandri Corporation probably does the same to any Izanagi captives, they are just better at keeping it quiet.

Those can be our four defining Traits, Fanatic, Elite, Ruthless, Samurai Evolved. We can also dream up a few quirks to add some colour: eccentric samurai-style dress (bit difficult, considering we can't alter the geometry of the models but we can see what we can do with some re-skins), an affectation for drawing on names of ancient Japanese warriors, rituals that echo ancient Japanese lifestyle and the resurrection of the archaic Japanese language as a form of battle language.

The narrow scope of the project might limit us in how much of this information we can get across to the player, but the important thing is that it's here to inspire and direct us, even if the player never gets to find out some of the details.

Time for a couple of re-skins. The light model:

...and the medium model:

While we're rolling, let's do an NPC too. If I had to choose one word that described the problem with the portrayal of the bad guys in Unreal 2 it'd be "faceless", they lack a simple focus that you can settle on and begin to learn what they are about. They need a leader.

The leader of the besieging Ghost Warriors can contact Agnes at some point during the game and we'll use his dialogue during that exchange to communicate some of the traits we've defined. The 'heavy' model is a suitably imposing figure.

We'll call him Yamagata Aritomo after a famous Japanese military leader (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yamagata_Aritomo), drawing on the traits we've defined for the Ghost Warriors as a group and their quirk for taking ancient Japanese names when they join the outfit. In fact, lets say that our Aritomo also holds the distinction of being a descendant of the original, a genealogical detail that has stood him in good stead as far as his career in the Ghost Warriors is concerned. We need a character diamond then:

1. A Proud Tactician - Before a fight, Aritomo has the wits and dispassionate, calculating mind of a grand master chess player. He is well-educated and his tactical thinking has been enhanced with the most advanced cybernetic implants the Izanagi corporation has developed. He takes a great deal of pride in his strategies, which he privately holds as the most superior on the battlefield. He doesn't take lightly to being outwitted, which is interesting, because it just occurs to me that maybe Agnes is also a Master Tactician (remind me to use that as one of her Traits, when we come to develop her character) and maybe that's why Aritomo now finds his entire platoon has been pursuing a handful of Liandri Angels. Agnes' clever misdirection has duped Aritomo into being drawn away from the main body of her unit by her tiny squad. While the rest of the Angels make their getaway far to the west, Aritomo's force are left facing off against just the decoy unit of six Angels. He's probably pretty pissed.

2. Philosophical - Aritomo takes his heritage very seriously. It's always fascinated me how much else besides combat the samurai valued expertise in. Apart from being a great political leader who reformed the Japanese army the original Aritomo is also renowned for garden design, something that might seem extremely incongrous to a western mind. I'm not too sure how I want to include this aspect of Aritomo's character just yet, but I do know it'd be interesting to try and bring some of that 'incongruousness' into our story. Often the most thoughtful war stories highlight the differences in perceptions between opposing sides. Perhaps Aritomo can temper his anger at being outwitted with a degree of philosophy while he talks to Agnes.

3. Savage Warrior - The heavy model is an imposing thing and the ground shakes when the big mechanised armoured suit stomps by. Aritomo has a reputation for forgetting the niceties of civilisation once battle begins and he has been known to use the added hydraulic strength of his battlesuit to literally tear opponents limb from limb on the battlefield.

4. Honourable - Aritomo believes very strongly in the Bushido code of the Ghost Warriors and would rather cut his own throat than believe he has broken it in some way. This will influence how he treats Agnes greatly.

Not too bad, I reckon I can do something with that.

Another reskin:

The whole point of defining Traits like this is to guide the writing of the dialogue. According to Freeman's system, the lines you write for a character should be measured up against the Character Diamond's Traits and evaluated as to whether or not they're doing the job of expressing those defining aspects. We'll do that when we get to writing lines for Aritomo.

I confess, I don't much understand the chapter called Group Deepening Techniques. I think it's because Freeman never really defines what he means by 'deep'. The whole tone of the book revolves around identifying and categorising elements that can bring emotion to your game writing in an empirical fashion, but he often fails to stick to this rule. The chapter consists almost entirely of an example of a hypothetical game, picking out particular details and saying 'this gives depth' or 'this doesn't necessarily give depth'. For instance, the example group believes in a spirit world, which Freeman states isn't 'deep' by itself but then details the physical manifestations of that belief, the way the group uses metaphors to describe these spirits and holds that up as an example of 'depth'. Maybe I'm just dumb. We'll come back to this when Aritomo and the Ghost Warriors start to manifest themselves in our mod and see if we can find analogies to Freeman's examples.

For now, let's get our new models into the map and next time we'll start scripting events for them.

Ruthless, Fanatical, Elite. Samurai Evolved.

Comments: on the _blackbored

Next: Part Twelve