Cyrus Byrd
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A Post About Writing Compound Fracture
🕑 Added 2022-02-22 21:30:08 +0000 UTCHey everyone, Cyrus here. Lately we’ve been working on some less exciting things. We moved over to a new version control system, Austin has been blocking out levels and Pete has been knocking out some of the less glamorous systems like saving and loading, menus, and world states persisting across loading screens. I have been working on music, fleshing out some of the story, writing flavor text, and polishing some of the older raptor animations.
This update will be about the story of the game. I’ll be avoiding specific details because I don’t want to spoil the game, but I will be talking about the scope and style of the writing and what our process has been like developing the story of Compound Fracture.
Before I go on, let me say that I am sharing this stuff with you all in confidence. It’s unlikely, but not impossible, that things I say here would catch on if leaked and we would be forced to answer for them in the future. I trust you all!
When writing this game, we had a set of goals to keep in mind at all times. Keeping the goals clear and easy to understand wasn’t so bad, but each goal introduces limitations and challenges that are difficult to solve. This post will be divided into sections talking about all of these goals and the solutions, limitations, and ideas that came out of them.
The game’s writing should not be too “modern”.
Modern isn’t a perfect word but it’s what we’ve gotten used to saying. The point is: it should always feel like Compound Fracture could have realistically been written in the early 00s or late 90s. Solving this is sort of easy, because the game isn’t mimicking old games, its trying to come off as a unique artifact that could have come out in that period. As long as it is unique we can avoid direct comparisons and focus on getting the vibes right.
To write a new thing as if it was written back then requires us to be conscious of the ways our cultural context affects our ideas. We naturally use new tools, consume different media, and have different sensibilities than people working on games in the past. Going beyond simply mimicking the writing of the target period and instead making something new requires research into not just what games were like back then but also an awareness of the things I am liable to unconsciously do now. My research will naturally include newer media, and I will draw from influences outside of the target time period. That's not a problem on its own as long as I am being thoughtful. For example, I spent a lot of time watching the United States Chemical Safety Bureau’s accident prevention videos, which come from all different time periods. What matters is trying my best to be conscious of my influences and where my ideas are coming from.
It sounds like word salad but at least for me, I don’t see a better way to approach this if I want to go beyond relying on dated references and jokes about the time period to sell the illusion.
We also came up with an unofficial list of things which should be avoided at all costs, including the following:
- Self-deprecating or self-referential humor.
- Fourth wall breaking.
- Common catchphrase type jokes like “Hey, that’s my thing!” or “Awkward…” or “So, that happened”.
- Complex characters are fine, but not every character should feel like a DnD character with a complicated backstory and personality that they are *oh so eager* to tell you about, and which informs every single thing they say.
- An exaggerated example of this is that a character could say “Whoa, why is this freaking door open? I had a bad dream like this one time…” when any normal person would just say “Did I leave that open?”
- References and easter eggs, especially those that date the game to after 2005, should not exist or be extremely well hidden.
- If it feels too modern it probably is.
Feel free to share anything you would add to the list. Might be a fun thing to talk about.
The game should balance being serious and having a sense of humor.
This has been the most challenging of all, but my biggest writing inspirations from the time: games by Kojima, System Shock 2, StarCraft, and others didn’t feel like one-dimensional dramas or comedies. They felt like complete stories where drama and humor worked in tandem. We spent a lot of time watching Verhoeven movies or playing old games trying to magically find a formula that would show us how to do this, which was less productive than it could have been. It sounds easy, but players used to newer games might be confused by humor in a dramatic story, and if the humor is distracting or messes up the pacing, player motivation, or anything more important it would have to be cut.
When it clicked was when we were working on the game and jokes would naturally happen. Things you could easily miss, and things that don’t feel like jokes seemed to be the perfect solution.
One example we really liked was having a locked door with a sign that said “Danger: Do Not Enter”. When the player figures out how to get the door open, they see that it is decorated like a surprise party. Some people might be confused by this or not even notice it, and their experience will be unaffected. They’ll go in the room and pick up whatever items are in it and move on. People who stop to think about why this door had a warning on it can find it funny and it won’t interfere with the pacing or tone at all, because it was on them to even find the joke in the first place.
Something I’ve realized working on this is that inevitably different people will come to the game with different senses of humor, finding jokes that aren’t there, or missing jokes that we put in. By leaving confusion as to whether jokes are intentional or not, the game can be both funny and serious without pacing problems or interference. At first this made me hesitant because there’s no point trying to make the game funny and failing. Telling a joke that nobody gets just feels bad. Then I realized that this insecurity is the source of a big problem in comedies I don’t like, where every joke is optimized to make the largest number of people laugh and you can feel the fear in the writing room that people might not get it. I prefer the less obvious jokes.
The game should comfortably accommodate both types of players.
Two groups of people are excited about our game. The audience for story driven PS1 style horror games likes our style, and the audience for classic shooters likes what they’ve seen. We don’t like to play to the audience too much, but it has been a concern for us that these two different groups of people will come into the game expecting two different things.
In general we can divide everyone who enjoys action games into two extremes, with a lot of people in the middle: There are those who cannot enjoy action without a compelling story to give it context, and those who enjoy action for its own sake and are not interested in having their experience interrupted by narrative that feels like it is being forced upon them.
I consider myself in the first group, I think Pete is more in the second group. If I haven’t deleted that line it means I asked him and he is. Having different perspectives on the team is a godsend. If I can give advice, it’s to not just work with people who are exactly like yourself.
From the writing perspective, the challenge has been that my story needs to be compelling and engaging without an excess of cutscenes, audio logs, mandatory reading, and dialogue sequences. I happen to like all of these things myself. I loved Death Stranding, for instance. But the game doesn’t call for that kind of stuff, and working with those restrictions is a healthy exercise that I enjoy. It’s taken a lot of work and iteration to get this balance right and it’s an ongoing process, and it doesn’t help that this is all completely subjective.
[gif of a raptor doing something cool]
Part of our solution goes like this: Essentials are communicated over radio conversations where the player still has full movement and control. We use these sparingly and in my opinion, they disrupt the action in the least egregious way possible and are only strictly bad if they are written badly. I hope they aren’t. If there are any cutscenes they are for the most crucial moments only, and at times when they can’t possibly interfere with the pacing.
Additionally, radios are hidden throughout the world with subplots, which interested players can choose to turn on and listen to. Sometimes it’s someone talking, sometimes it’s just music. Notes are hidden throughout the world, and I am making sure to not include information in these that is essential or even very useful for progression.
There are no “side quests” in the strict sense. There are no mission objectives, quest markers, or anything like that. I like when there are things to do besides progression, but not the kind given to you by an NPC and marked down as a list. Optional stories should feel like a consequence of exploration. Anything we can’t comfortably do in this way gets cut. Games in the past did this really well, and there are still modern games that do it now. The game I’m thinking of right now is on our list of games not to mention in public, but you can guess what it is.
As with any limitation, these can all be freeing when you let them be. The fact that I can write notes and optional content knowing that *nobody is required to read any of it* means that the information therein can be as interesting (to me), complicated, or impractical as I want it to be. The goal should never be to make everyone happy, but in this case I think the compromise was better than what I would have done otherwise.
Some final notes:
You’re probably wondering which of the above mentioned categories Austin falls into. It’s neither. He only plays games to see which textures he recognizes from websites and to stand in one room admiring the lighting. He experiences games in a completely unique way and it’s precious and beautiful. Leave him be.
Also, I mentioned that there are conversations over the radio, so I have to address the question of whether we have voice actors. We do, and I’m really excited to show you some of their work. I’m so happy with their takes on the lines and beyond thrilled to get to do this. Thank you all for supporting us because without you we would not have been confident that we could afford to hire people and we would have been missing out.
