The first job as a Narrative designer was to define the narrative system that would drive the experience. In collaboration with the programmers, we arrived at a branching system of choice linked to the chosen emotions.
Defines the dialogue that will run
Choice of musician
Choice of the story arc in which we will evolve.
Choice of emotion
Choose an emotion according to the clues present in the dialogues and the behavior of the musician.
IF the emotion is compatible:
The following dialogue advances the musician's story.
IF the emotion is NOT compatible:
The following dialogue brings new clues to compatible emotions, but does not advance the story, the player must try again.
This dialogue choice system involves the creation of dialogue trees leading to different frames. These trees were created in several steps: creation of the basic tale (material), creation of the dialogue tree and narrative arcs, and finally integration into a Google Sheet linked to the Unity project.
Writing the chapter story
Dialogue tree, different evolution of the musicians depending on the player's choices
Integration of dialogues in the Google Sheet with tags and identifiers.
Once the dialogues are written, it is then necessary to take care of the emotional tags created by the programmers and to test the coherence of the narration with the various possible sequences of dialogues. The game's emotional cues are instantiated directly through the Google Sheet, so emotional management was also part of my responsibilities.
Dialogs once the step of adding tags is complete.
"Your honey in exchanges for my family's most precious possession! Where's the cheat <? E: React / Trust, Mouse, TRUE />?"
<? E: ReactionType / Emotion, TargetCharacter, Stop textDuringReation />
The mouse produces Confidence Vfx. The text stops for the duration of the VFX.
Thanks to all these tools, it was possible for me as an author to create different evolutions of each character according to the emotions that the player chooses to play. The mouse facing the cat can therefore end up frightened or compassionate. Its story arc will evolve and define a character trait for the rest of the adventure.
