Game Narrative through level design
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Finnish Narrative Director, best known for his narrative work Remedy’s ‘Alan Wake’ and ‘Quantum Break’
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Senior Area Designer for The Outer Worlds 2. He is most know for his contributions to The Last of Us Part II, specifically for designing level such as "The Birthday Gift", "The Chalet, and "Finding Strings".
Aalto’s Devlog #5 / 27th September 2023
Game Design: Narrative
About the Lectures
The second and final lecture by Mikko Rautalahti explored many specific examples of how narrative can impact a variety of game elements. From visuals to mechanics, the narrative must be present in every choice that game designers make and this gives writers the power to have great impact, even with a small team. As an alternative source, I also wanted to find a specific example of applied narrative and I found a GDC talk about pacing in level design. It is a recording from Evan Hill, level designer of The Last of Us: Part II and in his lecture, he focuses on the narrative and level design decisions made in a critical emotive scene in the game. He highlighted the importance of interactive pacing and introduced key concepts that be taken into practice in any kind of game.
Video links
Despite the many graphs and classical structures used in narrative lectures, Evan Hill focused his talk on the ‘Kishōtenketsu’ method, and he defined it as an “anatomy of interesting events”. It defines the structure of classic Chinese, Korean and Japanese narratives. It is a basic method, where there is an introduction (Ki), then a development of the elements (Shō) followed by a twist (Ten) and then arriving at a conclusion (Ketsu). At first glance, this might appear simplistic, but Nintendo’s Koichi Hayashida (director of many Super Mario games) mastered this technique in Super Mario 3D World. This allowed him to introduce a wide variety of mechanics without having to use boring text boxes to explain them. Hill highlighted the impact of this premise on his own approach to level design.
The main challenge that Evan Hill faced when designing the ‘museum level’ in The Last of Us, was that they were aiming to create a setting with no combat or stealth, where there is mostly dialogue and that it’s mostly linear. All of these are set within a video game where there is a ton of combat, stealth and action mechanics. It is quite challenging to introduce narrative moments in this type of game, but when done well, they create memorable moments for those players who want to engage. Additionally, they allow those who do not want to go deeper into the story to have an overview and get the key ideas of the scene.
To achieve this task, they defined four different elements in the narrative: Focal points, prospects, threads and secrets. Each one of them has a different goal and they are the key parts that allow players to create their own pace.
Focal points: This should be a complete experience without anything else.
Prospects: Clear options to the player. “Give the player a bite and let them decide how many to take”.
Threads: Create a situation where you add and expand the possibilities for players. This helps bring sequences to life for those who are interested.
Secrets: Mold-breakers that help players think that everything is possible if they lean in. Not focal points of the story, so if they miss those it is okay. They will hear about them later.
Interactive storyboard stillframes
Finally, he highlighted the importance of using references. From video games and from other media as well. I was surprised that he acknowledged the narrative design of Firewatch which I referred to in my previous reflection. It was an interesting and unexpected connection and he even included some of the terms used in the previous lecture, like ‘reactivity’ as an instance. He also described their process to achieve the final product which resonated with our previous lectures about prototyping. This process included ‘playable storyboards’, a term I was unfamiliar with and I was amazed to hear how they combined these rough prototypes with improv sessions where they sought interesting bits of content to implement in the final version.
Overall, this was one of the most insightful references I have found so far, not only for the quality of the ideas presented but also because of the fact that I was able to witness it in the first person. I watched a streamer reacting to the scene that Evan Hill disclosed and I could perfectly point out the design decisions they made and how they unfolded into the player’s reaction. This video even triggered some memories of my own playthrough where I had a similar experience to the streamer and it made me realize how emotions can be designed combining narrative and level design.
Emotional moment from the gameplay
More from Aalto’s Devlog:
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Untitled Penguin Game (1/3)
Period 2 - Game Project I
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Airplane control and procedural map in Unity with C#
Period 1 - Software Studies for Game Designers
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Game Jam: Mamapato
Period 0 - Introductory Game Jam