Weeks 4 and 5 consisted of a part-time game jam that spanned the duration of two weeks in which we were tasked with ideating, conceptualising, and prototyping an artefact. Following on from week 3 where I reverse engineered the opening cutscene of Final Fantasy VII Remake (2020) to storyboard form, I conceptualised the narrative for an introductory cutscene for a new game utilising the ideation method of the sizzle reel, taking clips from existing game and film cinematics to offer a broad sense of what I would like the finished artefact to look and feel like.
Finished Sizzle-Reel
In this 2-week game jam, we were provided a theme to either adhere to or to take influence from.
The theme was made up of two parts:
Dixit card:
A news headline of our choice:
We could interpret the two parts and use them in any way we saw fit. I decided on the headline later. Firstly, I decided to study and draw potential meaning from the card’s image through basic media interpretation: connotations and denotations, and colour theory. There was the mention of “boss fights” circulating in the development practice forums and this influenced me to go beyond that and ideate a main antagonist for a game. Instead of drawing too much from the personal and historical pools of my mind for now, I focused on sticking purely to what was in front of me and, using the blue-sky approach, I jotted down anything that could be symbolic to, or associated with, the main focuses and colours of the image.
Instead of trying to conjure a physical picture of the character, I decided to concentrate purely on a mentality. A new mind. Personality, mannerisms, and ideologies built-up through the careful extraction, implementation, and combination of nothing but my interpretation of the imagery’s associations. Although, I found myself limited as I could not at first imagine a story world in which my character could possess these characteristics, abilities, and philosophies and feasibly exist. The key word ‘world’ reminded me of the news headline: New ‘super-Earth’ found with water and the right temperature for life (ITV News, 2019). At this point, a historical influence was then incorporated to help mould the artefact as my idea developed into housing my antagonist on this ‘super-Earth’.
Even then, I struggled to come up with the character’s story without the world’s history, so instead, I fabricated a story for this world. What better place to start than the new beginning for humanity on this unknown planet? A backstory of the world took form. As I have always wanted to write in the science fiction and fantasy genres, I thought why not do both? I thought of how we might get to this “super-Earth”. Thanks both to my fondness of Christopher Nolan’s Interstellar (2014), and humanity’s very real ability to make Earth practically uninhabitable, I concluded that this backstory, which was to become the grounds of which my intro cutscene concept would be built, would stem from a moment of forced planetary migration that takes place a few thousand years in the future. From this point on I incorporated fantasy elements, one of the most common, magic. To create a world in which science and magic co-exists, I felt that there had to be a discovery of this ‘newfound power’, and so there should be an original element that radiates from several stones or relics residing deep under the planet’s surface that provided those that drew from these stones with god-like abilities and superhuman intelligence. Of course, there had to be consequences to possessing such a power so even though there were beings who helped build a better world, there were those who were corrupted by this power and instigated a war beyond belief and threatened life itself. Now, with the antagonist, I initially thought it best to have this character spearhead this war, but it became clear that I could not simply establish the character’s story on this premise alone, I found that this would make it difficult for the player or viewer to connect with the character. Therefore, drawing again from fantasy, I decided that the war should be an ancient one and forgotten by most. Deemed as legend or dismissed as myth. I became possessed with the idea that in the full game the player should have the choice to either save those corrupted by these stones, destroy them, or join them. And because of this, the player would have a compelling reason to take part. Because of this, I decided that it would be good for two very close friends (in-game characters) to be involved in the finding of the stones. However, I knew that this would take time to flesh out and be near-impossible to fit all into a 2–3-minute intro cinematic, given such a short timeframe.
To summarise, the backstory would take place in the future in which there will be the following: planetary migration, finding of the stones and the god-like beings that humans become because of them, the building of a “better world” only for those corrupted by the stones to instigate a war, which would become to be known as “the ancient” or “forgotten war.” The game itself would be set several thousands of years after these events in which two friends would venture out to see whether the magical stones and ancient war were indeed real. For now, the idea is that the best friend (the antagonist to be) would become corrupted with power, whereas the other friend (the player) would be given the choice as how to deal with the person closest to you who is seemingly all but deserting his sanity for power.
As mentioned earlier, part of the reason as to why I was eager to ideate an in-game intro cinematic was down to the week 3 challenge and how I absolutely love the introduction of not just the Final Fantasy VII Remake (2020) intro cinematic (PlayStation, 2020), but also that of the original Final Fantasy VII (1997). I intend to work my way up to Narrative Designer for a AAA studio although I need to continue writing for games and add to my portfolio because as it stands, I have no video game writing credits to my name, only that of film. “The dominant mode of storytelling in games – as measured by its centrality to the majority of narratives that occur in games – is that of the linear, non-branching cut-scene (or indeed, the text-based non-animated interludes we see in mobile titles).” (Buchanan, 2021) Based on this logic, I found that it would be good to start the development process here before venturing into entities such as interactive narrative. “Even in titles that do present branching narrative, we could view many of these choices (such as, for example, deciding whether to save an alien species from extinction or whether to betray a friend) as moments of interactivity that in turn unlock portions of linear storytelling.” (Buchanan, 2021) This cutscene would stay the same as it would be the bedrock of the story, but the player should have the ability to determine which cutscenes they are shown afterwards by unlocking cutscenes through the choices they make, and in-turn, unlock new dialogue options and character choices to determine the cutscenes shown even further down the line, and so on.
I decided on a sizzle reel to convey the narrative, ambience, and pacing of the cutscene I have ideated and the story I will continue developing overtime. “Sizzle reels are often created prior to a project being shot. If so, sizzle reels will often use materials 'appropriated' from other existing sources. These kinds of reels are sometimes known as 'rip reels' (or 'rip-o-matics') and they are sometimes intended to look and feel exactly like a trailer, but in fact are mostly culled from existing films and television series, existing ads, but occasionally will be combined with original material.” (Aguado, 2018) Before I started looking for clips and editing them together with appropriate soundtracks, I wrote down the key beats to help me focus. From this moment on, I fixated only on the planetary migration, the finding of the stones, new builds of civilisation steered by these godly beings, and the ancient war. With this cutscene being its own story, it had to have a beginning, middle, and end in which the sacrifice would have to be vast, and the stones had to seemingly phase from existence; leaving the viewer/ player wondering what would happen afterwards. I found that this was the best way to lead into the first act of the game.
In hindsight, I wish that I had attempted to prototype the cinematic using Unity so that I may operate out of my comfort zone and learn technical skills more relevant to this industry rather than film, this is the task I intend to set myself in the future. Whether or not I will succeed is yet to be seen. Never having used a sizzle reel in the past, I have found it is a great way to showcase an idea to other potential stakeholders, but also to see for myself whether the idea would come together as intended and whether it is worth following through to full development. Having shown my sizzle reel to my peers in our Discord chat, the response I received was positive, although because I had used game cinematics from older games, the quality didn’t quite match up which took one particular viewer out of his suspension-of-disbelief. Because I was focusing on narrative, the differences in art-style were evident, I should have stated beforehand to everyone that this was mainly to convey the narrative elements rather than artistic. As you can see, I spent more time with worldbuilding rather than in character development and because of this, things like character biographies were placed on the backburner until I could figure out how to properly flesh out and implement this character into the world, this is to be the next step for this game’s development in terms of narrative.
Bibliography
2021. Adobe Premiere Pro CC. Adobe Inc.
Aguado, K., 2018. Medium. [Online] Available at: https://ken-aguado.medium.com/all-about-sizzle-reels-55b5b420ebb [Accessed 07 March 2021].
Buchanan, G., 2021. Writing for Games - 02. Linear Cut-Scene Narrative - Greg Buchanan. [Online] Available at: https://www.gregbuchanan.co.uk/writing-for-games/02-linear-cutscene-narrative [Accessed 07 March 2021].
ITV News, 2019. New 'super-Earth found with water and the right temperature for life | ITV News. [Online] Available at: https://www.itv.com/news/2019-09-11/new-super-earth-found-with-water-and-the-right-temperature-for-life [Accessed 08 March 2021].
PlayStation, 2020. Final Fantasy VII Remake - Opening Movie | PS4. [video] Available at: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xOA5GwRcBks&t=47s&ab_channel=PlayStation> [Accessed 3 May 2021].