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Company News MCA answers eMail questions

VentilatorOfDoom

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Tags: Obsidian Entertainment

Codex object of admiration Chris Avellone answers questions at his <a href="http://forums.obsidian.net/index.php?automodule=blog&blogid=1&">blog at Obsidian</a>.
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<p style="margin-left:50px;border-style:solid;border-width:1px;border-top-color:#ffffff;padding:5px;border-right-color:#bbbbbb;border-left-color:#ffffff;border-bottom-color:#bbbbbb;"><b>I'll try to keep this short out of respect for your time. I just found myself with a deep desire to know how much background material you tend to write for an average companion NPC in the party-based games you've worked on. I'm trying to get a feel for how much background material I should aim to write in my own work. I realise the proper answer is "as much as your game calls for", but I'd just like some sort of milestone to compare my own characters to. If you need me to narrow it down, I'm one of those Torment fanboys; how many pages of background material (give or take) did you write for the companions in that game? If you've found that there's a significant difference between the amount of work you do on characters in certain games or settings, I would be very interested to hear that as well.</b>
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Attached is the amount of background material we wrote for Kreia on Knights of the Old Republic II, if this gives you an indicator.
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My advice: A lot of what you imagine a character to be is simply not going to make it when the rubber hits the road and you start scripting that character in the game engine and in conversations - it's only then they truly find their voice and their theme, so I try not to get bogged down with too much backstory. Anything more than a page or two I find is probably enough to get started and go from there. For example, some of the events in the first draft of what we intended for Kreia ended up not surviving once we were designing full force and discovered there were other more interesting things we could do with the character rather than what we initially thought. But hey, that's part of the design process.
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Note that a lot of the "backstory" for Kreia also involves concrete details for what a voice actor needs to know - since it's becoming a staple in the industry that every character is voice-acted, a lot of that stuff we need to write out for the studio (and for our own reference).
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Also, one thing I've found often can bog people down is they want to keep exploring the abstracts about a character, when I think sometimes the best thing to do is charge in, start swinging, and find a voice and attitude for the character. There's even times when I write a sample short story for how the player specifically encounters that character and see if that helps me to get rolling on themes and the spine of the character (I'm doing this on our current project, and it's a new approach).
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Murk

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german efficiency infects das kodeks

good man, keep at it VoD
 

Malakal

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Why bother making so much background and never using that afterwards. Or never having it influence anything in game. Or possibly both.

And I, for one, gladly welcome our new news spamlord.
 

Fat Dragon

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Good read, always nice to have devs who actually take the time to answer fans' questions.

Also, am I the only one who keeps seeing a white box around all of Vent's newsposts?
 

Malakal

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Fat Dragon said:
Also, am I the only one who keeps seeing a white box around all of Vent's newsposts?

Me too. I thought it was on purpose? Definitely makes seeing what was quoted easier. And looks quite good.
 

Murk

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Use the quote function and you'll see he's using html code to create a table around the post. Adding his own touch, if you will, plus it makes the forum entries of the news posts look obviously differentiated to basic forum posts.

Not a bad idea, and doesn't detract from anything.
 

thesheeep

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Malakal said:
Why bother making so much background and never using that afterwards. Or never having it influence anything in game. Or possibly both.

You need that background to figure out the personality of a NPCr. Sure, some random grunt doesn't need that, but really important NPCs do.
You just notice when someone has put thought into a character. It show's in dialogues, behaviour, etc. If that all fit's together and we have a memorable and authentic(!!) NPC here, someone has either given the NPC a good background and history to get a feel for the personality or was just lucky or so talanted that it worked without.
And I don't think there are many people that can make it work real good without doing background and characterisation.

Obviously, the more of that stuff you can get into the actual game, the better ;)
 

KalosKagathos

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Just look at the attachment. Kreia's character sure has changed over the period of time between the first draft and the final game, and definitely for the better.
 

Lockkaliber

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I'm glad they got rid of the distinctive dark side Kreia for the more ambiguous one in the final game.
 

KalosKagathos

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Sion and Kreia also don't have a clear master-servant relationship in the final game. My only regret is that they ditched the Fallen Jedi class: Kreia without access to Force powers would feel more right.
 

Mattresses

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I'm one of those Torment fanboys; how many pages of background material (give or take) did you write for the companions in that game?

Avellone: lol, no, herez kreia.
 

Lesifoere

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Lockkaliber said:
I'm glad they got rid of the distinctive dark side Kreia for the more ambiguous one in the final game.

Agreed. I must note that her age given as "40 to 80" is a pretty huge range.

VoD, you industrious poster of news, you. How about less ME2 spam, though, or at least rounded up under one single topic?
 

VentilatorOfDoom

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Lesifoere said:
VoD, you industrious poster of news, you. How about less ME2 spam, though, or at least rounded up under one single topic?
I guess I could round them up under 1 topic as you suggest.
 

Volourn

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"I'm glad they got rid of the distinctive dark side Kreia for the more ambiguous one in the final game."

There was NOTHING ambiguous about Kreia. She was evil to the core, one note, one dimensional, and so obvious from the very moment you first met her.
 

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