Joannes Truyens is the founder and editor of Playthroughline, and has written the majority of the scripts on the site. When he started it in 2009, he never expected it would catch on. After all these years, it still hasn't and he has learned to trust his expectations.
I am always interested in charting a game's development path and looking at what could have been. Games are subject to a lot of iterations and sometimes go through an entire redesign (as was the case for Splinter Cell: Conviction). That's why I would like to talk about Interstellar (which is not a game, bear with me) and how I was disappointed with what was eventually realised from the original script penned by Jonathan Nolan. You can read it in its entirety here and I'll be comparing it to the finished product in this post. For the sake of convenience, Jonathan Nolan's first version will henceforth be referred to as the script and the movie will be referred to as (wait for it) the movie. Also, spoilers.
Woolfe: The Red Hood Diaries. Not narrated by David Duchovny (sadly).
It appears I've been running this little blog for four years this month. Please join me in a celebratory nod as a distraction from the recent lack of updates. At least I have a series of valid excuses this time. I've spent a month in America! I've moved house! And pretty much the most exciting development of all: I can actually call myself a narrative designer now! For the last two months, I've been working closely with the Antwerp-based studio GriN on a game called Woolfe. It's an episodic platformer/brawler set in the Red Riding Hood fairy tale, but with that customary dark twist thrown in. I'm currently in charge of finetuning an already established story foundation and writing dialogue and voice-over elements. The first trailer is below the jump.
Fine, you try captioning this one.
On October 26th, the British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) invited four games writers and narrative designers for a small panel on the theory and practicality of writing for games. Since I was visiting a friend in Wales at the time, I was unable to attend myself. Fortunately, I managed to sneak a recorder on an unwitting attendee, and she captured the entire panel for me. If this unwitting attendee whose name may or may not be Nina is reading this, you have my eternal gratitude. So while this is an indirect account of the panel, I hope to offer a short but thorough recap here. Read on to find out about the improper use of cutscenes, the challenges presented by a silent protagonist, and why a games writer is like a feng shui guy.
Next we'll dream you up some facial hair, okay darling?
Inception. A great movie by a great many standards. It gleans elements from a wide variety of genres and skillfully combines them into something that carries enough weight to become more than the sum of its parts. Its far-reaching appeal has naturally led to an enormous outpouring of articles and discussion, not in the least geared towards theories about what it all means. A subset of such articles focuses on the relation between Inception and videogames. It should therefore come as no surprise that Christopher Nolan himself has announced an intention to craft a game based on/in the Inception universe, and this post looks at the way in which it lends itself exceptionally well as a blueprint for a (certain type of) adaptation.
E3's lesser known cousin, E2.
I am currently located in Belgium, which has a relatively small game development community (focused more on games for portable phones and social networking sites). Besides my efforts to expand my experience locally (like this), I've recently been travelling abroad to places that play a larger role in the game industry. One such excursion led me to both attend and volunteer at this year's Eurogamer Expo in London. It was a marvellous experience and a definite recommendation for anyone trying to break into the business, whichever aspect thereof is one's focus.
Welcome to Playthroughline, the online home of writer/narrative designer Joannes Truyens. Together with a bunch of cool people, I made Neurocracy, a hypertext game that invites you to solve a murder in a near-future world by diving into the Wikipedia of that world.
