During my time as a Game Developer, I have directed and created a multitude of cinematics, cutscenes and dialogues between characters both in writing (through Dungeons & Dragons), and brought to life visually (in video games).
The most notable examples of my Scenario & Narrative capabilities arc in the form of full 2D Sprite-based cutscenes (with audio & camerawork included) that wove together the story of my current passion project, Illustria.
Below you’ll find some examples of cutscenes from Illustria (keep in mind, this game is still incomplete and unreleased), along with a description of exactly what’s going on in the scenes. From character motivation, to the context of the world, and emotional gravity of dialogue exchanged.
Ch2: Scene 6 – The Scholar
This scene takes place around halfway through the second chapter. Ilia, Leodore & Tsuri have traveled to the Cerulean Coast to find the Keystone that is hidden within Isola Morta, an island just off the coast After speaking to a Captain, he promises to let them aboard his ship provided they can track down a missing passenger. A Scholar and Sorcerer named Stella, who has allegedly ventured into the deep caves along the coastline in search of relics of lost lore to study. She hasn’t returned and the Captain is being held up as a result. The party have finally reached the end of the cave (a mini-dungeon for the player), and find Stella at the underground lake.
Interlude 2: Scene 1 – The Pupil Prince
This scene is the first scene of the Chapter 2-3 Interlude. Shortly after defeating the Chapter 2 boss, and retrieving the Keystone from Isola Morta, the screen fades out, and shows the ‘End of Chapter’ card, before prompting a Save. After the save menu has closed, the screen will fade up on this scene.
Here, we finally see that The Master – Ilia’s Teacher who has been MIA since the attack on the Monastery in Ch1 – is alive. She has been taken captive by the Lunatealan Military. After a few weeks of being locked up in the dungeon of Chateau de la Lune, she is finally confronted by Prince Thergenir. Here it is revealed that the two know each other, and it’s loosely hinted at that perhaps the Prince was a student of her’s too once upon a time. Thergenir is looking for something. Something important., and he has to find it before the Queen of Solaria does. He thinks the Master of the Solstice Monastery might know its whereabouts.
From the multitude of cutscenes I’ve created for Illustria, I have learned several key lessons when it comes to visual scenario directing.
Coloured Text & Dialogue Boxes
To help players keep track of important aspects of a conversation, specific words were coloured into categories. These rules apply based on the knowledge of the Protagonists, not the Players. All locations are Yellow, allies are Blue. enemies are Red, and the key antagonist is referred to in Purple. This not only gives more weight and gravity to certain names and locations, but allows for key points of dialogue to still be understood if the player decided to skim-read the text.
Dialogue boxes share similar traits. Allied boxes are Coloured whereas enemies are Dim, which helps to create a divide between friends and foes. Again, this only applies based on the knowledge of the Protagonists, not the players.
Pauses in Dialogue
Sometimes the absence of words is more powerful than words themselves. As a general rule of thumb for Illustria, each time there is a comma or a new sentence in dialogue, there is a short pause in text display (as it writes from left to right). My earlier projects lacked this as a feature, and not only did it make the text blurt out all at once, but it made it harder for the players to understand how the words were spoken, and imagine the structure of the sentence. This took away from the impact of dialogue in some cases, and it was something I made sure to fix in later projects of mine.
Emote Bubbles
I personally think they’re charming way of visually conveying the emotion of a character. Emote Bubbles are always displayed before the corresponding text, and are used often (but not incessantly) to give extra meaning, emotion and gravitas to the oncoming dialogue. Text alone can be misinterpreted, so these visual cues are handy in ensuring the player fully understands what’s going on in a cutscene emotionally. Art-wise, they’re also pretty cute and on-theme to the games style. With the limitations of facial expressions for the software used to develop this game, Emote Bubbles were very handy.
Movement, Music & SFX
As Illustria is a 2D game, camera work is limited to birds-eye movement. My camerawork really shines during battle-scenes, especially in the scenes played as a Boss battle is starting. These scenes involve filters and zooms to amplify the impact and drama of fight.
Music and Sound also play a very important role in cutscenes, and I’ve used musical cues including fades, cuts and pans to enhance and compliment the visuals of a cutscene where necessary.
In an entirely separate vein from visual narrative design, I have had years of hobbyist experience in written narrative design in the form of D&D.
I have been running D&D campaigns with a small group of friends since high school, and am currently developing my own Homebrew Campaign. In regards to narrative design, not only have I written the entire story with my own characters, but I have created a Character Compendium to heIp me keep track of them all (and to help players remember who they all are). I won’t be showing the entire Campaign Guide here (as it’s just enormous), but below you’ll see an example of an Overview Page for a city I created.
These pages always come first when outlining a location, and contain some flavor text (usually read aloud) and a map that is provided digitally to players.
The Campaign Guide is currently 84 Pages, long and contains immense detail on the, world, setting and characters within Lumenaris.