Dragon Age narrative lead and also developer David Gaider has actually cautioned of the “long-term headache” in games composing brought on by specific wonderful, all-powerful tale aspects being presented.
“One narrative design issue I’ve run into is what I call the lyrium problem,” Gaider stated (by means of Twitter), making use of Dragon Age’s multi-purpose mineral as an instance. “This issue doesn’t automatically render settings […] bad or unenjoyable. People like magic. It’s fine…for a time. The problem is with long-term narrative cohesion.”
Gaider serviced Dragon Age till leaving BioWare in 2016, and also although presently creating musical RPG Stray Gods, the “lyrium problem” is still on his mind.
Lyrium is what Gaider thinks about an ‘Anything Thing’, basically a “narrative crack-filler.” In games, these can be things, established items, or perhaps a multiverse that has the power to rationalize story openings nicely. “If you have something in your setting which can technically do anything” – of course, consisting of magic – “then it will, eventually, do everything. And that’s not good.”
Not just could one-stop wonderful things pave the way to lax narration, Gaider advises that they require “strict, clearly-communicated limitations established from the outset or it will grow like a weed,” because “once your Anything Thing becomes the answer to everything, suddenly it’s a task to explain why it isn’t the current answer.”
“It becomes this shiny, easy solution for every issue that prevents the team from doing the work to do anything else,” Gaider described in follow-up tweets. “Weird thing happens? Lyrium. Need a mechanic for a cool gameplay thing? Lyrium. Something that breaks all existing rules? Lyrium.”
“At the end of the day,” Gaider coatings, “if you want to save yourself long-term headache, you need to put in the work on cohesion early.”
Some of the best video game stories reveal us just how excellent writing is done.
Source: gamesradar.com
