7/13/99

"I gave to you now you give to me..." -Neil Young Greetings, friends and listeners, and welcome to today's update. Today's topic is on the process of creating the story design for Torment. Here's how it all started: Back in the days when I was still a wet-under-the-ears computer game designer, fresh to Interplay from TSR, Chris Avellone came to the office I shared with Zeb Cook and presented the two of us with his idea for the storyline for what was then to be called "Last Rites." We offered our suggestions and revisions, and off he went to work on his initial idea some more. When I joined the team, Chris had already filled in an extraordinary amount of detail. He had moved from the basic storyline to the creation of actual characters and a rough dialogue template that quickly mutated into the polished document we've got today. Maybe next week I'll figure out how to present the two separate documents so you can compare them. Chris then passed off the design for several areas on to me. He had an idea of what should go on in the area, but gave me free rein otherwise. I whipped up an outline, sketched out some characters, and we were off. Since the work load kept getting more and more massive - and the amount of time needed for any given task suddenly doubled - we began adding designers.... and this is how it works now: Chris gives us specific objectives for the areas we are to cover. For example, we need to have the player recover X many major memories, Y many minor memories, and learn Z specific things that will allow him to move on from that area. In other words, what Chris gives us is essentially a spiderweb of necessity - we add the flies that fill it up. This gives us a large amount of freedom to fill in the quests that we think would enliven the area. The 'restrictions' placed on us for the area simply serve as boundaries, as opposed to confinement. Given this freedom, we've managed to come up with a wide variety of stories to fill the larger story in the game. Not all of them relate directly to the player or the answers he needs to find - but many of them provide hints and clues to move the story along. It's wonderfully fun, while at the same time being a little daunting - we still don't know if we've got too much story and too little action, or the other way around, and we're struggling to make sure it all balances out to be the best game you've ever played. Hopefully you'll find it worth the effort we've poured into it. -Colin

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