STORYWRITING
The writing process of “A Clumsy Adventure” started when I was selected as the lead storywriter and scriptwriter for the game. I accepted such a role because coming from the traditional writing industry I always handled with feelings, cries, poor humor poor comedy poor laughs… I wanted to challenge myself in dealing with something new; when I arrived among the team and met the character of Zack, I started asking myself the basic question of critique storywriting: what are his conflicts? What does he want from life? Which kind of person is he? Has he got friends or not? Is he an intuitive person or not? Etc…
Questions are the key to many many things, but only if you have the courage to answer to them.
CREATING ZACK AS A CHARACTER
Videogames, tv, movies, books actually propose us most of the times the typical person that is able to save the world. However saving the world is actually another kind of deal, everybody can do its own to do it. Zack’s a symbol of that.
Zack’s basically an antihero: he’s not tough, he’s not handsome, he’s not strong, he’s not the best guy at work etc… He’s clumsy! That’s what qualifies him actually. But he’s not just clumsy and he’s not just stupid (at least not in the traditional sense of the term), I think of him as a naive simple person who’s hardly accepted by others because of his extravagancies and nerdy attitudes. To be honest I think everybody actually felt like him for more than a once in their lives, that is why sometimes we look for or bump in something that may provide a change in quality of our life.
He’s not the damned Solid Snake, he’s not as smart as Sam Fisher, he’s not an ace like Ghost or Dom. He’s a normal guy after all.
That said his fate actually give him lots of chances to show his clumsy nature, but it always gives him the possibility of showing what he can actually do, trying his best to help others in order to be accepted. Here we take a lesson: It’s not just through heroic epic actions, but rather it’s through a good heart (and maybe some clumsiness) that’s possible to save the world!
INSPIRATION
In these terms Zack’s actually much more the average videogamer than you may think at first sight. The average videogamer, in fact, was a source of inspiration, but beyond him the inspiration for an enjoyable platform videogame came from PIXAR’s and Dreamworks’ movies like Shrek, Monsters vs Aliens, Up etc… movies I always loved that were able to tell stories, give good lessons without renouncing to comic situations or clumsy characters, in this sense Zack is not that far from Shrek, Megamind, Bob, Ralph and all the other heroes from the screen for children and parents; other sources of inspiration involve parodying movies and videogames, an example can be the lots of references in the gameplay, level design or famous quotes inside the game.
SCRIPTWRITING
The process of scriptwriting I conceive is similar to the one used for traditional movie industry writing American style scripts. The thing starts from a GDD or from free inspiration. There is a lot of freedom of expression inside the team so everybody reads, listens and gives tips for each part of the production.
I start picturing in my mind what actually happens and then write it down on Google Docs through a protected file shared with the rest of the team who can put comments on it and then we discuss about how it’s working.
The most boring part of the job instead is reading and rereading what written hunting mistakes, trying to create a better text that will later be useful for directors, animators, voice actors.
AN EXAMPLE
At the beginning of the game Zack has to take part to a VR training, as in most of the games it’s actually a way to put the player in the basic mechanics of the game and introduce the player to the game’s world. What happens in a normal videogame is that you get acknowledged to this VR world and follow your duties. What instead happens in “A Clumsy Adventure” is that Zack, as a normal videogamer who actually dreams of experiencing such an environment, starts to dance and move inside the VR environment as he was a kid or as being part of a dream came true! Such a thing however will surely be seen as strange by others, as operators, just like when people started using Kinect in Malls moving strangely, weirdly and others behaving as witnessing a fool because they’re not into it… but, let me be sincere, I want to ask you to think about it, how would you react in such a situation?
FROM SCRIPT TO STORYBOARDING
After I put down the basic lines of the actual script, the Storyboarder draws useful pictures to make us understand how the game will look and flow. It’s not that different from what happens in a movie. The different thing is the relation between the partners and the continuous feedback we receive both from team members and both from the fans on various sites.
THE SCRIPT
THE STORYBOARD
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