Writing for Action Adventure Games

Approximately halfway through Reach’s development, I took over scriptwriting responsibilities following the departure of the fantastic Frankie Wakefield-Harrey. At the time, we had a fully implemented vertical slice script, as well as early drafts of key scenes elsewhere in the game. Given the pace of development, however, much of what we had was soon out of date.

I went delving into what we knew about each of Reach's characters, seeing to understand their personalities and backstories, and what about their individual voices worked well vs what didn't.

Atlas (played by Alec Newman) serves as a mentor & quest-giver to the player character (Rosa). He's friendly and fatherly, and very out of touch with the modern world. Face-to-face exchanges between Atlas and Rosa are typically grave, with Atlas outlining the stakes of the missions Rosa is due to undertake. During remote exchanges (talking via a drone) Atlas is much more relaxed and playful, asking questions about Rosa's life and what has happened on the surface over the last 3,000 years.

Alongside department leads (Michael Michael, Manos Agianniotakis, and Ian Sutton), I went through the existing script to identify major changes. These included changes to streamline and clarify the game world’s backstory, the removal of a subplot that was no longer relevant, making the main character less 'quippy', and the addition of a major beat that provides extra narrative tension around two-thirds of the way through the game. With these major changes identified, I began editing.

Lithos (played by Alix Wilton-Regan) is Reach's primary antagonist. She is vicious, with a sharp, barbed tongue that she uses to great effect against Rosa. She is quick with an insult and deliberately verbose, taking pleasure in threatening Rosa and her family. Around two-thirds of the way through Reach, Lithos rejoices in driving a wedge between Atlas and Rosa, revealing that Atlas hasn't been entirely truthful with Rosa so far...

Edits to the existing script ranged from minor word swaps to full scene rewrites, spanning approximately 10k words in total. I then contributed a further ~10k words covering new narrative scenes, gameplay dialogue, player and enemy barks, and optional in-level worldbuilding text & accompanying dialogue.

Dialogue was recorded across multiple sessions (both in person and remote) at SIDE Studios in London. During these sessions, I worked directly with Reach’s incredible cast (Alec Newman, Alix Wilton-Regan, and Andrea Valls) and our amazing dialogue director (Danny Baldwin), providing context and clarification where necessary to ensure their performances matched the action and emotion we were after.

The player character, Rosa, is a headstrong stuntwoman from the surface-world. Having been plunged underground by an earthquake, she stumbles upon a forgotten 3,000-year old civilisation. Rosa is a fish out of water, puzzling out what happened between Atlas and Lithos long ago. At various times, she's bewildered, scared, angry, dour, and vengeful. She spars verbally with Lithos, giving as good as she gets, but often takes a gentler tone with Atlas, patiently explaining the concept of a stunt woman to someone who doesn't know what a movie is. When it's revealed that Atlas has lied to her, she verbally berates him.

In circumstances where actors had wording or character suggestions, or found certain lines weren't working, I was able to approve or veto suggestions, or write alternative lines then and there, editing the master script as required.

https://youtu.be/zaGNu4gvHEg

In addition to working directly with the script and actors, I also wrote concise & engaging in-game lore, helped prepare documents for localisation, supported the implementation of subtitles, and provided copy editing for most writing in the game, including achievement descriptions, upgrade/unlock descriptions, loading screen tooltips, level names, and more. All of this was carried out alongside my standard duties as a level designer.