So I was digging through some old game magazines and ended up finding a great little piece on the poor video game endings of games from 2008 (Fallout 3, Gears of War 2 and Fable 2 were all mentioned). But tucked away in a side column was a brief but enlightening interview with Drew Karpyshyn himself.
I don't want to stoke fires or bring up the whole ending debacle again, I think we've all moved on from that and are looking more positively towards the future of the Mass Effect series, which is fantastic. But it's a piece worth reading and worth learning from, especially in how so spectacularly the Mass Effect 3 team didn't head the advice of it's former lead writer.
Also, the magazine is long out of print, and somethings are just worth archiving. I emboldened some of the more interesting thoughts.
What does it take to craft a good ending for a videogame story?
One of the big things is that we do story development first on a high level. But we do it with the lead designer, the artist, [and other key team members] working together so that everyone gets the elements they'll need. For example, [with the first Mass Effect], the art director was concerned with what would make a visually stunning ending, the designer wanted a big fight, [and that led the Saren battle]. Narratively, I made sure that the idea that Saren is indoctrinated and turns into a giant robot tied in with all the stuff established throughout the game! But that co-development - the fact that story is so integrated for the entire two to three years of the project - seems fairly rare in the industry.
How do you prevent game mechanics, like boss battles from getting in the way of the narrative?
It's a matter of having writers working side-by-side with everyone else. You have to have give-and-take: as you develop the game, you might tweak who the final boss battle will be. We considered getting inside Sovereign, but it didn't fit with the mechanics, so we changed the story to have you fight an avatar that represents Sovereign.
How do you balance the desire to create a series with the need for game to tell a tale of its own?
That's probably the trickiest part. With Mass Effect being a trilogy, we want to escalate with each chapter. We broke down the story of [the first game] into acts - become a Spectre through to the conclusion - and then we did the same for the trilogy. The first game is Act 1 - it's about discovery and learning things. Act 2 is a complication, a twist on what you learned in Act 1. And Act 3 brings it all together. We know where want the trilogy to end, so it's about picking high points along the way that feel satisfying. [With Mass Effect 2], We don't want to do that kind of thing where we leave people hanging. We'll wrap up the threads that have been playing out in that game, but we'll plant seeds so you known something is coming down the road.
Any insight into how the standard development process could end up neglecting the story or its ending?
The general feel in the industry is that most studios don't give writing that much of a priority; one of the scripters or the artists just whips something up. Or they just compartmentalize the writers, and it's very difficult to make something that feels like part of the game if you aren't involved in the process. And sometimes, deadlines just get in the way, and you don't have time to polish [the story enough].
Karpyshyn, D., 2009. 'Choke!'. Official Xbox Magazine, (96), pp. 63 - 64.
Of the actual Mass Effect 3 ending, what allegedly took place:
"No other writer did, either, except for our lead. This was entirely the work of our lead and Casey himself, sitting in a room and going through draft after draft.
Every other mission in the game had to be held up to the rest of the writing team, and the writing team then picked it apart and made suggestions and pointed out the parts that made no sense. This mission? Casey and our lead deciding that they didn't need to be peer-reviewe.d [sic]".
Hope some others found it an interesting read. Greatly looking forward to Mass Effect Next!
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