Brother Richard

Polish site Grimuar Sferowca offers an interview with Colin McComb, Wasteland 2 writer.

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GS: Colin, you'd worked on numerous books and adventures for the Planescape setting, you took part in the development of Torment's storyline, and lately you've been involved in the designing of a post-nuclear world of tomorrow. Could you tell us in brief what were your responsibilities on the Torment team and what are you responsible for now as a writer on Wasteland 2? Colin McComb: In 1996-99, my title was "game designer". Now, that title would probably be adjusted to "narrative designer"; though I was responsible for some mechanical work and some scripting, I was primarily responsible for developing characters, quests, and some items. My work for Wasteland 2 is very similar to that. Right now I'm working on fleshing out a very polite cannibal cult and making sure there's plenty to do and experience in my particular area. I think there's a good depth of reactivity here, and I'm looking forward to seeing how it plays when it's implemented. One of the great things about the preproduction lead-time we have is that we'll have time to make necessary changes and get everything working just right. GS: You've written books, you've written games - which poses the bigger challenge? Do you prefer to create worlds that come to life solely in the reader's imagination or interactive ones offering the support of graphics and sound? Colin: They're both challenging, but in different ways. Still, I think I'm going to have to give the edge to CRPGs, because in addition to developing compelling characters, an interesting plot, and narrative threads for other supporting actors, you need to develop a game that reacts to the player's choices. Is the protagonist going to make certain choices? You'd better think about those choices, and about how far you're going to allow the player to go down that path. This is one of the questions we had while developing Wasteland 2: how evil do we want to allow the player to be? At some point, the story starts to go sideways. An organization like the Rangers probably doesn't look too kindly on a rampage killer, and we've discussed ways to implement what happens when the player reaches that point. With fiction writing, you tend to have a lot more freedom. You're not constrained by hardware limitations or difficulty of modeling or scripting specific sequences. You can change your setting in the blink of an eye, and you can explore as far as your imagination can take you without worrying about having to generate art assets to back up the vision in your head. You can plunge from the heights of heaven into the depths of hell and take a rest stop in a place of machines and circuits, or take the viewpoint of an electrical impulse - all in the same story, and you don't have to worry about developing mechanics that support these shifting narrative styles. On the other hand, fiction writing is a nearly solitary exercise. There's a certain joy in it, but it's also beautiful to work with a team and to see your joint vision come to life for a far greater audience than most writers get on their own. So I can't really pick one. They're two different animals.

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Template:News Template:Wl-publish: 2013-01-06 11:26:19 +0000