(22) 10 Key Quest Design Lessons from 'The Witcher 3' and 'Cyberpunk 2077' - YouTube
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Transcript:
(00:02) [Music] thank you [Applause] I'm not sure what I did to earn this um already thank you so much for being here this early at the morning I know there's so many more better things to do at nine like sleeping so thank you for being here my dears I was told to remind you to turn off all your buzzers uh and all you know devices that you decided to bring in and emit sounds you know whatever that is you can fill it in uh we are the stock is long as hell so uh basically I'll like do as much as I can I'll be speaking quite fast because
(00:52) I want to show you a lot of things now uh we will finish in like 55 minutes hopefully when I'm efficient that means that there will be no time for questions however I'm going to stay with you of course till I'm not dead um in a wrap-up room in 305 okay 305 this is where I'm gonna be uh after this talk and then we can you know sit together and chat for like I think two hours I have for you so uh I hope that I will be able to answer all the questions so um having that out of the way I'm really
(01:22) glad we have audio I hope that that's gonna stay uh shout out to our technical technician he's amazing and helped me out a lot uh thank you so much sir and having that of the way let's go so my dears my name is a quest director inside a break so what I do I direct Quest open world and cinematic departments in our studio uh we are the teams that design and implement the story together with the with our amazing writers now um today I'll be talking to you about a few things and I'll mention a few words
(01:57) about me so you know who the hell I am but that I promise this will be short because this is not about it then we'll talk and look into the narrative pipeline into the project this is really important element of really how we build the games and really the reason why those games are good um of course you know there will be some level of simplification to this pipeline because uh otherwise we would have spent here hours just discussing important elements to it and then I'll move on to a key Quest design lessons
(02:26) um I have divided into three parts for you so that you know you can kind of rub your head around it uh there will be mastering the plot structuring The Narrative and improving the design at the end all of those lessons are actually designed in a way that they're supposed to give you as much takeaway as you can however I have prepared takeaways at the end as well however each lesson is kinda a thing that I learned uh throughout like many years in the industry uh things that they didn't know uh really at the beginning I don't
(02:55) think they are trivial I don't think so otherwise otherwise I would have probably don't from from the very beginning what to do but I didn't uh and I want you to know now so um moving on a few things a few games I've worked on I'm in the industry almost 19 years now I've worked on a bunch of like indie games that you never heard of and a few games that actually never been released if you are in the industry long enough you will actually get to that point that your game is uh you know shut down uh
(03:22) throughout the production so uh you know each of us has to go through that painful process then you know I managed to join the Two Worlds 2 Team where uh I was a lead writer Elite Quest designer and then joined our Witcher 2 Team uh during the uh Witcher 2 enhanced Edition uh work I was just a just helping out you know with with things debugging and learning from my fellow designers and then from The Witcher 3 I was a senior Quest designer did bunch of main story and side quests and uh became a lead of the team from
(03:52) um hearts of stone and led the team Through Blood and wine and then cyberpunk 2077. after we shipped cyberpunk I got to other departments which is open world and cinematic and uh right now we are working on Phantom Liberty uh it's around UH 60 people team uh so uh and shout out to them because I love them and some of them are here actually so thank you for being here now my dears uh let's move on to the narrative pipeline first uh hopefully this part won't be too boring for you uh fellow gametives especially people
(04:24) working on a story I think this is very valuable slide even though it might not look that appealing um but I tried to put a picture there so here you go um there is few things I wanted to point out first and foremost our games are about the story and the story is the most important factor in them always and we want to seduce you as a player we want to take you with an adventure to our worlds and really make you feel how it looks like that's why we always start from a story outline our writers in a small group prepare first a story
(04:56) outline and again that outline can be actually really short it can be really like At first few pages maybe even less and then we feedback that outline and it grows and we get it to the point that we can start working on a quest design documents and this is when Quest design team steps in and they start working on the design designs those are like designs that you can say they look like something between game design and a movie scenario something like this there are elements of a dialogue there but not too much it's just an example we do not
(05:26) really write dialogues in those documents yet and of course that iteration process on the design documents it happens together with cinematic design team and also open world team and also other uh like others like writers for instance and other important departments in our company we are trying to include as many voices as we can and then we move on to the draft implementation actually those documents are used when they're approved they're used to actually produce a base for all of the Departments to be on the same
(05:57) page and then we start working on first block out locations so this is when our level design team steps in uh we are starting to work on the first drafts of the dialogue so basically the quest designers are like sketching them out we do not write them we just sketch them out basically what the scene is about um we do include first elements of gameplay play that's basically we want to make sure that that Quest is playable and then this whole process concludes with actually something that various companies called uh first playable for
(06:27) us it's just draft um and when the quest is playable and all the quests are playable that means that the whole game is playable and that is basically the goal of the draft stage and afterwards we move on to pre-alpha Alpha pre-bita Beta and then we polish the game and ship it in that period this is how it looks like though in practice so when you have the story outline we iterate the hell out of it and then when it's approved it goes to Quest design iteration happens there and to the draft implementation with iterations are
(06:59) happening there what's important is that it actually can be disapproved you can call it it can be sent back to the previous stage and I think this is a key thing like why um our things are working the way they are working because we basically do not like resign uh until we are really really happy with whatever we have produced and sometimes we do a lot of iterations and we bounce a lot um back and forth between those stages and every single time when we actually move on and let's say update something
(07:31) in a meaningful way uh on the draft uh implementation level we also go back and really uh try to like update the documents at least till the alpha stage that was the most boring part out of the way let's now focus on the key Quest design lessons so my dears the thing is that I will need to talk about the story and to talk about the story I need to spoil you some things so if you didn't play cyberpunk 2077 or Witcher 3 you need to leave the room so I think everyone's gone that was supposed to be gone that's the last
(08:10) warning really to turn off the video or just leave the room um I'm trying I will be I'll try I'll do my best not to spoil too much but I'll have to spoil some things because I will be using examples so let's move on to the first stage which is mastering the plot I will be talking about three major lessons here engagement impact and believability of this slide is only for you for tracking where we are we will now talk about the engagement uh when we were working on The Witcher 3 uh blood and wine the opening quest uh the best
(08:39) the Beast of booklet there is a moment when you as a player you as geralt you go in and you investigate and then there is this moment of all subs see there's this guy chopped off on a table uh the quest was designed by Augustine our lead Quest designer and what we wanted to do there we wanted to make sure that as a player you'll be intrigued by what the hell is happening you know like why uh this guy is chopped off in such a way and every single detail that they actually find out throughout this investigation is including in
(09:08) introducing some new things that you wouldn't expect and every single step is actually surprising in a way um and that is a I would say like one of the one of the elements one of the factors is really driving us when we are constructing our story we want the player to want the story you don't have to shove the story into players throat you make it you can structure it in a way that player is craving for it and player really wants it and the key thing that I wanted to you to memorize from this is that by subtraction of key
(09:40) information you can actually make the player really intrigued and really curious about what's going on and uh the investigation is actually a really interesting um a really interesting um the typical element of that and Witcher 3 is really a detective game in a fantasy setting I I loved I think it was PC Gamer that did this article when they actually properly identified what Witcher 3 was try to be some uh when in times of a genre it is a detective gave a game in a uh Dark Fantasy setting um and not that many people maybe felt
(10:14) it from the very beginning but when designing the the quests and so on we were using a lot of Investigation mechanics and that naturally uh send us to actually creating many more stories that will be simply about finding out what the hell happened now another example I wanted to show you is from one of the most beloved quests from uh cyberpunk 2077 the dream on this is one of the opening scenes let's watch it together V glad you could make it Jefferson grab a seat please I'll explain why I asked you to come over
(10:54) we've had a break-in not the usual kind though so unusual how a couple of days back dead of night something wakes me a noise I grab my pistol and come out of the bedroom see a stranger he looks like he's about to reach for it so I pull the trigger nail them no idea my head started spinning and I passed down no trace of in the morning after I'd like you to find them find out what he wanted notify the badges yet we don't want any Buzz around this no attention whatever you know ncpd's full of people who like
(11:36) the occasional strategy if we reported a break in the media descend on us like a swarm of locusts no badges gotcha of course we notified SSI about the incident our private security look into this say anything this is where things get a little weird they claim there's no sign of a break-in or of a shot being fired security cams didn't record anything guard outside didn't see her hear anything they suggested Jeff must have had a bad dream convenient answer as you can see in this particular scene we have set it up in a way that there's
(12:22) a deliberate subtraction of information look at another example that I have prepared for you here at the moment when you're actually as a player doing the investigation there's a moment when you're actually getting to this back room there are those big machines there when you scan them when you can see actually on the scanning in the UI you can see that it's an unknown tag that it's a system that is not in a database that it's basically being not recognized as a player you are taught actually that
(12:49) using the investigation mechanics and scanning basically in cyberpunk you're going to find out what happened what it is and so on in this case uh Patrick Mills the quest designer for this Quest and uh Rafael or Khan the writer for this Quest they have decided to actually very deliberately remove those informations for the player and really say you know I know that you are using the the scanning and you want to know you want to find out what actually happened but you won't find out and this is really really deliberate play with
(13:17) the player and throughout that uh and it's it's really really important that when you're constructing Your Story by doing this you can really make the player very curious and I brought up of course the dream honest one of the examples of such quests because I think it that it has done it the best out of everything that out of out of the quest we have at cyberpunk 2077 but both Witcher and cyberpunk are actually full of uh such examples we'll be moving on I could be talking much more about about that at that point
(13:50) but I want to give you those uh you know nuggets of knowledge so we will now jump in to the impact um and this is one of the more powerful uh I would say uh lessons that they can that they can uh give you when we are creating the story we are trying to from a very beginning created around those emotional banging moments what you're seeing here actually is uh Judy she is broken down after the moment of what has happened to her friend I'm not going to spoil it uh much more but it's really heartbreaking and
(14:21) as a player you have met Judy already here you have get to know her you know who she is and then throughout that storyline you have also get to know Evelyn and at this point there is a moment when you actually uh face her and it's really heartbreaking moment when you actually actually see you know her makeup you know like dripping down her face and it's uh it's really make you make you as a player like empathize with her and when we are creating those stories we always try to think about those emotional moments that are really
(14:50) are going to drag the player to our stories this Quest was designed by Sarah Grimmer who's sitting here in the front of row uh and Magdalena [Applause] thank you and Magdalena who is the who is the writer of this Quest they did a phenomenal uh phenomenal job and uh Judy's storyline and what's interesting is that from a very very beginning we didn't have that moment but when working on that storyline we discovered that we actually have to add it it was fairly early of course when we discovered that
(15:21) that uh particular beat has to be in the story and this is what I want to encourage you to do like when you're actually crafting your stories think about those emotional moments like the moments when you can really like punch the player or your reader your audience into the gut and really make them feel things because this is the most important thing and when I'm always training like my younger designers we always tell them that we want to teach the player the designer to control what player is thinking and what players
(15:50) feeling and that is really your job as a narrative designer I always I really believe in that you really need to try to control with players thinking and feeling super important for building good and impactful stories another example actually is it comes from The Witcher 3 when I was working on the uh on the Battle of cormoran that's the quest I designed and implemented um and uh I needed a moment for Siri to actually make a decision that she is not going to be hunted anymore she's not going to be a prey she is going to be a
(16:22) hunter and she's going to be going after the wild Hunt but to do so I knew that I need a substantial event that will really break her inside and that was the moment when I proposed to our writer's team to kill vassimir and um at first they weren't sure if we should be doing that but you know throughout the discussions with marching blahauer story director uh we reached the conclusion that actually it's a really good decision to basically really make Siri make that step make that change um you know some of you might be a
(16:57) psychologist I'm a psychologist by education there's a lot of events in our life that actually can tremendously change just you know like for instance people that have been in concentration camps like there's a lot of data that shows when they left them they were completely different people and that incident what happens in their life and changes them really tremendously is something that they kinda needed right but to build it in a game I really had to be very careful that's why I picked vesimir because his character is build
(17:25) up and prepared really well you get to know him throughout many quests so that's why this moment was so impactful and also I wanted to do something that players wouldn't believe that we will be doing I wanted to surprise you in a good way I hope basically to drag you to our storytelling and that is the second point I wanted to make here like really when you are building those impactful stories no holds are beared like you can do anything that is needed to make the player feel things and here's the another example I wanted
(17:58) to show you there is a moment when uh V uh wakes up on a landfill in uh cyberpunk 2077. let's watch the scene together happy that she looks now listen John I have done exactly what you asked so lest you and me figured [Music] timeline foreign so um what's interesting that when you're actually creating your stories you can
(19:01) create them around the emotional impactful moments as I said but sometimes it's difficult those things need a proper build up it takes time it takes screen time it takes a lot of pages in the book a lot of pages in a comic book to really build it up properly so what you can do is also build your story around something that together with Thomas our story director we call it cool scenes and normally when you're actually working with the designers a lot of them will actually propose to you lots of different like cool scenes and things
(19:33) that could happen the thing is like I do not think that this is a proper way to build a story and tell a storyline how uh and tell an emotional story however you can do it you can't actually think about those banging moments that really stay in your mind and kind of intertwine them in your story and here is an example of basically takamura going there and basically delivering the Justice Dex is the guy that double crossed you in cyberpunk 2077 you probably uh know that hopefully you played the game um and it serves multiple different
(20:04) purposes it you know kind of concludes the storyline of Dex as a character it introduces takimura as an important uh main story character here for us and it's also a short consign concise very Punchy scene that's very memorable um in the same time uh we had actually a lot of discussions internally if that should be an actual objective for the player maybe you should be asked to really go off their decks and do that but throughout like many discussions you know waiting like pros and cons we reached the conclusion that would be
(20:37) probably better to just have the uh takimura take care of that and use it God bless you and use it as an introduction um so one last thing for you to memorize here outside of those emotional moments you can also think think about great scenes but this is always I would say secondary to the great emotional impactful stories that you're building but have that in mind if you only have the storyline that is constructed out of the cool scenes you'll see that there's no soul in your story there's a great um
(21:09) storytelling uh I would say theory about fire and Embers maybe you heard about it it's basically the the um the fire is everything that is a soul of the story and Embers is really what I see you know is the VFX is cool [ __ ] happening is you know uh Transformers beating the [ __ ] out of each other this is basically like great stuff happening in the screen you know great visual spectacle but there's no fire you know in it and I think like we as storytellers and narrative designers we always need to take care of the fire
(21:37) that it's there that concludes the impact I need to slightly speed up because I'm talking too much so right now we will move on to uh believability um as a as an industry and I'm here speaking about also you know uh myself we are sometimes very uncomfortable with actually giving the player the moments when there's nothing to do and there's there are moments when you are not supposed to run in and basically build something new and and do so and you don't have any new objective look at this example this is a moment when you
(22:12) actually had a uh your intimate moment with Judy you know and you're there embraced looking at her having a smoke and there's nothing else going on there's nothing else to do there's nothing else to be it's just being with her and being a human is really a lot about this like we interest we like intuitively as human beings we know it like when you were with your loved one you do not like hug and run to take out the trash right because that's the next objective you you you normally like spend time with
(22:46) them right you embrace them you just look into each other and this is what you do and like as as a studio we have learned that actually that we need to make give space to our characters to really shine on the screen to really give them time to do all of those elements and like there's so little games that actually do it like you can probably search in your memory there's literally a few examples that come to mind and that really is so powerful when you're building the characters but you of course need to use your empathy uh
(23:19) your your personal empathy and try to feel you know what is the proper moment and of course you know the fact that this slaps so much in cyberpunk it's a work of our amazing cinematic design team that makes sure that those moments are really properly timed cinematic animators they make sure that you know all the animations are really fluid look look how believable she is how she acts you know when she looks at you and this is the this is how you see her in the game because your face is literally next to her so when you have those moments
(23:45) don't rush another element another moment is like there's there's the situation when you're actually together with pandam right like there is the sandstorm coming and so on you're supposed to sit with her and so on and I remember watching so many YouTubers and streamers and so on influencers playing our game when she actually put the hand put the legs on your legs and everyone's like oh what's gonna happen now because like that's so unusual that's so unusual for the characters in the game to do that
(24:14) like that's normal that's human we never do that that should be like just two characters in Idol and over the shoulder camera just talking to each other right that's what we are used to but that's not not life that's not how people act you know normal people that's why you know um uh our cinematic designers when they're working on that scene they had this idea actually to start introducing the connection between V and PanAm that is sort of getting born here you know the moments when she actually does this
(24:41) you know so those human like moments are really important and I I know I'm talking too much and I need to move on I wanted to point out something something super important make sure that in your storyline when you are building a story it's not only about the plot so when you're meeting the characters they are not telling you about um what's next to do what's our next objective but there are also moments when they are themselves and they speak what's important for them that's why there is a moment when you go for a
(25:10) coffee with Kerry that's why there is a moment when you just lie embraced with Judy and there's nothing else going on that's why there's a moment when you're with PanAm here she puts her legs on your on your legs and you're just there together and they do not talk about the plot they do not talk about like what's next to happen about your renovo arasaka Saburo and the chip in your head and all that they don't they are people and they talk about what's important for them right so please remember about this when
(25:36) you're building a store line do not pack their only plot but also characters who they are and make them speak about their themselves and that's important especially in AAA because like we normally don't have a budget to basically pack it all in and it's important to reserve a bit of that budget to be able to do those things please remember about this now we'll move on now to the next section this pretty much concludes the mastering the plot now we'll talk to you about structuring narrative and there are
(26:05) three parts here uh brevity choices and consequences now some of those elements are pretty much a separate talks on their own um but I will I will try to give you as as much as I can during this talk so first and foremost The Cinematic cinematography and Cinema industry a long time ago has figured out how actually from the movies eliminate so-called busy work and what I mean by that there is a situation when you're together with a with a character you find out about something and then you go into another character and you talk to
(26:37) them and basically refer everything and you sort of go on and repeat everything this is pretty basic when it comes to storytelling but I see it all the time even in the movies in games especially so there are situations when we as designers we need to look really in our writing in our scenes but also like in a structure of our quests and be like okay when are we actually repeating informations and when when things are not needed because when you remove the fat when you trim the fat then the story becomes much more Punchy here's the
(27:07) example from Battle of karmoren um so there was a moment when I knew that we had to actually plan out that scene and that's the scene that Igor sajinski right now uh he's in our narrative director Igor who's working on that scene we knew that at this point we don't really want the player to discuss with Siri every single nook and cranny how that the defense of care Morin is going to be because you're going to see it in a moment so why the hell have it talked them about it so that's why we
(27:38) basically decide okay let's just move use a simple cut here and they say Gerald says okay you know what let's just focus on it and discuss it in detail that's it it cuts and then you're in the action basically uh as uh the wild Hunt is attacking um kermoran the next thing I wanted to point out to you is something that actually we have been learning throughout Witcher 3 but I think we have mastered it or maybe get closer to it during cyberpunk is how you do your Exposition and when it comes to
(28:09) the uh cyberpunk 2077 everything is you are all the time in action there in the shoes of you we have almost no Cuts we have no cutscenes you're always there yourself because of that we had to be very strategic about like how we divide the information and before I explain it I need to mention to you they signal and noise Theory maybe some of you heard about it signal is all the messages that you want to give the player all the important information everything that you want the player to learn noise is everything that player can do in the
(28:43) same time therefore making the signal less visible so for instance here the example that I'm showing you right now the moment when you're going for a reconnaissance with takimura at first you're actually walking with him this is something that we call internally walk and talk you're walking basically and takamura tells you and we they talk about things that are slightly less important because here the noise is high I get gained go naked I can jump around I can do things throw grenades maybe you
(29:10) know and not really listen to him the noise but the potential noise is quite High and the signal is pretty low because I can do so many things but then as a player you actually get at the top of the of that building you sit down together look at takimura then the signal is high and the noise is low because I have a control over the camera I know where players looking and then I can actually give the player all the important information about the plot and the characters so when you look in all that sequence you can see that sequences
(29:39) in cyberpunk and they were like that in Witcher 3 2 but to lesser extent you can see that sequences in in cyberpunk they are divided in a way that you you have moments when you're together with the character when uh noise is high and signal is low and as a player you can do weird stuff during that but all the most important information are always delivered when you're focused on the characters because we wanted to make sure that they understand as a player that we don't lose you as an audience so it's really good trick in a way to
(30:09) divide your Exposition like this ask yourself a question okay what actually is the important part of my narrative and what is not or what is slightly less important and what is only maybe your ego and your ego speaking it you wanting actually to player to get all of those important story informations everything about the world and backstory and all that maybe it's really not needed maybe it can be really something that we call an opt-in design so a player can actually decide okay I will actually listen to it deliberately because I want
(30:37) but if I don't want to I'll go naked and throw grenades one last bit that I wanted to mention um this is fairly difficult to do and it requires I think quite a lot of skill but you know we are a GDC and I think it's a perfect audience to talk about it Exposition in general is difficult to do uh well and a bit inside in Witcher 3 but I think in cyberpunk we kind of learned it how to do it well and here's an example when you're actually working together with um Jackie into the compaki plaza there's
(31:10) this moment when this lady that works there she greets you uh and she has a uniform that's cool but she also has a real skin and her skin is like dark gold it's like it's like a dark gold kind of a uh um shade and it's surprising in a way because it turns out that in this world uh and your skin is a part of your attire you wear it to work that's basically normal thing however here in the story we never ex we never address it there's not a moment when we in the story point out finger to that and tell
(31:42) you that as a player but you can actually understand it if you look at what's going on you can actually understand oh so this is what this world is this is how it's constructed and it's normal and natural to be like this and you know when you're moving through cyberpunk you actually see lots of those so you know commercials for instance that we have in the game the TV the radio all of them are actually about this they're the subtle Exposition and subtle Exposition is about the values that are underlying your narrative
(32:10) underlying your world and we wanted to make sure that those values stick through but they are never directly given to you we never Point our finger to it almost never we basically try you try to make you like soak in that world and really be in that world let me move on because I'm far from being brief so that concludes the parity Point Let's Move On Now to choices and consequences now my dears this section is really gigantic and um I could have a completely separate uh talk about this so I will be deliberately picking just
(32:44) some elements of that uh there's more to it uh but there are some things that I think are really important or things that I learned throughout our work um in uh to the project that this example that you're seeing right now is geralt who is facing the uh uh the tree you can call it the heart of tree uh and then there is this the choice that you're supposed to make now what we have done here deliberately as a designers we have built up both sides of that story uh both sides between those between those you're choosing so that
(33:18) you have no idea exactly what's going to happen this is an example of the choice where actually bad things happen no matter what you choose we sometimes do that um sometimes we don't but sometimes we do in that's the a matter of a play between us as creators and you as an audience um in this specific case we wanted to make sure that you will make a bad choice no matter what um and that was the design however all of those sites are actually very car carefully created and very carefully structured as a player you don't really
(33:49) know what's going to happen but both sides sort of have been presented uh to you and those emotional dilemmas those interesting dilemmas are like they are making the best possible choices you can actually have in your game really like when you're choosing choosing if you want to do a quest or not it's not really an exciting Choice uh you know um maybe if you want to have sex with a character that's probably also not exciting because everyone will will choose it so because of that like it's really good to
(34:18) think about what is actually a moral dilemma and and what is really not obvious you know what is really not obvious there's so many things in our world that are not obvious and things that you know everyone fights on social media every single day it is not that difficult to create those dilemmas and make sure that the player has really something to think about in here actually you have another example there is a moment when uh Placid is uh one of the uh frontmans of the voodoo boys gang so he actually double
(34:48) crosses you and as a player I'm pissed at this guy and when I meet him I will [ __ ] punch him in the face and what happens the game gives you exactly that and this is what we learned actually throughout work in Witcher 3 and cyberpunk 2077. when it feels right that the given Choice should be there then we as a designers we should provide it to the player because in most cases it means that we have created that situation in a way that as a player you really believing you should be able you should be given the choice and given the
(35:20) option to do so and that's always like a philosophy that we have that when we are playing our quests you know throughout working on them uh we always ask ourselves okay does it feel fine that I can't do something here and sometimes it does sometimes you may want to not give a choice because you want to make a point and that's also fine you just need to be cautious about it as a designer for me it's really amazing when I watch Like streamers and YouTubers influencers when I see them play our games and they
(35:49) literally at the moment when they say I [ __ ] hate this guy I want to punch him and then the choice comes in when to do that like that happened with fingers that happened with Placid this means that the design was on point and we have actually felt right because then as a player you're in shoes of V you felt you are not forced into any choices and you really feel okay the designs provided me that AI can be that person I can really role play that person I really need to speed up now when um we were building the uh race for
(36:21) the Quran in The Witcher 3 for the for uh for skellige there is a series she is a daughter of uh krachi Almar and um she's the daughter of Quran kind and then there's uh her a brother helmar uh they are both on a race for a crown but as a player you are really presented with a choice that is not too a good one this is a negative example that I'm showing you right now the series in a story she has been structured in a way that she will be always a Preferred Choice by our players and in a way here
(36:56) we didn't do too well preparing that choice and that's why I'm giving you this example to show you that it's it's difficult and we do not always get those things right because Terris was preferred by many people because she was more interesting as a character she looks better than realmar she is she had more screen time simply she was written in a better way and then when you have Helmer who has so many downsides much less people will choose him so you need to think about those things and when it
(37:26) comes to cyberpunk actually we have discovered that also a very interesting factor which is the star power we have Keanu Reeves uh playing uh Johnny silverhand in cyberpunk 2077 with Idris Elba uh playing in a phantom Liberty we need to take into account the fact that every time when we have a star players are going to fall for a star almost all the time therefore Johnny silverhand when you meet him first time in cyberpunk he's a real [ __ ] because we wanted to make sure that we draw this really big Arc from him being a horrible
(37:58) person to the point that you actually really like this guy at the end and really understand him but we thought about this from the very beginning that star power of Keanu Reeves in this case he will skewed your choices he will skew your choices and he will make you want to be with him more than if that would be some random generic character my dears that will be the choices now I'll move on to consequences let's look actually an example from one of the quests that I uh I've done for uh cyberpunk 2077 this is a moment when you
(38:29) are going back to uh totentan's uh Club you could have as a player before Matt maelstromers in all food factory where you could have killed a bunch of them or resolved that situation this Quest is much later and let's look at this example find a way to handle anyone we survived Royce we'll deal with her talk no [ __ ] way remember that tape from All Foods that's the rimbo who did Royce no no no no no no it wouldn't be that stupid to show up here you the one yeah what anyone actually boohoo when he
(39:10) wins look at this a chance of a neck of the barrel get the [ __ ] out now it's the all foods Punk not blind what do you want watch out for that one best Isis mean anything to you you work with her no just gotta talk heard she's here sure I'll take you in here actually you can see another example there is a moment when you go into Totten Tans and there's dum dum you know if you manage to if you actually made a deal with Maelstrom he's there now what it is as a designer I am doing telegraphing this is how we call it we
(39:59) are at the moment when you have actually made your choices those choices come into something and at the end when you meet that character he is there talking to you in person and I as a designer I'm telegraphing in as many levels as I only can there is a moment when you walk in then there's the dump there's dumb them or if you kill them there's Patricia that she basically take a rule over like Maelstrom and so on and she's taking care of it um and you talk to them the story develops in a completely different way
(40:27) they walk you through different paths they walk you to different rooms this is called telegraphic when you're showing your consequences to the player use every [ __ ] possible trick you have to make them realize that is the choice one of the things that we have realized when working on a cyberpunk 2077 is the fact that when when consequences are too subtle players won't see them and I will show you more examples of that in a moment here like the choices the consequences that come in that are really clearly paragraphed are always
(40:58) the best and players always surprised and they love it they really love it and it's not really that expensive in terms of budget to make so and those choices that are really really delayed and sorry consequences that are really really Delight are always the best in here you could have made the choice in prologue and this Quest comes in in like really late in the game um it's it's a part of a storyline um of Kiri eurodyne that is like pretty much one of the last like main characters that we're introducing to the
(41:29) game um you as a player you probably forgot what happened that's why when you walk in they have a chat and in that chat they say hey this is a Gong that's zero Royce northwards that's the that's the reason why that line is there because I'm telegraphing to you hey player do you remember remember you did that do you get it yes Royce all foods that is the reason why those lines are there right telegraphing on every level because like the game is cyberpunk it's gigantic players don't remember all of
(41:58) those characters everything that happened besides I don't know what happened in their life player could have played you know 10 days straight for 20 hours every single day and got there or they might have two five years to play it you know they're you know their kids might have borne you know in the middle who knows what happens you know it's you never know what happened to the players so that's why you need to Telegraph very clearly another example actually this is the uh this is the one that is a negative
(42:24) example I would say we have put a lot of effort in cyberpunk 2077 in television and radio content and again players who actually paid attention to that liked it and really appreciated that but most of players didn't most of players actually didn't realize that it's even there that's why when you're actually designing the consequences for your choices designed for visibility this is how I call it so think how you can actually show it to the player in any possible way when you're designing something that's
(42:56) super obscure and nobody will see it it makes no sense really it makes no sense to spend that budget because for the player something that that player didn't see it doesn't exist and again maybe their redditors they will go Reddit and you know they will read about and they'll be all excited that it actually is there but that is a fracture of your player base majority of them if they don't find it they assume it's not there and this is what happened for cyberpunk quite a lot actually like a lot of our
(43:23) consequences have been subtle have been situations where character appears somewhere they're mentioned you know you can meet people that you have saved you know for instance in this example you know depending of your choices there some of the TV content changes or radio content changes pretty much nobody realized that for quite long for for quite a lot of time you know people claim that it's actually not in the game at all so really designed for visibility especially when you're spending as much
(43:49) budget as we have spent on all of the radio and TV content my dears that concludes consequences I'm actually not that bad with the time no I'm horrible okay um let's move on because we have like four more uh but you know thankfully we have whole day so um we'll be talking about over the design bravery novelty and Effectiveness here I have uh uh quite a lot so I'll be short at it right now um there is a moment when we as a designers we really feel that our ego speaks to us right and we want to make
(44:19) the most the best possible life simulation we can an example here PanAm is here sitting in in a bar sipping a beer in the prologue of cyberpunk you can actually meet her and throughout the you know early stages of the work on the game through conversations hey should she maybe finish the beer get into the car leave drive to no a badlands you know meet the nomads you can follow her see all of that okay but what the hell is the point of that you always need to ask yourself a question okay why this is even in the
(44:49) game why I'm I would be even adding that details are amazing when they matter when there's some kind of a meaning behind them when there's a reason behind them adding that stuff is really makes no sense and always when you're working on the things you need to ask yourself a question am I actually designing it over designing uh at this point I remember throughout um work on cyberpunk 2077 one of my designers changed uh his title on slack to Quest over designer so uh another another example I wanted
(45:19) to show you is the example from uh cool metal fire um this is the this is the quest this is the moment when Johnny silver and for a first time takes over your body uh and in here actually what I did uh together with uh cinematic designer Ruka shliva we have made a decision that there's no point of actually V uh as um as Johnny because Johnny has control over your body at that time to meet the Rogue and with hair actually talk about everything and really repeat everything that was said we have decided to use a cut here
(45:52) and basically jump directly to the most important things and then there is a moment after that when you wake up in that hotel you feel you have blood in your hands you know because you're like coughing badly and so on Rook is there and turns out they already talked and established everything and she knows all the important elements so this ties up a bit to the brevity I talked about but also like we knew that okay we could actually design here an amazing long scene and do all of that but we felt it's really not
(46:19) needed because in most cases it will be just repeating the same information and that is the over design I'm speeding up slightly because we're short on time so now let's go to the braveries now I really want to I I really love this Quest and I but this requires some introduction before I'm going to roll that clip so my dears there's a quest in cyberpunk 2077 when you meet Joshua Stevenson he is a convict and he during his time in prison he uh decides to go back to God he wants to die but die in a
(46:52) specific and he knows he will die he is sentenced to death but he wants to die in a specific way he has a purpose he wants to die and become a symbol for everyone else and in our world we have something called brain dances as a brain this you can record that brain dance and make someone else exactly feel and experience what you feel so what Joshua Stevenson does he gets in contact with a Brandon studio and they agree on so that he will die on a cross and they will record that as a brain dance for everyone who's a follower who for
(47:26) everyone who can actually go through that experience and there's a lot of build up leading up to that scene I wanted to make sure that you know all the context because that contest is really important we pay a lot of attention to that we had incredible writer uh marching blah our um story director who wrote the dialogues for this quest to really make sure that we flesh it out before actually that happens let's look at a watch it together foreign [Music] save yourself and save us [Music] [Music]
(48:31) do you not fear God you stand condemned under the same sentence [Music] God [Music] [Music] father forgive them for they know not what they do [Music] we are punished justly for we receive what our Deeds deserve but this man has
(49:36) done no wrong [Music] remember me when you come into your kingdom [Music] truly I say to you today you will be with me in Paradise thank you foreign [Music] at the very at the very beginning when we were working this Quest when the designer who actually designed it um tartinsky when he came to me actually this Quest was about something else at
(50:40) the very beginning you as a player you're accompanying Joshua Stevenson in the end you were delivering him to bring the studio and this is where it ended and I told him but we have this amazing interactive scene system I want to be in the shoes of that Roman soldier who actually hammers him to the Cross because this you can really put the player in that experience and you can really make the player feel it and really you can really make it be like this and our amazing cinematic team really made it happen and I I honestly
(51:10) believe that we as a AAA industry we are so scared of new topics of things that are required very bravery and I'm talking about artistic bravery this Quest has a lot of context it's not an edgy scene for being an edgy scene it's a scene about the person it's a his it's it's a quest about the religion about belief it's the really gruesome and dark world that's why all of those elements about the religion spirituality and being in close connection with other people actually matter so much and this
(51:40) is a very important element to have in your game um in most AAA and I'm speaking about this because like the Indies are actually doing much better job here in most AAA you don't really see that we are so safe with everything that we are building there's another example I wanted to show you actually when I was working on Bloody Baron storyline from The Witcher 3 um the there was a moment when um you know I came up with the idea of botchlink you know this miscarriage child you know that Baron has um and there was a lot of concern you
(52:12) know we had some young fathers in the company and they were pointing out to me that they are maybe not too comfortable with having a zombie child uh in the game but when we talked I told them what it is about it's about domestic violence it's about this broken father who's apparel to geralt actually trying to do his best and actually understanding all of his shortcomings and then there was a moment when he actually takes the uh botchling in his arms and walks with him that whole sequence when he carries him
(52:42) I in the files in in the game files I actually called it peregrination because he goes in to actually undo in a way as much as he can to do what he has done uh to his family and that was important it's not a shocking value just to be there I wanted to talk about something that wasn't talked about and again we are talking about 2012 at that time in Triple A's you didn't see topics like this nowadays it's maybe slightly different especially on the Indie space but at that time it was something that
(53:10) nobody has ever done before and we really wanted to do it because we believed that this artistic bravery is something you should be doing this is our responsibility and especially this is how I see it is a director in our company and I know that a lot of directors is with me in this like we have a purpose of basically doing something else something different because you as a players when you come to us and you play the game from set a breakthrad it needs to feel like our game and it's not safe and we'll be
(53:39) doing things that sometimes nobody else will do there's another example from here there is a moment one of the most beloved endings to cyberpunk 2077 Don't Fear the Reaper there is a moment when actually if you have built a relationship with Johnny who at some point offer you that he can actually join you on this one-to-one suicide mission on arasaka that was something that our Quest designer erovarendi proposed he was he felt that it was needed in this given moment to give the players something like this and we were
(54:10) like this is so [ __ ] bold we should probably do it and that's that was basically how the conversation went we really wanted to give you that option as the players and we found out ways how to do that if you go in there when you die the credits roll because that is your ending and of course you know a lot of players proven us that they are able to beat it um really well that whole sequence my dears there's much more going on and it's six minutes left so we are going to we're going to speed up even more
(54:39) I wanted to show you and one of the scenes an example where our interactive scene system is used here as a matter of novelty it was an important element of the uh Innovation that we've been doing for cyberpunk 2077. let's watch it together well [ __ ] goes for you too Austin this is so [ __ ] hard [ __ ] ass on the [ __ ] couch make me thought you'd never ask Ed figure us down for a Planet Bull in your sky sit down this ain't gonna end well but [ __ ] well all right come on got line up
(55:46) take a hit thanks I'm good whatever you say straight-aged princess [Music] here we go a flat head model mt-0 T12 need to see it [ __ ] [ __ ] Dynamic thermal optic camo armor full cognitive immersion with a raven controller paint out prototype actuators made of titanium Vanadium Kevlar composite and watch this fully integrated link too it's only the spider starts crawling on walls
(56:50) daggering from sirens this is what you think yep we'll take it three sure yeah yeah that's secret brick got it it's all paid out [Music] I don't see any [ __ ] brick around here do you yeah I don't see any break here so uh my dear this scene actually shows so many innovations that we have done in cyberpunk 2077 when it comes to first person perspective storytelling and um I wanted I wanted to mention this because of the Maya principle they wanted to explain to you like Maya principle is something that I think can
(57:41) guide us a bit when it comes to working on a new novel things for our games and basically defines that you should actually provide as much novelty as you only can while in the same time trying to stay somewhat relevant to the player somewhat familiar so that player is not lost that is the way how we've been building our interactive scene system as a player you kind of get it you know you're there okay you can look around even though it first uh actually a lot of other players didn't know that they
(58:10) can move their head in the scenes they felt that they are just stiff because this is what they were taught to before in time of course players learned you know that they can actually do it and incred incredible things about the scene scene done by mihaus Bridge our cinematic designer amazing thing about the scene is that you can see how much staging was changing you know the characters were moving you were in a place but actually the plans were changing you know there was a there was Royce in the background you know when
(58:35) the door opened he was there then he walks into you we're actually by changing things in the front of you changing your frame it took us actually a lot of time to get to the point that we understood how to build those things so uh when it comes to the novelty I really advise you to stick to the to the Maya principle when you're like maybe worried about like just going to Wacky and doing something that you know your game won't find its place on the market it will guide you in a way of like how to do and what to do another example
(59:06) here is like actually coming from one of the quests I worked on you need to establish the rules before you break them this is a pretty simple a pretty simple rule a lot of young designers really love to break the rules and they want to break all of the rules into first show the rules that you have them that you have established them to really be able to break them I need to speed up slightly so that's why we'll move on to Effectiveness right away and here is the the one of the elements of Effectiveness
(59:34) I wanted to talk to you about is the fact that you as a designer you can really design your story and everything you have for the team you have when I was actually working on like a supreme Quest I knew that um my cinematic designer in this case it was Jason that I mentioned before and David Cordero animator they actually are both uh guitar players and they [ __ ] love that stuff so I knew that that can really basically design the whole concert when you're putting together samurai band you're there in the shoes
(1:00:05) and playing with them and I think this requires actually a lot of skill because you as a designers you need to have bonds human bonds with your teammates you need to know the people you're working with because sometimes some certain certain stories or elements you will be able to pull off and others you won't be able to and treat them like as assets treat them as resources as a thing that you can really help out with be together with that and build together but this requires you to know the people you're working with and know their
(1:00:35) strong sides and weak sites because then you can really build it for um I will I will just glance over those really fast but this is last two points pay attention to what other designers are building um this is an example from Quest from Philippe Weber the parade in cyberpunk 2077 when we designed that quest in 2019 we already knew what is in the game therefore it was actually pretty easy to know that we are providing something different than other designers believe me or not but if you're working with creatives and you know probably some of
(1:01:07) you uh definitely feel it people crazy people actually come up with the same ideas very often you know separate people will come up with the same ideas that happens really a situation when you actually have the team that communicates well and knows what the hell is happening in the game is really important because then you don't copy each other's ideas and you don't reuse the same solutions that you already have and the last last moment a shot from Pyramid Song a quest by Sarah Grimmer this is one of the quests that's
(1:01:34) actually one of the primary examples of situation when whole team was put so much on the same page this is one of the most beloved quests from cyberpunk 2077 where all of the disciplines collaborated really well Sarah basically started some of our experts she knew everyone in the team she knew their capabilities knew what what to do and she knew how to push their buttons to really push them to do their best my dears that concludes this part this is a speed run at the last moment so now I'm actually moving on here are actually
(1:02:04) a few slides that are basically a takeaways um I'm just displaying them for you here of course this will be on GDC Vault so you can take a look all of those points are actually already um in the in the presentation so this is more of a sum up for you so that you know uh what's going on and here's the last part it now um I wanted to thank you so much for being here [Applause] foreign [Music]