lost-echo

Week 11 Story & Narrative

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by

Kimi Du
in

As our game contains a significant amount of narrative and cultural storytelling, one of our key goals this week is to fully integrate characters and dialogue into the gameplay experience. This ensures the narrative is not only present but meaningfully intertwined with mission flow, environment interaction, and emotional progression.

When designing our characters and their dialogue, we consistently ask:

  • What would make the most sense in the context of real history?
  • What functional role does this NPC serve in terms of mission progression, navigation, or world enrichment?
  • What unique piece of information or emotion can this character convey to the player?

Design Methodology & Pipeline

1. Defining

  • Defined two core NPC types:
    • Mission-Critical NPCs: Required for progressing gameplay.
    • World-Enriching NPCs: Optional, but expand lore and emotional depth.
  • Determined each NPC’s purpose, spawn location, and relationship to the player’s progress.

2. Creating

  • Designed each character’s identity:
    • Personality, role, game state behaviors, player interactions, animation states, and dialogue framework.

3. Writing

  • All dialogue was written first in Mandarin to reflect authentic cultural tone and linguistic style.

4. Translating

  • Translations to English maintained the original emotional tone and cadence, supported by AI-assisted refinement.

5. Implementing

  • Built NPC blueprints in Unreal Engine 5, created dialogue trees, state machines, and animation blendspaces.
  • Placed NPCs into their scenes and began in-engine testing of pacing, clarity, and visual presence.

Two Types of Interactable NPCs

Mission-Critical NPCs – These characters are essential for progressing the main questline. Players must speak to them to receive key information, unlock objectives, or trigger major events.
Diverse World-Enriching NPCs – These optional characters exist to deepen the narrative and atmosphere. While not required to complete missions, interacting with them reveals cultural background, personal stories, or environmental lore.

Story & Emotional Progression

To support strong emotional storytelling, we structured the game into three narrative stages, each associated with different NPC behavior and player emotional response:

1. Arrival – Tension & Distance

  • NPCs: Cold, cautious, fearful.
  • Context: Player enters a wartime village as an outsider.
  • Player Emotions: Unknown, alienated, disconnected, uneasy.

2. Trust Earned – Recognition & Engagement

  • NPCs: Respectful, curious, interactive.
  • Context: After proving musical talent to the guzheng maker.
  • Player Emotions: Respected, curious, empowered, connected.

3. Departure – Closure & Sentiment

  • NPCs: Grateful, warm, hopeful.
  • Context: Player prepares to leave, villagers gather to say goodbye.
  • Player Emotions: Rewarded, fulfilled, hopeful, yearning, nostalgic.

Dialogue Samples for Mission-Critical NPC Dialogues:
Provide strong narrative cues that guide the player with clear goals, objectives, and next steps in the mission.

Dialogue Samples for World-Enriching NPCs:
Deliver optional, branching conversations that respond to player inputs and reflect the evolving world state, enriching lore and emotional depth.