Former Narrative Design Intern at Soma Games
What I Worked On
The Reluctant Redemption of Verity Lux is an upcoming PC narrative-based point & click game where you play as an investigative journalist trying to unravel the mystery behind the disappearance of Walker Khamenos, a celebrity playboy. The game will feature choices and article customization.
What I did
Wrote side quests
Wrote lore
Wrote in-game notes
Tagged dialogue lines to play animations
Great Chain
One of the games I worked on at Biola University was “Great Chain” which was created in Unreal Engine. Great Chain is an action adventure game in which the player must go to the various islands of the Great Chain and save them from The Glowing.
To the right is a video showing one play-through of the game with the player getting the bad ending, as the game was designed so the player would most likely get the bad ending on their first try. The video also shows the player talk to all of the side characters and obtain all of the optional items.
What I Did
Narrative Design
Programmed Dialogue System
Level Design
Programmed AI (Scrapped in Final Version)
Programmed Melee Combat (Scrapped in Final Version)
Narrative Design
Wrote All Dialogue
Designed Choices and Consequences
Wrote Both Ending Screens
Dialogue System
Modified existing dialogue code for expanded functionality
Wrote code to allow choices to add future dialogue options
Fixed bugs
Level Design
Created gray-boxed path for Volcano
Collaborated with Environment Artist over where NPC’s and locations needed to be
Added a rock and a hill in the beginning to hide certain locations and make the game feel longer
Added all the music, adjusted their volumes, edited loop cuts, decided when they would play, and made them play in-engine
Story and Choices
The overall story concept and premise was decided at the start of development, however, I wrote all of the dialogue, tablet and beast item text, and designed all of the choices as well as their consequences. To the left is a video showing all of the writing I did, as well as all the choices.
Narrative Challenges
One of the biggest narrative challenges I had was explaining the player’s combat ability. Originally the player was going to use a sword to fight The Glowing, but it was later decided that the player would shoot stuff and “disperse” The Glowing. It was also decided that the player would start out with this ability instead of learning it or having something happen to gain the power. While admittedly not the best explanation, I decided to do a little bit of a “chosen one” theme but I decided that Jin was randomly chosen instead of him being a special being prophesied long ago. To explain why the islanders couldn’t get rid of The Glowing themselves, I tied Jin’s power to him being the “chosen one” and decided that it was the only power that could kill The Glowing.