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阐述编写有效游戏对话的8点经验

发布时间:2013-03-14 17:28:20 Tags:,,,

作者:Mark Slabinski

写作可能是创造一款娱乐性游戏中所遇到的最残酷挑战之一。你可以在电脑前连坐12个小时,抽出一页又一页的胡言乱语,但却不觉得自己究竟写出了什么。撰写对话已经够难了,而在交互性领域这更是一项艰巨的挑战。为游戏写作通常已是一项棘手任务,以下是我过去数年一直要面对的8个注意事项,有些是行业中其他人给予的经验,有些是我自己观察和实践所得的结果。

A-Sirius-Game-dialogue(from desura.com)

A-Sirius-Game-dialogue(from desura.com)

1.简洁性——“简化意味着删繁就简”

对于任何作家、任何媒体来说,简洁性可能是最重要的特质。唠叨是一种致命缺点,尤其是在当今这个写作讲究清晰、简洁和趣味性的时代。狄更斯若有幸活到今年,应该无法以作家身份在游戏行业谋生,但海明威却有可能。

让我们举个简单的例子,有一个NPC请你为他杀死一些狼。这种任务游戏发展史上存在多种变体,让我们以最糟糕的例子开始:

“欢迎你,高贵的旅人,我恳求得到您的帮助。我是Jammers,是为Count Argyle效力的一名农夫。有一群狼叨走了我珍贵的羊群。我打算把其中一只羊进贡给Count作为今年收获节的祭品。如果你杀了10只狼,我会奖励你50个金币。”

这种对话充斥太多无意义的信息。你其实可以将其中的内容砍掉一半,甚至缩减至三分之一,例如:

“旅人,帮帮我!巨狼叨走了我的羊群。杀死10只狼我会给你50个金币。”

这样就好多了。短短几句话你就表达出了玩家需知的相关信息——他们得杀死一些狼获得金币。这并不是什么令人兴奋的对话,但至少更为得体。简洁性的本质是理解你自己想说什么,并将其落实到字面上。你只要削减掉一切累赘,直达中心意思即可。

2.突出角色个性

有传言称Stanley Kubrick会给自己电影中的每个角色命名,即便他们只有一两名台词,或者根本就没有台词。为其命名可以让这些角色显得更具真实感,并且能够让自己更好地理解这些小片段如何在更大的框架中发挥作用。所以如果角色配上对话,即使它们在文件中的名称只是7号农夫,也得让农夫呈现自己的个性。这里我们不妨将农夫称为Jammers,那么Jammers目睹自己的羊群被狼叨走,自己的生计被摧毁,全家人甚至有可能难以过冬,他还有可能感觉良好吗?当然不可能,所以他会表现出一些情绪。他不但想让你杀死这些狼,还想借你之手进行报复。

这里可以再深入一步。Jammers是这个地区唯一拥有台词的农夫,所以让我们把他变得更有趣一点。他还有个很胆小的特点,很可悲的个性,以及夸张性的倾向。

他的对话可以是这样:

“我的主啊,请可怜可怜我,杀死这些狼。我将把半数家产给您,请您一定帮帮我,它们要是吃掉了所有的羊,我一家老小就没法过冬啦!”

这里我们就得到了一个更富情感的请求。我们传达了一个更具个性的角色形象,也让玩家知道自己的任务和奖赏。我们还可以表达更多角色特点,但现在这样就已经可以了。

3.避免过多的背景故事

极少人愿意听一个角色喋喋不休地讲述Elder Dragon王子为了取回权力指环,如何毁灭了Elven王国……

被迫听这种内容与在课堂上听教授庄重地发表演,而下面的听众昏昏欲睡并没有什么区别。玩家可能更想直接进入一些更有个性的环节,或者与主要故事相关的环节。法典和传说的写作,虽然可能是一个将游戏世界融为一体的必要部分,但最好还是将其设为可选项。除非Elven王国的历史在故事中占据最大篇幅,否则就不要填鸭式地向玩家灌输这些内容。

但这并不是说背景故事就很不可取,只是说应该将其放置到合适的地方。这种写作最好放置到支线任务(游戏邦注:因为支线任务更适合弹出背景故事),或者法典条目中,让玩家想看时自己去翻阅。背景故事是任何世界中的一个重要环节,但要记住必须给予玩家选择的自由。Bioware对这个概念的理解就十分到位,它向你抛出大量信息,但你却可以在不影响游戏体验的前提下彻底无视它们。你无需在《龙腾世纪》中阅读连篇累牍的法典以理解周围发生什么状况,但当它们开始花费数分钟解释圣殿骑士和Mages Circle之间的关系时,你就会知道这一点很重要。

要牢记背景故事就好像是一顿美餐中的点缀,它让整顿饭看起来更令人赏心悦目,但永远也不可能像真正的食物那么重要。

4.“动静”是一门重要的艺术

要清楚动静的用途。动静是那些很小的对话,也就是角色可能脱口而出的感叹。你玩过那种只听到玩家角色评论他们如何解开谜题,或者敌人只是说自己在装载子弹,需要进行掩护的游戏吗?这些动静并不像电影脚本,它们有可能是玩家在开放世界听到的第一个声音,也可能是他们根本就没有听到的内容。

动静写作很难,也是现代游戏的一个关键元素。情境对话可以让玩家知道自己必须了解的情况,但动静的功能并不仅仅如此。动静是游戏世界同玩家对话,以及回应玩家的一种方式。在潜行时倾听守卫的脚步,中立NPC经过的声音,敌人交战的声音,动静可以让游戏世界更富生气和响应性,是游戏给予玩家的一种反馈。

动静并非可视化写作中的主心骨,它们有特定用途。

如果使用得当,效果会很理想,但如果使用不当,则可能与游戏严重脱节。《Arkham City》中Catwoman关卡的动静,以及《Dishonored 3》中的环境动静表现相当糟糕,前者过于突兀,后者则缺乏变化并且多数时候显得毫无意义。

为动静写作很困难,因为它们不但要遵从所有正常对话的限制条件,还要增加大量的变化。撰写100个“我要杀你”的变化,从中找出最好的5-10个表达方式可能是一项苦差事,但最终会让你获得一个更富变化的敌人动静集合。它会迫使你去思考自己究竟想说什么,为什么你要说出来。要善于运用动静,不要只是让它流于形式,而要让它具有内在含义。

《孤岛惊魂2》的故事设计师Patrick Redding曾在2009年GDC大会上发表了一个关于动静写作的出色演讲,《孤岛惊魂2》中确实有大量有趣的动静,其中一个尤为有效的动静甚至能够同时传达三个情况:敌人在干什么,敌人不知道玩家身处何地(玩家正在潜行),他们害怕玩家。优秀的动静设计可以避免资源冗余现象(游戏邦注:这意味着工作室可以在配音问题上投入较少时间和金钱)。

5.创造出有趣的东西

Lost的作家在写电视剧本时都奉行一个很有趣的哲理,即人们每提出一个问题,都会再生成两个问题。这意味着要让玩家去质疑NPC,或至少去思考为何自己要去做某事。这会让玩家对NPC产生不同的想法,让他们看起来更有趣。这样,Jammers的小任务就没那么简单了:

“你得在Count来临之前杀死领头狼,必须如此!你在它的尸体中会找到一个戒指,把戒指拿给我,也许我可以给你更多金币。但也不要对此抱有太大指望。”

这种对话有点严厉,但却提出了问题。为何狼的尸首中有枚戒指?为什么Jammers如此渴望我们杀死领头狼?为何一介农夫会拥有这么多金币?这些问题与有趣的任务设计结合起来,会让玩家对Jammers的话产生兴趣,而不只是着眼于获得奖赏。奇怪的事情还没完。即便玩家对丰厚的报酬并不感兴趣,但你激发了他们的兴趣,并促使他们分析角色的对话内容,这就已经是一个了不起的胜利。

6.与时代脱节的语言——有时成事,有时坏事

如果你想了解如何在历史或奇幻场景中表达对话,观看《权力的游戏》等电视剧应该是个不错的选择。有许多年轻的作家,包括我自己,就犯过这种错误,频频使用thee和thou(即古英语中的you)等中世纪的写法。

不只是奇幻故事遇到这种问题,科幻故事也常受到电影《星际迷航》以及《Flash Gordon》系列科幻小说的影响。

《权力的游戏》、《星际大争霸》等影视作品可以让我们了解,没有必要使用华而不实的语言对话。

有时候使用语言满足玩家角色扮演的癖好,让他们感觉更为融入你所创造的游戏世界,不失为一种有趣的做法。但切忌令自己陷入语言老套的泥潭,最好使用富有活力而时髦的语言。

7.通过学习提高语言运用能力

只有不断阅读和持续写作,你才有可能提高自己的对话撰写能力。体验那些拥有出色对话的游戏,当然也是一种理解如何撰写有效对话的学习方法。

至于节省地运用语言,可以看看具有相似限制条件的作者所写的作品。人们通常易于忽略短故事作者,但他们却是最长于创造简洁对话的作家。海明威就是这方面的大师,契诃夫同样如此,此外还有不少当代作家也是擅长撰写对话的能手。

总之,要尽量多读书,无论是有趣还是无趣,过时还是现代的作品,一定要在大脑中充分酝酿后才能让这些语言出炉。

8.要记住95%的人玩过游戏一周后就不记得游戏中的对话

你一定要牢记,多数玩这款游戏的人不会记得你所撰写的内容。他们不会记得那些让团队中的人开怀大笑的台词,以及那句令角色焕发生命力的措辞。多数人玩游戏的人,并不会真的玩完游戏。他们不会做任何支线任务,不会阅读背景故事,还会以在乎你在撰写对话过程中投入多少时间。(本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译,拒绝任何不保留版权的转载,如需转载请联系:游戏邦

8 Key Principles of Writing Effective Game Dialogue

by Mark Slabinski

The following blog was, unless otherwise noted, independently written by a member of Gamasutra’s game development community. The thoughts and opinions expressed here are not necessarily those of Gamasutra or its parent company.

Want to write your own blog post on Gamasutra? It’s easy! Click here to get started. Your post could be featured on Gamasutra’s home page, right alongside our award-winning articles and news stories.

Writing can be one of the most brutal challenges in crafting an entertaining game.  You can sit in front of your laptop for 12 hours and pump out page after page of absolute drivel and feel like you’ve barely accomplished anything.  Writing dialogue is already challenging enough, but it’s even more difficult in an interactive space.  Writing in games in general is tricky business, but here are 10 things I’ve learned throughout my years that have stuck with me.  Some of these words were imparted on me by others in the industry, some are simply from my own observation and practice.

1. Concision -”The ability to simplify means to eliminate the unnecessary so that the necessary may speak.”

Has Hofman was onto something when he said that.  Concision is probably the absolute most important quality any writer, of any medium, can develop.  Verbosity kills, especially in this day and age where writing needs to be clear, concise, and interesting.  Dickens would not have survived long as a writer in the games industry, but Hemingway might have.

Think of a simple example, say, of an NPC asking you to kill some wolves for them.  It seems like some variation of this quest has appeared in every game in history, so let’s start off with a base example of terribleness:

“Hail, noble traveler.  Please, permit me to beseech your aid.  I am Jammers, a peasant in service to Count Argyle.  A pack of wolves have taken to my flock of prized sheep.  I intended to give one to the Count as a tribute for this year’s harvest festival.  If you kill 10 of them, I will reward you with 50 gold pieces.”

So much pointless information.  There are 62 words in the exchange above, you can get that down to half, or even a third.

“Traveler, help me!  Giant wolves have taken to my flock.  Kill 10 and I will give you 50 gold pieces.”

Much better.  In 20 words you’ve delivered every bit of relevant information the player needs to know what to do.  They need to kill some wolves to get the gold.  It’s not the most exciting sentence ever, but it gets the job done.  The essence of concision is understanding what you yourself are trying to say and helping you put it to paper.  Once you’ve sheared away all the fluff and gotten to the heart of what needs to be said, everything else is pie.

2. Character above all else

There was a rumor that Stanley Kubrick named every single character who showed up in his films, even if they only had a line or two or even no lines at all.  Naming them made them more real and allowed him to understand better how even these small pieces worked in the greater picture.  So it is with dialogue, even if their file name is only Peasant #7, the peasant needs to have some character to him.  Let’s call him Jammers.  Would Jammers be okay with these wolves killing his flock of sheep, destroying his livelihood, and likely condemning his family to death come winter?  Hell no, so he gets emotional.  He doesn’t just want you to kill these wolves, he wants to live out his revenge through you.

But let’s take this a step further.  Jammers is the only peasant  in the area who even has any lines, so let’s make him even more interesting.  He’s also known for his cowardliness, and miserly character, and his propensity towards theatricality.

His dialogue should be anything but static or clinical:

“Dear Gods, if ye’ve got any mercy in your soul, kill these wolves.  I’ll give you, eh, HALF of what I own, just, please, if they eat all of my flock my family won’t survive the winter!”

So here we have more a more emotional plea for help than before.  We’ve conveyed some more of his character, given the player exigence, told the players their task and reward, and we’ve done it all in only 37 words.  We could convey even more of his character if we wanted, but this should suffice for now.

3. The Treachery of Forced Lore

Special thanks to Jason Vandeberghe for searing this rule into my mind one year.  As brilliant as your intricate history of this fictional world is, as assured you are that you are the direct reincarnation of JRR Tolkien himself, very few people want to listen to a character soliloquize about how the Elder Dragon Prince destroyed the Elven Kingdom of Sif-Rús to recover the rings of power to blah de blah de blah, I’ve already mashed A button to get to the quest details.

Being forced to listen to lore is usually only a step up from listening to a professor with an over-inflated sense of gravitas give a lecture, people are going to fall asleep.  Players’ll either want to get to the more character centric parts, or to the parts that are immediately relevant to the main story.  Codex and lore writing, while a necessary and challenging part of writing for how it brings the world together, is ultimately best left optional.  Unless the history of the Elven Kingdom’s fall is a huge part of the story, don’t force it down the player’s throats.

This isn’t to say that lore is evil, it simply has its own special place in the world.  This sort of writing is almost always best left to either sidequests whose purpose is to flesh out lore, or to codex entries the player can access whenever they want.  Lore is an important part of any world, but the fact that you’re giving the players a choice is key.  Bioware is understands this concept perfectly, throwing huge swaths of information at you that you can completely ignore with no detriment to the game.  You never need to read the hundred codex entries in Dragon Age to understand what’s happening or why certain things are happening, but when they take a few minutes to explain the relationship between the templars and the Mages Circle, you know that it’s important.

Always remember that lore is like the garnish on a fine meal; it brings the whole dish together visually, but ultimately is nowhere near as important as the actual food.

4. Barks – the deadly art

Always be aware of the purpose of your barks.  Barks are those little bits of dialogue, those one sentence exclamations that characters will blurt out.  How many times have you been playing a game only to have the player character remark about how they would solve the puzzle you’re stuck on, or the enemies who just have to tell the world that they are reloading and need to take cover.  They’re not cinematic and they’re not scripted.  They could be the first thing a player hears in an open world, or they could possibly never hear it at all.

Bark writing is deceptively hard, and a key element of modern games.  Ambient dialogue can be a good way to tell players things they need to know, but it extends beyond that.  Barks are the game world’s way of speaking to the player and reacting to them.  Listening in on some guards while in stealth, passing by neutral NPCs, listening to enemies in a firefight, the bark is meant to give the player feedback while making the world feel like a living, responsive entity.

Barks are not a crutch to be used in place of visual storytelling; they serve a distinct and specialized purpose.

When it works, it works beautifully, but it can severely detract from the game when it doesn’t work.  Arkham City’s barks during the Catwoman levels and Dishonored’s 3 ambient barks stand out as particularly egregious moments of barks gone bad, the former for being overly sexist and awkward, the latter for lacking variety and largely being pointless.

It can be hard to write barks, as they follow all the constraints of normal dialogue, but with the added difficulty of requiring a huge amount of variety.  Writing 100 variations of “I’m going to kill you” to find the best 5 or 10 can be a brutal slog, but ultimately one that will lead to your having a more varied set of enemy barks.  It will force you to think of really what you want to say and why you want to say it.  Make a bark work for you.  Don’t just let the bark be what it is, have an implied meaning.

Patrick Redding, narrative designer for Far Cry 2, gave a wonderful talk on barks at GDC 2009, and indeed Far Cry 2 had a lot of really interesting barks in it.  One especially effective bark was able to convey three things at once: What the enemy was doing, that the enemies no longer knew where the player was (player was in stealth), and that they were afraid of the player.  Good barks avoided redundancy (which meant less time spent with voice actors in the studio, which meant more money saved), and always

Just be aware that even when you’re wearing full Daedric Armor enchanted with the souls of the damned, someone will still tell you to watch out for the mudcrabs by the lake.

5. The LOST school of creating interest out of nothing

Lost’s writers had a very interesting philosophy when it came to how they wrote their tv show, which was that for every question they answered, two more were asked.  Approached more broadly, this means making the players doubt the NPCs, or at the very least question why they would do something.  This makes the players think different thoughts about the NPCs, and makes them more interested.  Suddenly, Jammers’ little quest for us isn’t so simple.

“You must kill the pack leader before the count arrives, you must!  On his body you’ll find a ring.  Just bring it back to me and MAYBE I’ll give you a little more gold.  Don’t count on it though.”

A little heavy-handed, but it does ask questions.  Why was is there a ring on the body of the wolf?  Why did Jammers want us to kill the pack leader so much?  Why does a peasant even have this much gold?  This ties into interesting quest design and what makes players interested in listening to what Jammers has to say beyond the promise of fat loot and some gold.  Something weird is going on.  Even if the payoff isn’t the greatest thing ever, the fact that you piqued their interest and made them analyze what the character was saying is a victory.

6. Anachronistic Language – sometimes your friend, sometimes your enemy

Watching shows like Rome and Game of Thrones can be amazing if you want to figure out how to express dialogue in a historical or fantastical setting.  A lot of young writers, myself included, make the mistake of thinking that everything has to be thee and thou wilsts and “Of course, My Lord Liege, pray tell the news from the front carries favorable tidings.”  Again, it probably goes back to Tolkien, the veritable deluge of fantasy authors who copied him, and the general cliched of how people spoke in medieval Europe.  And this isn’t just limited to fantasy, science fiction suffers just as intensely from the legacy of Star Trek and old serialized science fiction like Flash Gordon.

What shows like Rome, Game of Thrones, and Battlestar Galactica can teach us about dialogue is that there’s no need to use any sort of flowery or unnatural sounding language.  There need to be some language quirks to set them apart (Sons of Dis, Frak, etc.) but so much more of it is in the actual delivery.  If your VAs can  deliver everything with just that right balance of conviction in what they’re saying and the fact that this is a fantastical world and so there needs to be enough for people to latch onto with suspension of disbelief.  Dylan Moran has a quote that sums this up pretty nicely:

“People love to hear words like that, they love to say stuff like that.  Makes them feel ten feet tall.”

So sometimes it’s fun to play around with language and give people a way to hear themselves speak whenever they really role play and pretend to be a part of this world you’ve created, but don’t let yourself get bogged down in a trite mire of antiquated speech.  Keep things moving and snappy, and save the eloquent soliloquy for the badass speech before the final boss.

7. Developing an economy of language through study

There’s no real way to do this except through constantly reading and constantly writing yourself.  Playing games with particularly effective dialogue is, of course, required in order to further your own understanding of how dialogue works.

For economy of language, read authors who are under similar constraints.  Short story authors tend to be neglected, but they are amongst some of the most brilliant at crafting masterfully concise dialogue.  Hemingway was a master of this, so was Chekhov, and plenty of contemporary writers are veritable masters of dialogue as well (George Saunders and Alice Munro spring to mind, as well as China Mieville’s short fiction).

I cannot stress enough the importance of keeping a wide and variegated internal library to draw upon.  Watching as much as you can, without regard for what’s cool or not cool or what’s antiquated or contemporary, all of it needs to simmer inside you brain before anything can come out.

8. Realizing that 95% of people won’t remember a thing you’ve written a week after playing.

Above all else, you must never forget that the majority of people who play this game won’t remember a damn thing you’ve written.  They won’t remember that snappy one liner that made everyone on the team laugh, or that amazing turn of phrase that just made that one character really come to life.  Most people, if they even decide to pick up your game, won’t even finish it.  They won’t do any of the sidequests, they won’t read any of the lore, they won’t care about any of the time you spent trying to make sure.  And that’s okay.(source:gamasutra


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