Crysis 2 Interview
With Writer Richard Morgan
FarCry and Crysis earned Crytek a solid reputation as a developer that continually raises the bar in terms of tech-driven visuals. And while many fondly recall those titles' richly detailed jungle settings as graphical high-points in gaming, you don't hear them talking much about either games' story. Crytek is well aware that in the past, their storytelling skills haven't been quite up to par with their CryENGINE-powered presentations and dynamic gameplay, but they're hoping to change all that with Crysis 2. To ensure their sequel's narrative is as compelling as its firefights, they've brought on sci-fi novelist Richard Morgan. We recently caught up with the famed British author to discuss his work on Crysis 2, the challenges of writing a game versus a novel, and why The Suffering is the greatest game of all time.
AtomicGamer: Can you talk about your creative process on Crysis 2? Is its story evolving and changing much during the development cycle or do you stick pretty close to an original draft?
Richard Morgan: It really has to change. The narrative is an important part of the game, but it's got to support the game. As the lead writer, I can't just be like “That's the story! I don't care about the levels!” That's not going to work, unless you want to make a bad game. You begin with what you'll roughly think it'll look like, and then go from there. Rather than writing a story, I feel like I'm more creating a fictional web. In gameplay meetings, it always comes down to the question of “Will the fiction support this?” If it doesn't, then it's usually easier, due to time, money and resources, to change the fiction than the level build. But you can do this, because fiction is malleable. As long as you have a good core story, remixing it, like a good song, won't break it. If your core fiction is strong, you can re-rig some of it and its webbing will take the strain. This is not always the case; very occasionally something has to give, and it is the game rather than the fiction. But mostly it is the other way around. But yes, right up to the final build it is always a work in progress.
AG: I'd imagine after writing lengthy novels it must be rather constraining to write a game. Did you find that challenging?
RM: I spend an awfully lot of my time trimming my dialog. In a way, though, it's quite nice; if you write a lengthy sequence for a cinematic, and half of it needs to be trimmed, you may have good dialog left over to use later in another part of the game; polish and change it a little bit, and you may have something you can use for in-game dialog. Again, if the fiction is strong and what you're writing is personal to that fiction, then it becomes multi-pluggable; just because you come up with it for one spot doesn't mean you can't use it elsewhere. Or sometimes, with editing, it can be used during a level load or even as NPC chatter.
AG: First-person shooters usually want the player to feel like the character, leaving little room to flesh out the protagonist's story. How did you approach this challenge?
RM: Since the character isn't able to say anything, it actually makes it easier than you might think. You have to reflect most of the expressible stuff out onto the NPCs, which means they gather weight, depth and character, and reflect back to you. What the NPCs say to you should have a pretty significant emotional impact in order to develop your character. Of course, how much your character is developed also depends on how much the player is paying attention. Also, the way I've designed the story for Crysis 2, the circumstances of the player character are such that his personality and back-story are the least of his concerns. Generally, I don't think this presents a problem if you keep in mind when you're writing that all the stuff you want to express needs to come from other characters, not the protagonist. It was a big change for me, though, as my novels are usually very driven by the protagonist. So in that way it is challenging, but also fun to pick up some new tricks.
AG: Are you very critical of other games' stories?
RM: Well, I have a strong personal hatred of dialog trees; until the technology comes where you actually talk to the NPCs, well, forget it. In games I look for an intuitive space and a compelling narrative. A game like F.E.A.R. really works for me, as it's very headlong, giving little time to hang about, and the gameplay is incredibly fluid. It had this compulsion, hurrying you forward the whole time. It also had some great A.I. A very different game series, Uncharted, also has this narrative funnel where you're being hurried along, and there's this very fluid sense of how you interact with the world. But yes, generally if the gameplay is dynamic and adrenaline filled, and the narrative compelling and rushes you forward, them I'm happy.
AG: Any particular game you feel did an especially good job telling its story?
RM: The Suffering was a game I feel did not get the attention it deserved...it was a little blip on the screen. But for me, in terms of what gaming can do for storytelling as an art, I'm still yet to see that bettered; that's still the best videogame I've ever played, the first Suffering, the second one they kind of dumbed it down with the morality meter. For me, when I played the first one, though, it was this epiphany where I thought “Oh my God, you could not do this in a novel or a movie.” The gravitas that game carried in terms of addressing the iniquities of the American penal system, how society molds people...all that stuff was there just as in a high quality Stephen King novel or a well made Scorsese movie. There was just this dynamic in it that you can't have in text fiction. I've still not seen anything that comes close to it.
Thanks to Richard Morgan and the team at Crytek for the chance to find out more info behind their big bad FPS sequel. Crysis 2 is set for release this fall on PC, PS3, and Xbox 360.
