AMA: Q&A with Obsidian Entertainment's Carrie Patel

[Music] good afternoon everyone welcome to day two of gdc showcase i'm brian francis a contributing editor at gamma suture.com and maker of things here at gdc uh today's super special guest for our ask me anything session is obsidian entertainment's carrie patel carrie would you please introduce yourself hey bryant uh thanks a bunch for having me it's really great to be talking to you today my name is carrie patel and as bryant said i work at obsidian entertainment where i am a game director and a senior narrative designer i joined the company in 2013 to write for pillars of eternity wrote for the white march expansions i was co-narrative lead on pillars of eternity to dead fire then i went on to write for the outer worlds and i directed our first expansion for that game parallel on gorgon and i'm currently directing an upcoming title from obsidian so again great to see everybody here today awesome i have played a lot of those games and i have really enjoyed my time with them but let's get the show on the road

you've got questions she's got answers i'm just the rando in the middle who can relay questions from a to b go ahead and start submitting your questions via the question tab in swap cards chat function are you tired of hearing the word question yet um you can ask questions about carrie's work on the outer worlds or pillars of eternity or just her work as a writer narrative designer and game director in general y'all have already put some good questions in chat let's do this okay and that's the point where i scroll over and go grab the questions that i've been looking at um uh i really enjoyed this question so i want to start with this one from lake watkins uh lake watson says hi carrie thanks for the ama they are curious what tools or techniques you use for player modeling in your games do you identify players psychographics or use some other approach i actually knew obsidian has a decent model for this so i was i wanted to throw this one up top uh because it was pretty sophisticated by which you mean like who we think the player who we think the player is trying to play in the game i think like identifying different

player types you know like explorers story nerds combat nerds like like that's that's a very shorthand rough example i would use but yeah i think that's where the question's going yeah so i for that i think it the first question is what kind of game are you making and what are the fundamental design pillars of that game um you know and that is sort of the first uh filter for you know what kind of player base what kind of player type you're really trying to serve you know for a lot of the games like we're mostly known for rpgs with a lot of story and a lot of reactivity and a lot of player freedom so our model for a lot of those types of games is a lot of tabletop role-playing games so you know we we try to we look at the things that players seem to get the most out of that like they they get a lot of character interaction um they get the sense of a really big reactive world to explore that gives them lots of options for how to solve problems lots of tools that they can use um and again a high degree of reactivity to how they use those tools meaningful and interesting characters to

interact with you know and so i think a lot of the the player types we assume like we know there are people who want to go fight things we know there are players who want to explore and immerse themselves in a really deep well-realized reactive world and we know there are players who really care about story and character and companions and they want to get to know everybody in the world talk to everybody um so you know knowing that those are i think kind of the three the three um big content draws of our games we try to set them up in such a way that players can approach that content in whatever way and with whatever focus we want tremaine williams tremaine thank you so much for hanging out with the showcase i've seen you in a bunch of chats just wanted to give you a shout out tremaine williams wants to know when building an open world game how do you determine how big is too big how do you deal with dead space between points of interest oh man um there i mean there are a lot of ways we can do this it's uh you know obviously an interesting environment for the player to traverse um you know combat encounters in between

banter with your companions um you know but sometimes a little bit of dead space is okay like if the player is always moving from one encounter to the next you know from one bit of banter to the next um there's not really a moment to just sort of slow down and appreciate kind and also anticipate where you're headed um and i think this is where just like play testing and again understanding like what is the what is the pace of the experience you're trying to offer is really important um you know because again you you do want a little bit of quiet space like some of the most you know fun i've had in in the witcher 3 and in games like breath of the wild is just sort of getting from one point to the next and kind of having this goal in mind if i see something in the distance i want to get there and i know it's going to take me a little bit of time to get there and i'll run into a few surprises but because i am interested in this world and i don't know what i'm going to find next the process of getting there is fun right on our next question comes from katie setoff katie would like to know as a narrative designer do you ever run into trade-offs

between storytelling and engineering limitations if so how do you balance those concerns yeah i mean i think engineering limitations uh you know i think that's an issue for just about um every design department um and fundamentally you always have to i think you do have to start from the perspective of what is possible and what to like what are the tools i have uh you know my disposal and what are the constraints that i have to abide by rather than saying let me just do what i want and make it someone else's problem to make it work um so i mean you know again this could be that this uh can relate to how how often or how many cutscenes you can use um you know sort of the graphical fidelity of conversations um and i mean honestly there are a lot of gameplay constraints as well that play into this like are you playing a game where you can kill every npc because if so that's something that you have to adjust for in the way you tell stories and the alternate avenues you offer to players um is this a game where we are going to automatically pull players into

any conversation they encounter or do we allow players to opt in again in which case um you know you have to uh have to think about how those players are going to get have a good experience even if it's not necessarily the golden path experience that you are primarily designing around so i mean i think yes engineering limitations um can be a bit of an issue but i i think the bigger thing to think about for narrative and again for any design department is just um what is the level of freedom you're offering players um you know what sort of gameplay tools do we have as designers and are we offering players just to make sure that the experience that you're trying to set up actually plays well with the game that you're making right on um kirsty logan fowler is asking a question that i would consider one of the most loaded questions i hear from narrative folks but we're gonna go for it what kind of structure do you use hero's journey three act structure five act structure and does it differ between games and different types of games i just heard a bunch of knives being unchief somewhere

yeah i i'm not really i don't know i'm not a huge believer in any one of those structures being like the right way to tell stories the right way to tell game stories um i the way i look at tools like that is if it is a useful framework for you to think in and for you to think about story and pacing and escalation and character arcs then go ahead and use it um but i think that you know when you get into writing a um writing a story to fit a formula rather than using a framework to help you create and pace your story i think you're putting the cart before the horse we do tend to write a lot of our uh story overviews and our story briefs with three act structure i've definitely done that and i've seen a number of other people at obsidian use three or even five act structure but again it's it's less about saying oh we have to follow this very rigid formula around our acts um and more just let's think about the

kind of the phases and the developments and the major beats that players are going to go through and you know how that what what environment is the player in now what are the big problems in front of them kind of what are we trying to pull them towards um at each of these different phases of the story um and again with with a with a more open world game with something where you're offering players lots of freedom and what they do and how they explore again you have to keep in mind they may not follow the story beats um the way you are intending them to uh so again you cannot you can't necessarily engineer the perfect three-act structure for like every player who goes through prim to get to new vegas and also every player who fights through you know the death claws on the other side to get there um but you do have to understand that players may choose that other experience and they still expect to have a good time even if they understand that they're you know in it by choice skipping out on some of the other content you've laid in front of them

um i'm gonna roll two questions together noah denny asks how would you suggest a high school student to get a career in the video game industry connor mcclaskey is also asking what is the number one mistake you see beginners who want to get into a narrative design career make those are both kind of career study questions i figured i would throw them both in the pool at once so you could formulate uh the answer that you see covers that topic yeah i'd say um for getting into the games industry however you can which isn't super helpful um you know it's and the thing is this is we're such a young industry and we're it is developing so quickly that you know even though i joined a little more than seven years ago um you know my experience was i applied to an online opening uh you know interviewed did a narrative test and got the job um and you know that that is certainly not how many of my colleagues have gotten in um many people have you know gotten in through other studios where they you know they garnered other experience or you know if they wanted to get into

narrative design or or a different role they they may be started in something else like you know qa is a common entry point for a lot of people but you can honestly like if you can get into another design role that's often one of the most narrative adjacent if you want to get some of that experience um you know so i think um understand you know which of those roles you're targeting but be open to be open to adjacent roles um that may still allow you to get more experience um and and also allow you to show that you are a a capable person who can who can learn and address challenges as they come at you um because that you know it's obviously very important um as far as mistakes uh i think one thing is just not honing not honing writing fundamentals enough um like i think fortunately you know we're we're getting to a point where game narrative and narrative design is you know becoming enough of an

established discipline that you don't hear as much anymore like oh well it's good enough for games like you know no we we expect quality um and so you know honestly just basic sentence level you know being able to write strong error-free dialogue that is mechanically correct um that conveys a sense of character um that that implies things without over explaining them um and also honestly that gives players well for an rpg in particular that gives players sort of hooks to to um establish their own role and involvement around like you know the least interesting conversations in a lot of rpgs are the ones where an npc is telling you their their very detailed backstory and your options are basically uh-huh listen go on yes you know um the more interesting ones i think of like improv where as a player you're presented with a scenario or confrontation or you know a question of some kind and you are interacting with this other npc um and you're sort of expressing

yourself as a character in this world through your interaction with them gotcha uh the when you brought up that example of the character reading backstory and you're and the only examples are telling more i thought of that uh um that uh my dinner with andre interactive game joke from the simpsons from like the 90s or something and how they beat telltale it's just that format anyway that's 2d is a joke um jung shang lin would like to know in the outer worlds is there any notable difference in terms of your approach to narrative design compared to uh pillars of eternity one and two um yes so and and some of this may be a little maybe fairly micro i mean one big thing is in the pillars games you know those were uh top-down isometric games where you were very zoomed out from the player or from from the the characters on the screen and so you know that definitely limited what we could show happening on screen um but it and it also meant that we had a bit more freedom to use descriptive prose to describe someone's gesture expression

describe kind of what they're doing within like a believable sort of bubble around them um with the outer worlds you know obviously we want to you know write dialogue and then use um you know gestures and facial animations to show those shifts in emotion and to show characters actually doing things in the world um which you know in some ways and maybe this is also because you know i come from a background writing novels and short stories i did really miss that ability to write descriptive prose and to let that do some of you know some of the storytelling heavy lifting and also just some of the handle some of the emotional beats um you know someone who is saying one thing but emoting another um because that's obviously very hard to do um you know even with very you know unless you're uh you know performance capturing everything um so that was one big difference um and i think the other was just sort of the understanding obviously of who the player is and what what sort of range of characterizations

we're letting them embody in the world um again pillars drawing a bit more from tabletop we try to widen that range a bit and we say you know you are the watcher and this is the context for which you have unique insight and abilities in this world and you know why you can help people solve these problems that they have um but you know again trying to follow that tabletop formula we have a variety of dispositions and a variety of uh you know skills and so we want to make sure that however you are sort of building yourself accordingly that you feel you can express that character um for the outer worlds we still wanted to take a pretty light touch in terms of assuming who the player character is um you know as as an outsider um they don't actually have a role you know like the watcher um that gives them a a really really unique skill set except that they are an outsider to a world um where they can sort of see the absurdity of it just because they are not of it um but yeah you know our kind of the one

of the big models for who the player character is in that world was mal reynolds from firefly you know the idea of someone who's um not a saint not a villain um someone with sort of a a morally gray spectrum who can you know embody either end or you know some range in between as the player wants to um ellen ducarpe asks one of my favorite questions in here which is uh as a narrative designer how much say do you have in things like item and weapon descriptions or anything that could be considered systemic that adds to the narrative as a whole so at obsidian we do try to you know and this is different at every studio i should also say that at obsidian narrative designers and writers are the same role many studios separate them out we do not we try to integrate a narrative pretty early in our process because you know again it's it's really just about making sure that we have a a world that feels cohesive and you know a story that feels

reflective of the game the player is actually playing um so you know narrative designers will tend to have a lot more um a lot more authorial control over anything that is like a quest item or you know obviously a note or a readable in world um we aren't always quite as closely involved with you know things like weapon descriptions um especially the stuff that is a bit more systemic that's that's the kind of thing where it honestly just sort of depends on on your staffing where you might have your narrative designers do a pass on that stuff later but because it is a bit less um a bit less closely tied to quest content that the player is likely to be playing it's not quite as necessary to have a really detailed writing pass on you know this particular sword um i'm going to go to a question from joshua garcia-sheridan who wants to was kind of asking about pavardi from the outer worlds um uh their question is what sort of pitch was presented for the inclusion of

an asexual character in the outer worlds were there any arguments conducted in the course of that quotation i know that writing belongs to a couple other writers on the team but if there's anything you'd like to throw in about like you know obsidian deciding to add an asexual character to the game um and also in the context of for those who don't know that this character does have a full romance arc um even though they're asexual which is um that seems totally obvious if you're familiar with asexuality but i can see why that's not obvious at first blush yeah so um parvati was written by chris letwall and kate dollar hyde who did an incredible job with her also got a little bit of supporting writing from natai padar um she was concepted before i joined the outer worlds um but i mean you know we i i think we're where that character started is just wanting to to give her a very a very authentic and sort of emotionally resonant experience you know because parvati's arc is about um you know she's from this small town and she you know she gets out of edgewater and gets to finally see the rest of the

galaxy and part of what makes her so interesting is that she's she's so kind and pure and good in a world that is corrupt and cruel and nasty and there's this you know i certainly you know when i first uh played those early builds i was like well how is this character going to react you know when she gets out there and also how do we make her how do we make her feel like she is part of the same world um when she is so clearly different from it so you know i think just giving her a story and a quest um that you know related to her sort of embracing and accepting more of who she is um that led her to you know an authentic and emotionally fulfilling relationship again even in a world that does not seem to place a lot of value on those um you know i don't i don't recall uh i don't recall any any specific discussion about like you know her as an asexual character you know it's like oh should we no it's like

this is who the character is and this is the story we're telling about her um and so we just want to tell it well um getting off topic from uh world's characters um stephen marasola would like to know um how do you handle or deal with writer's block if you or anyone on the writing team has experienced it during development well so one thing sometimes honestly it helps just to move on to a different task or a different piece of content if you can i don't have a tendency to try to you know kind of bang my head against a wall trying to solve one problem um when sometimes the best thing to do is just step back from it and let those details marinate in the back of your mind as you're doing something else another technique i like to use especially if i really do need to get some quest or character writing done is even if i'm having writer's block around you know who that character is what makes the conversation with the player character interesting and engaging i generally at least know how and where the conversation begins

and where we need to get the player by the end of it and so sometimes i like to do something that i think of as a rough pass which is it's you know it's not it's not purely placeholder text as in you know sanjar says this or sanjar tells player to go here it's um you know it's it's just sort of it's something between that and you know an actual invoice writing pass and it's just it's kind of it's what other writers i think talk about when they say turning off your inner editor where it's like this doesn't have to be good this doesn't have to be final this just has to let me explore a way to get from a to b um without worrying that i'm setting anything in stone and without worrying that this is what you know people are going to review in another week and sometimes honestly just getting that structure out there lets me return to it later and then see oh well here's some clear beats and arcs and moments that are happening you know even in this you know roughed out version that i can build on and have fun with or oh okay well now that the work of sort

of structuring this out at a high level is done now i feel like i have a bit more room to think and play with what makes it fun gotcha um phillip anichik would like to know when a concept of a game is created at the very beginning before or during pre-production um what questions do you usually need answered to establish the pillars or main points for the core game idea i mean i mean i guess it's you know what kind of what kind of i guess the biggest question is what is the experience that you want players to have like you know what is what is your elevator pitch of this is why you're gonna play the game and this is this is the promise of what we're offering with it um i feel like you almost you start with the very s the very focus well the very high level stuff and you sort of build out as you go down so you have that experience um and you know then you say okay well you know they're they're basic things like okay

well what what platforms are we offering this on you know what's what's kind of the genre is this an rpg is this an action is this somewhere in between um you know what kind of setting is this is this sci-fi is this fantasy is this you know an existing ip um and you know kind of as you build out those questions you're also thinking about i think the pillars are one of the things that should come very early in the process um because you know your pillars are the design goals and elements that support that basic experience um and you know you may you may sort of massage how you frame them how you word them um and as you're you know sort of building out the specifications of the game you may need to take a couple checkpoints and say like okay are these specifications you know are these um these different features that we want to invest in is this still reflective of the core experience and the pillars that we are saying support that core experience that answer the question uh you'd have to ask them unfortunately they

aren't in the call with us so we're gonna move on anyway we've only got about a little over five minutes left folks so i just wanted to uh you know we're gonna get a couple more questions in um uh we're gonna burn through as many as we can before we go i also want to remind you that you should stick around there's so much more great free sessions coming your way i'm super excited um the gdc podcast is going to be recording live later on um and they're going to be recording with derek you uh creator of spelunky and spelunky too so uh carrie before we go if they've got more questions for you where should they send them where can they find you or obsidian in general sure literally but like on the internet right right um you can find me on twitter at carrie underscore patel um and you can also find obsidian on twitter at obsidian adam sydney gotcha okay uh questions until the end um what would you say is unique for the medium when it comes to writing as opposed to traditional prose fiction i love that question because you mentioned you've done prose writing as well that comes from peter varka

so i think and again this sort of varies depending on i you know my game experience has been on rpgs and on rpgs specifically that offer the player a pretty wide latitude in who they are in the world so with that in mind um i think the biggest the biggest difference is just understanding who the protagonist is you know in a in a novel or any other piece of prose fiction obviously you have um a very carefully choreographed arc that you're sending that main character on you know the beats they're gonna hit you know how they're going to react to them and you were telling a story around that when you are writing an rpg like pillars of eternity or like the outer worlds you have beats that you know the player is going to hit but you want to offer the players some room in expressing how they feel about those beats and how they want to react to them um and so there's it's actually pretty exciting like it's a lot of fun to look at a particular moment and think well this is how i feel about it but how might someone else feel about it

and you know what what touch points and what thematic reflections can we offer um elsewhere in the game to just sort of prepare the player for this moment and give them a new context in which to think about it gotcha um i love this question from uh ziyad al badrawi um i'm going to tweak it slightly but they out i just want to say i really like it um zab wants to know how do you go about constructing a narrative do you start with an idea a question a theme etc is there a different process you go through for me a big part of that question i guess is like what inspires you as a writer like what gets you like energizing what where do those good ideas and good story moments come from for you gosh um man they can come from a lot of things like i i do think it's important you know as as a writer honestly as as a designer of any kind in games as a as a creator in any kind of media um to consume widely you know don't just play games also read books and watch movies and don't just you know play the genre you make like try other things as well um i do think

it's important to you know kind of get outside of a very narrow lane and you know draw inspiration from and experience kind of the variety and the options that um other media and other genres offer you um you know i get inspired by uh by great characters and by really evocative settings um and so you know for me finding finding works of fiction that offer me those things um kind of you know keeps me creatively engaged um gotcha we're gonna close out with our last question for the day coming from christy logan fowler um kind of going to springboard off of our discussion about pavardi from earlier kirsty logan fowler is asking how do you approach uh diversity and representation in your writing um you know trying to trying to be as inclusive as we can about you know who who the player is who the player might be and the world that you know that we're setting our story in um you know i think uh you know

be inclusive and also i think obviously you know getting outside of tropes getting outside of stereotypes i i think just being very mindful about um what your first impulse is and then asking well why is it this you know it's um you know if you're if your first thought is well you know the knight character is obviously this guy you know who you know looks like this it's like well but why you know it's it's not that we can't have that character in there it's not that he can't be a knight but it's just you know is that popping into my head for the you know is that the first thing popping into my head because there's some real meat there or is it just because that's the first place my brain went because it's a thing i've seen a dozen times and what i'm really doing is just sort of riffing off of a very you know commonly seen uh trope and example so again i think be mindful dig deeper um be compassionate with the characters you write and the stories you tell it doesn't mean everybody has to have an

every and you know everybody has to have a happy ending but it does mean that we treat our characters in their stories with respect and gravity and emotional nuance roger that uh we're going to do we'll read to a rapid exit but that's it for today thank you all so much uh for joining us stick around there's more great stuff carrie thank you can't wait to see what's next for you in obsidian thank you bye everyone