Word Choice - How to Handle Exposition in Games - Extra Credits

All right, so this week we're back to the subject of exposition. Like we said before, most of you probably learned a lot of this stuff in high school, but we're going to put it in the context of games because writing for games often presents us with some pretty unique challenges. We're going to focus this episode specifically on word choice and simple literary techniques that'll help us get the most out of our exposition because games generally lend us a very limited amount of space to deliver dialogue. First, let's talk about characterization. Characterization's probably the easiest thing to understand in a broad sense, but the hardest to give specific tips on. Perhaps a good example is the difference between Portal and Quantum Conundrum. Sure, Quantum Conundrum had some issues with its physics puzzles and such, but when it comes down to it, the reason that that game will never get the love that Portal does is because Fitzwilliam Quadrilateral is no GLaDOS. And this all comes down to an understanding of the character and the way that understanding is translated into the words they say. Both of these characters are experienced primarily through dialogue. They are almost entirely presented to us through the words they say. So, how come one

resonates so much more than the other? Well, very few of Fitz's lines serve to do anything other than to deliver information. Fitz says lines like, That cylinder is an IBS battery and it powers dimensional shifts. Toss it into the large receptacle mounted on the wall over there on the second story. Now, GLaDOS is often giving you instructions, too, but her lines simultaneously give you a sense of the world you found yourself in as well as an understanding of her own Schadenfreude and insanity. Any contact with the chamber floor will result in an unsatisfactory mark on your official testing record followed by death. As a writer, the difference is in how well you know the character and how well you know what needs to be conveyed. Ezio Auditore saying, Requiescat in pace. after every kill or EVEN COLE TRAIN'S WOW! HELPS THE PLAYER to understand those characters just a little bit better. Who they are, what's important to them. That's what gets us invested in them. It's what makes us like them. But try not to limit yourself to catchphrases and accents. That alone will still leave you with props, generic animated mannequins rather than human beings. Instead, think about why your character would pick up such affectations in the

first place and what that means about them as a person as a whole. Figure out exactly who your character is, what their quirks are, what makes them unique. Then, rather than wasting more words to convey that information, put it in the tone of your dialogue. Conveying personality through verbiage, how a character phrases things, will tell us more than all the weepy backstory exposition in the world. Backstory can't live without character, but characters can be vibrant without a ton of backstory. After all, investment in the characters is the only reason we care about the backstory in the first place. So, prioritize character and then figure out how much backstory you actually need. All right, so, know your characters, know their quirks, and make sure their personality is clearly conveyed through their dialogue even if they're simply delivering the player instructions. Enough on that, moving on. The second thing we want to talk about, this idea of word choice, is perhaps easier to give concrete suggestions about but harder to talk about as a generalized whole, but we'll try. Even if two sets of words might seem on the surface to have the same meaning in a literal dictionary sense, there's so much conveyed in the relation of words, their meaning in relation to your sentences as a whole, that two seemingly identical phrases can have a radically different impact on your viewer. Uh for

example, "To be or not to be, that is the question" has a very different impact on the listener than "Ayo dog, I was thinking about whether I should off myself." These phrases might mean the same thing on the simplest mechanical level, but the viewer is going to perceive them very differently. So, what do we need to think about regarding word choice for our games? More than just beauty or lyrical quality, word choice allows us to kick the viewer in the brain, to say to our player, "This is important. Listen. Care." There are a number of minor techniques we can use to make a sentence stand out, draw the player out of simply passively playing, and instead make their brain actively engaged with the narrative. Perhaps the simplest of these techniques is repetition. It sounds silly, but simply by repeating a word or phrase, we can highlight its importance and have it be the part that sticks in the player's mind, the part that we force them to think about. It works for the choruses of songs, and it works for games. Remember that famous Fallout line, "War never changes." The actual phrase from the game is War. War never changes. In that intro sequence, they say the word war seven times and repeat the phrase war never changes again about halfway through as a transition as their tie between talking about the past and talking about the game world future. Or

how about Andrew Ryan's A man chooses. A slave obeys. He says that phrase four times in the two minutes you're talking to him, throwing in the words man and slave another half dozen times on top of that. This sort of kick to the brain is vital as it clues the player in that this isn't just dressed up exposition, nor is it some moving the story forward plot device, but something that really needs to be thought about. This is doubly important as we, the gaming audience, haven't yet been acclimatized to the idea that one should be watching, reading, or listening as closely to a game as one might a film or a book. But the writer has to be careful because poor use of repetition can easily feel stayed and clumsy or worse still sound like a bad translation. Make sure you use your key phrases judiciously, repeating them for impact. The best way to tell if you're doing this correctly is just to test. Get some people together, read the lines to them, see how they feel. Remember, like the rest of game development, writing should also be a process of testing and iterating. Don't let people change your vision, but let them help you know when that vision's not coming through. But let's talk about another technique, bookending. When you begin and end with something, whether it be a location or a

phrase, it forces the audience to reflect. Because of all the context gained in the intervening time, it makes us reconsider the phrase, image, or scene that we started off with. The Final Fantasy series likes to do this a lot. Look at the return to Zanarkand and Final Fantasy 10's opening sequence. You see it before the story begins and then again when you reach that scene chronologically. It's not at the end of the game, of course, but it still achieves the bookending effect. Or we could talk about Silent Hill 2's letter reading, one of the most famous examples of bookending in games. If you want to get a player to think about the transformed meaning of something, this is an excellent technique. Next, I want to talk about dissonant juxtaposition. When you place two things side by side, they provide context for each other. When that context appears to be contradictory, it creates a mental dissonance that the audience has to resolve. It forces us to stop and think. Phrases like A Clockwork Orange or Rippling Walls serve this purpose. The actually has a number of good examples of word choice if you're looking for examples. So long as meaning inheres in this juxtaposition, it'll not only give you a cool phrase, but also force the player to pause and process what you're trying to say. We could go for episodes listing off techniques like this. We've only described the tiniest fraction of

writing techniques games can employ, but hopefully this gives you a springboard to start digging even further into how to say more with your games and how to get your players to notice. If I have one final suggestion to offer, it's this: Read your lines aloud with a friend. I have seen far too many professional developers who never play act through their scenes, never read their lines aloud, never see how they flow live before it's time to record them with voice actors. Don't make that mistake. Live your characters, get into their heads, take on their personas and try to act like them. What would they really say in this situation? What would they say to the specific person they're talking to? Grabbing some people and acting these things out will help you immensely. You'll be able to feel it the moment something rings untrue. I hope that helps. We'll see you next week.