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Bridging the FAQ: Story and Brothers in Arms

Mike N

08.05.05

Prerequisite Wordy Introduction

This has definitely been a long time coming. Ever since Road to Hill 30 concluded and I started on Earned in Blood, I've been waiting to write this dev diary. Unfortunately (or fortunately depending on your outlook), I became so enraptured by the work we were doing on Earned in Blood I... well, I forgot. In the interim I've posted on the forums to answer the questions I could and try to steer people's perceptions toward what we are actually doing with EiB. This dev diary will serve to answer all the questions and points that have been brought up. For all intents and purposes this is an old-school FAQ that you would have downloaded on your dad's 33.6 modem while he was at work (it's a known fact anyone who had a 33.6 was hardcore.)

Onto the questions: (I get this one a lot.)

Why did you kill off Allen and Garnett!!1!? They were the best characters!!#@

I should preface this by saying that, in the writer's world, if I've managed to upset you enough that you type and swear at me in ASCII for killing off a character, I've done my job and I've done it well. I can't even keep up with the number of forum topics and discussions that revolve around the situation involving Allen, Garnett, and Leggett. Oh excuse me, where are my manners?

!SPOILER ALERT!

There, now no one will be surprised when I discuss integral plot points of Road to Hill 30 with reckless abandon. As I was saying:

I believe the greatest story success of Road to Hill 30 was developing a complex triangle with three ancillary characters that were outside of the main arc (being Baker's arch.) It's great to be at a company like Gearbox (horn toot in 3, 2, 1) and be able to have as much freedom as I've had with the story. We could have sat around with a chart of all the characters and had discussions about which ones are the most commercially viable, or which would make the best action figures, but we didn't. It was extremely important to me that two really likable characters were introduced in the first game, and killed off quickly - punctuated with a question mark. It took a little convincing to be so brash with our first game, but people supported me and, overall, the story. So we went with it.

Allen and Garnett

That's not to say you won't see them again; Earned in Blood takes place before and after the events of RtH30. Allen and Garnett are back for a few missions. Desola shows up, and of course Leggett and his situation get more light shed on them. (Did I just describe a man so broken that he fires a pistol at a tank to get it to notice him as, "his situation?")

What's up with Rivas?

This is more of a mixed bag. I can admit this was not a total success. From the start, we knew there was no way we would be able to get thirteen people's story arcs into the game (not without MGS levels of cut scenes). So, we started devising ways to develop the character outside of the game.

Well, we knew Penny Arcade was definitely going to do something Brothers in Arms related, but it wasn't decided yet. So, we flew Mike and Jerry up to Gearbox to check out the game and sit down for a meeting. We talked for a while about what we were about, and how we'd like them to help us tell our story. I told them about Rivas, and how he keeps a diary, and how I wanted that to be his voice. How I wanted it to be a soldier who speaks only in drawings and scribblings (and subsequently what happens to a soldier in war).

Rivas
Rivas

They agreed, and started sending me pages within a month and I was just blown away. I couldn?t believe how awesome it was turning out. I was on cloud nine. When they finally sent me the entire completed diary I was ready to marry the both of them, because they had really done something incredible for Brothers in Arms as a whole. The diary itself was a total success.

The problem was not everyone that played the game read it. The actual paper copies were given away as (awesome) preorder gifts, and after the game came out, it was available for free on the Ubisoft website. This did create a rift where gamers would load up Purple Heart Lane and see Rivas choke to death, but never know who he was. This was an oversight, but not one I regret too much. The most common complaint I get is "Rivas seemed really cool in the diary, why did he die without saying a !@#&* word?"

This is a testament to the talent of the Penny Arcade guys; they were able to develop a character in seven pages that gamers actually wanted to interact with in an entirely different medium. Who knows, maybe in the future we'll release some of Rivas's other writings and drawings through boot camp and onward to England. It's a wide open future.

Will Nine Days Earlier ever be released?

In one word.

No.

Next Question.

I kid. I kid, because I love. I will, of course, elaborate. Nine Days Earlier was conceptualized as the ultimate introduction to the world and characters of BiA. Baker would emerge from his tent, where his men were standing, and be able to enter all of their worlds before boarding the plane to Normandy. So I wrote the scene (and two subsequent rewrites) that I was really happy with. We recorded it and started implementing it. After Pat Krefting spent at least a month putting the scene together, I must have spent two weeks glued to his monitor trying to make this work, and we convinced ourselves it did. There was a problem though...

It was crap.

It was a noble goal and it hurt no one more in the entire universe than me to cut that scene. I lost sleep. I was having trouble focusing on the rest of the game. I mean, that cut me deep. But you know, there comes a time where you say:

Yup, that's still crap. Cut it.

The pacing was off. The voice acting was really sketchy. There wasn?t enough time to add a bunch more animations. The scene was a mess (albeit a pretty mess). The fan reaction wasn?t that surprising to me. On paper, it sounds like the perfect opening to the game and a truly creative and interesting way to introduce all those characters. But a dream can only carry you so far before it drops you on your face.

Shot from Nine Days Earlier

However, I have excellent news. We learned a ton. There were a lot of problems with voice acting and implementation of lines on RtH30 (none more so than Nine Days Earlier.) We probably cut two hundred lines from the story when all was said and done. That's a hell of a lot of dialogue.

So here's the good news. Ready? Not one single line or scene has been cut from Earned in Blood. We simply used our new found knowledge on the subject and attacked the problems differently. If there ever was a scene that didn't work, I'd go back and write it until it worked. Most of the time this resulted in adding dialogue into the game instead of subtracting. In one case, we added an entire chapter to the game to get a story point across.

So as for the tarmac, I promise you haven't seen the end of it. The beauty of our franchise is I can jump around in time as much as I need to tell the story (this is taken to awesome new heights in EiB). Further down the line, don't be surprised when you're standing on the tarmac again (and I promise this time you won't hear the voices of myself and Randy. Insert emoticon).

Can you see the future?

Yes I can, and it's looking extremely good. I can sleep well at night, knowing that the biggest complaint for the first game with respect to the story was people wanted even more. This is a complaint I am always glad to oblige. Our gamers want to spend more time getting to know these characters and I've been bending over backwards to make this happen for EiB, and especially for the future of BiA. We're committed to this story and we will see it through. I can't wait to talk more about this, but a team of samurai monkeys could be dispatched to kill me for saying too much... and to be fair I could take maybe three on by myself, but definitely not a team of samurai monkeys. That's just crazy talk.