Narrative Design
North Dash
"Dashquest (previous name of NorthDash) is an action game which can't support a heavy narration with many dialogues and narrative interactions. However, it was important to bring an narrative aspect which could light the player's curiosity and create a dynamic, fun but also deep and intriguing experience.
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That's why when the player begins it's adventure, he knows nothing about his objectives, except surviving, it's by progressing in the game and interacting with the merchant, the only friendly character, that he can find the different piece of the puzzle. Who he is? What this world is? What happened here ? This puzzle has to be complex to fully understant, but need to be optionnal to enjoy the game."
Production d'un niveau
The level design was led by the desire to bring narrative elements to the player and create identities to every rooms. As level and narrative designer, my role was to design the blockouts and to include the narrative environmental elements in each level to make our world coherent. Then, the artists create the final version of the level.
Blockout : Elite room 2.
We can see 2 dead Giants who killed each other. One tried to defend the temple behind him (now fallen into ruins). There is a huge anchor stuck in the land.
What happened to these Giants? To this world?
Final version: The initial intention led the artists to build the level. The player's path is already decided on the blockout and set with the node at last.
When the final version of the level is over, I add the final touch: the node balancing. Each rooms includes nodes which define the specific events and the number and difficulty of fights. These nodes are also responsible of the player's path through the level. I can create different path to create many levels from one environment.
The player's path is defined by the location of the node. He moves from node to node.
The nodes define the parameters of the fights. Up to 4 enemies can appear during a fight. We can also choose the type of enemy.
Variété de niveaux
There are some type of rooms: Combat, Elite, Event, Merchant and Boss. These types include their own specific features. One of my role was to create the room variety by designing new features and environment.
The Battle Room, Elite Room, and Boss Room include fights. Elite rooms are more difficult, but a reward chest awaits the player. The boss is the final step to reach the end of the level.
The player can buy items when he crosses one of the merchant's rooms.
Event halls have specific characteristics. For example, here the player can choose to bribe enemies or fight them. But they are much stronger than the other enemies and the player risks to be defeated.
The distribution of the rooms on the map allows the player to choose his path. It's set randomly, but we control the spawn rate of room types in each row of rooms.
Even though a lot of rooms and blockouts were made, the short production time didn't allow us to put all the rooms in the game. In fact, only half of them could be integrated.
Tutoriel
I was in charge of the tutorial which means two things: introduce the player to our universe and teach him how to play without breaking the immersion.
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The game is about dead viking (Einherjar) who crosses a Valhalla, the dead warrior's paradise, devastated by Ragnarök, the end of the world. The tutorial followes a Viking warrior into battle who finally dies and reaches Valhalla, the place where the game takes place.
"This battle will never end ... It is not the time to be weak, I have to get back to the fight!"
Hold to guard!
Swipe to attack!
Tap on an enemy to launch a projectile!
"A Berserker! He's way too strong for me..But if I have to die, it will be with glory! For Odin!"
"Is this ... me? My body? Does it means that..I'm dead?"
"This light..this door ... what is ..."
I was the designer of the tutorial, which involves the production of a document that explains in detail the scenes and the intentions. Then the artists made the level based on these instructions.
Tutorial design document (French only)
Ecriture
From Oneiros, the land of dreams ...
My main role was to create a coherent universe from the experience we wanted to propose to the player. From my proposals, the artists would create the shapes of our world. I wrote more than ten concepts. We decided to start on Oeneros, the land of dreams. In that concept, the player didn't die when he loses, but just wake up and the beginning of the level. He's not fighting dead vikings but nightmares. Each level of the game would be very different in their appearance and more and more fantastique (to sink into the dream).
A lot of reaserches of the theory of dreams were done to create a coherent world.
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Then, to inspire the artists about the themes of the different levels, I wrote many player's stories in many fantastic universes. By created and writing these worlds, the artists could imagine visual representations. The artists chose among these 24 stories to create the biomes of the levels.
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Example : the islands of nowhere.
"In front of the player, there was nothing. The sand flowed like a waterfall in the void for miles on either side. In front of him, huge rocks were floating in the sky, linked together by footbridges. Once on the footbridge, the adventurer glanced down to the bottom. The ground doesn't seem to exist, a fall promises to be endless. He then evolves through these Herculean rocks. True islands among the skies, where vegetation manages to flourish. Floating enemies constantly attack the hero. The advance is bitter and laborious..."
Concept of artists based on stories.
... To Valhalla, the land of the Vikings!
At the middle of the production, we had to rescope the game. If we plan three levels, we reduce at only one. It create a big issue : the cohence of our universe where based on the variety of different biomes, of different levels. it couldn't work with only one level. Everything we created collapsed and we had no time to start again the entire process of world building we did. I had to react quickly and led by the the current hype on Viking's culture, I created a new lore based on Viking's Mythology. This topic perfectly sticks on our first intentions.
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After weeks of researches, the lore was born and the narrative elements could be made. I had to read every Nordic myth related to our game. It was an intensive time of historical researches to create our own freely interpreted vision of this mythology, to respect the intention and essence of the original work.
The Poetic Edda: The first narrative step
The Poetic Edda is a collection of poems in Old Norse collected in a 13th century Icelandic manuscript, the Codex Regius. Today it is the most important source of knowledge on Scandinavian mythology.
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In the game, warriors from every time and place are trapped in a post-Ragnarök Valhalla. It's a mix between the Nordic culture with more modern cultures. This merge is symbolized by the first trailer of the game which illustrate the Prophecy of the Great Spring, a poem merging Edda's style and a more modern style.
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(It was firstly writen in french and translated in english).
Quand adviendra le destin des dieux,
Le Père des pères périra.
Saignant les sols, sapant les cieux,
La Famille du Fourbe Frappera.
S’ouvriront du pré d’Odin les portes,
Déferlant d’orphelins guerriers
Des Âmes mornes, éternelles et mortes,
Qui même d’Helheim seront meurtriers.
Tintant de l’aiguille, le temps passa.
Les Vanes vannés, la vie enfouie,
Le trépas reste, le règne cessa,
Un désert de misères s’épanouit.
Âges après âges, les Ases s’oublièrent.
D’Horizon, de saisons éloignées,
Recueillis par l’arbre séculaire,
D’inédits bellicistes sont piégés.
Un espoir persiste pourtant,
Que D’Yggdrasil le printemps revienne,
Quand un Candide combattant,
En se libérant de ses chaînes,
Accomplira déterminé...
…ce qui a été commencé.
When will happen the fate of the gods,
Will flow the Father of Father's blood.
Bleeding the lands, sapping the sky,
The Deceitful's Family will Strike.
From Odin's field will collapse the gate,
And orphan warriors will invade:
Mournful, eternal and dead souls,
Destroyers of the worlds, they take the roles.
The clock rang, the time passed.
The Vanir vanished, the life will blast
The death stays, the reign ceased.
A desert of misery was released.
Ages after ages, the Aesir were declined.
From distant seasons and distant times.
Welcomed by the Oldest tree,
New trapped warmongers can't be free.
But a last hope still persists,
From Yggdrasil the Spring again exists,
When an ingenuous warrior,
By destroying the barrier,
Determined would complete ...
… What has been started.
Structure :
Edda's style :
Rythme : alliteration and emphasis, uses Fornyrdislag (Two lines of four syllables)
Verses of 4 Fornyrdilag.
Literary methods : Heitis and Kenningar (replacing terms by poetic and Scandinavian mythological designations)
Modern style:
Rythme : alternating rhyme and homophony.
Verses of 4 lines (8 syllables).
Literary methods : inversion of the subject and the verb, metaphors, anaphoras, personnifications...
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Temporality:
Future: It has a predictive value, it is an Eddique process. Used to mention past prophecies, writen before Ragnarök to design this end of the worlds.
Past : unchanging facts, direct consequences of the prophecies annouced with the future tense. The prophecies had happened.
Present: player's timeline when he visits the world in the game. It underlines an uncertain outcome.
Meaning:
It's an introduction to the game. It explains the context, announces the timeline (after Ragnarök and its consequences) and mentions the player's objectives. If he first can't fully understand the lines, he will find in the game some related notes which can help him to figure out this enigmatic poem. It's an optionnal puzzle reserved to the most curious players who want to discover the whole story.
Encyclopedia
By progressing in the game, visiting many times the rooms, defeating a lot of enemies, the player unlocks some notes about Viking's culture, mythology or about the lore of the game and the reason of this apocalypse. There are around 400 notes unlockable by playing. Every detail of the lore and the world is explained in these notes and every note is translated in french.
“Undead, vampires, ghosts, moving corpses… Here is the fate of the vile warriors, heartless whose mind was corrupted by vice! Unworthy of Valhalla but too brave to Helheim, they are wandering in the northern lands, attracted by blood smelt. They became… <b> Draugrs </b>. ” Extract from an old tale written to scare children and teach them care… Draugrs aren't real… Right?
This example is unlockable when the player kill his first draugr. It explains who they are. To unlock the rest, he needs to kill more of this enemy.
To write these notes, I worked on Google Sheet. My table was linked to the Unity's project to allow me to change my text easily. The localization of the game is also set on this table.
Mythical characters and figures
There are two types of characters in the game: playable characters and the merchant.
The playable characters :
There are four characters: Baldrod the viking, Asano the ronin, Acelin the farmer and Cupidon the bandit. Each one has his own backstory unlockable in the encyclopaedia. They come from any time and places. There story and their profile impact their statistique and gameplay specificities.
Baldrod, one of the few surviving Viking warriors from his community, died in the struggle to save his traditions. Powerful and valiant warrior, He reached Valhalla where he only met misery and desolation.
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Baldrod has better basic statistics but don’t has any special power.
Baldrod is the last Viking. He has no special abilities but he has a stronger physical constitution.
The Merchant :
He's the only one character whith whom the player can interact during the game. He's pacific and social but stay very mysterious on him and the world. He seems to know everything related to Valhalla. He's at the center of the puzzle and he's the key of the comprehension of what happened there. In fact, this merchant is Loki, the Facetious god, responsible for Ragnarök, the end of the world, the war between gods and Giants.
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​He seems to know everything. Indeed, when the player stops to his shop, he says a line of dialogue. These line of dialogues depend on the player's actions.
Examples:
_ Fist meeting.
"You're obviously a rookie, I can see that! So, simply speaking, you're dead and now, you're stuck in Valhalla!"
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_ Player have less than 10 gold.
"Don't try to cheat me poor man! I'm the only one Deceitful man here!"
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_ Player died for the fist time against the Boss.
"Damn Heimdall... I killed him (on his back). Why have Valhalla's magic had to bring him to life!"
Document gathering all the texts produced and unlockable in the game. The goal is to produce enough quantity to make the game last over several levels.
A beginning and an end ...
Even if this game is a student project, the end of the game had to let the possibility to continue the development. That's why, even if the player reaches his objectives by ending the and of the level, he discovered his true objectives and following steps to escape these damned worlds.
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"Impressive...It seems that I was not mistaken...you are the Einherjar of the prophecy.
We can reach Yggdrasil now and travel through the different worlds! But I have to warn you…
Midgard’s access is locked. To free yourself you have to end Valhalla’s curse… And for that you have to complete what have begun: Ragnarök.
Find the sword of the Giant Surt, the only one thing capable of destroying Yggdrasil to make him reborn from its ashes… pure, washed from our wars.
Go! Explore every world of Yggdrasil in search of its roots and destroy them with the sword! You proved your worth, warrior! But your adventure just begins…"
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