Weird West - Interview @Gamesindustry

Narrative designer for Wolfeye Studios, Lucas Loredo, talked to Gamesindustry about how he plans to tell a story without using cutscenes in Weird West.

Though plot specifics are under wraps, Weird West's storytelling seems to favor unique player experiences over traditional cutscenes. With this dynamic approach, the real story comes from how the game reacts to player input.

"In my ideal world, honestly, there would be no cutscenes -- which is a weird thing to say as a writer," says Loredo. "I think they can be used effectively... but do they even belong in this medium at all?"

To Loredo, taking control from the player creates experiences that "are not the fullest realization of the medium." What keeps Loredo excited is the search for and continued refinement of an alternative source of storytelling in games that feels more organic.

"What does it look like to tell a super story-driven game without cutscenes?" says Loredo. "How would you make The Last of Us Part II without cutscenes? I don't really know but I'm curious to be a part of figuring it out."

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"The strongest tool I have is imagining environments the player gets to move through in order to communicate to my level designer what the stories of these spaces could be -- the way the scene is decorated and how the NPCs are moving about the space, for example," he says.

For Loredo, narrative design is "the ultimate playground" for writers like him who are "interested in expressing themselves not only through words but also through ideas, objects, sets, and moods."

"[This kind of writing] is so much more vast than [prose] fiction," he continues. "It's sort of like you have a billion toys to play with."