Category: News

The following blog post, unless otherwise noted, was written by a member of Gamasutra’s community.
The thoughts and opinions expressed are those of the writer and not Gamasutra or its parent company.

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Pendragon is a narrative strategy game being made by inkle, the creators of 80 Days and Heaven’s Vault.

Our last game, the IGF-winning Heaven’s Vault, was a 20+ hour adventure game that plays out differently for every player, and every time you play. It worked by combining a standard adventure game world with a highly contextual, dynamic dialogue system. The world provides the input – what do you find? In what order? – and the dialogue system spins it out into a narrative.

For our next game, Pendragon, we wanted to push that idea further. Is it possible to make the entire narrative out of contextual dialogue? Instead of tying the conversation engine to something rigid, like an adventure game world, we’ve tied it instead to a procedurally-generated Chess-like strategy game. Boards, moves, pieces… and combinatorial explosion. 

Here’s how it works.

The Blueprint 

Heaven’s Vault‘s dialogue system consists of an enormous bucket of short conversations, tagged with what discoveries make them relevant, and a system for deciding what to say next. 

That system – which is driven by what the player finds in the world, and also what they talk about – is ultimately the thing responsible for delivering a coherent and engaging narrative across the game’s 20h running time.

A game of Pendragon – which is roughly as long to play through as 80 Days – consists of a series of “boards”. Each board is created based on the required difficulty (which increases across the course of the game). It’s given a setting type (“weird forest”, “crumbling ruin”, “village”), and then populated with appropriate enemy pieces (“wolf”, “bear”, “rogue knight”, “blacksmith”) that the hero party then attempt to fight, sneak and talk their way past.

The system for the narrative is like Heaven’s Vault’s: an enormous bucket of lines of dialogue, or lines of description, tagged with what’s required to make them fire. But it’s also quite a lot more structured too, with layers of content arranged from highly specific down to highly generic. 

The Ground Floor: Responding to Game State

The basic tags are all tied to the gameplay. Who’s moving? What kind of move are they making? What consequences does the move have on the game state? Which other pieces are involved in this move? 

We test these using a “play” condition which takes three parameters – a description of the piece doing the move, a description of the move, and a set of things the move and piece mustn’t be. Here are some examples:

• play ( HEROES, ATTACK)  
  • a hero piece is attacking someone
• play ( HEROES, (ATTACK, EXCHANGE) )    
  • a nervous hero piece is attacking someone, but is about to be captured in return
• play_not ( (NERVOUS, HEROES), ( ATTACK, EXCHANGE), LAST_PIECE)  
  • a nervous hero piece is attacking someone, is about to be captured in return, but isn’t the last piece on the hero team

Not every line has every kind of tag, and queries on tags can be highly specific – is Lancelot speaking, or Guinevere? – or they can be more general – Is the piece speaking someone confident, or someone nervous? Are they injured? Are they a knight, or a villager recruited to the cause?

Pendragon has a bank of about a thousand of these, arranged in rough priority order, with some additional tags to prevent close repetition of lines. These form the lowest level of the game’s thinking – the fallback content. 

The Mezzanine: Responding to Game Setting

The next layer is similar to the previous, except it’s reserved for lines that reference the “skin” of a board more directly. This is done on a separate layer so it can be swapped in and out as required: there’s no point processing dialogue about villagers when you’re knee-deep in a snake-infested marsh. 

This layer uses all the same tags as before, but are only active is other conditions are met about the setting, or the piece being attacked; things like:

• play(HEROES, ATTACK)  && is(victim(), BEAR) –
  • the knight slices through the bear
• play(WOLF, RETREAT) && isLocation(FOREST)
  • ​​ the wolf slinks a step back between the trees

Together these two layers give us playable locations, with a lot of colour:

Turn 1: LANCE advances
LANCE:   There’s a wolf between the trees.
LANCE:   I don’t think it’s seen me.

Turn 2: WOLF advances 
WOLF:  Grrrr…

Turn 3: LANCE holds position and draws his sword 
LANCE:  Steady now. Watch the eyes…

Turn 4: WOLF captures LANCE
The wolf leaps, and Lancelot is knocked to the floor.
GWEN: Lancelot! No! 

But they still feel very much like barks; they lack the feeling of narrative because there’s no continuity from one moment to the next. In the example above, it’d be nice if Lancelot could, on Turn 3, curse and remark that the wolf has indeed seen him. 

The Second Floor: What Just Happened?

The next layers of the stack introduce new ideas to move from describing the game state to creating a narrative around it, introducing ideas such as “did I just say X?” “Did I speak last?” “Is the piece I’m attacking the one that moved on the last enemy turn?” This allows you to set up simple chains of conversation, as follows:

Turn 1: LANCE advances
LANCE:       There’s a wolf between the trees.
LANCE:       I don’t think it’s seen me.

Turn 2: WOLF advances 
WOLF:     Grrrr…
GWEN:     I think it’s seen you, Lancelot.

Turn 3: LANCE holds position and draws his sword 
LANCE:      I’m not afraid…

Turn 4: WOLF captures LANCE
The wolf leaps, and Lancelot is knocked to the floor.
GWEN:     Lancelot! No!
GWEN:     You might be brave, but why are you so stupid?

As with the tags for piece types, these “what did I say recently” queries can be quite generic; we aim to reuse content intelligently as much as possible and avoid writing entirely bespoke chains. The above sequence of moves – advance, advance, hold, capture – may only appear once in a hundred games, as the both the human and the AI player are free to make any valid move on their turn.

It’s important to find a balance between making triggers so specific they never fire, and so general they lose the sense of coherence. 

The Third Floor: Dynamic Relationships 

The next layer of our plot machine is reserved for dynamic plot: in-game events which are too significant not to be carried across the entire game. These are largely driven by relationships between characters.

For instance, at the start of the game, Guinevere loves Arthur and Lancelot, Arthur loves Guinevere and so does Lancelot. These relationships are turned into tags – Guinevere is conflicted, Arthur is betrayed, Lancelot is dishonourable (and no one is happy.) 

The game then uses these tags to respond to events such as:

• An unrequited lover saves the object of their affections, who thanks them awkwardly 
• A nasty, betrayed lover leaves their cheating partner to be killed 
• A nervous, conflicted character can’t choose between two people to help 

These relationships are also allowed to change across the course of the game. When a lover dies, a character may become broken-hearted. An unrequited lover may earn the respect and even love of their beloved by saving their life. Equally, love may turn to hate and jealousy, setting up new relationships to be responded to by the game. 

(Dynamic relations can then power gameplay effects: a character may obtain a devastating self-destructive move on the death of their lover, or a powerful burst of action on a declaration of unrequited love.)

The Rest of the Entire Building: Generating Plot

All of the above forms the basic core loop for Pendragon, but as you might expect, it becomes invisible very quickly: players begin to skim over it. It’s not the oatmeal problem – it’s easy enough to provide a huge variety of responses (short, long, funny, sad, etc) – but rather it becomes clear that the text is only ever an output and never an input, and so the player learns that reading is optional, and will soon or later stop doing this. 

We first encountered this problem when developing Sorcery!’s combat: a Rock, Paper, Scissors-like simultaneous game, in which each round is converted into a procedurally assembled prose fight sequence as you play. We solved the irrelevance problem there by adding “tells” – the prose would include some text to suggest what the AI character was about to play on their next turn, so by reading it, you could make an informed guess about what to do next. 

(We really liked this system too! But reading reviews there’s a clear gap between “people who saw we were doing it” and “people who still ignored the text and found the combat too random.” Next time in bold type, perhaps.) 

But for Pendragon that kind of solution is too simple: we need plot-construction, to carry our band of knights from the edges of Britain all the way to Arthur’s side; we need world-building; and mysteries; and strange prophecies; and all the other things that combine to create a sense of mythology, character, and presence in the world.

Floors One Through Two Hundred: Scenes

Each “new board” is assigned a scene. Scenes can be generic and repeatable (“fight in a marsh”) or highly specific (“the wood where Merlyn went missing”). The scene then provides a top-level of dialogue barks, which are used before anything else is considered, and these can be very specific; setting up the level, discussing it; exploring it; while still handing control down to the lower levels. 

A discussion of, say, what happened to Arthur’s fabled sword Excalibur, might be interrupted by a wolf mauling one of the main characters to death. Or it might proceed to its conclusion, with one character naming a monastery where the sword is rumoured to be held – which you can then travel to and visit, cueing another specific scene in which, perhaps, the sword will be found, if the stabby monks don’t get you first. 

Conversations told this way are very fragile: they need to be interruptible, and be able to pick themselves up again if left half-finished; but this is a problem we already solved in Heaven’s Vault, and we’re employing the same knowledge tracking techniques we developed there.

The logic behind deciding what scene to play when is quite subtle! As with Heaven’s Vault, there is a game-wide “story manager” whose job is to ensure interesting things happen, but not too often! 

The manager is aware across the wider game-loop as well, so a story that appears in a first play-through is less likely to reappear in the second if there’s other content to explore: a feature we were unable to put into Heaven’s Vault because of the fixed nature of the game world. 

The Dream of Camelot!

And that’s the whole of the castle; from base foundations up to turret-rooms, banqueting halls and bedchambers. We’ve been throwing boulders at it for a while and it seems to be holding up!

The Steam page is up, the wish-lists are trickling in, and we should have a playable demo along very soon. Pendragon should be out in early summer!
 

The following blog post, unless otherwise noted, was written by a member of Gamasutra’s community.
The thoughts and opinions expressed are those of the writer and not Gamasutra or its parent company.

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[Mario steamroller-ing pirate cartridges at a Dutch airport will now haunt your dreams?]

Goodness, it’s time for yet another Video Game Deep Cuts on Substack, my darlings. This week, what’s been up? Well, another interminable quarantine week, but at least the Internet continues in good form.

Hope you enjoy all of these links, and we’ll be back midweek with the latest ‘All-Time Greats’ picks from a guest.

– Simon, curator

The Current: New Games To Consider

The Culture: Game Culture & Deep Dives

The Past: Game History

The Other Goodness

Thanks for reading, and see you next week!
Simon.

The following blog post, unless otherwise noted, was written by a member of Gamasutra’s community.
The thoughts and opinions expressed are those of the writer and not Gamasutra or its parent company.

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The interactive narrative is still uncharted territory. Designers haven’t quite figured out where to stand between player agency and guided storytelling, branching stories and linear ones, and other huge matters about stories in games.
This exploration is far from over, but it’s moving fast. Every day new narrative-based games come out, and many of them are actually trying new ways to convey narrative.
Anyway, I’m not here to go further in this exploration. As game designers, we must not only conceive the story, but find a way to deliver it. Interactivity means this too. The audience of our story won’t just sit and listen to it. Our audience will look for the story, or run into it while experiencing pure gameplay. On the opposite, sometimes our audience will do everything he can to avoid it. Our job is to let them be immersed in our narrative, without necessarily force them to stop playing while doing so. However, sometimes we forget about the existence of many ways and spaces for our stories to be experienced. I’ve come up with the following list as a reminder of these ways. It’s a memento of gameplay moments, items, styles, and every possible part of the game that can be actually used as an instrument for narrative delivery.

Before we start, take into account the following golden rules:

1. Don’t stick to only one. Almost every game uses multiple ways to deliver narrative. If you do so, you will prevent monotony. Furthermore, every player is different. Some will avoid some kind of ways, but will eventually occur in others, more fitting their personal gameplay style. You need to diversify
2. Those methods are NOT mutually exclusive. In fact, many of your narrative moments will fall into multiple categories
3. Interactivity vs Narrative. Playing and understanding the story at the same time can be hard. If a player is busy in a complex gameplay moment, he could have some problem following someone speaking to him. This doesn’t mean narrative and gameplay moments should be separate: on the opposite, the more we merge those features, the more harmony in the experience will be achieved. But keep always in consideration the player and his multitasking limit

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The use of words is reduced. The player understands the story not while reading something, but with visual tools: pictures, photos, NPCs, and creatures’ behaviors towards him and between one each other, object degradation, level design, pace, and much more. More than a single tool, it is a quality that can be applied to other methods. Do it as much as possible, always.

PROS 

• The most elegant way of delivering narrative
• Highly effective, understandable at every level of interest by the player, from the overall tone of the game to small details of the story
• Immediate and immersive

CONS 

• The hardest to build. It requires combined work by different roles of the team. It requires a strong art direction
• Detailed info is harder to deliver, only proactive players will understand deep narrative

EXAMPLES 

• Half-Life 2
• Journey
• Inside

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The gameplay is paused, forcing the player to deal ONLY with the narrative, having sometimes the opportunity to skip it according to the importance of the passage. Cutscenes are the classic and most expensive way to do it. Use it when you need the player to experience some beat of the story.

PROS 

• The player receives the content completely, with no distraction, preventing missing important passages
• Overall high control on the passage
• High quality perceived
• If well done, it can be highly rewarding, preventing the player to suffer for the agency deprivation

CONS 

• No interactivity. Players could drop the controller, something you never want to happen
• The narrative must be engaging.
• Can be highly expensive
• Requires competence in cinematography

EXAMPLES 

• Metal Gear Saga
• Final Fantasy Saga

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NPCs talk to the character directly through some communication device or ability.

PROS 

• Every moment is ok to deliver content
• It can potentially deliver a lot of information

CONS 

• It needs a coherent explanation for consistent communication
• It requires a high amount of dubbing
• Depending on the gameplay moment, the player could ignore it

EXAMPLES 

• Borderlands Saga
• Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice
• Prey

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NPCs or other PCs talk to the character vis-à-vis. Sometimes they wait to be spoken with, sometimes they reach the player themselves.

PROS 

• The world looks alive
• Different NPCs can express different opinions and points of view
• Players go looking for NPCs for many gameplay reasons, like equipment and quests

CONS 

• Potentially high use of models, dubbing, writing
• The more NPCs there are, the more players is likely to skip dialogues and go back to the main gameplay

EXAMPLES 

• Fallout Saga
• The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild
• Final Fantasy Saga
• Undertale

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An NPC follows the main character, communicating with him regularly. Alternatively, the player guides a group of characters, which interact with each other.

PROS 

• Every moment is ok to deliver content
• Great bonding with the NPC

CONS 

• A lot of AI programming
• Strong game design choice. NPC must be designed to be useful to the player, and never an obstacle, for example

EXAMPLES 

• The Last of Us
• Baldur’s Gate saga
• Oxenfree

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Often used to hide level loadings, to calm the pace of the game, to give cheap game time, or to simply make the player move from an area to another with map and space coherence. These moments, usually, have a low level of interactivity.

PROS 

• It fills an empty but necessary moment, with few, mostly mechanical gameplay and distractions for the player
• Especially useful in combination with backtracking

CONS 

• When the destination is reached, the dialogue suddenly interrupts, unless the player chooses to wait for it to end. A rough choice, he would do nothing but listen to the narrative

EXAMPLES 

• God of War (2018)
• Red Dead Redemption

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Places to visit and objects to gather are scattered over the world. Once reached, the item delivers a piece of the story/theme/setting. Very common, almost every game delivers narrative this way.

PROS 

• Players are encouraged to explore areas far from his main path, looking for items
• Often related to the achiever player type, players often look for items to achieve an objective

CONS 

• Weak, few players linger in reading books and item descriptions
  • This effect can be prevented with audio registration or comment by the character, but that requires more dubbing

EXAMPLES 

• The Witcher Saga
• Dishonored Saga
• Divinity: Original Sin 2

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The narrative is delivered during game loading, usually with text and images.

PROS 

• It fills an empty but necessary moment, with no gameplay and distraction for the player

CONS 

• Limited time to deliver it, hardly can give deep pieces of information
• Dependent on the quality and quantity of loading screens. Forcing a loading screen just to deliver a narrative is not recommended

EXAMPLES 

• Dark Souls
• The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

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The player uses some specific mechanic to get in-game info.

PROS 

• The player is not forced to get any narrative, usually obtaining it alongside gameplay knowledge
• The player perceives agency upon discovering the narrative

CONS 

• No control. The skill must be cheap and useful to increase the chances the player uses it, unlocking gameplay features and upgrades

EXAMPLES 

• Final Fantasy Saga (Scan Magic)
• Prey

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NPCs deliver news about the world. They don’t address directly the main character.

PROS 

• The world looks alive and ever-changing while keeping coherence and familiarity
• The same assets can be easily recycled through the game.

CONS 

• Must change as the story progress
• Only doable in certain specific settings

EXAMPLES 

• Fallout Saga
• Dishonored

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A character (could be the main one or another one) speaks to the player or to some generic “reader” of the story.

PROS 

• Every moment is ok to deliver content
• No need for feedback or response from the game or character
• Meta-narration is a cheap way to speak about things usually hard to explain, such as feelings and thoughts

CONS 

• It requires a lot of dubbing
• Higher writing skills needed

EXAMPLES 

• Alan Wake
• The Stanley’s Parable

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The level enrichment always tells a story. This tool is strongly linked to level design prophecies. There are several ways to apply this method, from a vague atmosphere to specific writings on walls.

PROS 

• Every space is an opportunity to tell a story
• Low programming required

CONS 

• Often ignored in fast-paced experiences
• Passive tool: the player could decide to ignore it

EXAMPLES 

• Portal 2
• What Remains of Edith Finch

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Playing different characters, the player learns the same story from different points of view.

PROS 

• Wow moments, twists and turns
• It can be cheap in terms of level design: the same spaces traversed by different characters means new emotions with old levels

CONS 

• Requires deeper narrative design: the same story seen from different perspectives could result incoherent
• If the new character, and his story, doesn’t differ enough from the original, the player could feel mocked

EXAMPLES 

• Prince of Persia: Warrior Within
• Nier: Automata

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Here we are at the end of this study. I draw on this list as a tool, with two basic functions:

1. Remember ways to deliver narrative I tend to forget.
2. Remember risks and opportunities that lie in every way.

I wish it will help you as well, and inspire more discussions: in fact, this list is far from over. I can’t wait to perfect it, make it deeper, as complete as possible. Hopefully, I will soon be able to release a 2.0, with more ways and some more specific examples.

In this 2020 GDC Virtual Talk, Alexander Swords presents The Forest Paths method: a workflow for game developers to develop their game narrative in tandem with their design components.

Swords’ talk, which comes alongside a book he’s released on the topic, helps developers create a narrative design strategy that can align everything from theme to narrative to game design.

It’s a helpful talk, one you can watch for free on the GDC YouTube channel.

In addition to this presentation, the GDC Vault and its accompanying YouTube channel offers numerous other free videos, audio recordings, and slides from many of the recent Game Developers Conference events, and the service offers even more members-only content for GDC Vault subscribers.

Those who purchased All Access passes to recent events like GDC or VRDC already have full access to GDC Vault, and interested parties can apply for the individual subscription via a GDC Vault subscription page. Group subscriptions are also available: game-related schools and development studios who sign up for GDC Vault Studio Subscriptions can receive access for their entire office or company by contacting staff via the GDC Vault group subscription page. 

Thumbnail by Bonnie Moreland from StockSnap

The Gamasutra Job Board is the most diverse, active and established board of its kind for the video game industry!

Here is just one of the many, many positions being advertised right now.

Location: Foothill Ranch, California

Who We Are:

Visual Concepts is one of the world’s top game development studios with a flat, entrepreneurial, and non-corporate work environment. We have a proven track record having shipped over 100 multi-SKU titles to great critical acclaim.

Our studio in Foothill Ranch, CA is committed to gaming and technical innovation and offers top candidates the opportunity to learn and grow with some of the smartest and most creative minds in the industry.

What We Need:

We are seeking a Senior Systems Designer to join our development efforts on an exciting new game! Within this role, you’ll be focused on creating, maintaining, and balancing engaging gameplay systems. You’ll work with engineers, artists, and other designers to build innovative mechanics and economies that form the backbone of our new project.

What You Will Do:

• Document, build, implement, bug-fix and “own” your ideas, overseeing them from concept through to final release

• Design, write, and prototype new systems and some of the meta-game such as player progression, character creation, game balance, economies, and other related systems

• Evangelize core gameplay features to the rest of the team and help develop best practices

• Collaborate with game and world designers, gameplay engineers, artists, and animators to implement, tune and balance gameplay systems

• Prototype and pitch your own design ideas to the team

• Analyze, validate, and incorporate feedback from the team, as well as from external user testing, as needed

Who We Think Will Be A Great Fit:

• 5+ years’ experience within the video game industry

• Shipped at least 1 AAA game within a Game Designer role

• Experience in system design for console or online games, such as player progression and advancement, social mechanics, rewards, economy, or customization/in-game editors

• Experience with scripting (proprietary or third party) 

• Strong understanding of development processes, workflows, and tools

• Experience working in-engine, either prototyping or implementing your ideas

• Comfortable with a development that is playtest-driven and focused on iteration and polish

• Ability to find new opportunities for improvements and additions within a game

• Ability to work in a team and collaborate with engineers, artists, and other designers

• Good communication and presentation skills

• Self-motivated and proactive

What Will Help You Shine:

• Experience working with analytical data sets for balancing and fine-tuning 

• Experience with Unreal Engine 4 (UE4) and working knowledge of UE4’s Blueprint system

• Experience with programming (C++, Python)

Interested? Apply now.

Whether you’re just starting out, looking for something new, or just seeing what’s out there, the Gamasutra Job Board is the place where game developers move ahead in their careers.

Gamasutra’s Job Board is the most diverse, most active, and most established board of its kind in the video game industry, serving companies of all sizes, from indie to triple-A.

Looking for a new job? Get started here. Are you a recruiter looking for talent? Post jobs here.

Torben Ellert is the lead online designer  of the episodic title Hitman (2016) at Io-Interactive. He provided Gamasutra with this in-depth look at Elusive Targets in the game. While most targets can be taken out in myriad ways and at a time of the player’s choosing, these Elusive Targets only appear in the game for a short period of time for a 48 hour window, and players only have one chance to complete the mission.

One of our mandates for the first season was to present Agent 47 as the apex predator, traveling the world, meeting interesting people, and killing them. Part of this mandate was a challenge to the design team: create a moment in time, “a snipe where your one shot matters” – the purest possible experience of being the assassin. Another objective was to create an ongoing pulse of experiences throughout the first season of Hitman, with tense assassination missions at the heart of those experiences. 

This is where the idea of Elusive Targets came from: high-level direction to create an ongoing series of time-limited, intense assassination missions. They would be tough because players would have one chance to get them right, and the whole dynamic around how you play the game should change. 

This was a challenge because previous Hitman games have always allowed the player to replay and rehearse, gradually gaining expertise and aspiring to the perfect hit. This new game mode would run counter to everything we know about Hitman. But before we knew exactly what this new game mode would end up being, we set out to explore what we could do with our game. 

“The biggest narrative challenge was how these Elusive Targets fit into the game’s storyline. Short answer: they don’t.”

We tried a number of things, which lead to the development of Escalation Mode, for example, but everything kept looping back to the core assassin fantasy – of what it meant to be Agent 47. At the heart of that, for me, is getting the call: ”Hello 47, the ICA has a new Contract for your consideration.” But it needed more than that – we wanted the player front and center, to make it feel like each second counted, and that everything hung in the balance. 

So the first thing we decided on was a time limit. A target who was only present for a very short period of time (it was 6 hours to begin with!). And that the target could only die once, and by extension the way you managed to complete the mission would be permanent.

Then we took away the tools that normally guide the player to their target: the red target glow, the mini-map and the icons on the main map. Basically, going back to the core of the first Hitman games (and going against a lot of what we know as modern game designers).

The very first time we played and reviewed the game mode was with Io’s Senior Game Designer Jesper Hylling and Studio Creative Director Christian Elverdam. We printed out a picture of the target, and put it on the table next to Jesper and said: “This is what he looks like – that’s all you know. Go kill him!”

The eyes of a hunted placeholder man

“As we developed the Elusive Targets, we assigned each of them a code name. In this case, we used cocktails. “

Jesper tracked him down, and trailed him to the first set of trespass zones, and then had to go and find a disguise, by which time he’d lost the target. It was rough, but the core of the experience was there. 
After that, we explored save rules and restarts, and time limits. In the first versions, it was one-and-done. So no restarts, no retries, just industrial-grade pressure.

I remember standing in front of one our Friday studio meetings, and playing it live for the entire team. This was the first time most people outside of the Online team had seen it, so I was trying to be suave and smart and snipe the target through a tiny window. Needless to say, I failed, and then had to improvise. Said improvisation involved a saber in the middle of the cocktail party in Paris. It wasn’t pretty, but it got the job done! I’d made a plan, it had failed. I had improvised, and gotten away with murder. I fled the level, with bullets whizzing around my ears, and felt like a boss. 

Now that we had the basic concept, we needed to turn it into a fully-fledged design. 

We began with cocktails (as one does). The final name of anything in a game like Hitman is always up for grabs. So to allow us to refer to specific Elusive Targets as we developed them, we assigned each of them a code name. In this case, we used cocktails. 

The first Elusive Target (White Russian) had no narrative at all. But as we developed the idea, we realized that each Elusive Target needed to be memorable – not just from the tense game mode itself, but also the iconic nature of the targets themselves.  The idea was to make everyone in our community able to say “I remember when I flew to Sapienza to assassinate the Prince”. 

The Cardinal, in the Church Tower, with the Giant Bell

Perhaps the biggest narrative challenge was how these Elusive Targets fit into the game’s storyline. The short answer is that they don’t. We decided we’d have much more freedom if they were “what if” stories that simply happened in the same place. “What if Agent 47 went to Paris to assassinate a media sensation at a private party, during the fashion event of the year?” 

This guy has thrown his last party

This gave us the freedom to create new characters that fit with the spaces and themes that we had already established, without having to explain exactly how they fit with the mission’s normal storyline. 

For example, in “The Sensation”, the target is Jonathan Smythe, a controversial media star who fled underground years ago. The ICA has just learned that he will be attending a private party in Paris (with the blessings of Dalia Magolis) for several hours. There is no time to prepare, and 47 must go in without the usual time to plan. We underline this in the briefings for Elusive Targets which end with Diana saying “The clock is ticking, 47. Good luck!” as opposed to the usual “I’ll leave you to prepare.”

With the narrative framework established, we turned to the larger question: how we would structure the game experience as a whole? How much information should we give players, when should restarts be allowed, would there be a save-game or an auto-save and how would we handle player failure? 

“Playing an Elusive Target in a level you have fully mastered gives you the experience of being the apex predator. No matter what might be in store, you have the tools and experience to handle it.”

One thing that has been constant from our first prototypes was the idea that failure (and success) would be permanent. The result of this simple design decision is striking.

When players begin an Elusive Target, they play the game very differently. Gone is blasé experimentation with fire-alarms or barging into trespass zones in the face of armed guards, confident that there’s a save-game to fall back on. Suddenly they are much more focused, and serious. Every move carefully considered, and every improvisation full of risk. Every guard is a deadly threat, and every civilian a potential witness on the road to that coveted Silent Assassin rating.

In our larger-scale play-tests some players sat stone-faced, attempting to crack the Target by themselves, others conferred in small groups, and still others watched as mistakes were made and painful lessons were learned. 

Obviously, this works because players know the game well.  When a player tries a new location for the first time, they are in at the deep end (this is one of the reasons why we’ve not released an Elusive Target straight into a new level – players should have the opportunity to master it first). And when, a new target arrives, they may not know where he is, but they have all the tools they need to pull it off.

Even so, it became obvious that players needed to be able to restart, at least up until the point where they committed to the elimination. Since each Elusive Target changes the levels (sometimes quite substantially) they needed to have some way to scout and plan, or go back to choose new equipment, if they needed to. This lead to the one substantial change to the original design, which was to explicitly allow players to restart the mission at any time up until they began to eliminate their targets, or complete their objectives. This is the Rubicon moment, where each player must put his cunning plan into motion, knowing that from here on in, there are no restarts. 

Elusive Targets are designed to complement our level mastery progression system, simply because players who reach the highest levels have learned the levels, and their mechanics. They’ve gained an enormous amount of strategic agency, and can start in the right place, preplace equipment and approach their targets with consummate skill.

Much like Agent 47, they can adapt immediately to changing circumstances, regardless of whatever precautions his current target might have taken.  Put shortly, playing an Elusive Target in a fully mastered level gives you that experience of being the apex predator. No matter what might be in store, you have the tools and experience to handle it.

With the narrative frameworks and gameplay structures in place, we needed to actually be able to inject new missions into existing levels. Fortunately, a basic design decision for Hitman, NPCs, geometry and rules – basically everything we need to assemble and deliver an Elusive Target.

Taking “The Sensation” as an example, we disabled all of the bricks that make use of this back area of the game – specifically everything relating to Novikov’s meeting with Max Decker. This meant that several of the most obvious approaches to the rear area were also removed, keeping players on their toes. Then we took assets from the rest of the level and built up a private party, complete with music, bubbles, nibbles and guests. We also advanced the in-game lighting by about an hour to make it seem like a little later in the evening – obviously long after Victor has already met with Decker.

It’s an ongoing thing – as we build and release Elusive Targets and see them being played, we tweak (and redesign) future ones. Players see us responding to how they played, and we learn a great deal about what constitutes a challenging experience. We’ve experimented with different types of security details, we’ve had targets with big loops, and small ones, targets in the middle of parties, and targets out in the middle of a city. And even identical twins, where you must not harm the wrong person.

Sibling rivalry! One is the target, the other is the client. Aim carefully!

Hitman is a party game. No, seriously. The game’s serious tone with its lethal undertow of grim humor makes for immensely shareable experiences. From the beginning, we knew we would see highly skilled players working together to take out the targets. But it still surprises me how quickly they crack a Silent Assassin play-through, and begin to refine it. But, obviously someone has to go first, and make the mistakes so everyone else can learn from them.

“Some players approach the Elusive Target missions blind, playing them one-and-done, and living with the consequences if things get messy, while others spend hours scouting the levels before the mission is even live.”

What we’ve seen in the community are internal differences amongst players about exactly how Elusive Targets should be played. Some approach them blind, playing them one-and-done, and living with the consequences if things get messy, while others spend hours scouting the levels before the mission is even live, based on what information they’ve gleaned from the briefing videos and the pictures we’ve published. These players often restart as much as they can, only committing to the elimination when they are completely sure they have a plan. 

And as they work together, it creates a sense of united purpose. While everyone is their own version of Agent 47, everyone is united by a common objective, and a common experience.

Our service model really shines here, as we can respond to developing play patterns and feedback on the game experiences we create. The tight scope and our ongoing releases within the season format allow us to adapt the experiences and change the common playing field.

People who took on the first couple of Elusive Targets saw this very clearly. Sergei Larin (the Forger) was almost unprotected, with only a single bodyguard to cover his back. Congressman Anthony L. Troutt had a security detail of two, and a personal assistant. Cardinal Adalrico Candelaria had an entire region of Sapienza locked down for his personal benefit, with security on every possible approach (as you’d expect). 

At the time of writing, we’ve had ten Elusive Targets, and they’ve become part of our history, alongside the Meat King and the other classics of the Hitman franchise. Each player has their own story of how they approached the Cardinal, or the Sensation, or the Wildcard. Of how they waited for the mission to go live, of how they prepared, and how they rejoiced (or railed) at the way it went down. But while every player faced the challenge alone, we all did it together. And for me that’s been the biggest success of the game mode – the way it has created moments in time when we all came together, to take on memorable targets, knowing that it counted. And knowing that we would never see them again 

We’re at the mid-point of the season right now, with several new locations ahead of us, and a lot of Elusive Targets to come, and I’m looking forward to seeing how these go over into Hitman history. 

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to go make a Bushwhacker.

The Italian government has announced that its plans for financial support for businesses during the COVID-19 crisis will include funds for the country’s game development studios. 

Per a press release sent to Gamasutra, the government has announced the creation of the First Playable Fund, an economic resource aimed at funding the creation of game prototypes and supporting the industry as the country recovers from the initial spread of COVID-19. 

The announcement came with support from the country’s game industry trade organization, the Italian Interactive Digital Entertainment Association (IIDEA). The government has set aside €4,000,000 for the fund, and will reward between €10,000 and €200,000 per prototype. 

IIDEA director-general Thalita Malago noted that the organization has been trying to secure government funding for the country’s industry for some time. “We are happy that with the DL Rilancio – or Relaunch Decree – it was possible to take the first step in this direction,” he said.

The release provided some interesting context for this government support as well. A survey from the European Game Developer Federation noted that developers from the south of Europe are the most pessimistic about studio survival, which may be a result of both the virus’ heavy impact on the region, and a previous lack of government and investor support for an industry that had to go toe-to-toe with companies from other countries.