Narrative Design - Final Thoughts

As I was working on the Narrative Design for !Bird, the direction I went with it actually changed more than I expected. I initially didn't plan to have much of a climactic ending for the game, but I ended up deciding it would be a bit lame if there was no payoff for your efforts, so I instead decided to have a twist ending that played on the player's expectations.

My initial plan was to have most of the narrative be background lore that the player could figure out for themselves if they so chose, but I decided it would be more fun if the game built up a relationship between the player and the voice that speaks to them over the course of the game. For this reason, the voice gets more friendly to the player as they progress, eventually revealing their name and showing a bit more of their own personality. This was also done in order to achieve a good emotional payoff when the twist ending makes Casey (the voice) the final target.

I was in charge of writing all of the dialogue for the game; to do this, I created a spreadsheet that kept track of every dialogue interaction in the game, what lines of dialogue it contained, and when it would play.

I also implemented all of the dialogue into the UI. Some of the dialogue in the game is different from what is on the spreadsheet, as I adjusted it based on player feedback and other general testing.

At the moment, the game currently doesn't include the ending I had planned simply due to time constraints; instead, it leaves off on a cliffhanger after Casey being the final target is revealed. However, I'm hoping to implement this ending later so the game can have the full narrative arc throughout the level that I was hoping for.

I enjoyed working on the Narrative Design for !Bird; the directions it ended up going surprised me, and I think the end product was much more interesting because of it.