Chris Avellone Blog Q&A, Part Two

Obsidian’s Chris Avellone has returned to his blog to answer another question sent to him by the curious community, and this time he even provides us with a great example of the background material the team wrote for Kreia during the development of Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II – The Sith Lords. The background info itself is in image format, but he goes on to explain the process they use when creating such a prominent NPC:

My advice: A lot of what you imagine a character to be is simply not going to make it when the rubber hits the road and you start scripting that character in the game engine and in conversations – it’s only then they truly find their voice and their theme, so I try not to get bogged down with too much backstory. Anything more than a page or two I find is probably enough to get started and go from there. For example, some of the events in the first draft of what we intended for Kreia ended up not surviving once we were designing full force and discovered there were other more interesting things we could do with the character rather than what we initially thought. But hey, that’s part of the design process.

Note that a lot of the “backstory” for Kreia also involves concrete details for what a voice actor needs to know – since it’s becoming a staple in the industry that every character is voice-acted, a lot of that stuff we need to write out for the studio (and for our own reference).

Also, one thing I’ve found often can bog people down is they want to keep exploring the abstracts about a character, when I think sometimes the best thing to do is charge in, start swinging, and find a voice and attitude for the character. There’s even times when I write a sample short story for how the player specifically encounters that character and see if that helps me to get rolling on themes and the spine of the character (I’m doing this on our current project, and it’s a new approach).

One other thing (I know, I know, can I ever shut up?) that is helpful is also (if the CNPC is going to interject into conversations, like K1, K2, NWN2, etc.) and other designers may be writing dialogue, include a list of key words and situations that the CNPC is likely to “pipe up” and say something because it’s true to their character – for example, with Kreia, mention of Sion and Nihilus, mention of Jedi or Sith philosophy, etc. If I can find our interjection charts, I’ll post that in a future blog.