Ark of the Lost Angels

2017’s Titanfall 2 had one of the most engaging FPS campaigns in recent years, despite being relatively cookie-cutter in terms of narrative structure. The first reason was that with the first Titanfall game being a multi-player only game, with a “campaign” made up of multiplayer matches with expanded animation, added…

I finished The Walking Dead game, and had some thoughts regarding the ending. I chose to have Clementine shoot Lee, giving him the peace of mind in dying instead of becoming a threat to his friends, allowing him to pass in peace, relatively speaking. It also served as the conclusion…

In Katherine Isbister’s article “Nonplayer Characters – ‘Living, Breathing’ Others in the Game World” she asserts that “Accomplished game developers use a range of social cues from NPCs to produce feelings in players, putting NPCs into powerful and consequent social relationships with the player/avatar.” This idea is something I have…

Recently, I had the fortune of playing What Remains of Edith Finch. The game follows Edith Finch as she returns to her family’s home, the last member of the Finch line still alive, and has to piece together what happened and uncover the nature of a mysterious family curse that…

There’s the idea held by several people that cutscenes are a method of storytelling separate from the main gameplay, and it’s lazy as a tactic. The argument is that you could excise every cutscene from a multi-hour long campaign and tell just a competent story as you could with the…

My writing is described as being heavily detailed in terms of its settings and its characters. I’d say that’s true. As a fan of movies, the little details about the world always impressed me, and I have tried to flesh out the details by continually asking “why?” Why does a…

Where to go next is a loaded question. Creative writing started for me as something that I did during my high school classes after I was caught up on taking notes to keep me occupied. Then it grew into something I did when the classes were boring, and during my…

Microfiction is tricky to write. I recently participated in a microfiction challenge, and as someone who usually tells a story in upwards of sixty-five thousand words, capturing something in sixty-five, it was incredibly challenging. However, it is a helpful skill to have. The piece I wrote was a small scene,…

Plot is important to any story. It drives characters and their development, it provides situations to react to, it tells the story, and it provides conflict to be involved with. The standard storytelling plot is the introduction and exposition, where the conflict, characters and setting are introduced; followed by the…