EA's upcoming Star Wars game is clouded in as much secrecy as any other part of the franchise. However, writer Amy Hennig has let us in on one unique problem with adapting the material for a video game. Hennig was the keynote speaker at PAX West 2016 this year, and in talking about the title, without giving anything away, of course, she mentioned that one key aspect of the way that Star Wars tells stories seriously complicates the way that video games are traditionally written. Specifically, the fact that the viewing audience always knows more than the characters in the movies, because we get to see what the villains are up to.
One of the challenges from a game designer perspective is this opens this up to this privileged observer problem. Which is, when we watch a film we're the privileged observer, right? We're not the protagonist. We can see their struggle is illuminated by the things we see that they don't... We see the stakes are greater because we can see everything that's happening, and how do you do that in a game when we're supposed to identify with the protagonist and you cut away to things that they don't know?
Amy Hennig's comments came during a discussion about the upcoming Star Wars game that she is currently working on as a part of Visceral Games. The Uncharted writer said that the studio had been working closely with the team at Lucasfilm in order to be sure that their game truly felt like it was part of the Star Wars universe. The fact that the Star Wars films frequently take the time to show us what the antagonists are doing is viewed as one of the key aspects of the story structure, meaning that any Star Wars game should also include it. However, most video games don't do that. They focus exclusively on the protagonist.
Certainly, there have been video games in the past that have shown us what the bad guys are up to. However, there's a significant difference to the way that works in movies versus video games. In a film, you have no control over the action, so knowing more than the characters increases the suspense since you don't know what's going to happen. In a video game, if you know what the villain is planning, even if your character doesn't, you can potentially take specific steps to deal with it. How many times have you knowingly walked into a trap in a video game because the game told you it was a trap, yet the linear story gave you no other option? It has a detrimental impact on the emotion of the experience and, as Hennig says, it makes it difficult to identify with the story's protagonist, because the player and character are separated by their differing amounts of knowledge.
While Amy Hennig says that this is a challenge, she certainly didn't sound like somebody frustrated by a current issue. It would seem that the team has a plan for dealing with the "privileged observer" problem, but of course, explaining the solution would likely tell us much more about the actual game than the team is ready to release.
What's clear is that Amy Hennig, Visceral Games, and Lucasfilm, all are really trying to recreate the Star Wars cinematic experience in a video game. It certainly makes us all the more interested in what we're eventually going to see. As soon as we know anything more about what the game actually is, we'll be sure to let you know.
