World Building through Narrative & Dialogue

While deciding on the direction of gameplay in conjunction with the seriousness of the topic being discussed, I decided to create a more empathetic, story based experience rather than a game with objectives, player goals, and rewards based on player ability. Our team believed that ‘gamifying’ this could very easily trivialize the concept and lead us towards a caricatured version of the tragedies that occurred centuries ago, so we opted for a more educational walkthrough narrative based game. It is also because of this that I decided on a narrative without a general overarching ‘plot,’ as Grissel would not have experienced her life in the typical movie formula. Instead Grissel is shown to live a normal life in the enlightenment era until she is accused, and then executed without a proper reason for being a witch. I also did not give her a specific reason for her ‘crime’ as we wanted to emphasize the absurdity of some reasons why women (and some men) were hung for witchcraft. Instead, in the last act the player sees a group of townspeople shout various theories (mostly based in superstition, as was the religious beliefs at the time) about why she is a witch, and must therefore burn at the stake. These range from curdling milk to wearing too much jewelry to religious persecution, which were all legitimate reasons given during that time to kill ‘witches.’

The narrative is mostly driven by a wide range of character dialogues that span over three acts, with a narrator supplying facts and summaries of the time period and events that occurred in between. We chose the first act to be at the witch monument located in Dundee, the second act to be at St. Mary’s Cathedral church, and the third church at the town centre square, an open area that was actually the location of her hanging back in the 1600s.

The first act is between Grissel and the community at large in various trivial activities in a typical day in Dundee. It is there that we are introduced to Grissel alongside her personal community. The second act is a scene of Grissel and her husband at church, the same church that had the priests that later accused Grissel and her husband of witchcraft in real life. There we are introduced to fictionalized versions of all three priests who mention a witch pricker visiting town, and that is the only sort of foreshadowing the player perceives (although it is a pretty clear foreshadowing of events, as players understand the premise of the game and knows what had already happened to Grissel Jaffray, the woman who was burnt at the stake centuries ago in Dundee). The last act is more dry and clean cut as we see Grissel living out her last few moments in anger and pain. There is more narration and explanations of the story at large and a few more facts given about the events that took over Scotland in the 1600s en masse. At the end of it all a monument is displayed in 3D rendering, a hard contrast to the 2D characters, with all the names of people who died at the stake present on it.

I decided on using English subtitles but had all voice actors speak with as much of a scottish accent as we could manage to find (from our limited resources) to further the immersion and respect the culture that this event takes place in. I gave the VA a separate script with scottish intonations and words to help with that endeavor.

Due to the narrative being the driving point of the game, I ended up specifying a lot of information in the design document through my script alone. Each act had a description of the locations, the characters, the mood, the ambient sounds and general atmosphere in addition to the dialogue. It was a good mockup of soft level designing in addition to guiding the player towards Grissel's grim fate.

Character Art, the process of creating non-stereotypical characters, and the Complications of AR

Based on our team’s artist abilities, we decided on having characters drawn in 2D and projected into a 3D environment through a 2D device. This actually has a very special effect, and looks unique to us, which helps tie in our aesthetic as a team and as a game experience. I started working on the character of Grissel and drew many iterations of her at many different ages, with many different styles. My team was most happy with the last mock up I drew, and so I began to create the characters.

We decided to keep the stylization of character to a minimum. We decided on a lineart heavy, semi realistic muted toned style to create serious but beautiful characters that rotated according to player camera angles so that a 3D rendering of them would not be necessary. Grissel does not stand out amongst the other characters and that is to emphasize how similar she is to anyone else in the community, further explaining the point visually that it could really be any woman that gets accused. There are more male characters than female due to the occupational standard of the time, something that is interesting but we do not feel ultimately detracts from the message of the game.

from there, I drew the characters. Below is a compilation of art works I created for this project, just my visual contributions to the team.