Stephen Rhodes

Writer & Narrative Designer

Deconstructing Game Narrative – Part 1: Spider-Man

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It’s been a while since I wrote on my blog. It’s been a very busy couple of years with working on a myriad of titles and projects, as well as trying to focus on a better work life balance. I decided that I wanted to get back to writing blog posts about topics I love, and no topic is dearer to me than that of discussing narrative in video games. I want to begin with a multi-part series analyzing the way various developers structure the narrative within their titles. I want to look at what’s good and what’s bad. What stood out, and what failed to ignite.

Before I begin my critique, I need to make a statement. There is no right or wrong way to write or make video games. The process of game development is an organic and often chaotic cycle of implementation and iteration. There are dozens of factors that go into governing every decision made at every level of production. As such, I want anyone reading this to understand that my thoughts and opinions on how games are made and how stories are told are my opinions. That’s not to say the choices other developers made are bad. In fact I applaud the diversity with which we tell stories in this medium. That’s the reason why I want to look at them closer and see what the developers achieved.

2018 has been an embarrassment of riches when it comes to incredible games. From God of War, to Red Dead Redemption 2; there has been a clear push by AAA developers to have compelling narratives woven into the heart of their titles. I’m going to start this series with a look at one of this year’s best games. I have a lot to say on it too, so let’s get started talking about Insomniac Games incredible Spider-Man.

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Horizon Zero Dawn: Jurassic Spark

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Following on from my Resident Evil review in January comes a look at the game I bought in February (although only just), Horizon Zero Dawn.

This release was a big deal in many respects. It’s a first party exclusive for Playstation, and it is a new IP, which are pretty rare these days in the AAA development space. It’s a game about hunting robotic dinosaurs with a bow, but it’s also about family, the concept of belonging, and learning from our past.

Horizon also introduces us to Aloy, a strong female protagonist, a fiery red-haired bad ass that you are going to see a lot more of in the future I can assure you.

Let’s get under the armor plating and check it out.

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Developer D&D: Campaign Diary #2

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Hello there. Here I am again with another campaign diary for my Dungeons and Dragons campaign that I’m running for a group of my colleagues at Ubisoft Quebec. This week the party recovered from their ambush on the road. They levelled up their characters for the first time and started to progress their characters. They also reached the town of Red Larch, where they interacted with a bunch of NPCs, had some down time, and looked into helping the locals with their issues.

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Buying Just One New Game Every Month (Or Not)

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We live in a truly wonderful time (sort of). Every year, hundreds of video games, board games, films, TV shows, books, and comics are created and released for our entertainment. There’s so much media for us to consume that it’s impossible to keep up. The really depressing thing is that if nothing new was created from this point onward, there would still be too much content for us to consume in one natural lifetime. There is literally hundreds of years worth of media out there for us to consume and enjoy. Despite this, new content is created at a ferocious pace and nowhere is this truer than in the video games industry. Every month, dozens of new video games are released for our enjoyment. They range from Triple A titles worked on by teams of hundreds of people with budgets of millions, all the way down to games made by one guy in his spare time using free software. So what’s a guy to do?

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Developer D&D: Campaign Diary #1

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One of my goals when moving to Quebec late last year was to make sure I continued writing RPG campaigns and dungeon mastering games. I had decided that I would get a PC and simply run games online for friends back home, and other people on the internet, but what I really wanted to do was find a local group. I had this grand campaign idea in my head that I really wanted to write and play, so I wanted a group of friends that I could sit around a table and run it for. Luckily, working in the games industry means I’m usually not short of a nerd or two who wants to play in a D&D campaign. After running a successful Christmas themed one-off session for some of my new colleagues, I realized I had found a good group to play with.

Storm of Death is the name of my four part epic Dungeons & Dragons campaign. It takes place in the Forgotten Realms, and sees the players travel from the sword coast, all the way to the Anauroch Desert in the east, and to realms beyond. It’s divided into four, twenty four hour chapters, each containing four parts. This format allows me to structure the sessions properly, and makes designing narrative arcs much easier. It also enables the campaign to become modular in nature, so that when I publish it online, other groups can use some or all of the modules based on their needs. The campaign is designed as a complete campaign experience, taking characters from level 1 all the way to level 20. It can, however, be used by existing groups by picking one of the chapters and playing through it as a self contained adventure arc. I started the campaign on the 7th February, and we’ll be playing bi-weekly. I decided I wanted to record the play through on my blog so people can follow along, or see how my group played through it.

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Resident Evil 7: Horror Finally Comes Home

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Resident Evil is one of the biggest game franchises in the world. It’s had nearly a dozen titles, and spawned numerous books, films, toys, and merchandise. Every time I speak to someone about the Resident Evil series they have a different story about how they were introduced to the games, and what their first experiences were like. It’s a household name in the horror genre, and it set the bar for what a survival horror game should be.

Well, it used to be at least. Over the years the franchise has taken some pretty catastrophic twists and turns. The franchise has evolved with the times, and the results have been mixed to put it lightly. They’ve tried all sorts of things, but nothing seemed to work. They knew the old formula wasn’t selling, so they looked to the big hitters of recent times for inspiration. This, however, was not the direction fans wanted the series to go and the sales proved it. Now it’s 2017, another installment has been released after some very clever marketing. Things seem to be back on track.

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How I Prepare For Running A D&D Campaign

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I’ve been running role playing campaigns for many years now. I think the first one I did was for my school friends when I was around fourteen, or fifteen. It was a Warhammer Fantasy Role play campaign I think, or D&D, I can’t quite remember. What I do remember though, is that I barely did any preparation. I just went in there, rolled characters, and started setting a scene. It went okay for a few sessions as I just threw combat encounters at them, but we started to lose momentum around the fifth wave of goblins!

I realized that my campaign, whilst functional, had no deeper meaning. There was no story to be told here other than the murder of goblins. I realized quite quickly that my campaigns needed to be planned better if I was going to keep players interested in what I had to offer them. Far forward some fifteen years later, and my campaign planning starts months before.

I’m about to start a brand new campaign with a group of my colleagues, so I thought it would be fun to share some of the methods I use to prepare for running a role playing campaign.

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Ten Things To Look Forward To In 2017

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Happy New Year everyone! We did it, you guys. We survived 2016. Now as we march bravely into 2017 and the terrifying unknown, I thought it would be best to kick off the year with a short list of things I am looking forward to getting my hands on.

Now we all know there are some scary things coming this year. We don’t need to talk about what those are because we all know of what I’m talking about. That’s right, another new Nintendo console!

I’m kidding! I’m actually quite excited for the Switch, but I’m sure I’ll talk about that in due time. Right now I want to share with you ten things I’m excited about that are due to be released in 2017. Like my end of year list, this is in no way conclusive. They are not in any order, or ranking. These are just ten things I’m eager to watch, play, or read this year. Okay then, so here we go with the first blog post of 2017…

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Ten Things I enjoyed In 2016

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I decided that for my last post of 2016 I would do something a little different. Normally December is filled with top ten lists. Everyone does them for everything, and they are endless. I find them quite entertaining, but I really didn’t think I could fill a top 10 list for games, books, films, and TV.
Instead what I decided to do was to pick ten things that I enjoyed in 2016. They aren’t in any order of priority, they aren’t based on anything other than the fact that I discovered them in 2016, and I enjoyed them. There will be some books, films, games, TV shows, and maybe even something else. This has been a shit year for planet earth, and humanity, but there’s been some good things. Let’s get to it shall we.

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