Hi guys, how is the writing of the Star Citizen lore constrained by the known game mechanics?asked by Kilrathiknights
TL;DRLore is constrained less by known mechanics than by unfinished ones, so they stay less technically specific and focus on emotion, and the constraints prompt useful discussion between departments.
Yeah, it's a balancing act and it's sometimes, to be quite honest, lore is not so much constrained by the known game mechanics but more often by the unknown game mechanics. It's the stuff...the elements of ships, or weapons or worlds that we're still in the process of getting final approval on. So, when moments like that come we need to avoid getting too ultra specific on technical issues in that regard. From a lore perspective, it makes us do is probably focus less on those specifics and maybe more on the emotional story or on the emotional specifics which from a storytelling perspective is actually helpful. It makes you realize,what is this really about emotionally, what can we tap into. It does also cut both ways. For example, with the recent Genesis Starliner sale, if you look at the flight board all the places you see that you might have trips coming into we all approved the landing zones that would be on that board; because from a lore perspective you may be able to fly a Starliner into, let's say, the Hades system but there's no place for you to land there from a lore perspective because it is a pirate world and it is a dead world to a certain degree and stuff like that. Jared made a really great, funny card about Hades- 'Why would you ever go there' and it's an easter egg that you can find on the flight board if you search for it, if it's there at the right time and it was a fun little joke at the beginning but from a lore perspective we had to come in and be like, 'Oh wait, we need to do something else with this because this type of company wouldn't really fly or probably not want to fly into the system'.
There's definitely other stations, like the Rawley station on the moon of Odin II I mentioned earlier that's also a place where a commercial-like Starliner isn't going to go anyways. So, from a lore perspective also it's kinda like us being able to go in and be like, 'the mechanics of the game doesn't make sense for that to head there because of all these reasons we've built in'. So again, it's a balancing act and it's actually a good thing too because what it does do is it promotes in depth discussion between departments whether it's art or whether it's design. They come to us asking certain things or we go to them to get clarification so I think that makes for a good, healthy creative process all around.
Yeah. I feel like working with constraints can really help you narrow down what it is you finally want to do. Like if you're given like, 'here, do whatever you want in this space', you can get choice paralysis and not be able to develop your idea but since we have these conversations we can have these rules we can write by. That's super, super helpful.