The best narrative talks from GDC

gamedeveloper.com:

It's safe to say that the Game Developer editorial crew is a narrative-oriented bunch: which is evident in the number of narrative talks we covered during the show. Naturally, we can't cover every panel (here's where I link to GDC Vault), but here are a few of our favorites from GDC 2023, alongside interviews with Alt.Ctrl.GDC and IGF finalist creators.

Speaking at GDC 2023, HeartMachine narrative director and Solar Ash writer Tyler Hutchison shared sage wisdom such as "verb your characters" and "emotional outlines are bullshit."

"Put as much thought and care into writing a longline as you would into making your entire scene–you're writing this little one or two sentence thing from people on your team so they can understand everything that's going on in your head."

Narrative designers Alexa Ray Corriea and Lis Moberly want to help you give better feedback to your creative collaborators.

But when you aren't given good feedback on those mistakes, there can be cascading consequences. Poor feedback, Moberly explained, can lead to developers being unsure of their status at the company, uncertainty about what goals they should be working toward, a sense that they lack autonomy, a lack of social connection to their coworkers, and a sense that things in the workplace are just unfair.

Ubisoft Toronto's Brandon Hennessy spoke at GDC 2023 about the narrative work that went into Watch Dogs: Legion, and how the game's Play as Anyone mechanic required changes to the narrative team's pipeline.

Hennessy was pretty upfront, saying that Legion was unlike anything the Ubisoft Toronto had ever done before, particularly the narrative team. The studio’s previous works, such as Far Cry 5 and Splinter Cell: Blacklist, were relatively