Alien: Rogue Incursion At SDCC 2024

The team behind Alien: Rogue Incursion headed to San Diego Comic-Con this year, hosting a panel and making themselves available for roundtable interviews. I was able to catch up with them at both, and here’s what I was able to learn about the upcoming VR game.

If you missed the news, the big reveal at the panel was that the game’s protagonist is Zula Hendricks, and that she will be voiced by Andia Winslow. Zula Hendricks is not a new character in the Alien universe, but if you’ve just watched the films you may not be familiar with here since she exists in the extended universe of the novels and comics.

First, we had the chance to speak with Winslow and TQ Jefferson of Servios, So how does Winslow feel about voicing a character who’s well-known to franchise fans?

“Okay, so it's eight years since she came off the page to now screen, to VR screen. So I read the book I guess five years ago, I just came across it. So when I saw the casting and I found out I was booked and I saw her name, I said wait, Zula Hendricks? I think that's Alien. And then when I found out, I was like, oh gosh, it's amazing because sci-fi and horror is pretty important in my family, so, I'm like, alright, this is very cool.”

How did she prepare for the role?

“So in terms of preparation, I think the really cool thing about voiceover and voiceover acting is it's a collaborative process so it's not just me barking blind, it's me working with the creative teams and the director and the writers to build a world. So what we did is we built a world based on the 45 year legacy of Alien and bringing this franchise to VR in a way that's never been done before. It's going to really create I think some memorable game plays, some memorable experiences you're going to see, you're going to hear, you're going to feel, you're going to experience this franchise in a way you never have in the past.”

“I mean you want to be informed as an actor, you want to be authentic as an actor, you want to make sure that you're staying in line with what's happened in the past. So I did read the book years prior but I went back right away, let me refresh, and also went back to watch the films again because I want to say, what did I forget? What are some terms that I forgot or some essence that I forgot so that my intention real time recording would be in line with what we're building. So I think I've done that.”

I was curious about how she approached a role that required acting in isolation in a sound booth. How difficult is it for her to create that feeling of apprehension and fear when there was nothing there?

“I think what's really cool again about voiceover is that your director is your coach and your creative team, they are part of the people that help you build this world so they're giving you cues to help you to feel the senses so whether it's sense memory, whether it's you projecting yourself, imagining yourself in these spaces, I think often times voice acting can be the most difficult kind of acting because you don't have costumes, you don't have scenes, you don't have sets, you have to really go there in your mind and so for me it was recalling, reading the book, recalling seeing the Alien franchise through all these years.”

“I wasn't here in the 70s, but going back and looking at the original concept from Ridley Scott and understanding the world I think I was able to take all that data, input it and in real time work with an amazing creative team that's got a high standard of care to bring Zula to life and to bring the world to light that you're going to see shortly and hopefully that you'll enjoy it.”

“I think without being too serious about it, I come from a military family. So I think part of my upbringing was understanding discipline, empathy, leadership, being resolved. Also, I played professional sports and I was a movie athlete. So this idea of being coached, this idea of mission-based performance, it all ties into military operation, right? So even though this is a fictional military operation, this is in the future, this is in space, this is something that I do day-to-day to help achieve things I've done throughout the different iterations of my life. So I think when I get into the booth and the directors on the other side of the glass and TQ and Zoe and the writers and the creatives, I'm ready to go to work.”

“Tell me what to do, what's our mission, to advance the ball, to advance the story, and I'm ready to go to work, and that's how I get myself into that mind-frame, which is a little bit different than a lot of actors, but for me, that's what helped get me in the slot, get me in the bucket.”

When asked about the pressures of stepping into an iconic role in a 40-year-old franchise, Winslow responded:

“I think that taking on any franchise that has longevity, that has a large fan base, that's beloved, there's always a pressure to be authentic and that was our goal first and foremost, we wanted to be authentic, we wanted to look real, sound just like the Alien film franchise.”

“So in VR it's critical that you immerse the player in the world so that means the music, the sound effects, the visual effects, the lighting, the voice over, everything has to come together in a way that feels like we've been dropped right into the film.”

“So that was our first goal when we did our original proof of concept we'll say, you know, did it feel like the film, did it look like the film, did it sound like the film and once we unlock that then we just iterate, we go over and over again, we make more of it, we test if it fails and we get feedback from the fans to help us dial it in.”

How does she feel about being a part of a story told through VR?

“Well, I could say, unequivocally, Alien was meant to be in VR. The idea of atmosphere, miasma, the interactivity of the world, the fact that you reach out and touch things, the physicality of it, taking your pulse right home, popping out a magazine, slapping anyone in, racking it, that sort of thing. That sort of interaction is only happening in VR.”

“So for us, it was a dream realized and the fact that the game is purpose-built, it's not modded, it's not converted from a different format, it's purpose-built for VR means we can really dial in how it feels, how it looks every moment of the game. We can dial in.”

I was curious as to the approach that Jefferson took to the gameplay and asked, “when you hear about a new Aliens game coming out, the first thing you think is that it will be a first-person shooter, yet this game was announced as Action Horror. So what drove the decision not to put another shooter in the gaming franchise and how would you describe Action Horror?”

“It was definitely a conscious decision from concept onward that we were going to have a game that is first-person perspective because it's VR, but we wanted to focus on storytelling and bring a rich narrative to the platform.“

”So Action Horror is what you are doing, that's the genre that it's in, but there's so much story and there's so much in the game that is exploration, that is preparation, that is not running the pivot and shoot like a first-person shooter. So it was very important for us to make that distinction so that people who are buying the game know what they are purchasing. They know that this is a story-driven adventure played as an adventure. It's cinematic.”

“The wonderful thing about being cinematic, and one of the challenges, quite frankly, is that everything is in first-person and everything is in real-time. So when we are telling a story, we can't cut away and go, you know, meanwhile, at the base, this is happening. Because if we do that, we are going to break the immersion. So everything is happening to you in real-time. All the storytelling is happening in real-time in first-person. And we create the story in such a way that it ties into the game loop and you are assembling the story as you are playing along.”

VR takes immersion to a whole new level, what did the team do to deliver an intense experience that didn’t become overwhelming for the player?

“Well, I think it's a few different layers to the answer. One, Servios was founded as a VR studio. It's our 11th year, and our early games were built specifically to take on these challenges in VR, how to cure for nausea and how to handle movement in 3D space. So we're very practiced at developing gameplay that doesn't affect the player negatively.”

“But we also test a lot. So, we'll put people in the game and we'll get data from them, feedback that's telling us, oh, this feels good, this didn't feel good. And then we'll put in comfort settings that will allow players to play smoothly and without a lot of friction. So you'll see vignettes that come in that blur the boundaries around you, that steady your visuals. So overall, the goal is to keep people comfortable and engaged in the game rather than thinking about, I'm wearing a headset and I feel nauseous.”

What did the team think of Zula as a character?

“She is not a superhero, but she's heroic in her quest. She's trying to save a comrade who is somewhere, you'll find out, can't tell you that. So she's fighting many battles. She's fighting this battle against Xenomorphs, she's fighting the battle against Corbin Reed, but she's also fighting internal battles.”

“She's pivoted many times in her life. She's pivoted from being kind of a youth on the fringe. Then she pivoted to being under the discipline of the Marine Corps, and then she pivoted to being someone who's leading by principle. She's fighting the good fight. So I think that idea of pivot, of always moving forward, of always being in the trenches, whether it be for the military or for yourself or for your friends, that's what I think resonates most with me, is always moving forward. Always keeping your eyes on the prize and always doing the good work.”

“If I could just add, one of the things that made Zula so appealing to us as a character is that Zula is very aware of what genre she's in. She knows that she's in a horror action sort of scenario. Not in the way that Deadpool knows she's in a game or in a film, but she's willingly going into this scenario. I think that's the thing that makes her just incredibly heroic, that she has made it her personal crusade to prevent the emotions spreading, to stop corporations from exploiting them. If you go back to the original comics in Defiance, even at the end of her story line, she's like, we're probably going to die, but we're going to kill some xenomorphs, we're going to fight the good fight, and the fact that she's taking that upon herself as noble. She's elected to save humanity.”

Next, we had the chance to talk with Tate Mosessian, studio art director, and Eugene Elkin, the game director and the lead engineer on the project.

I first asked Elkin about movement in the game: “VR games have always had a problem fixing the first-person movement problem so that it feels natural. What system did you select in this game, and why did you choose it?

“So, we've been in VR for over a decade now, and we've been in it since the very first day, where just moving makes you feel nauseous. And the industry evolved as a whole in terms of what the standard of locomotion is these days. It used to be only teleportation, otherwise it's nauseous. We figured out there's a certain ramp up in acceleration and ramp down that actually doesn't make the person nauseous. But we also have comfort options, so if you don't like turning, smooth turn with a joystick, then we have snap turns. We're instantly snapshot.”

“We do vignettes, so if you start moving faster, then there is a post-process effect that kicks in inside of the screen that always gives binocular vision, almost tunnel vision. And because you're not getting this fast movement and peripheral vision, then the nausea is decreased.”

“So, we are using just general locomotion, but there's a lot of tricks in the backend that go there to decrease that whole feeling you might get from nausea.”

“It's this action horror mix that's just perfectly built for VR, and it's a game from the ground up is built for VR experience.”

Will the game support haptic feedback?

“Haptics is crucial, especially when you're firing the gun and in VR when you have so much physicality with what you touch. Even opening the doors does not hit you and your keyboard. And as you come up and there's a lever that you grab and you pull down, everything should have a feel to it. Because that physical interaction with it is just another dimension in the game that, OK, this is real. It's not just, I feel it. I don't just see it in a game. Just about everything has haptics. Obviously, the controllers and haptics have also improved in VR, but PSVR actually has had haptics. And at certain moments when, I don't want to spoil it for you, I'll just say when you can hit and you feel it in your head, that's just another level of immersion that you feel connected to the game.”

Are there any Easter eggs in the game placed for fans of the extended Alien franchise?

“Yeah, from a visual standpoint, saying this a lot today is we really were interested in being authentic to the 1986 film. And so you're going to see a lot of things in there that will draw you back to that time period, that space. We're not recreating Hadley's Hope, you know, vent by vent, but we are creating worlds that look like they could have been on a neighboring planet. And so you're getting that Alien experience. You are going to get to see a lot of the iconic stuff that you would see there, the equipment, the creatures. But you're also going to be immersed in the world that you haven't seen yet, but that is in tune with what you have. If you're a fan of the franchise, you'll definitely be pointing and giggling quite a bit, and if you're a newcomer, you will enjoy it just the same.”

Elkin expressed enthusiasm for working with A.I. in the game:

“It's the opportunity to work with, I think, one of the most unique A.I. in gaming. Traditionally, difficulty and the way you play it can be scaled with a biped character, like a humanoid character, because they can shoot, they can run after, they can lock doors, they can open doors. They can take cover, there's so much they can do, but we have this creature that's able to climb on anything, walk on anything. It can be on walls and ceiling, it can be perching in this little hole inside the wires, but in the end, all it can do is melee. And it's this perfect killing organism, and yet we need a mixture of, okay, it's an action game, it's not just a horror game, you're not just running away from it, you've got to fight this thing.”

“So there's a technical challenge, because we needed to stay authentic. The first thing, we set a couple ground rules when we started iterating on the game, and one was authentic alien combat and respect to Xeno. So the moment you don't respect it, the moment you kind of, your head is not in a swivel and not using the motion tracker to analyze, hey, did I just hear something tap-tap-tap behind the walls? And you don't take out the motion tracker, you're not being careful, you might just get got in that thing.”

“One of the concepts that we follow from the beginning, I like to reference Conway's Game of Life. It's this mathematical kind of puzzle you learn in programming school, in CS 101 or something, where there's a grid, a grid paper that's in each time a computer generates a dot randomly. And depending on how many dots get generated next to your dot, you either live it or die. And if you run that simulation out, the craziest complex patterns emerge. Sometimes it looks like a spaceship that travels all around the grid. Other times a whole city appears and another city appears, and then dots will travel through and they die. So essentially, simple rules can create complex outcomes. And that's what we did with the Xenomorph.”

“Essentially, we're like, it can traverse anywhere. It likes to respond to sound. If a player is clumsy and they knock over a bunch of cups at the table, they'll hear it and they'll come. But they're not going to just spot them right outside a door, like typical in games where we just spot some enemies. They just pop-in from events somewhere and they're searching the environment. They might see you, they might not see you. There might be more than one, there might be three, and they might not catch you and they might just leave. And you run into it as it was leaving. And that type of simulation creates emergent behavior. Sometimes they do interesting things.”

“I'm like, what is that? I never told him to do that, but he's out there perching. He's hiding and he's waiting for the player to walk past him. Because that's what the simulation just happened, the way all the rules came together, and that's the behavior it created. Yeah, it could be unpredictable. And the only thing you really know is it just wants to kill you. Yeah, it's relentless. And it's going to find ways, so yeah.”

When Mosessian was asked how he felt working on an Alien game, he responded:

“So, you're asking an artist how they felt when they found out they were going to work on an alien project. H.R. Geiger, Ron Cobb, Sidney, that's enough right there. And really, they provided the framework, the blueprint, everything we needed to interject into this game. And that was the Bible, that was what we felt.”

How much freedom did he have in designing the look of the game, were there constraints imposed by the owners of the franchise IP?

“They were accommodating, and we sort of tried a few things and pushed and pulled in different directions. Ultimately, we just ended up coming back to the Xenomorph Warrior and really held true to that. So any feedback that came back from Disney was really there to kind of help out. If there was something we missed and they caught, great, thank you. So it wasn't really an adversarial relationship, it was really a collaborative one because we were all in sync with what we wanted to do with the project. Where we were able to branch out a little bit was within the environments, and Disney and 20th Century have been really good about letting us do that. As long as we remain in the sort of core visual rules and maintain the aesthetic, it wouldn't be confusing to the player, where am I, what world am I in.”

“We'd been constantly getting feedback from people saying, even just dropping into a corridor. I knew immediately what game I was playing, I knew what movie it was from, and that was just in an empty corridor. So then we knew we were successful, and then we were giving the IP holder what they wanted, too.”

Any special challenges?

“While you can't really do cutscenes in VR in a traditional sense, because you can't take away control of the camera from the player, because the player needs to be able to rotate their head, and we wanted to create some really enticing moments. Something that disempowers the player, and they’re able to tell the story of what's happening. So there's lots and lots of engineering work and animation work and prototyping that went in. How can we give you head movement, and yet take away control of your arms? And all of a sudden, your arms can do something else, but maybe you have a little control of your arms. That way you can be, let's say, strapped to a chair, because that's necessary for the narrative moment.”

“We talked about Zeno traversal. Really on the art side, the challenge is to create environments that the Zenos can actually traverse. They're fairly complicated spaces, but luckily, working hand-in-hand with combat design and engineering, we were able to create those really porous environments with all of the greebles and all of those things, and still have the Xeno be able to traverse all of that stuff. Floors, walls, ceilings, traverse within the walls and into vents. And so we were able to, at any given point, they could all drop out of the environment and confront you. You could engage with them. Some of them might run back off into the ceiling and try to flank you and come back around. But we've been able to, and this was the challenge, to create those environments that would allow for that. That's something we're really proud of, the effect that Tate is describing here.”

“Why are Zenos doing this sometimes? Why do they go away? Sometimes the answer is, I don't know, man. The artist or designer will come for me, he's like, why did this Xeno do that? I'm like, I don't know.”

Mosessian noted that the 1986 Aliens film provided him with inspiration for the look of the game:

“Well, I mean, to be honest, we tried to recreate it as closely as we could. Everything down to the webbed fingers, everything down to the number of ribs, whether you see the eyes or whether you don't. Surface quality, all of that stuff really sort of was driven by the film and the characters in the film and creatures. So yeah, that's really what we were trying to do.”

“I mean, there's creativity in that, too, in terms of being able to provide maybe a little bit more. I mean, because the film is a man in a suit, so you at least have to make it look not like a man in a suit. And so that's where we spent a lot of our time on the legs and the feet. Maybe thing it out a little bit, because the man in the suit's a little bit chunky. Xenomorphs are a little bit more streamlined. So those areas where we just tried to take the practical effects from the film and work them more into the 3D lines.”

How do you tell a story without cutscenes?

“Zula Hendrix arrives on Perdan with her AI companion, Davis One. So there's a lot of interactions that happen between the two people as they're discovering what really happened on this planet. And they're there to find Zula's friend who disappeared and kind of went dark. So that's why in her investigation, Perdan and Zula and Davis One are exploring the environment there and then covering all the secrets. And the conversation between them two and the inner monologue of Zula sometimes is what's telling the story. And while there's not a cutscene in a standard way, there's definitely a VR form of a cutscene that we've worked on very hard to develop that can help move along the story and narrative in some fashion. And we do to a degree rely on traditional video game tropes where you communicate a certain amount of information to the player, things like email messages and stuff like that.”

“There's definitely found those horror narrative objects where if you want to get a deeper lore, there's people who can blast through it. But if you're a fan of the franchise, there is a lot for you to find and really figure out and background on what really happened to the player. So much care went into a lot of stuff that most people don't even know are in the game.”

“What's the ecosystem of this planet? Why is there salt all the way outside? And it was a failed terraforming attempt. And there's a lot of information to discover if you're interested in the world.”

I was curious what an artist felt like working with such a dark palette, and so I asked Elkin: “there are a lot of very dark space, a lot of dark palettes, dark spaces. So how do you balance that with the player being able to see things, but not lose that feeling like there's something in the dark?”

“That was one of our pillars for the art department was lighting. Lighting in dark spaces, lighting in bright spaces, and then chaos lighting. And in games, it's my philosophy that you don't ever put a player, especially in VR, in a black room. You have to see something. So even in those dark spaces, we see into the shadows. You have to give the player the opportunity to do that.”

“There are a couple of occasions where we provide the player with a flashlight and we design those spaces specifically around times where we'll need a flashlight. Even in those cases, we want to get a little bit of ambient light into the dark shadows just to give a player boundaries, understanding of sort of where they are in the world. So yeah, I mean, it is a huge tool to use in games in general, but it's also extremely important in different ways in VR.”

Elkin mentioned that game should take about eight hours to complete the story, but there are opportunities to explore and spend more time with it. So I asked him if the game is primary a linear experience or are there opportunities to branch out and find secret spaces?

“There's definitely opportunities to find secret spaces. In terms of designing the game, there's golden path and then we call it the silver path for people who do want to explore. And that's where you find the majority of the lore.”

“When you find those secret emails of what happened, what happened in this room? There are secondary stories that can be told through the environment. What is this dead body in this room? They're like, oh, that's what this person was doing. That's why they're here.”

“Yeah, I mean, it is a narrative game. So to a degree, we do have to draw the player through the world. But we give tons of opportunity to go off in silver paths.”

The discussion then turned to weapons.

“We have a shotgun, we have a revolver. And because all of that is in VR, each weapon is incredibly unique. Not just in the way you handle it. Each one is unique in the way, for example, you reload it. A pulse rifle, you have to check the clip, grab another one, slap it in, rack the pin, and all of that feels really kind of incredible. For the first time, you're holding an actual plasma rifle, and because of the haptics that we talked about earlier, and its look and its size and the way it behaves, it's kind of a magical experience. It's total wish fulfillment. You have a revolver, there's a drone that you can flick like a cowboy. There's a shotgun. Each one has a reason to use and a best opportunity. Distance, line of sight, how many rounds.”

“Well, I mean, if you've got the shotgun and you spend it, you're also in a race to load the shotgun. So, you've got eight rounds, and you've got to get them in there, or as many as you can, until the Xeno comes bearing down. And you physically get to pump the gun. Each one has a physicality to it that can only be done in VR.”

“And the question, just real quick to that point, how do you balance the physicality, the feel of it, with the control of the gun? Obviously, sometimes in VR, it can be a little clunky, kind of like a hand cracker, you adjust it a little bit. How do you kind of balance that? I mean, you hit it on a nail there, it's a lot of trial and error and tuning, and figuring out, sometimes you have these great ideas, and it becomes overly complicated. And then you want to scale it back, but you still want to have the realism of the weapon. You don't want to abstract too much, because there's an ultimate abstraction. It's a button, and the whole thing is your hand comes up and loads it and cocks it, right?”

“There is a whole other way, a simulation of the weapon, and you have to find that happy medium ground where people are enjoying it, but they're not frustrated by it. Yeah, and sometimes you want that, because depending on how fast you can reload the weapon, it's also, when should I do it, when I should reload it when there's no xenomorphs around. So that plays into the difficulty of using the weapon.”

While on the topic of weapons, I asked about ammo scarcity. “Is the game a survival experience where you have that one bullet, and you need to decide if you should shoot it now or if you have to save it for later?”

“Well, there's scarcity, so there is that. It's not like you have to manage this every second of the game, and we give you cues of how much ammo you have left, and it's all very sort of there in front of you. But we do interject scarcity, and so you do have to be somewhat conservative with how you use your weapon. You don't have to spray and pray for it. You'll run out of ammo very quickly. They'll get you.”

Lastly, we had the opportunity to speak with Alex White, the writer of the game’s story. White has an extensive background in writing novels for the Alien extended universe, so the game is in good hands narrative-wise.

What about those of you who have never read the comics or novels? Will they be able to follow the game’s story?

“Do not feel daunted at all. These are just characters that pre-exist and are really exciting to write about.”

Is there a different approach to writing for VR than for a traditional game?

“Absolutely it's a different approach, because not every moment when you're being hunted by aliens is a good one to have a conversation. You know what I mean?”

“So when people are crawling through a wet hallway, trying not to be killed, there's not going to be a lot of dialogue. Which is interesting because we have characters that have a lot of history together, and that have history with the Xenomorph themselves. You know, because we know that this is a character who is well-known for hunting and fighting Xenomorphs, this is not going to be somebody who's maiden voyage with them. Right?”

“So that affects how the dialogue plays out. It's almost like Hendricks' seen the movies, you know? And so that's really interesting. And as far as the VR nature of it is concerned, the VR nature of it is so immersive that when you try and have a conversation out of context where it doesn't make sense, the players notice, we notice, it's something that we go and police and make sure that everything is as seamless and close to the realistic experiences as it possibly can be.”

I was curious if Alien had a lore bible or not, or if as a writer White had to rely on his own extensive knowledge of the franchise’s history:

“Well, okay, so that is interesting because there are a lot of conflicts inside of the canon. Right? And so one of the things that we tried to do is to really close to the things that we knew were going to be strong contenders. So nobody gets mad at aliens. Nobody gets mad at aliens. So we know that. Right?”

“You know, alien defiance, we wanted to make sure that we worked in a lot of that lore. So that all goes in, you know? But as far as like how we work with the extended stuff, we're mostly trying to stick close to the cinematic stuff. We don't want to step on any movies or TV shows. We want to work with the license holder to make sure that they're really happy with everything so that even though our projects are not related, they can remain as canonical as possible. Now, you know, Adam and I have discussed at length the differences in when and how canon matters, but for this game and for our purposes, I think that is probably the answer you're looking for.”

How is writing for a game different since you can’t control what a player will do as you can the protagonist in a novel?

“There's mainline dialogue and then there's contextual dialogue. I work with a team of narrative designers, Zoe Quinn and John Raeberger, who are really exceptional narrative designers.”

“What they do in a lot of ways, if you go to a door that doesn't have a key yet and that person has to have a, oh no, this is locked kind of line, that's somebody else. I'm not going to be writing that. I'm going to be writing the dramatic moments, the ones where you get the real monologues where you go, now it's time to burn this place to the ground kind of monologues. By the way, if you're looking for those moments of empowerment and things like that in this game, they are going to be there. It's an action horror game. There are action moments and there are horror moments and moments where you feel powerless and moments where you feel very powerful. And so the writing process needed to be engineered to optimize those moments.”

“So I'm always looking for places where we can have those important conversations about the characters' backstories and character development and things like that. Because I believe that when we have those in ways that matter to the players, that the immersion is just off the charts.”

Is writing for a video game experience different than writing for a reader?

“Oh, absolutely.”

So did that kind of affect the way you had to approach the dialogue or the story?

“Oh, 100%. Well, it's just like I was saying earlier, how you can't have a conversation in the middle of a hallway with a bunch of Xenos like, oh, what were we doing last night? Oh, excuse me a moment. Bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, you know. You know, and so I will say that that's, I mean, that's the first and the most obvious way.”

“But the other thing is that you have to be really economical with your dialogue, right? If I've been traveling with you for five years, I'm not going to be like, hey, remember when we traveled together for five years? You know, that's not that's not going to happen, right? That's called expository dialogue, and it's something that we as writers have to avoid. And there's so much of that. And there's so much backstory that Zula Hendrix and Davis One have to explain. And there's so much backstory that Gemini Exoplanet Solutions has that has to be explained. And then at the same time, we still have to even though we assume you've seen the movies, we still have to put enough explanation of just in case you bought this game and you've never seen the alien before.”

“You really don't have very much time to say those kinds of things, you know, because, again, if you get two seconds to coordinate and you're running out of food and water for, you know, you're stuck in there's a bunch of aliens hunting you. You're probably not going to say like, remember that time I, you know, got a back injury and the first battle I ever fought? That was wild.”

How did he work in those scary moments for the player?

“What's good about that is that I work with a design lead. So oftentimes they will come to me and they'll say like, we have a jump scare here and we have a jump scare here. So I'm more, it's like I'm getting, I'm getting the setup, right?”

“So like when you approach this window, you can expect it to come hit the glass or something like that. Then what that enables me to do is to go ahead and start throwing in red herrings. I'll have them start talking right before we get one of those jump scares or something like that. Just to mess with you, right?”

“So I think that I'm able to do that, but I think that most of the time those kinds of big moments come from engineering.”

How does he coordinate with the developers so that gameplay and story are cohesive?

“It is a deeply collaborative environment where there is no room for divas and rock stars. I had to write lots and lots and lots of drafts to make it work as we gradually align towards what they were making. And that's how that always is when you're doing software development.”

“If anybody here is a software developer, we all know that agile software teams change their objectives every sprint. Video game teams, not necessarily that different. They all have different things that they're pursuing on behalf of the license holders and investors. They have different things they're pursuing as part of the business, what the fans are looking for, that kind of stuff. And I need to be there to support that. And so a lot of my writing, you know, you can't be precious about it. You know, you have to expect to throw stuff away. And when that happens, you can't get your feelings around it. So it is, in that regard, I would say I've had more work hit the cutting room floor than just about any other project. But that's also because when I write a novel, I plan the novel by myself, and the only person that has to approve it is Disney. So it sort of works out.”

Did it ever work the other way during this game? Did you have a great idea for as scene that would work somewhere, and the developers said, okay, we'll build that into the game?

“All the time. All the time. You know, where we would be. Because the thing is, I still had to make a prediction about how it would go. A lot of times what would happen is I would sit down with level design, and we would go through the level painstakingly, step by step. This is going to happen, then this is going to happen, then this is going to happen. I would go back and write dialogue around that. And any part where I was like, well, I'm going to have to take a guess at what happens here, I go ahead and take a guess. And there were plenty of times when they said, I really like that. Let's make that a feature. Or, I really like that. Let's make sure it gets into the game. There were other times they said, oh, this is heartbreaking. That's so good, but we can't do that. You know, it really just depends.”