Want a glimpse into the creation of frighteningly good sci-fi survival horror Dead Space? Writer Antony Johnston explains some of the process that came with penning the game’s story and its associated comic books.
How much freedom did you have in writing the game and the comics?
I actually had a lot of freedom. Because I was brought on board so early in development with the animation guys, we all worked together to build a master timeline and what we decided was that there were several beats we had to hit; things that the story needed to make sense. And then we decided what particular things had to be in the comic and the animated feature. But around those things we had a lot of freedom to do whatever we wanted.
That was great, as it gave me a lot of freedom and I was able to create a whole raft of characters for the comic, design lots of new visual stuff and work to expand the universe and game world.
How much control did you have in writing the actual dialogue for the game?
Loads. Obviously it’s a game, so certain events will trigger bits of dialogue and scenes, so I had to follow those. They just said “here’s what we need – go away and decide what’s the best way to do it, and come back with a script”. So that’s what I did. [laughs]. There was a lot of creative leeway and a lot of respect for what I do.
I think the industry is realising you need professional, dedicated writers if you want to get that quality of writing. I think we’ll see a lot more people like that as the games industry matures, I certainly hope so, because I think it can only be good for games.
How did you get the job as writer for the project and how did that develop?
I was recommended by [comic book writer and novelist] Warren Ellis, who had some involvement in the conceptional stages of the game, and EA decided it wanted to do the comic book as well, but Warren couldn’t do it because he was too busy. We have the same agent, and so he recommended me instead. We had a few phone conversations with the guys at EA to work out what they wanted to do with the comic and it progressed from there.
We had done all the preliminary story work but I hadn’t quite started the comic when EA contacted me about scripting the game, and I said “yeah, I’d love to do that!” [laughs] So I wrote most of the comic before I scripted the game… it all kinda blurs into one big session of late nights at the laptop. It was all organic, really. I think mainly they wanted to check that what I was going to do in the comic fitted their vision, before getting me to do the game’s dialogue.
Being a games player yourself, was writing for videogames something you’ve always wanted to do?
It was, yes! I’ve wanted to do something in videogames for a while because I do enjoy playing them, and I think it’s a whole new arena from a creative perspective. Games can be art, they’re already entertainment, and it’s something that I always thought would be quite cool. And it is, as it turns out! [laughs]
How much of the game have you played during the process of it being made and written?
I’ve been sent videos of gameplay and EA took me into the studios at Redwood and demoed the game for me. I’ve seen it being played and watched walkthrough videos that the developers have made, but I haven’t actually had a controller in my hands yet and probably wont until everyone else has at retail. Obviously because I did the dialogue I know what the story is, and I was always given as much support and access to the assets as I needed, but never got to play it!
What were the main requirements in creating the dialogue for Dead Space in terms of tone and other factors?
The main remit was to keep it naturalistic. So you don’t have people in the game talking in heroic proclamations, because they’re just ordinary guys: your main characters are an engineer, the leader of a security team and a computer geek… and the engineer doesn’t even talk. So they’re real people, not soldiers or space adventurers. That’s the approach I like to take, that’s the way I write my comics. So it was mainly just a case of finding and developing the characters and letting them speak in their own voice.
What sort of challenges were there in creating the comic and game?
The challenge in writing the comic book was making it interesting without giving away spoilers for the game. [laughs] The challenge for the game was the compression required, the economy of dialogue required. Because there’s a lot of story and plot to get across, there’s a lot of information to feed to the player in order to help them to understand what’s going on and reveal the twists, turns and secrets of the game. Because it’s a game and not a movie, you only have a few lines of dialogue to do that in – we don’t have any cut scenes and you can’t have someone talking for 30 minutes explaining things while Isaac’s walking around bored.
That was a challenge, but that’s where my experience in comics really helped, because in that medium you’re constrained by physical space, rather than duration. So as a comic writer you have to learn how to economise very heavily and get a lot of information across in a small number of words, and it was the same in the game. It was a challenge, but it was one I was used to.
Now that your work in Dead Space is finished, is working in games something you’d want to pursue more?
I’d love to. It’s the first game I’ve done and it’s been a fun and creatively challenging and interesting experience. And I’d love to do more.
