Martin Lancaster – Lead Story Designer

As story lead, I’m responsible for all things narrative: in-game dialogue, cinematics, game mechanics, objectives flow and level pacing. The game’s fiction influences most aspects of development, so a large part of my job is ensuring that all the departments are on the same page. The bigger the project, the more difficult this becomes so I’m continually answering questions from other teams to ensure that the story comes across as intended.

Over the past few months I’ve been working closely with our contract writer, Richard Morgan, as he’s developed the game's plot, characters, universe and, ultimately, its script. As the levels and cinematics evolve, I’m on hand to do rewrites, solve problems and keep Richard informed so we can adapt the fiction to include anything from a change in direction to a kick-ass idea from someone on the development team.

We’re at a stage now where we’re seeing the entire game come together as a whole, with all the pieces falling more or less into place. It’s an exciting time, but an extremely busy one. At the moment, we’re having daily reviews of the levels with Cevat and the project leads, in which we look at every aspect of the game – art, design, animation, audio and storytelling – and ask ourselves: “how can we make this better?” It can be hard-going but the great thing about it is seeing the levels improve on a weekly or even a daily basis.

For instance, we’ve had a couple of cases recently where something we thought was great on paper just didn’t work in the game. It’s never easy to cut or change things that have already been worked on, but you have to be brutal when a part of the story simply isn’t working. Gameplay trumps all, so if an aspect of the story is getting in the way of the player’s game experience, we’ve got to adapt it.

I’ve also been crunching to get the script ready for our next voice recording session, which is mere hours away as I type this. There are a lot of last minute tweaks to make, and I’ll be supporting our audio director in the studio by providing direction and context to the actors.

The biggest challenge right now will be getting the game finished – and finding time to spend with my girlfriend. At the moment, I’m in the office between 9 and 12 hours a day, and about 8 hours on Sundays.

The best thing about my job is definitely the people. There are so many talented folks at Crytek – fantastic designers, artists, animators, audio engineers and programmers – and I’ve learned a lot from them. Well, maybe not so much from the programmers: I’m convinced that what they do is some kind of witchcraft.

But in all seriousness, you couldn’t get this kind of experience on any educational course in the world. It’s been invaluable.