Alan Wake 2 and Marvel's Spider-Man 2 creators share their thoughts on having dual protagonists in their games. Read here to learn more about their process and the challenges they faced during development.
Alan Wake and Spider-Man Directors Have a Sit-Down
The Dual Protagonist Motif
In an interview with IGN, Alan Wake 2 Creative Director Sam Lake, and Spider-Man 2 Senior Narrative Director John McAdam sat down to discuss developing their games. In a section of the interview, Lake opens the discussion to the process of how Alan Wake 2 and Spider-Man 2, have similar ideas of " having two hero characters and two protagonists and two playable characters." According to Lake, the dynamic between the protagonists is important because "they make the story together" and "how they live in this world and affect each other that is as important as those characters on their role."
For McAdam, it was "a lot of learning." From the beginning of conceptualization, McAdam intended the game to be a "Venom story" that was going to "weave in and out of all the other characters in the story and affect them." He and his team at Insomniac further explored this concept and decided that this game should have dual protagonists "with Venom being the main thing."
The Challenges of Having Dual Protagonists
In the early stages of production, McAdam explained that "there was too much going on" but writer Lauren Mee was able to handle Miles’ character and "make sure that it's really great" by having his story focus on Martin Li. This helped the team balance the story of the game and ensure that Miles had a part in the story "because it’s Peter who succumbs" to the symbiote. An additional challenge for the Insomniac team was the open world and gameplay.
When creating New York, McAdam explained that he wanted to differentiate the Spider-Men with "some side content that was Miles only, [or] was Pete only and we wanted you to get a sense for, okay, when you're playing as Miles, the city is a little bit different. The people know you differently, whatever."
It was difficult for the team to make sure the game didn’t feel linear as they wanted the players to have "freedom to be able to be who they want to be" but also "want that cinematic story" for them.
Lake expresses how difficult it was to create suspense in Alan Wake, and although he had a clear picture of Alan Wake’s arc in the story and elements, he states that "a lot of thinking needs to be done." In the past game, you would "lead the character into a cliffhanger and that's the point to switch" but since players can choose when to switch, that tool is no longer available.
Similar to McAdam, Lake was able to overcome this with the help of other writers, such as Clay Murphy and Tyler, to create the character arcs and "the kind of multiple layers of it." He explained that the team had to write "from 30 pages to 50 pages on the detail level of what is actually going on and happening."
Lake explains that the final version of what Alan Wake 2 was the closest game created to the initial vision." Because in many of the game projects, we have changed very critical big things along the way. But here we had the beginning vision and the end game. There were, of course, okay, this mission goes away and things like that, but certain key things in it are in the final game." Lake explains.
Source:
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