Even if Metro Awakening is shaping up to be the fourth entry in the post-apocalyptic underground series, its virtual reality format has introduced some unique challenges in terms of story and character writing, not to mention all the usual game design hurdles developers need to overcome in the VR space.
Game Rant sat down with Metro comic book writer Dmitry Glukhovsky who has been actively involved in Metro Awakenings development, and he talked about his approach to the story and character writing in a virtual reality game as opposed to traditional flat screen games. Glukhovsky revealed what he thinks is most important when trying to immerse players in a narrative, as well as how people have an “empathic superpower” that allows them to strongly identify with well-crafted characters.
How players become Metro Awakening's protagonist
Since players must physically inhabit a virtual reality character, the question of how to make the experience believable was something that Glukhovsky pondered early on. According to Glukhovsky, it is important not to focus too much on the character's background and overload the players with facts and history. Instead, the best way to get players to “become” the character is to drop players head first into the character's current predicament. Half lifeGordon Freeman is a strong example of this: with minimal exposition or lore dumps, players quickly become Gordon Freeman, and his desperate struggle to escape Black Mesa becomes their own.
I thought about it, and then I came to the conclusion that the best thing you can do is create strong, immediate drama for the character, so that you now become him. The only way for you to become him is to give no background to the character. The magic of drama and dramatic storytelling is that when you identify with him or her and you realize that the problem he or she is facing is a serious challenge and you want to help him or her solve it – whether it's a personal problem, global problems – your identity dissolves into his or her identity.
10 minutes into a two hour movie and you are the character, especially in the moments where the character starts to make moral choices. You completely forget yourself. You are the character. When life gets hard for him or her, your heart spins, when something is hard, you feel ashamed, when he or she is in love, you almost feel that sexual excitement too.
Glukhovsky also pointed out that people are especially drawn in when characters are faced with moral decisions. In this case, it's important that the character makes a moral decision that the player would likely make in their shoes, as missing the mark here can alienate them and take them out of the experience. This immersive effect from moral decision-making probably explains why many players like games with morality systems and dialogue trees.
Metro Awakening does not have a silent protagonist
The Metro series went largely silent protagonists after Subway 2033but Metro Awakening will be a return to form. It makes sense in this case: the main character i Metro Awakening is Khan, a character that players have encountered before and portrayed by the original cast.
We have the superpower of empathy, and we can easily imagine that we are the other person, connecting to his or her needs and perspective.
So I think the biggest challenge in storytelling is not alienating this dictator as a player. Our protagonist i
Metro Awakening
speaking, and this is the first time to exclude the DLCs from the previous one
Metro
game and the first game in
Metro
series where the main character actually has a voice.
Calling back to what Glukhovsky said about immersion, using a voiced protagonist in Metro Awakening should help players connect more emotionally with the game. Like another Half life example, Half Life: Alyxs voiced protagonist was an excellent demonstration of this quality. Thanks to the legendary writing talent of Dmitry Glukhovsky and Vertigo Games' undisputed VR record, Metro Awakening shaping up to be a terrifying, gut-wrenching and all-encompassing immersive experience.
Metro Awakening will be released on November 7 on PC, PlayStation VR2 and Meta Quest.
