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Meet the Developers: Hall Hood


CourtneyWoods

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Hi everyone! We have answers from Hall for some of the questions asked in this thread. We're not always able to address all questions, but we appreciate your questions and posts! Thanks for participating, and stay tuned for more Meet the Developers blogs.

 

 

Q: Did the writers have any say in who would voice the characters?

 

Hall: We always offer casting suggestions for every character we create, but the final determination rests with our teammates at LucasArts. For especially high-profile roles - our character classes and companions - we receive audition recordings from multiple actors and choose our favorite from among them. The process has worked out great, as we got some tremendously talented voice actors for our biggest and best roles.

 

 

Q: How closely do writers get to work with the voice actors? Is there some degree of coaching, or sharing why you wrote something in the way that you did?

 

Hall: Before we send our scripts off for recording, BioWare's writers add detailed performance notes for the actors to see when they come to the recording booth. Each individual line has information to help the actor understand the context of the line and what's happening in the overall conversation where it's occurring. Our project was simply too big for writers to get any "studio time" with our voice actors, which is a shame. I would love to meet the actors who brought my heroes and villains to life, one of these days.

 

 

Q: In a recent interview, you mentioned you mentioned that the writing direction of the future would be akin to the Avengers, bringing the individual stories together into one epic story. Could you elaborate on what this means for the future?

 

Hall: I can't reveal anything about our future plans, but we're always experimenting with new styles of storytelling for SWTOR. Some stories work especially well as a great big group team-up where players compete for the spotlight during conversations (hence the Avengers analogy), but that doesn't mean players have to be grouped in order to enjoy them. All of our content that isn't specifically written to be a class story is designed to work equally well whether you're in a group or flying solo.

 

 

Q: I'm interested in knowing a little more detail on how you went about working for Bioware as a writer, Mr Hood. What kind of qualifications did you need, and what type of things should an interested person put in their portfolio?

 

Hall: I had been a professional screenwriter for over a dozen years before applying to BioWare. I had also been an avid gamer my entire life and was especially fond of BioWare's RPGs. On top of that, I was also a massive Star Wars nerd. Of course, being a gamer and Star Wars nerd wouldn't have mattered at all without the time I put into learning the craft of writing. A good portfolio for a prospective game author will demonstrate confidence and talent as a writer, and also show a thorough understanding of the principles of good gameplay and quest design. Writing for games is the most challenging and rewarding creative work I've ever done, but it's definitely not a career path to embark on lightly.

 

 

Q: What is in the glass Hall? (referring to the blog photo)

 

Hall: That, my friend, is a cup full of Sith tears. Sooooo delicious…

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You know, those answers are actually really boring. This has been the most underwhelming Blog Post by far - I wasn't hoping to be overwhelmed, merely whelmed. I am not whelmed. Hard to feel excited about story content when the lead writer can't make it sound exciting.

 

Lack of SGRA talk is becoming a sadly hilarious constant.

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You know, those answers are actually really boring. This has been the most underwhelming Blog Post by far - I wasn't hoping to be overwhelmed, merely whelmed. I am not whelmed. Hard to feel excited about story content when the lead writer can't make it sound exciting.

 

Lack of SGRA talk is becoming a sadly hilarious constant.

 

Thats the truth. While SGRA aren't that important to me they are to a lot of people yet it was ignored.

 

Really can't say how much I don't care if an actor got notes or who picked them and as for how you got to work at bioware what does it really matter? You could be a tramped they pulled off the street or Oxford educated it doesn't matter if the stories are good. As for whats in the cup good question really cared about that too.

 

So all in all bang up job on answering some tough questions there. The game is losing subscriptions and rather than do anything about it or discuss with players what could be done we get this. Not inspiring confidence that cartel boxes aren't a means of wrincing a few more bucks out of players before we go into maintenance mode.

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Thats the truth. While SGRA aren't that important to me they are to a lot of people yet it was ignored.

 

Uluain pulled the figures and questions about SGRA's made up around 25% of those in this thread. But it was very important to find out the contents of the mug.

 

It's really the old weekly Q&A fiasco all over again, but far more niche.

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Q: In a recent interview, you mentioned you mentioned that the writing direction of the future would be akin to the Avengers, bringing the individual stories together into one epic story. Could you elaborate on what this means for the future?

 

Hall: I can't reveal anything about our future plans, but we're always experimenting with new styles of storytelling for SWTOR. Some stories work especially well as a great big group team-up where players compete for the spotlight during conversations (hence the Avengers analogy), but that doesn't mean players have to be grouped in order to enjoy them. All of our content that isn't specifically written to be a class story is designed to work equally well whether you're in a group or flying solo.

 

 

 

I'm sorry, but I have to call this a total dodge. We already have multiplayer conversations, and have had from the very beginning so that is clearly not what Mr. Hood was talking about in the interview. The implication was that you guys would not be making anymore Class Stories in favor of "Avenger-style" stories instead. That is the issue. Point blank, can we expect more class stories in the future or is that off the table for cost reasons? Right now we don't know if we will ever get more class story content and for a lot of us that's what makes this game worth subscribing to.

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I´m not expecting more class story untill an expansion some day, but none of us realy know for sure. Were kept in the dark, and this interview didn´t help one bit. "i cant say anything about future plans" what´s that about. You dont have to be specific, but some vague idea of the direction of the game realy should be possible to deliver. If you dont know were your heading then were realy worse trouble than i feared.
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I´m not expecting more class story untill an expansion some day, but none of us realy know for sure. Were kept in the dark, and this interview didn´t help one bit. "i cant say anything about future plans" what´s that about. You dont have to be specific, but some vague idea of the direction of the game realy should be possible to deliver. If you dont know were your heading then were realy worse trouble than i feared.

 

I agree, it's very frustrating, and all of the marketing videos in the world do not replace a developer actually talking to us about the direction and future of this game. The State of the Game post was a joke. Right now we know nothing about what the future has in store for anything, and that's after a very tumultuous year in which BioWare struggled with server consolidations and getting very basic MMO features into the game, which took them forever. I really think the Lead Writer should be able to say point blank, without any spoilers, what we can expect in terms of story in this story-based MMO. Maybe my expectations are too high. Maybe I'm sick of hearing about Free to Play and HK-51, and I want to hear something of substance from BioWare. :rolleyes:

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My guesses:

- SGR is gone with Daniel Erickson

- class stories are gone because that's what drove the budget of SWTOR through the roof. 8 stories with voice acting, 8 times the dialogues of "dragon age" or "mass effect" plus 40 companions.

 

If either of those have any truth, I would have hoped that Bioware had the decency to tell us - of course it seems a lot of things have, and will continue, fallen by the wayside in favour of Free 2 Play.

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The question about SGRA's was the single most asked question in the thread. I feel disappointed to hear nothing about it yet again. The feature and the publicity that go with it seem to be greatly underestimated, which is somewhat surprising considering we're talking about a BioWare game after all. The company already has very positive experience with SGR in their previous games, so we can't say they are hesitating to make the first step - they already made a road..
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The question about SGRA's was the single most asked question in the thread. I feel disappointed to hear nothing about it yet again.

 

The question about what he was drinking in his glass was deemed of higher importance to the community.

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My guesses:

- SGR is gone with Daniel Erickson

- class stories are gone because that's what drove the budget of SWTOR through the roof. 8 stories with voice acting, 8 times the dialogues of "dragon age" or "mass effect" plus 40 companions.

 

1) I find the idea that SGRs or anything for that matter would be attached to one man on the team a bit silly. It's a fully Bioware/EA supported concept.

2) As I often have mentioned to people who bring this up, the actors are under contract and the industry standard is that they receive annual salaries. They don't get paid by the session.

 

The bigger factor in both of those things that is most relevant is *time*. It takes time to get all that dialogue recorded and edited and people are impatient as it is.

 

I definitely get the impression that there is a general gag order on all story related stuff.

Edited by chuixupu
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Hi everyone! We have answers from Hall for some of the questions asked in this thread. We're not always able to address all questions, but we appreciate your questions and posts! Thanks for participating, and stay tuned for more Meet the Developers blogs.

 

 

Q: Did the writers have any say in who would voice the characters?

 

Hall: We always offer casting suggestions for every character we create, but the final determination rests with our teammates at LucasArts. For especially high-profile roles - our character classes and companions - we receive audition recordings from multiple actors and choose our favorite from among them. The process has worked out great, as we got some tremendously talented voice actors for our biggest and best roles.

 

 

Q: How closely do writers get to work with the voice actors? Is there some degree of coaching, or sharing why you wrote something in the way that you did?

 

Hall: Before we send our scripts off for recording, BioWare's writers add detailed performance notes for the actors to see when they come to the recording booth. Each individual line has information to help the actor understand the context of the line and what's happening in the overall conversation where it's occurring. Our project was simply too big for writers to get any "studio time" with our voice actors, which is a shame. I would love to meet the actors who brought my heroes and villains to life, one of these days.

 

 

Q: In a recent interview, you mentioned you mentioned that the writing direction of the future would be akin to the Avengers, bringing the individual stories together into one epic story. Could you elaborate on what this means for the future?

 

Hall: I can't reveal anything about our future plans, but we're always experimenting with new styles of storytelling for SWTOR. Some stories work especially well as a great big group team-up where players compete for the spotlight during conversations (hence the Avengers analogy), but that doesn't mean players have to be grouped in order to enjoy them. All of our content that isn't specifically written to be a class story is designed to work equally well whether you're in a group or flying solo.

 

 

Q: I'm interested in knowing a little more detail on how you went about working for Bioware as a writer, Mr Hood. What kind of qualifications did you need, and what type of things should an interested person put in their portfolio?

 

Hall: I had been a professional screenwriter for over a dozen years before applying to BioWare. I had also been an avid gamer my entire life and was especially fond of BioWare's RPGs. On top of that, I was also a massive Star Wars nerd. Of course, being a gamer and Star Wars nerd wouldn't have mattered at all without the time I put into learning the craft of writing. A good portfolio for a prospective game author will demonstrate confidence and talent as a writer, and also show a thorough understanding of the principles of good gameplay and quest design. Writing for games is the most challenging and rewarding creative work I've ever done, but it's definitely not a career path to embark on lightly.

 

 

Q: What is in the glass Hall? (referring to the blog photo)

 

Hall: That, my friend, is a cup full of Sith tears. Sooooo delicious…

Hi Hall,

 

since you wrote the Jedi Knight Story class I'd like to offer some feedback about this class story.

 

I tried it during the beta and played a low level dark sided Jedi, so my experience with the class is limited.

 

First I wish the dialog had some impact because playing a dark sided I felt like surrounded by blind Jedi.

It felt especially disturbing in front of the council as it was like all of them failed the force sense classes and were on drugs and deaf.

 

Then playing a dark sided Jedi was more about greed, fame and being an as_ole than said being a you know... a dark sided Jedi or a Jedi falling to the dark side..

 

Finally I don't know why but the class story felt a bit too much bland / cliche.

 

I guess most of it comes with design direction and technical choices though.

Anyway not saying writing for games is easy.

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I'm sorry, but I have to call this a total dodge. We already have multiplayer conversations, and have had from the very beginning so that is clearly not what Mr. Hood was talking about in the interview.

 

If you try to read it a bit more optimistically, however, it could just mean that some future content (let's call it Makeb for the moment) might get a more intermingled, coinciding overall story arc in the form of a planetary/bonus quest line that doesn't intervene with class stories. That would be cool.

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Onasi is never listed as having had a wife after Telos, especially considering his son died.

 

His personal story in KotOR involved saving his son from the academy on Korriban. If lightside Revan is canon then Dustil should still be alive. Plus I wouldn't mind if they modified canon a bit to see another Onasi. I'm also sad that they didn't have the Onasi blaster as a legendary item, or Bindo's robes.

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His personal story in KotOR involved saving his son from the academy on Korriban. If lightside Revan is canon then Dustil should still be alive. Plus I wouldn't mind if they modified canon a bit to see another Onasi. I'm also sad that they didn't have the Onasi blaster as a legendary item, or Bindo's robes.

 

'In Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords, Dustil was supposed to make an appearance in the tomb on Korriban. Dustil would claim that he is a Jedi and turned his back on the dark side only to return to Korriban for reasons unknown even to himself. While inside the tomb, Dustil would claim to have encountered and killed Carth twenty two times while other times, Carth had killed him. While speaking with the Jedi Exile (who he believes is just another vision) he would cry for his father and ask why he left him. Dustil would then become enraged and attack the Exile. However, the voice for the scene was never done, and was cut from the final version of the game. Instead there is a body labeled "Dead Jedi" in the chamber with a datapad belonging to a Jedi named Nebelish. The designers never changed the model for the corpse however, and he still clearly resembles Dustil.'

 

I don't think they've ever decided on whether or not to make this C-canon, but it does make sense.

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'In Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords, Dustil was supposed to make an appearance in the tomb on Korriban. Dustil would claim that he is a Jedi and turned his back on the dark side only to return to Korriban for reasons unknown even to himself. While inside the tomb, Dustil would claim to have encountered and killed Carth twenty two times while other times, Carth had killed him. While speaking with the Jedi Exile (who he believes is just another vision) he would cry for his father and ask why he left him. Dustil would then become enraged and attack the Exile. However, the voice for the scene was never done, and was cut from the final version of the game. Instead there is a body labeled "Dead Jedi" in the chamber with a datapad belonging to a Jedi named Nebelish. The designers never changed the model for the corpse however, and he still clearly resembles Dustil.'

 

I don't think they've ever decided on whether or not to make this C-canon, but it does make sense.

 

Hmm, well it would have been nice to hear Raphael Sbarge in the game. They could have made an Onasi work, considering that was never actually in the second game.

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You know, those answers are actually really boring. This has been the most underwhelming Blog Post by far

 

Hall: I can't reveal anything about our future plans

 

I really don't understand why, after so many years and so many MMOs, people do not understand this.

Edited by Andryah
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I really don't understand why, after so many years and so many MMOs, people do not understand this.

 

As much as I would have liked to know anything about SGRA's, that wasn't entirely what I was commenting about. I just found the answers boring, that's all. Perhaps some insight into the process, how the different class story writers engaged.

 

However, I will add that I find it aggravating that the Community Team (and now Mr. Hood) cannot even confirm that previous statements remain valid. I hardly call that "discussing future content".

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