“Hello! For the last few months, I've been working on the little pieces of information that subtly unfold the various histories and cultures of Kenshi's world. Writing for a sandbox game can be a little different to other RPGs where the developers normally have more control over what the player hears and sees (and even what the NPCs do!). So, for Kenshi, I need to reflect the necessary information differently while also making sure the world feels alive and immersive.
A few months back, I talked about roughly structuring our first factions' layouts on the world map, but now my job is to zone in on the individual cities and their own mini conflicts. I've been planning out what I like to call the 'Carrots' - the local goals or tempting secrets for the player to explore. I then list out all the possible ways I can convey that information, using in-game item descriptions and different dialogues, or visually with assets. We're strictly against traditional quest systems in Kenshi, so it's important for me to tell the player what they can do indirectly through the environment instead, planting seeds in your minds and making you want to do things for yourselves.
One of those 'dribbles' of information involves writing dialogue Barks. Barks are the short bits of dialogue that NPCs blurt out either in reaction to something, or just completely ambient comments - the ambient comments are the ones that I've been writing and they're perfect for breathing life into a world, reinforcing goals and lore, and simply interacting with the player to really make them feel part of the world. BUT... I have to write a lot of those suckas while actually keeping them interesting and nonintrusive. They can be a bit mind numbing to work on but they're one of my favourite methods to paint a picture of a town via gossiping and general musings from citizens.
If you'd like to read more about my process with writing barks, I've written a much more in-depth article on gamasutra[
www.gamasutra.com] or you can follow me on Twitter”
