Max Folkman
@maxfolkman.bsky.social
1.3K followers 617 following 90 posts
Writer, Director w/ @nickfolkman.bsky.social • Now: Senior Writer @ Riot Games • Prev: Spider-Man 2, Ratchet & Clank, Miles Morales, MASSIVE CHALICE • voice on @scriptlock.bsky.social • Rep: Dallaslyn Lamb
![Interviewer: There’s also often one writer, Marc Laidlaw, who drives the story. Is that sufficient, do you think, or should all developers learn to become good storytellers to a degree?
Garland: That’s a really, really big question. The first thing I’d say, and I want to make this really clear, is that I was not the writer on Enslaved in the way that Marc is the writer on Half-Life. I was very emphatically a co-writer. When I arrived at that project, the levels and the characters pre-existed. Not only that, but much of the required scenes between the characters already existed as well. So, in the way I conceptualise a writer, in that he begins with a blank sheet of paper, I was not the writer.
With regard to narrative, I think what I’d say is that it’s not important for everyone to understand storytelling, but it’s important for them to respect it. If you’re going to have a narrative within a game, you have to see it as being as valid as the gameplay. That’s what it boils down to. So here [gestures towards the door] is a film production company, and lots of different people are working on Judge Dredd behind us right now. Some of them will have narrative uppermost in their minds, and some of them won’t; some of them will be thinking: ‘How do I design this gun?’ And the design will have some narrative components.
It’s got to have a display that tells you what kind of ammo you’re using, stuff like that. But they’re not really thinking about the overall narrative picture and they don’t have to, but they’re also not going to do stuff that contradicts it, and if they do then someone else will correct it.](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:r7tca3ya5x7o2l5jkxctk3c6/bafkreign5qgownaief6ushgaw4gcza3wee235ctr34xxw4erh7igbrx5h4)
