Nonlinear design and writing is a huge challenge, but it’s ultimately what games can do better than other media. Games must have interactions with choices, consequences, and resemble a digital Rubik’s Cube that adapts and changes depending on the player’s actions and choices. The ZA/UM writing and design team are more interested in making the writing suit the video game medium rather than imitate film. Kurvitz goes on to discuss how writing in video games is often influenced by writing in movies, with cutscenes often replacing interaction altogether. This allows a deeper and more intriguing character development, perhaps not unlike the revelations of The Nameless One in Planescape: Torment. This episode allows you to learn a lot about your character that you wouldn’t have otherwise. He pulls his gun out, threatens to kill himself, and so on. If you fail to bring the situation under control, your character starts going ballistic. You’re powerless, but you are a cop who has to arrest them. The men confess the crime, but then they start taunting you, provoking you into giving in to violence. It’s just you and your partner against them. At a certain point in the game, you’ll have to interrogate eight individuals, all of whom are carrying weapons.
He then proceeds to give an example of this. As a developer, studio ZA/UM has spent all this time in development to make sure that the game’s RPG systems reflect the way you’ll make mistakes.
The mistakes should make you feel something, whether it is embarrassment, apprehension, or regret. Instead, mistakes should impact the way you will react in the future, as you respond to what just happened. Kurvitz talks about how he expects the player to make mistakes in Disco Elysium, but the game won’t punish you or prevent you from accessing certain content in the game when you do.
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