Game Culture managed to catch up with Insomniac’s Lead Writer on Resistance 3, Jon Paquette while he was over in Australia promoting the game. We managed to get the nitty gritty on what Jon thinks is the best part of the creation process, how Jon familiarised himself with Resistance and what it’s like bringing the world of Resistance 3 to life

GC: This is your first time writing for the Resistance series. Being your first time, what was the most challenging part of the writing process?

Jon: Yeah I think for the Resistance Franchise the most challenging part for me was first of all, becoming an expert in the franchise, ya know there have been three games, and a PSP game and two novels and the comic books and becoming an expert in all of that. That was fairly easy, but once we started working on Resistance 3 there were so many stories to write, so many possibilities to use for Resistance 3 that it was hard for me to pick out the ones that I was going to leave on the cutting room floor so-to-speak, and I’m a big believer in simplicity in stories and in games so it was hard to leave alot of those stories untouched

GC: Sure, so leaving stuff out was difficult for you. You’ve actually answered two of my questions in one because the next question I was going to ask was “How did you familiarise yourself with the world of Resistance” so, it sounds like you did a lot of research.

Jon: Oh Yeah, it took a couple of months right at the start ya know, and there were alot of documents written at Insomniac that I could work off like the backstory, the chimera, and really understanding their motivations and the way that they worked that never came through in the game

GC: The next question was about the main protagonist in the story, did that come about because of you coming onboard or was that something that was already in the works?

Jon: Ah when I started it was pretty much a blank slate, I mean, the end of Resistance 2 was very clear with what happened. There was talk about maybe bringing Hale back for R3 or maybe going with a completely different char, when I looked at those events at the end of R2, I realised that what Joe capelli did was a very heroic thing, I mean he did the hard thing of killing Nathan Hale because he was about to become a Chimera, and if he had been allowed to live, he would probably be the worst enemy that humanity had ever known and probably would have caused the end of humanity as we know it. So Capelli really saved Humanity by killing Hale even though he was ya know, kind of cast out and labeled a villain because of it. And that complexity about the character really appealed to me and ya know, I also wanted to make Capelli a regular guy, give him a wife and a child and really kinda focus him on keeping his family safe rather than fighting against Chimera because that gives him a place to go creatively and dramatically

GC: I agree, it is actually a bit of a shift from Nathan Hale. I think as you play the game you can relate to Joseph in a different way because he’s a family man with kids and yeah, I thought that was quite a different turn in the story. So how long did it take you in total to write the story for Resistance 3?

Jon: Well ya know, game writing is a little different to other forms of writing so, when you’re writing a game you’re really working on the game and the game was in production for about two and a half years and it was writing and rewriting and throwing stuff away and creating new things

GC: It must be a process where you’re constantly changing things because you’ve got other aspects you need to consider for the story so it’s almost like you’re writing on the fly

Jon: Yeah it is, and thats one of the exciting things about game development for me is that you try to project whether things are working, but you dont really know until you put it in the hands of regular people and you see how they’re connecting with it. Whether they’re learning or what they need to do or whether certain moments in the game are working for them, and often times it doesn’t and you have to go back to the drawing board and rework some things. It’s not uncommon for game developers to throw away most of their work and re-do it before they ship the game

GC: Right Ok and that kinda leads into my next question about the importance of relating to the player of the game when you write. So how do you work through that?

Jon: I’m a gamer myself so first and foremost I want to help create an experience that I think I would enjoy and then from there we do a lot of testing, internally and externally. We bring people off the street and have them play the game and that’s primarily at least the best way in my experience to make sure that its connecting with players

GC: So what’s more difficult for you to capture as a writer, the action sequences or the emotional sequences?

Jon: I think in a game it’s probably the emotional sequences because alot of the people playing the game, they buy it for the action and for the interactive experience but I think the audience is maturing and we’re looking for deeper experiences, we’re looking for an emotional connection with the action we have in these games. And I think we need to keep questioning that as much as we can otherwise the medium will be kind of shallow. It’s got a ways to go

GC: Yeah, I agree with you completely I mean there are so many action games out there these days it really comes down to the storyline for a lot of people and I think that’s a very important part that sometimes gets overlooked when a game is classified as an action game

Jon: Right and as far as genre’s go, first person shooter is a genre, it’s not a genre in its context its a genre in its game mechanics. When people pick up a game they want a certain aspect of game mechanics but it’s through the story and the characters that we bring a unique spin on that. So they want to be able to do all the same things that they’ve done in other games, and they get upset if the controls are really different or if the game behaved in a really different way, so we really have to rely on the characters and the story to bring something fresh to the experience

GC: I Agree. So how important is creating an atmosphere with your story?

Jon: When I talk about game stories I like to use the players’ experience because that’s really what we’re creating. I don’t sit in a room and write words on a page and expect that to be consumed by the audience, the audience consumes the experience so mood and atmosphere is a huge part of experiencing the game and thats one of the tools that we have as writers and creators. So that’s why I think it’s so important to be close to the team and work with the effects artists who create the rain and the snow and the fog, the sound guys who give us the little creaks and groans of the wood as you’re walking along the floor, those things are really really important to the overall experience, and I think when people finish a game that has really good mood and atmosphere, more often than not, they’ll say “Wow that game had a great story,” it wasnt really like words on a the page that made the story great, it was the experience

GC: Yep definitely and I think music has a lot to do with that.

Jon: Absolutely!

GC: Is the soundtrack produced before you do the creating process or is that done at the same time?

Jon: It’s done at the same time. The composer Boris Salchow, he was in the studio a lot and he would come in and we would play the game together and talk about the kind of emotions we wanted the player to experience at certain points in the game, and then he would kind of go off and compose a piece that he thought worked and more often than not, he got it right on ya know, and thats just another example of how things change and evolve over time. If we changed a level, obviously we’d need to go back to Boris and say “Hey we need a new piece to get a different kind of emotional response here”

GC: What was your favourite part of the writing process?

Jon: Um, that’s a great question. I enjoy interacting within a team, I enjoy, strangely enoughm throwing away work when it’s toward the goal of making the game better. So I think for me, my favourite part of game development is kind of watching how early on in the process you’ve got all these main parts you know, making games is incredibly complex, and at some point you’d say to yourself “This is never going to work, these pieces are never going to come together and this is going to be a disaster,” and you lose all your confidence but then magically, somewhere along the way, things start clicking and it all starts coming together. And then you get to that point where you watch people play the game and you watch them having fun, it’s kind of like you’re giving birth to this creature that has taken on a life of its own. It’s very exciting and satisfying to see that change occur

GC: Definitely! It must be quite rewarding eventually when players get the game and they really enjoy the experience, I suppose that’s kind of the pay off for you, really

Jon: Yeah, I mean the reviews will be what they are. I’m more excited about people, just regular people going out and buying the game and playing it because from what I’ve seen, people are really enjoying it.

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