In the ever changing realm of game development, the journey to crafting a good gaming experience often begins with the right set of tools. We understand the importance of discovering the correct loadout, especially throughout our journey building “Tale of Ronin.”
Today, we want to talk about one of our main tools: Rashomon, an in-house narrative design tool that plays an important role in our day to day tasks. The name Rashomon was chosen both as a nod to the infamous Kurosawa film, and the known ‘Rashomon Effect’ which encompasses using contradictory perspectives and experiences in storytelling. Similar to how the Rashomon gate connected two worlds together, our tool allows us to create a gateway into our games world.
You may be wondering why a studio would choose to construct their own software instead of using something already available on the market. The answer lies in the need for precision, flexibility, and a tool that aligns perfectly with the specific requirements of their project. This is particularly true for narrative design tools, which play a fundamental role in shaping an immersive player experience.
Narrative design, the art of crafting the story and world within a video game, serves as the bedrock of narrative driven projects. This creative process involves blending character development, plot progression, and the player’s interactions into a cohesive and engaging story.
At its core, Rashomon uses graphs and an array of features that serve as a bridge to creating branching dialogues and a dynamic world. Rashomon helps us to blur the line between concept and implementation, making it easier to integrate dialogues, tweak existing scenes, and share our work.
In the next blog post, we will dive deeper into Rashomon, sharing more on how it streamlines dialogue creation. We will also show a sneak preview from a scene in “Tale of Ronin.” If you want to stay updated and receive notifications when we post a new article, don’t forget to sign up for our bi-weekly newsletter or follow us on Instagram and twitter.