The Real Neverending Story  

Developer: discreet monsters
Estimated Release Date: Fourth Quarter 2000

By Randy Sluganski

New Screenshots/Artwork Added May 2000:
     

Original Screenshots:
    

1999 can't get here fast enough for me! With games like Gabriel Knight 3, Outcast and The Longest Journey scheduled for spring, now add The Real Neverending Story to the list of anticipated adventure releases.

TRNS is being developed by a German company know as discreet monsters (neat company name!). The original Neverending Story novels were penned by the late Michael Ende and were also made into a successful film series. I asked Siggi Kogl, the producer of TRNS, why the word "real" was added and he replied, "We added real because we believe it will be the first serious work about the novel of Michael Ende, Neverending Story. It is very important for us, that everybody understands that we hate the movies about the Neverending Story but we love the book and Michael Ende's work and philosophy. The Real Neverending Story tries to fulfill what the book describes, but in a one origin and new story, which is serving the new media. This game has nothing to do with the movies! On the other hand it is planned to go on continuously with additional products like missions, dreamsavers (story-based screensavers), online-worlds, etc. and TRNS II and TRNS III, which gives the player a kind of real never-ending game." One has to be impressed that they are already planning sequels!

The object of TRNS is to save the mythical world of Fantasia and rescue the childlike Empress from the menace of the Nothing. Fantasia consists of five different and distinct worlds and, as you can see from the few screenshots that JA was fortunate enough to obtain, they are indeed colorfully populated.

Lots more to come on TRNS so stay tuned to Just Adventure for more screenshots and interviews about this exciting game.

Telling Tales

The Real Neverending Story
From an August 1999 Press Release

"Once upon a time there was a developer called discreet monsters, based in Munich. It began work on a revolutionary (action) adventure called The Real Neverending Story, based on the philosophy of Michael Ende's award-winning novel. The game is the world's first 3D realtime (action) adventure and it will revolutionize the computer game industry. And everybody will love it. The end."

Well, that was a nice story, wasn't it? Fairly linear, but nice. Well--imagine if the story was nonlinear. It may go something like this: "And everybody will love it. It began work on a revolutionary (action) adventure called The Real Neverending Story, based on the philosophy of Michael Ende's award-winning novel. Once upon a time there was a developer called discreet monsters based in Munich. The end. The game is the world's first 3D realtime (action) adventure and it will revolutionize the computer game industry."

It doesn't make much sense--so imagine how difficult it must be to construct a tale that is nonlinear, where events can be acted out in almost any order. That is the task faced by discreet monsters' storytelling department: Frank Veit and Robert Brecevic, collectively known as "The Nagila Brothers."

Frank and Robert met a couple of years ago at an interactive entertainment conference. They entered the conference strangers, and left friends. "At that time I was working as a conceptualist & scriptwriter in a new media company," says Frank. "Robert was scriptwriting for TV series, finishing film school. After the first session, we got a lift home together. Robert put some music on, which turned out to be some fancy Jewish pop featuring a song called Hava Nagila--and that's where the name came from. We hit it off immediately and created a working partnership, which has gone really well. We share the same vision--it definitely feels like we've met before."

The two guys are certainly some of the most creative writers your correspondent has ever met, prompting the question: "What kind of drugs do you smoke?" The answer--and it's up to you whether you believe them or not--is none. So journey with us, as we chat with the self-confessed--and definitely crazy--Nagila Brothers.

How does scripting interactive fiction differ from writing traditional fiction?

Pops: At first it doesn't differ at all. The pitch has to grab people and make them interested. Of course, in picking the subject of the story, you always have to keep in mind the medium where the story is going to be told. Tense family dramas about divorcee parents where the facial expressions of the characters portray the miserable lives they are living won't do in 3D real-time.

Frank: Not that such a story in itself wouldn't work--but those subtle facial expressions would definitely fail in delivering the message.

Pops: Once the synopsis and treatment of the story is done and agreed we start out by asking ourselves how it is going to be written. In what format or formats are we going to work? Are we doing branching, or multi-linear, storylines? Are we trying to solve everything through elaborate rule systems with preconditions of characters and items? Or something in between?

Frank: The conceptual framework is what makes it so challenging. There are no definite answers--there are no prescribed solutions.

Pops: Like with our invention--the EDS (emotion-based dialogue-system)--use of metaphors is the only way to cope with such conceptual work. In this case we used the metaphor of grabbing thoughts out of the "mind-pool" of the player character in order to make a compelling and immersive dialogue-system based on emotional impulses rather than grammar puzzles.

What software do you use to keep track of all the in-game events? Isn't it a bit of a nightmare remembering what's happening, what has already happened and where?

Frank: We have tried a lot of software. Doing listings in Access, Excel and other database formats. Using some flowchart software like Inspiration, Visio, etc. to get an overview of the chains of events and to make complex dialogues. Writing detailed scene-descriptions in ordinary Word files.

Pops: We also tried various so-called interactive scriptwriting tools like Script Thing, but they all somehow fail 'cause of bugs or simply not satisfying our needs. Though no existing software has provided the means of a general overview of all different components--the cross-reference between dialogue and coinciding events on a global level, for example. In what format do you store a random event? This is why we have to develop software of our own.

Frank: And this also goes with the job--defining requirements and conceptual framework for new tools. Like the dialogue editor, which is connected to the Story Database. These content management and editing tools that our company is developing are constantly expanding our means of constructing and shaping interactive stories.

How difficult has it been to come up with an original plot based on The Neverending Story? Would it have been easier to start from scratch?

Pops: The Neverending Story is a book--the medium in itself shapes the story. In a book you can explain loads of stuff simply by stating it in words. The main hero is fighting against oblivion--yeah, but how does it look when someone is fighting against oblivion? Is he banging his head against the wall or what? In audio/visual media you cannot explain as much as you have to show what is happening. Exactly how and when and where is it happening--"always" and "never" don't exactly make good imagery on the screen. Audiovisual storytelling has to be more exact, more concrete. With a writer like Michael Ende, who's very philosophical--dealing a lot with abstract issues--to translate this book into a game it is more or less like starting from scratch. The different film-makers adapting the writing of Michael Ende had their own ways of doing it. But I haven't even seen the film--therefore I have felt very free in creating an original plot based on the book The Neverending Story. Debating about the philosophy of Ende has been fun and the existing characters in the book were a good starting point for further development.

Which characters have you concentrated on--and how many new creatures will we see?

Frank: The main character of course is a new one--Asura. He is the savior, a fugitive and an avenger.

Pops: A really focal antagonist and a genuinely new character is the evasive and shape-shifting Trickster. Morphing throughout the game--his or her real name and shape I cannot reveal, since this is a secret. Discretion is a must. Then the Centaur Utar, actually the nephew of Cairon, is very interesting character. Complex and somewhat neurotic, he has taken on the task to keep law and order in place, though there is a dark secret dwelling in his past ...

Frank: Then we have the Fan, who believes that he is our twin brother. Is he mad or plain stupid? Hard to tell. He might be smarter than us all.

Pops: Gaia--the scorpio-lady with three pairs of good-looking legs--is evil all right. But she's also very lonely. Or the beautiful showdancer Habiba. Enigmatic and sly. The list could go on--it feels as if we have concentrated on all characters (more then 200 NPCs), trying to get the most out of them. Worth mentioning are the Rockchewers, the tribes of the Howls and the Barks engaged in a everlasting feud, the posh Aristides of the Ivory Tower and the scoundrel Turids, Primal Mother ... etc.

Frank: Most of the characters are new--if not, they are modifications of the ones that will be found in the book. A new phenomenon in Fantasia are, for example, the Dreamhunters--creatures that go into people's dreams retrieving lost things, patching up lost memories ... and so on.

How do you maintain freshness in the dialogue, giving each character individual personalities?

Pops: Develop a mild form of schizophrenia and then refer all of your characters to the different personae in your multiple personality disorder. Seriously--you let the "idea" of a character infect you, taking it to its outmost consequence. Making it larger than life. There is an idea about how a character is talking--this treat can be extreme since we are not making a real-life soap. If you, for example, would speak like the Fan in public, you would probably be committed to an institution.

Frank: And after writing the script and all dialogues there is a script coach rechecking all dialogues, checking the characters tone of voice, etc. And anyway, the director of the game is always a welcome source of inspiration, so we insist on input from the right people to guarantee best tone of voice for each character.

Plots are often overlooked in computer games--why do you think this is? How will you change this with The Real Neverending Story?

Pops: I think that is a question of genres. If a hardcore shooter or strategy game can work without a plot worth mentioning--then there is no need to have a plot for the plot's own sake. All media eventually develop genres, and so do computer games. When the film camera was invented the Lumiere brothers started with filming a train stopping at a railway station. Not very exciting. But seeing those little people moving on the screen was evidently enough for the time being.

Frank: With computer media, the "camera" is reinvented every now and then. For every new technology there is an offshoot. Invent a new engine and you have by definition a new game. It has been like this for quite some while, but it will come to an end. When invention becomes a standard feature, it tends to get kind of saturated. And as the costs of making a computer game steadily rises, there's a definite need to communicate to a larger target group and not only to those computer graphic aficionados who are satisfied with a few technical modifications.

Pops: Let's see who will be the Charlie Chaplins and Buster Keatons of early computer media age. I am convinced that the market for computer games will grow exponentially when story is introduced to a larger extent. Story is a universal language--independent of gender, race, class or special interests. With The Real Neverending Story we take aim at bringing the story into the game. The story will not be confined to only before and/or after gameplay. Take something like Metal Gear Solid: "This has happened." Then you play for a while, until: "you have successfully blah blah ..."

Frank: This system makes the story seem an excuse for gameplay that has nothing to do with going through the story. No, no, no--this is not the way we do things. We try to keep the linear elements of the game to an absolute minimum.

Pops: Connecting the different events within the game, making them all relevant to one big flexible, "elastic" storyline (which is still supposed to move forward and not get stuck in a status quo). ... whoa, that has been hell of a work. It is easy to get lost in something that feels like an abyss--thinking what if ... what if ... what if. ... And then there is always someone reminding you of some variable--something really simple--that you didn't think of. Well, after having done this I do understand why so many people have avoided attempting this type of genre--either by making the story irrelevant or leaving it to the user to make up his or her own story by direct interaction with other users, like the Ultima Online games.

Frank: The work with The Real Neverending Story is very much long-term. We're developing methods and standards for content-driven games. We're all out there pushing the boundaries to something that is inevitably the future of fiction.

What do you think Michael Ende would have thought about your scripts? How have you tried to maintain his vision?

Frank: I think he would have liked it. He would have been fascinated by how much more we were able to extract from his original ideas. That's also what his wife, Ms. Sato Ende, said about our work--she is very excited. Putting loads of manpower in furthering the scope of an imaginary world--making Fantasia even more "real" could only make him into a happy man.

Pops: The philosophy of Michael Ende was propagating the freedom of imagination. And due to this vision you could say that we were free to go absolutely berserk--which we did. Yet at the same time we were really orthodox, strangely enough.

Of which parts of the script are you most proud?

Pops: Those parts of the script where you feel that story and gameplay is perfectly matched together and there are no irrelevant events and/or actions in coherence to the "big picture"--like when the perfect conspiracy is revealed. Aha! They were all in on it! Or were they?

Frank: Parts where the story furthers the aspects of what gameplay can be about. Like when you have to humiliate yourself in the game in order to get away alive from a vicious and very bored lady called Gaia.

Pops: Forcing the gamer to do unusual stuff is very rewarding.