Writing for the LCD: FPS games

Episodic content

Episodic content is a bit of a hot potato right now, thanks mainly to the pending release of Half-Life 2: Episode Two at the start of October and the cancellation of SiN Episodes. My personal thoughts on the matter have already been publicly aired, but the spate of episodic first-person shooters continues despite my insistence that the genre is just plainly not suited to an episodic format.

Still, one point that even I can agree with is that for FPS writers the episodic format holds definite attraction and charm.

If we ignore the technical problems which I believe to be at the root of the cancellations and delays plaguing FPS episodes then there is still a wealth of creative opportunities that are practically begging to be explored by FPS, as well as other genres.

Episodic content allows continual refinement of storylines and action, as well as technological elements such as has been the case with Half-Life 2 Episodes where each instalment has had a particular technological focus, with Episode Two set to showcase wide-open spaces and cinematic physics.


By using an episodic model, writers would be able to produce more cliffhangers for players and could alter stories to reflect more immediately relevant and modern themes, as well as taking advantage of the episodic content to provide simple, branching storylines and multiple reactions built over elastic or potentially non-linear plots.

However, it all depends on the story you're trying to tell, as Rob Yescombe was quick to point out when we asked if he was tempted to make Haze an episodic affair.

"It all depends on the kind of story you want to tell. Certain stories would suffer from being dragged out across several episodes. If you look at a high-concept movie like Home Alone next to something like LOST with its huge arcs and a dozen characters, it’s easy to see why each works in its chosen format.

In my mind, the world of HAZE and in particular the Mantel Corporation could be reworked and expanded to work episodically. But since this is the first game in a series (I hope) it seemed logical to keep the number of main characters fairly small at first. It’s an ensemble, but a pretty small one. I didn’t want to overload people at the start."


So again, being mindful of how a story will function is important to how the finished product can end up. While games such as Half-Life 2 Episodes can be adapted to work with an episodic format – with a host of background characters and a series of cliffhangers eagerly awaited by fans – there are some FPS games which would be plainly unsuited to an episodic format. Doom 3 is the first example which springs to mind, mainly because every single episode would consist of another dark corridor to run down.

Doom 3 would also need a re-write for an episodic format as the game only has a small selection of goals (Join Delta Squad, call for help, kill Bertruger) throughout the entire game. These relatively simple and few plot-driven goals contrast greatly with games which have stories that are well suited to an episodic format, such as Half-Life where player goals are constantly adapting and changing. One minute players may be climbing up the infamous elevator shaft to save the dangling scientist, the next they may be recruiting the help of Barney Calhoun to open a path through an office complex which leads to a larger, overarching goal.

While Crysis obviously isn’t set to use the episodic format, it’s something Martin says Crytek has their eyes on for the future;


“We’re currently aiming for around 10 hours gameplay in the single player campaign (of Crysis) but, of course that time will vary from player to player. As for episodic content, we have been thinking about it, as everybody in the industry probably has. With the right game concept, there are a lot of positive arguments for episodic content and it’s definitely something to consider for the future.”

The ability to recognise whether or not a story is suited to an episodic format is critical for writers of FPS games nowadays. The 'standard' game format which we have become used to is similar to that a full length movie and obviously some movies wouldn't work in a broken down multi-part format; The Way of The Gun is one of my favourite movies, but it would be an awful mini-series.

A game with plenty of peaks and cliffhangers and a wide range of characters is well suited to be an episodic format, despite the reservations many of us now have about episodic gaming, while a game built on the strength of gameplay, like Painkiller, would make an episodic game with all the artistic merit of an episode of Eastenders.