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嗯，出遠門前發個文，這篇不是什麼社論類的東西，也跟Erepublik沒什麼關係應該不太會起爭議需要速回XD

會想寫這篇的起因是看到Disclone幫一篇外國遊戲設計相關文章寫的[譯文][設計師手記No.1][譯到腦死]設計線上遊戲之數個要點，突然讓我想到我之前也很想發但是一直沒有完工的遊戲設計師訪談專文。於是我就花了兩個小時把這篇給完工了。

這篇主軸是翻譯自2011年時Gameinformer.com在電玩大作〈刺客教條II：啟示錄〉（Assassin’s Creed II: Revelation）宣傳期對該作的創意總監的訪談，接續的是我自己的想法，最後則是訪談原文的逐字稿（已潤飾過的好讀版）。

老樣子，還請有興趣／喜歡的朋友請幫忙轉發轉SHOUT啊！

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訪談節譯（訪談逐字稿原文請見文末）：

電玩產業仍就是一個相較新興的產業。即使在這個已經成長到非常龐大、眾人皆知的階段，我們卻還在跌跌撞撞地試圖邁出建立語彙的第一步。

關於這個產業未來的走向，我認為其中之一是電玩會變得愈趨主流。成為主流的其中一種途徑，是把絕大部分的重心放在故事敘事上。在未來，劇情敘事與玩家的實際操控將會逐漸整合，脫離過往我們熟見的一段由玩家操控，然後緊接著一段的劇情影片，然後再回到由玩家操控，如此周而復始的模式。未來遊戲操控將與敘事本身合為一體。這就是我剛剛提到的我們還在努力發展的敘事語言。

我想舉一個我常常提到的遊戲為例。它其實稱不上一個遊戲，僅僅是一個實驗，叫做「旅程」。基本上它是一個8-bit的橫向卷軸遊戲，玩家操控的是一個16像素高的角色，色彩只有16色，非常老式的東西。你只能操控這個腳色前進或後退，當你前進時，背景會向後拉，而你只能一直往前走不能後退──你可以在螢幕中前後移動，但是沒辦法回頭倒捲重訪你已經到過的地方。你會在某個段落遇到另一個角色，一個女角，而當你繼續往前走她會開始跟在你身邊，所以你就知道，喔，也許這個角色變成我的女朋友或妻子之類的。

隨著你繼續往前走，你在卷軸場景中的位子就隨之推進，同時你的角色也在改變。你會看到你的角色隨著你在卷軸中的進度而慢慢變老。你會開始有種奇怪的感覺，好像意識到自己無可避免的宿命。而當你繼續走下去，你的兩個角色都已經老到不能在老，突然間女角就突然消失了，然後地上冒出一個墓碑。

我在旁邊觀察人們進行這個實驗，許多人就這樣愣在那裏兩、三、四分鐘，好像不確定、不知道接下來該怎麼辦似的。然後當他們整理好自己的情緒然後繼續往前走，直到最後自己的角色也消失了，變成另一座墓碑。

許多人出奇地被實驗中這個16色、由低解析度像素構成的畫面粗糙遊戲給感動了。我相信背後的原因是，你的實際動作（實際操控），也就是往前走這個行為，與這個遊戲的象徵寓意──人生是只能前進沒有辦法回頭的，基本上是同樣的一件事情。當玩家所做的動作與遊戲本身的意義越貼近，你就越能產生情緒上的共鳴反應，而這就是我們仍努力再發展的敘事語言──找尋聰明的解決方案將敘事與玩家操控融為一體。只要你能達成這個目標，你就能讓玩家有情感上的衝擊。


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這讓我回憶起〈刺客教條II〉（Assassin’s Creed II）中的最開始的三個任務。儘管是由不同的創意總監執導，〈刺II〉早已開始相同的嚐試。首先，大量的劇情透過口白對話融入玩家操控的過程中，劇情不再只由過場影片來鋪陳。玩過〈刺II〉的朋友們一定有印象一開始主角Ezio與他的親哥在街頭上並肩與敵對家族鬥毆，在返途中一同比賽爬上教堂鐘塔俯瞰佛羅倫斯的橋段。在我寥寥幾個取樣中，多數都在當下被遊戲營造的經驗所感動（當然不可避免的我們得分許多功勞給劇情影片接近末尾所下Jesper Kyd的OP編曲BGM ，但有趣的是，回過頭來「看」同一段影片而非「玩」該斷遊戲時，那種感動卻不復以往，甚至令人覺得有點幼稚）。當你的操作經驗與敘事重合，被打動的難度就降低許多。此外，〈刺II〉中即使是劇情影片，也不是預先製成（pre-rendered）的影片檔，而是遊戲中的現實（realtime）取鏡（這並不是什麼創新，畢竟pre-rendered的影片將佔據大量的磁碟空間而不切實際而少被採納），也因此可以加入更多的彈性，例如在許多劇情影片片段中，玩家依然可以很小幅度提供兩個指令來操控主角的行動。然而一直到〈刺客教條三〉代仍難脫劇情與操控時段相錯的窠臼。為什麼？

我認為最大的因素得歸咎於運鏡在影像敘事上的無可取代。好的運鏡，作為動態影像中可以被獨立提出檢視的語彙，所能提供出的敘事廣度與厚度絕對不是第三人稱主角後腦勺後方的固定攝影機（Fixed Camera）所能比擬。你可以在對話的時候拉近特寫雙方的表情與肢體動作，然後在音軌不變的同時轉換到由樓房上狙擊手背後的視角，隨即接續一個正反拍並快速剪入開槍失準後被擊碎的花器創造張力，緊接著特寫配角刺客冷然的神情然後換回正反拍鏡頭回到中景，以呈現他擲出飛刀的肢體動感 （3:30 ~ 3:40 ）──試想這一連串盡頭如果是從主角後腦勺上方的固定攝影機所目擊將會有多乏味？

更多內容先按下不寫，大家如果喜歡歡迎討論 : ) 最晚週末前返家回覆！


訪談原文逐字稿：

The video game industry is a relatively very new industry. Even at this point, it’s becoming really really big, to be something to be recognized with. We’re still stumbling through our first step of establishing our vocabulary.

One direction I think the industry will be heading into is, games will start to be much more mainstream. One of the ways to achieve this is to give a lot more emphasis to actual narrative. Narrative and the gameplay will become a more unified force, instead of what we used to see like gameplay-cinematic and gameplay cinematic. The actual gameplay experience will become cinematic in itself. That’s part of what I’m saying, that we’re still developing our language.

There’s a game, which I like to quote a lot – it’s not even a game; it’s actually an experiment, called “Passage”. It’s essentially an 8-bit side-scroller, with this 16-pixel-high character. The only input you have is forward, and back. As you move forward, the music’s playing, the background scrolls. Like 16-color type, old-school. One point, you’re just walking by, and you can never go back – your character can go back on the screen but you can never scroll back to where you’ve already been. One point, you come across another character – a female character, and as you keep walking, she starts following you. So you realize that, oh, she’s my girlfriend, or my wife.

And you just keep walking. As you keep walking your relative position on the screen is actually moving forward, and your characters changing – they’re aging. And you start to have the weird feeling, the sort of the inevitability of where you’re heading. One point when eventually both are very old, she disappears and becomes a tombstone.

I watched people play this, and they would stay there for like 2, 3, 4 minutes, just not sure, not aware of what to do next. Eventually they’d pull themselves out and keep walking forward. And eventually they’d themselves disappeared, and become a tombstone.

And people get extremely moved by the experiment in this 16-color game with these huge, pixely, characters. The reason is, I believe, because, what you’re doing – your actual gameplay input, which is moving forward, and the meaning of the game – life is something that goes forward and never back, are the same thing. And the closer the input the player gives, and the actual meaning of what you’re doing, is similar, the more you will have the emotional reaction towards it and emotional attachment, and THAT, I think, is what we’re still developing – finding cleaver ways of making gameplay and narrative the same thing. When you achieve that, people feel something. You don’t necessarily feel something when you just finish shooting 300 NPCs or 300 monsters, and then have a touching cinematic about your best friend that dies, right? Although that could be very cool, you don’t necessarily feel, because what you’ve been doing, is just like shooting people, for example. So finding cleaver ways of mixing narrative and gameplay, I think, are where video games going to evolve to. That’s why they will become even more meaningful and more mainstream – more people will actually want to play them.

-- Alexendre Amancio, CD of Assassin’s Creed Revelations, interviewed with Gameinformer, 2011. http://www.gameinformer.com/b/features/archive/2011/05/11/ac-revelations-meet-the-creative-director.aspx