Storytelling Pillars of Horizon Zero Dawn

What the talk is about

Benjamin McCaw, narrative director at Guerrilla Games, explains how the team pursued drama while making Horizon Zero Dawn. He breaks it into three meanings. First, apt exaggeration: enough to create contrast and high stakes (Aloy as an outcast, a world where war wiped out all life), but not so much that it becomes melodrama, or unearned emotion. Second, conflict on every level: between factions, within them, inside families and inside individual characters. Third, subtext, the unspoken meaning that makes the audience wonder and care, illustrated by Aloy's scene with Rost and other relationships. In the Q&A he covers minor characters, the difference between a writer and a narrative designer, and where to place exposition in a story's structure. Useful for newcomers and for developers curious about how writers think.