Narrative Design
First Draft
When creating the narrative for this experience, I first started with the characters that would make up the world. For each of these characters, I identified what their primary motivations were, and how they fit into the story. This method created a great framework to develop the dialogue for each of these characters. The main character the user will be playing as is named Diana.
Many Iterations
After establishing the characters, I then wrote a script that followed the main character throughout a day in her life. As the day progressed, Diana would inevitably have conflicts with the visual impairments associated with dementia. However, the story had to be drastically scoped down and was therefore mostly cut. The story now covered just the morning scene, rather than an afternoon and evening scene.
Final Version
The main character, Diana lives in her house with her son James, and his wife Rachel. Despite having dementia, Diana wishes to remain in her childhood home for as long as she can. This sets the scene for the experience. James assists Diana throughout the day with a myriad of seemingly simple tasks.
The Dialogue
After the game experience was more defined, the dialogue had to be refined to better fit. After reviewing the dialogue with my team, I then contacted a Vancouver Film School acting alumni to voice James. Voice acting improved the experience by allowing the user to listen to James, rather than moving their head to read his speech bubbles.