Game Studio : Dontnod Entertainment
Title : Tell Me Why
Role : Level designer
Engine : Unreal Engine
Platforms : PC & Consoles
Status : Finished & Shipped
Duration : 2019 to 2020
Internship & contract (1 year total)
What I did on Tell Me Why
- Creation of 2 levels including conception, iterative, integration and debug processes
- 2D prototyping Level documentation to synthesize & communicate ideas to the team (Top/Sideview docs, Nodal LD, level pacing charts)
- Blocking out gameplay areas using blockmeshs & terraforming in Unreal Engine
- Walkthrough / Events, dialogues & behavior scripting
- Design, formalization and communication of technical scripting & developing tool needs using flowcharts & behaviors trees
- Effective design propositions & adaptations following internal feedbacks
- Creation of various design documents (Animation mocap infos, GDDocs presenting walkthrough/general intentions to leads, needs/improvements listing for VFX & Enviro…)
- Narrative and mocap animation assets integration
- Basic set/propdressing
- Quality assurance of my own work, with the help of my coworkers
- Bugfixing
What is Tell Me Why ?
Tell Me Why is one of the latest narrative adventure game from DONTNOD Entertainment, the studio behind the beloved franchise Life is Strange.
In this intimate thriller, reunited twins Tyler and Alyson Ronan use their special bond to unravel mysteries of their loving but troubled childhood.
Set in the fictional town of Delos Crossing, Alaska, Tell Me Why features a cast of intriguing, true-to-life characters and mature themes.
As you interact with memories of the past, you will make choices that determine the strength of the unique bond that Tyler and Alyson share and shape the future course of the twins’ lives.
Chapter 1 - The ferry ride 🐋
Level brief
Level Name
- The Ferry Ride ( Chapter 1 )
Level Type
- Campaign level : ~15 min
- 2nd level of the game, still acting as a tutorial
Contributions
- Level owner
- Ferry’s greyblock and environmental changes
(Layout & landmarks) - Narrative, gameplay and AI scripting
- Mocap infos and integration
- Worked with narrative designer Elise Galmard
Tools Used
- Unreal Engine 4
- In-house scripting tool
- Plume, dialogue editing software
What is this level?
Tyler & Alyson are going back to their home town Delos Crossing, while trying to tie back their bond. Boarding a small ferry, the scenery is beautiful but the atmosphere between the twins is really tense and bitter.
I was paired with Elise Galmard, narrative designer, to craft a walkthrough that would best fit the initial intentions, which were player’s contemplation of the Alaskan landscape and the feeling of warmth and uneasiness between the twins.
This level is used to introduce the player to interactive dialogue options and would be able to explore the boat freely later on.
Using characters discussions and items/landscape inspection, we managed to display informations about Delos’s culture, its inhabitants and the freshly ‘repaired’ relation between the twins.
This is the map I’ve worked on during my whole internship at Dontnod.
It was an exciting challenge because I already had ownership of a level and possibility of having creative impact.
The basic barebone structure of the level (Main narrative beats and terrain’s 1st pass) was defined before I arrived at Dontnod. Beyond this, I could propose basically anything and any change following the creative lead initial vision.
Some challenges I've encountered on this level
Learning new tools
TMW levels includes a lot of gameplay, narrative scripting ( Walkthrough, 3C changes, UI, dialogues, AI, puzzles…) and integration of gameplay, narrative and cinematic elements.
This project introduced me to things I never worked on before such as mocap data integration and use of an external dialogue editing software, plus a new in-house scripting tool so I needed an effective way to learn how to use all this.
So I chose to make a gym scene where I recreated gameplay and narrative situations that would happen in the final game, based on the available vertical slice at the time.
I kept this process on my other projects and that made the adaptation to new tools/engines easy and pretty fun!
Pacing in a timed level
I made changes to the level’s pacing to keep the player engaged and simplify the level structure to avoid timing problems the moving boat did make.
Given the predetermined beats and the addition of the whale appearance moment, I chose to split the level in 2 main parts.
Part 1 : Cinematic/dialogue heavy, showing their bond status until a serious subject about Uncle Eddy’s gift acceptance comes up.
Part 2 : Exploration phase, with character dialogues, item and environmental inspect interactions
The whale appearance act as a nice transition and brings awe/relief after a difficult discussion.
I worked a lot with other services such as cam designers, 3D artists and UI designers/artists, leads to find solutions on every matter.
Emotions in dialogue's flow
The 1st part of the level would have substantial dialogue and cinematic content, though keeping the player engaged and improving on the way we convey the characters emotions is something I focused on a lot.
Original pillars were :
- making the player feel the connection between the twins
- A strong sense of contemplation, for the beauty and scale of Alaska.
We pushed further the twins’ emotions and included :
- Rememberance
- Embarrassment
- Torment
- Lightness
To convey these and keep the player’s attention, I chose to make little breathing time in dialogues. Dialogue is cut in several parts with pauses in-between these. Interacting with the appearing prompts on environmental local landmarks will resume the discussion.
Those moments are used to show awkwardness between the twins and difficulty to tie back their previous relation.
Movement, colors, shapes are used in a way to get the player’s gaze towards these point of interests. ( Sunrays on water, Cars, houses, chimney smoke, maritime mark, snow…)
We also used Alyson as a way to catch player’s interest on the 2nd pause
The idea came from these type of awkward discussions where the talking stops and nothing comes to mind but picking a subject from something you see to escape the silence.
I changed the landscape and tuned characters’ positions to fulfill these intentions.
I got the shore closer to the player, tuned the boat speed and the environmental local landmarks positioning to make it as smooth as possible.
But contemplation stays!
Every ‘pause’ in the dialogue had a failsafe, in case the player was looking at something else, that involved a specific dialogue cue that continues on the main dialogue branch.
Working with the tools dev team allowed the in-house scripting system to have this feature available, I had to make documentation to better communicate our needs.
Introduction to mocap
This project was the first time I got to fulfill needs for in-game mocap content.
I had to provide precise informations to prepare mocap shooting sessions, involving :
- Sizing, measurements and other set informations ( Ferry’s railing, deck sizing, NPC car, whale appearance details… )
- Prop infos ( Alyson’s ring, NPC in contact of surface… )
- Narrative direction details
An 'organic' encounter
Example of getting into the dialogue structure from an environmental interaction
In exploration phase, you can discuss with an NPC on the boat.
I wanted the dialogue structure to be more organic, instead of the classic ‘press to talk’, and show how invasive and harsh he was through this.
The NPC’s car had elements (Hunting accessories, Stickers…), showing parts of his personality, that Tyler would make a comment about and the NPC would react to it.
Each of these being a different way to enter the dialogue, then branching into the ‘main’ part of the dialogue. This resulted in feeling very organic and true to life.
Him being invasive is also shown when interacting with stuff AFTER talking with him. Being at ease, he would still talk with you at any given kind of opportunity. It fits the character well.
Chapter 2 - Alaskan graveyard 
Level brief
Level Name
- Last Rites ( Chapter 2 )
Level Type
- Campaign level : ~30 min
Contributions
- Level owner
- Terrain and general greyblocking
- Narrative, gameplay and AI scripting
- Mocap infos and integration
- Worked with narrative designer Gauthier Henrio
Tools Used
- Unreal Engine 4
- In-house scripting tool
- Plume, dialogue editing software
What is this level?
Tyler & Alyson are looking for answers and want to talk to Tessa. Someone told them she would be visiting her mom’s grave so the twins go to the graveyard with Michael.
I was paired with Gauthier Henrio to craft a level which was supposed to be set in a graveyard, revolving around the twins having to confront Tessa about her part in their mother’s tragic past.
The level’s core idea was for the twins to “rebuild” their memories of what happened after their mother died, through the use of their bond ability.
I wanted to focus on how to pique the player’s curiosity to make him explore the graveyard. Cemeteries are great places to remind so it was a nice opportunity to display character background stories.
I worked on this level after my internship ended and it was very pleasing to be more independent in the concept/creative process.
Apart from the setting being a graveyard and the need of an argument with Tessa, the scene had to be made from scratch.
Some challenges I've encountered on this level
A layout containing a parallel walkthrough
I synthesized the 3 main beats from what we wanted to see in the level, which are :
- Trying to find Tessa
- Following long burried memories towards the twins mother’s grave
- Confronting Tessa
The layout I made was based on the main beats of the level, with traversal and optional content in between to keep the player engaged.
Finding Tessa’s mom grave represent the challenge of this 1st beat that I located around a landmark, the Crooked Tree.
An hard gate is blocking the progress towards the twin’s mother grave, unlocked after triggering a bond mechanic in the 1st beat.
The optional content contains a bond choice (TMW’s bond mechanic), dialogues with two NPCs in the graveyard, a collectible and other environmental interactions.
As the twins are looking for Tessa, they would begin to follow their memories of their mom’s burial.
Using the recollections of the day of the burial aside from the present day twins’ reactions was an idea I liked a lot.
This parralel progression felt more organic for the player and the twins’ discovery of hidden truths.
It was an opportunity to play with the differences between past and present, shown in dialogues and interactions. (Owl’s nest, graves…)
Sculpting an interesting layout
I was really excited by the idea to make a graveyard on an islet.
Not only it was a fresh new place to discover but the fact you had to make a ‘crossing‘ to reach it was something I liked a lot.
A place the twins had to gather their courage to take a step in, to dug up memories from a long time ago.
Working with artists, I made a first pass layout proposition, with sketches and quick greyblocks in-editor, that was more focused on traversal and had height variations, bridges, vistas etc.
This first layout was cancelled because of 2 reasons :
- Being too far from real geological attributes that an islet like this would have (Example ref I used after this : Alaskan islet picture)
(Realistic appearance of the alaskan environment was mandatory) - Kind of destroying the approximate time limit the leads gave me for this level
I removed various traversal portions but kept the idea that the layout loops back to the starting point, the parking area.
Sculpting the terrain again with principles of deposition and erosion in mind, the islet became way more true to life when I made smoother elevations and got the playable space closer to the water level.
Saliency & affordance
At each step of the process, I always tried to improve affordance and overall player’s guidance throughout the level.
This was mainly done by using visual language, dialogue cues and animations from the bond mechanic.
Here are some examples!
The crooked tree
A landmark helping the player navigate the graveyard, from any point of the level.
The layout’s 1st main node is a circular area with a big crooked tree in its center, surrounded by graves.
Trees are framing the landmark and other environmental elements are used to create leading lines, putting focus on it.
Hints to the player
Dialogues are used to acknowledge player’s progress in the walkthrough and to give him hints of what to do next.
Dialogues between the twins, from NPCs and from the bond mechanic are also used to guide the player.
Example can be seen in the following video, the twins give an information of how to access the place where their mom was buried.
Paths
Guiding the player needed to be done using diegetic elements, so I included paths on the snowy ground.
The player is drawn by these marks and they can give valuable infos when they are branching, for example giving away the idea that there could be something to explore over there!
Colors & shapes
The 1st objective when arriving in the graveyard is finding Tessa’s mom grave.
Adding various elements around it and using bright colors really helped the player finding the grave intuitively. It also fits the narrative by telling how loving of her mother Tessa really is.
When looking for shapes that could intrigue the player, I chose to add a Tinglit totem.
I chose it for its salient shape and colors, quite distinguishable in a natural space, and given how important Tinglit culture was in our setting.