Becoming Pablo
My role
Narrative Designer
Studio
Tentworks Interactive
Team Size
~30
Platoforms
PC/Consoles
genre
Strategy, Management, 4x, crime, alt history
Game Brief
Becoming Pablo is a turn-based grand-strategy game where you build and lead a cartel empire. Conquer territories, manage your operation, and outsmart rivals in the gritty 70s-90s drug trade era. Every choice impacts your rise to power—or your downfall. Can you dominate the underworld?
Overview
Challenge
Creating a dynamic narrative and game play elements in a fast-paced environment with multiple teams.
Opportunity
Getting to write alt-history, a crime drama and to work on grand strategy.
Background
For this unreleased PC Game, I acted as one of the Narrative designers. At Tentworks Interactive, I worked in collaboration with different teams to create a compelling design experience comprising a drama telling interesting stories that intertwined intuitively with game design elements. I was responsible for the development of narrative structure, story development, character development, game scripts, event design, flavour texts, barks, and alt-history lore.
Please note, this project is still under an NDA until its full release.
Responsibilities
– Establishing an Overarching
Narrative
– Story Research,
Planning, and Development
–
Establishing an Ethos and developing deeper
themes.
– Dialogue scripting and
Narrative Design
– Creating
characters and storylines
–
Designing and planning gameplay events
–
Writing cutscenes, barks, and flavor texts for
the main game.
- Establishing an Overarching Narrative
- Story Research, Planning, and Development
- Establishing an Ethos and developing deeper themes.
- Dialogue scripting and Narrative Design
- Creating characters and storylines
- Designing and planning gameplay events
- Writing cutscenes, barks, and flavor texts for the main game.
Main Responsibilities
1. Establishing an Overarching Narrative
When I was brought onto the project, it was in its early development phase, and although initial work had already started on the gameplay and story concepts, there was no coherent narrative structure that bound all of the game campaigns and systems together. So, I pitched different ideas that could possibly work as our glue, and when one was chosen, I quickly developed the idea into deliverables that kickstarted the development pipeline properly.
2. Story Research, Planning, and Development
Given that the game revolves around the real-life story of the notoriously infamous Pablo Escobar, care had to be taken in how the story was told, so I dedicated appropriate time to thorough research, even down to details from his son’s tell-all, the newspaper reports from that time, and more. The research provided the added benefit of enhancing the authenticity of the game’s setting—both the time period (70s to 90s) and location (Colombia)—thereby deepening player immersion.
Having gained a good understanding of the character and the world, I derived an ethos for the game and identified multiple key themes, both secondary and tertiary. Using these themes, I crafted compelling characters and emotional story beats, leading to a preliminary story outline and character arcs. To visualize this, I used flowcharts, diagrams, and mood boards, and based on feedback from the creative leads and the design team, I made the necessary changes.
3. Dialogue scripting and Narrative Design
Collaborating with the game design team and working from their game plan and design requirements, I wrote the game script. This non-linear script integrated the grand strategy, management, and event-based aspects of the gameplay into the writing style, allowing for a varied player experience. This process tested my ability to juggle narrative with gameplay while still telling a compelling story.
4. Designing and planning gameplay events
While the design team had already earmarked the major gameplay events and the pacing, I was tasked with creating some of my own major and minor gameplay events. To achieve this, I had planned the story in layers based on themes, allowing me to create engaging events that played out those themes organically. Some events had immediate effects on the gameplay, while others molded a more unique gameplay and narrative experience for the player.
5. Miscellaneous
I also wrote the cutscenes, barks, and flavor texts for the main game.
