Untamed was a more expansive and ambitious game pitch that the team developed for NCSOFT. With a wild and vibrant world, deep and compelling narrative, and an intuitive, impactful combat system, Untamed was a game that combined the best parts of single-player, story-driven games and shared-world ARPGs.
Although we did not create a playable prototype for Untamed, we did put together an impressive presentation for the title that clearly communicated the unique aspects of its game design and creative vision. Here's how we did it.
GAME VISION
The initial high-level pitch for Untamed was to create a "multi-player version of Horizon Zero Dawn." As a management team, we were impressed by the vastness and vibrancy of H:ZDs world, and the deep and immersive nature of its narrative - and we wanted to create a game that provided that same experience in a multiplayer setting.
After a series of brainstorming sessions with the team, I wrote a game vision document that explained exactly how we would do that - with a clear definition of major game features. design pillars, and the core themes that would be central to executing the vision. This document also outlined the game's lore and narrative arc, setting the stage for the creative development that was necessary to complete the pitch.
Image credit: Dave Phillips
Image credit: Dave Phillips
CREATIVE DIRECTION
With the game's core design vision defined, we needed to quickly develop a number of fully-rendered concept pieces that would visually represent some of the games iconic experiences. After some focused meetings to drive visual themes and emotional touchstones, I wrote some "flash lore" of these experiences serve as a creative starting point for the artists - and we also shared these with concept outsourcing house that was supporting our in-house team.
The PLAYER'S JOURNEY
While the pieces were being finalized, we wrote a number of "user stories" that described potential game situations, presenting them as narrative experiences from the player's point of view. We also worked with our audio department to hone in musical scores that best represented the game's vision and emotional beats.
The most important of these was called "The Player's Journey" - which was a narrative experience describing the major beats of the player's progression from the beginning of the game to the end. Featuring the final concept art, voiceover and music, it presented a cinematic experience that drew the viewer into the world that we had created.
This video is an excerpt from the final presentation, showing the complete Player's Journey.
