The Force Unleashed had a mixed critical reaction, but the story was uniformly praised: do you think we’re at the point now where if a game has a great narrative, players can enjoy it despite their feelings towards the gameplay?

HB: I definitely think that story has a huge impact on perceptions of a game, from a player’s standpoint at least. I finish very few of the games I play, but those I do finish tend to be the ones with better stories and characters I care about. I don’t think I’m particularly unique in this way. So, from the outset, the Force Unleashed was meant to be an “experience-based” rather than skill-based game. We wanted players to feel immersed in the world and be carried along as part of an epic Star Wars story. Players that were looking for something that was more skill-based might have been disappointed, but I think we succeeded in providing a rich Star Wars experience (though the game is definitely not perfect even on this front). The consumer feedback we’ve received has been overwhelmingly positive, and the story is a big part of that, but so are the over-the-top Force powers, the art direction, the audio, and many other pieces of the whole.

I do think that as an industry, we pay a lot of lip service to the importance of story in games, but then we don’t always invest in this area, and there’s very little acknowledgement of the strength or weakness of a story in review scores or our perception of a game’s critical reception.

With a universe that’s as fragile as Star Wars, there’s always a worry that any Expanded Universe story will feel like fan fiction. What steps did you take to make The Force Unleashed feel like a genuine entry in the Star Wars canon?

HB: We were fortunate because we were able to create a story in a time period that hadn’t been explored previously, which gave us a great deal of freedom. We also put big stakes in the ground early on to make this feel like a new chapter in the Saga. If the six films are about Darth Vader’s journey, then in order to be part of that story, we needed to include Darth Vader in a very big way, and hopefully give the player greater insight into him as a character. We also focused heavily on finding meaningful connections to the original trilogy – not just fun fan moments, like an appearance by Mon Mothma (though we have those too), but really big moments that make you rethink that events in A New Hope and beyond. From an art direction standpoint, we leaned more towards the original trilogy as well, especially The Empire Strikes Back, which we felt was most similar to our story in tone.

But, the bottom line is a good story is a good story, no matter when it’s set. To increase the odds, I tried to adhere pretty closely to the rules of story structure. The story is built around a traditional three act structure, like most screenplays, and the character’s goals and needs change as the story progresses.

How do you feel about the good/bad ‘karma’ systems that games tend to rely on, these days? With Star Wars, you’re naturally forced to explore good/bad in some way, but The Force Unleashed story had a very clear goal: show one man’s redemption from killer to champion. Still, if you’d incorporated a good/bad choice mechanic throughout the entire game, you couldn’t tell a story of redemption, right? Do you think that a distinct good/bad choice for the player throughout a game can limit’s a scriptwriter’s creativity?

HB: I think it all depends on the vision for the game and how much the character can or should be a “blank slate” at the outset. Most games with such systems seem to require a storyline that is essentially neutral – your goal isn’t necessarily good or evil, but perhaps more personal – and the “good vs. evil” choices involve subplots, side missions, or wrestling with “do the ends justify the means?” in the quest for your ultimate goal.

For The Force Unleashed, we really wanted to create something that felt like the next chapter in the Saga, and believed that we needed a character with some backstory, motivations, and personality. We wanted him to have the capacity to transform over time – gradually, though, and not as a result of a series of less meaningful or arbitrary choices. We do offer you a choice at the end, which is basically the difference between being a true hero willing to sacrifice himself for what’s right, and a tragic hero who hasn’t learned from his mistakes and suffers a pretty horrific fate as a result. I was adamant that the “bad” ending wouldn’t be one where you overthrow the Emperor and end up sitting on your throne of blood and bone – that just didn’t feel true to Star Wars. Instead, I wanted to show that there are morally right and wrong choices, and that there are consequences for choosing the path of evil. In some ways, I think this is can be just as powerful and satisfying as games that offer you numerous smaller choices along the way because we were able to invest heavily in making the two choices really meaningful to the story, rather than just a blip on an alignment meter.

What other videogame scripts have caught your eye over the past few years?

HB: I think Fallout 3 did a great job eliciting emotions that aren’t typically associated with games: there were moments where I truly felt deep regret for something I had done, for example. I also enjoyed BioShock, for both its story and storytelling. Overall, Grand Theft Auto 4 had excellent dialogue writing and character development, and I think did a good job of presenting you with some genuine moral dilemmas.

How do you feel about other methods of storytelling in videogames – BioShock’s entirely in-game narrative, for example? Do you feel that Star Wars games, due to their cinematic origin, makes sense in cutscene form, or do you think there’ll be scope to experiment with different methods in future?

HB: t seems that the design community tends to fall into two very polarized camps over cinematics versus in-game storytelling, but I feel that there’s really room for both. I think that cinematics certainly work particularly well to tell stories in Star Wars games, but that doesn’t preclude using other methods as well and we’re actively exploring different types of storytelling techniques. I always want to be experimenting here if we can, but new or innovative storytelling techniques on their own are just a novelty and fall apart pretty quickly if the story, structure, dialogue, and characters aren’t there.

Congratulations on your WGA award! It’s one of the few bodies that seems to recognise scriptwriting in videogames – are you disappointed by the lack of recognition outside of the WGA?

HB: Not really. We received a humbling number of accolades for the game’s story, and we were really honoured by both the WGA award and an award we received at D.I.C.E. from the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences for outstanding writing. If we want wider recognition for writers within the games industry, then I think most of the onus is actually on us as game developers. We need to raise the bar and consistently deliver games with great stories, writing, and story-telling. All of this means that the industry as a whole – designers, hiring managers, testers, marketing, reviewers, everyone – needs to get better at identifying what actually constitutes a strong story and good writing. I don’t think we’re quite there yet, but every year we get closer.