Leanne Taylor-Giles joins Drop Bear Bytes as Narrative Lead

We are very excited to announce that Leanne Taylor-Giles is now on the team as Narrative Lead! She joins the studio after nearly six years at Ubisoft Montreal, where she worked as a scriptwriter on Rainbow Six Siege and Watch_Dogs 2. It was her prior writing role on InXile’s Torment: Tides of Numenera that now sees her reunited with Broken Roads’ Creative Lead, Colin McComb. Please join us as we welcome Leanne on board and share a bit more about the newest writer on the project.

So, let's have a chat about you and what makes you awesome, and why you are the right person to ensure Broken Roads is an amazingly written RPG!

Leanne: Absolutely!

First off, can you tell us a little bit about how you got into playing computer/video games... some of your early gaming memories, and how this turned into a passion for you that ultimately led you to wanting to write for games?

Leanne: Oh dear... Early gaming memories... I started playing when I was 3, with Bubble Bobble, Silkworm, and Little Computer People, as well as many other games on our Amiga. One day, the little man living inside our computer decided to leave the house and never come back. That's probably what kickstarted my obsession with games, and then when I later played Planescape: Torment my fate was sealed.

And now purely about CRPGs - what are some standout moments for you - as in, favourite bits of your favourite titles. Anything from fond memories, moments that were influential to your career, perhaps things you learned from or made you see RPGs in a new way?

Leanne: Two voice lines will always exist in my head. The first is Brage's laughter in Baldur's Gate 1 if you return him to the Temple of Helm and then speak with him again. The second is Deionarra's introduction at the beginning of Planescape: Torment. That's not even getting into the heartbreak that was the ending of Baldur's Gate 2, or more recently the sublime moments of awe in Disco Elysium. The stories we shape have as much ability to shape us, to reflect us in new and fantastic ways. And if we don't like what we see, we can change. A good CRPG is a key to a whole different you.

What can you share about how you plan to implement this in Broken Roads?

Leanne: The Moral Compass is a unique opportunity to show the player what their decisions and actions mean in a real-world context. By mapping their choices onto those existing schools of thought, we can rely on a culture-by-osmosis effect to encourage them to rethink their understanding of what those categories mean - e.g. nihilism - while providing the basis for further self-education if one of the topics piques their interest. Coupled with quests and abilities named after important philosophical works, a curious player will have many avenues to continue exploring morality far beyond the end of the game.

Your portfolio includes a wide range of published titles that span a variety of genres. Other than Torment: Tides of Numenera, what have you been working on for the last few years, and what else has been most relevant to writing on Broken Roads?

Leanne: I've spent the past few years working on Rainbow Six Siege, though I've continued to research and write academic chapters on the state of branching dialogues in the video game industry. I also taught Narrative Level Design in French for a semester,  which was an excellent chance to renew my list of narratively-excellent games since I last taught in 2010. I make spreadsheets breaking down game mechanics for fun, and I'm continually working to implement systems that will make our game worlds more responsive to the player's actions. I'm a huge fan of each player telling their own unique story, which is why working on Broken Roads immediately appealed.

Can you give us a couple of sentences about your MA thesis and its relevance to your work? Is it freely available for people to download and read?

Leanne: My Masters in Interaction Design is specifically about branching dialogue systems - what works, what doesn't, how to give the player agency and provide meaningful choices. I recently had the chance to expand upon my work in a chapter for Springer about player-centered design, where I was able to dig even deeper into how to write effective branching dialogues and what it means to build trust with the player. My Masters is available for free while my chapter is available for purchase.

Are you working on any other academic pieces right now, that you can talk about?

Leanne: I'm currently working on two other chapters, one on systemic NPC-side branching and another, co-authored, on game mechanics that encourage kindness and what including them in our games can lead to. I love academic research because it helps ground my day-to-day decisions in existing frameworks, while expanding those frameworks to apply to more varied types of storytelling. I get to look at our game worlds from both within and without, and I think that's incredibly special.

It's clear that Baldur's Gate, Planescape: Torment and more recently Disco Elysium have all been key gaming moments for many of the Drop Bear Bytes team. What are some of your other key influences that relate to Broken Roads, be it games, film, books etc.?

Leanne: I've always been a fan of failing worlds. M. John Harrison's particular brand of futility and beauty speaks directly to my view of human nature. The way that people will strive to bring a sense of order or cultivation to their surroundings, no matter how dire, that there are few urges more primal than to somehow say "I was here and I refuse to be forgotten" - these are at the core of sentience and self-reflection. Kurt Vonnegut summarized it best when he once, very wisely, advised us to keep our loved ones from combining with oxygen. What a simple and beautiful failure we are doomed/privileged to live.

And where are you originally from, where do you live now, and are you coming back to Australia?

Leanne: Having been overseas for 8 years now, I'm definitely feeling the call of our sunburnt country - "listening to I Still Call Australia Home and crying" levels of longing. I love Montreal and I will forever be grateful for the opportunities I've had here and the people I have met. But I miss the insulting-but-endearing frankness of the people where I grew up, the vast open skies and dawn over the Pacific Ocean. If I'm lucky, on a cloudless night in Montreal I can see Jupiter and maybe Polaris. For an astronomy buff, not being able to see the stars puts me in mind of the Mote in God's Eye. I can't wait to escape the cocoon of city lights and travel beneath the wide Milky Way once again, down the open highway toward my family and friends. That has to be one of the luckiest feelings in the world.

Thanks Leanne - fantastic to have you on board and looking forward to great things in Broken Roads!

Leanne: Thank YOU, Craig, for a delightful and engaging discussion! I can’t wait to get started.

You can find out more about Leanne on her portfolio website, which includes her GDC moderated panel “Everything's on Fire and No One Knows What to Do”.