Today, @joshscherr is talking about @Naughty_Dog’s Uncharted: The Lost Legacy, and the art of character development in non-linear spaces. Helpful slides to follow! 
Starting point: @joshscherr talks about a need for companion characters to help drive character interactions. “If an Uncharted hero is alone in the game, it’s usually because they [morally] screwed up.”
Lost Legacy open world was built on top of Uncharted 4’s non-linear levels, which were large, but still signposted and with linear paths through. #GDC18
Even with “eleventy billion” paths through the open spaces, these were the broad objectives needed to be accomplished, but there wasn’t enough time to handle it in cutscenes. #GDC18
The @Naughty_Dog team is experienced at cutscenes, but what happens when players can accomplish major objectives in any order? Answer: “film” cutscenes once, structure objective locations so they can play at each area naturally. #GDC18
QA was tasked with tracking shortest paths between locations to time out driving conversations. That was 15 seconds. Dialogue was timed around this, with primary, secondary, and bonus dialogue filling out that time.
Dialogue would stop hard when player entered a temple #GDC18
Dialogue would stop hard when player entered a temple #GDC18
To soften the previously antagonistic Nadine, @joshscherr wrote her backstory to include...a love for mail-order animal cards. Whose factoids she shouts in level dialogue. #GDC18
Lots of level dialogue had to be neutral, but to build flavor, @Naughty_Dog programmed a check to see how many objectives player completed. More objectives = more banter in dialogue. #GDC18
Last lessons from @joshscherr! #GDC18 (comes with a shoutout to the audio team for implementing complex dialogue sequences).
