Narrativity
Yasumi Matsuno
Writer
Contracted by Platinum Games for MadWorld

When PlatinumGames approached me for MadWorld, I thought about whether or not gamers actually expected a complex world setting or narrative in an action game. Personally, I don’t buy action games for their stories. However, due to the recent evolution of hardware, games have become more detailed, as can be seen by the ever improving graphics. Due to this, I can understand that modern gamers are not satisfied with action itself. So, for gamers that set a high value on atmosphere and depth of the story, I was requested to build the game’s world and script from the ground up.

In order to write the story, I met the development team more times than I could count in order to understand their game design and needs as clearly as possible. What I found interesting was that the development team told me one thing and producer was telling me another. More specifically, they gave me different orders from their respective positions.

The development team gave me two guidelines. First, “Jack is not a righteous person”. This is because he has no hesitation in regards to his violence. Secondly, “Violence is accepted in the world”. This was from the same reasoning as the first point. During gameplay, they did not want the players to doubt their action when performing an extreme act of violence.

On the other hand, the producer believed that “Violence should ultimately be denied in the end”. It meant that we had to be concerned about the current circumstance surrounding the videogame industry. I thought it was a quite reasonable request because, as a company, both SEGA and PlatinumGames did not consider violence right.

The setting of DeathWatch (an illegal underground live show) came from these two contradictory orders - the acceptance and negation of violence. In the extraordinary world of the DeathWatch games, violence and brutality is not only required, but accepted. However, once you step out of the show, the world outside is ruled by normal conventions. It’s not only in MADWORLD. Haven’t you felt that big contradiction in your life? I would like gamers to play the game so that they can experience the unusual world & its story that was created from these two conflicting orders.

Finally, it may be a little difficult to catch everything in the story by only playing the game once. With each replay you can understand the true meaning of each character’s dialogue more and more.