“Who do they think they are?”
You step into a room where every detail has been meticulously arranged, paintings on the walls, furniture choices, and even the carpet wear. Now, imagine being asked to tell a story about the person who lives there. Where do you start?
This is the challenge, and opportunity, narrative designers can face when joining a video game team late in the process. The art, character models, production design, and casting decisions are already locked in. Your job? To uncover the story that’s already written in the visuals.
When I consult for video game teams at this stage, I don’t begin with lore documents or script outlines. I begin by looking. Every design choice consciously or unconsciously made by the creative directors, devs, and art team offers clues about who these characters are.
Age and Expression: A furrowed brow hints at a life of worry. Laugh lines suggest a history of joy, or at least its performance.
Clothing and Style: Are they pristine or frayed at the edges? Do they wear bold colors or blend into the background?
Body Language and Posture: A slouching character tells a different story than one who stands rigid and proud.
Accessories and Props: A chipped wedding ring. A weapon that’s been too well cared for. A book with dog-eared pages. These details whisper histories.
Characters reveal themselves like people do IRL, not just in what they say, but in how they present themselves to the world.
I love this quote from Michael A. Greco:
"We are not who we think we are. We are not who they think we are. We are who we think they think we are.”
Like people, video game characters are shaped by how they believe they are perceived. The warrior who wears their medals every day isn’t just proud; they need the world to see them as worthy. The thief who dresses in high fashion isn’t just stylish; they’re proving they belong in circles that would cast them out if they knew the truth.
By studying a character’s visual presence, you’re not just learning who they are. You uncover who they want the world to believe they are, and what that tension reveals.
Character visuals don’t exist in isolation. They are shaped by, and must align with, the game’s overall art style, mechanics, genre, and intended audience. A hyper-stylized hero in a gritty, realistic shooter might feel out of place. A silent protagonist in a game full of bombastic, over-the-top personalities creates its own narrative friction.
Maybe a game’s art team established a clean, bold aesthetic with mechanics favoring tactical precision and teamwork. The genre demands high-energy action, and the audience expects competitive depth. The task isn’t to reinvent the wheel but to find ways to weave character, world-building, and narrative seamlessly into this existing framework. The narrative will emerge as all these elements work together.
I recently saw a post on LinkedIn about how AI tools like Google Vision and others can now analyze images and make determinations about age, emotion, and style, essentially automating a version of this process. While AI won’t replace human storytelling, it can offer a fresh, unbiased lens. An AI might detect a character's visual cues and categorize them in a way that sparks new story possibilities.
Applying these tools is a one-click way to get perspective. Even if the AI analysis sucks – maybe it will prompt you to come up with the good version. What assumptions does the AI make and how can a scribble play against those expectations?
Great video game storytelling doesn’t always come from a script-first approach. Sometimes, the story is embedded in the art, the animation, and the smallest design choices. By treating visuals as the first draft of the narrative, we allow characters to speak before they ever say a word.
So, the next time you’re handed a fully designed world and asked to “add story,” start by looking at all the amazing work the team has already done and ask: Who do they think they are?
