¶ Dev Spotlight on Kefke Wren!
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Writing Quest Dialogue |
History with the Team
- Quest Dialogue and New Bugle Newspaper for Industrial Revolution
- Writing the Great Big Dialogue Pool for Sim Settlements 2 and Chapter 2
Dev Q&A
¶ Where are you from?
- That's a tough one. I've lived all over the U.S. Even though I was born in Texas, and even though I've spent most of my life on the West coast, I'd say that I still consider Minnesota, where I spent most of my childhood, to be "home", though.
¶ What other hobbies do you have?
- In the past I've written poetry, and creepypasta. Some of the latter of which was actually what I used as a sample when I applied to write for Kinggath. I like to play, run, and homebrew for TTRPGs, and have two different sessions I'm in a week right now. I also love to cook.
¶ What other games do you play?
- I'm a big fan of open world games, and of RPGs in general. I also like farming/homestead sims like Story of Seasons, Stardew Valley, My Time at Portia, or Gleaner Heights. My biggest love after RPGs is probably puzzle games - the ones like Myst - though...especially in VR. VR gaming in general has really impressed me.
¶ What is your favorite thing to work on for SS2? and why?
- I like writing the dialogue for the characters. It's really interesting to me to try and get into the mindset of a character, and try to think about how they'd express themselves.
¶ What was the most difficult thing you worked on in SS2 and why?
- The most difficult thing is probably searching through player lines for ones with the right words and intonation to fit into a conversation and have it sound right.
¶ Do you have a story about working on SS2 that you'd like to share?
- The Quest "It Came From Planet X!" actually went through several versions before what finally shows up in game. I didn't write the final version, but I think I did write the earliest one that there's still recognizable elements of in the game. I was given the characters and a rough outline of what it should be, and basically told to start over from scratch. So "Franklin the Martian", Nessie the Brahmin, and the Powells with their mushroom farm in a cave are - I think - all that I took. Meanwhile, a lot of the broad beats from my draft survived, though many of the details got changed. The conversation between Katie and her mom about the comic book at the start, though, that's all me, up to the part about the trader's. Julie's chem brewing, and the dialogue associated with it wasn't part of my version. Katie's love of comic books was, though, and was going to hint to some "Speak as Shroud" interactions with Franklin that got dropped (along with an Easter Egg planned for speaking with Alex if you'd visited the cave once before, where he'd have referenced a piece of cut Fallout 1 content). Overall, I do think that the final version improved the quest, but I regret the loss of the Shroud dialogue.
¶ What's next for you?
- I've been working off and on at making a custom card pack for Inscryption that I might release at some point, and there's some characters I designed for SS2 that weren't able to make it in that I'd still like to see finished if I can find a way to make it happen. Otherwise, I'm taking it easy, and watching my health.
Links to Share
Some of My Work
My Quests in Game