Developer's Journal 3:14

Hey everybody.  This week I worked on the jury trial scenes.  The work is not very difficult because I already have all of the assets set up.  It's just a matter of posing everything and changing the outfits for each day of the trial.  I did create a crime scene for a few brief flashback renders, but otherwise it all takes place in the courtroom.

I have some anxiety about presenting the jury trial.  Audiences do love criminal jury trials, as attested to by the persistent popularity both of shows like Law & Order and reality crime tv.  But generally if we're watching/reading a criminal trial on tv or in a movie or in a book, the trial itself is a direct progression of the central plot, i.e. in Law & Order first we watch the police investigation and then we watch the prosecutor try the case for the same crime and then the episode ends.

Conversely, MC's trial in Episode Three, like Jamie's trial in Episode Two, is not a direct progression of the mystery surrounding MC's father and the Amy Mall homicide.  Rather, these trial scenes are included to present/explore certain themes, the importance of which become more apparent as the story progresses.  Please remember this is an eight-part story, so if you're left scratching your head why something is in the game right now, give it time to see if there is an answer.

But my challenge is to present MC's trial in a way that captures the players' attention now, even though it may not feel like a direct progression of the plot.  For many players, a murder trial will be interesting enough on its own, but I can't rely on everyone feeling that way.  And if I bog the narrative down with too much legal detail I'll end up with 30,000 players using ctrl+skip to move past it.  So testimony from a ballistics expert that would take an hour in real life is condensed into two sentences.  Attorneys ask leading questions without drawing objections.  Taking these kinds of artistic liberties keeps the narrative moving along, even though it does come at the cost of some realism.

One way to keep things interesting is to make sure there's enough in-scene conflict--recanting witnesses, cross-examination, an angry ex-girlfriend, and so on.  In addition, the murder victim's sympathetic mother and a cute, eager young law clerk give us additional reasons to care about what happens (if MC's own success is not reason enough).

Hopefully I pull it off.  I honestly thought the AVN world would have been collectively bored by the legal stuff I've had in the game so far, but so far at least some of you have been willing to sit through it.

That's all for this week.  Thank you for your support!

--Monk