Disco Elysium was an awe-inspiring writing challenge. Meaning: I was afraid of it. Pretty much every night I went to sleep. What if it doesn’t come together? What if we prove the opposite of what we set out to prove: this kind of game can’t be made - it’s not fun. Or, what if it works - but we just can’t get the bugs and logic errors out of the text? “it was an interesting idea,” they’ll say (I hate interesting ideas) “but sadly a clanky mess of Eastern European jank-ware.”
《极乐迪斯科》是一次由敬畏驱动的写作挑战。换句话说：我在害怕它。几乎每晚入睡前我都会思考，要是每个人的创作没有产生化学反应怎么办？要是我们驳倒了我们想要证明的事情，这种游戏实际上不可能完成，又该怎么办？或者，就算它成功了，我们会不会没法摆脱剧情中的bug和逻辑错误？玩家们会这样评价：“《极乐迪斯科》充满了有趣的想法（我讨厌有趣的想法），可惜它是另一款乱七八糟的东欧垃圾软件。”
Head bowed in shame, the lowly Eastern European jank-master walks down the street. His quests are unfinishable. There are logical inconsistencies. His Journal system doesn’t work. We came very close to that last one, by the way. We designed a terrible journal system that needed a complete overhaul one year before release. This caused considerable rewrites.
让人愧疚的是，卑贱的东欧垃圾软件充斥在互联网的大街小巷。他们的关卡尚未完成，他们的逻辑前后矛盾，他们的日志系统无法运作。顺便一提，我们的作品险些成为最后那种软件。我们设计了一套糟糕的日志系统，在发售前一年，我们不得不重构它，这导致了大量的重写。
“Considerable rewrites” - words no game producer likes to hear.
没有任何一个游戏创作者想听到*大量的重写*这个词。
Some numbers: The original release of Disco Elysium was 1,000,000 words long. It took us five years to write. Quite a few RPGs have scripts above a million words and they take two, maybe three years to complete. Why, then, did it take us five to write Disco Elysium (plus one more for The Final Cut)?
这里有一些数据：最初发布的《极乐迪斯科》拥有100万字的文本量。我们花了5年的时间去完成它。很少有RPG拥有超过100万字的文本量，就算有，他们也只需要花2到3年就可以完成。那么为什么我们花了5年时间才完成了《极乐迪斯科》的文本创作呢？（最终剪辑版又多花了1年时间）
It’s because of the rewrites. About 70% of the game is a rewrite. About 50% is a rewrite of a rewrite. There are large portions of the game that are triple-distilled, quadruple-distilled, or even quintuple-distilled. (Rewrite of a rewrite of a rewrite of a rewrite of a rewrite...). You’d think this results in a perfect, polished script, but large parts of Disco Elysium are bloodied and rough around the edges. We didn’t lick one version of the text endlessly, we analyzed why it didn’t work and then wrote an entirely new one. Entire scenes and versions of characters were cast aside. Some were rewritten four months before release, spring 2019 There wasn’t time to polish, we just wanted each character and scene not to completely suck.
因为重写。大约70%的内容经过一次重写，50%的内容经过两次重写。甚至有大部分的内容经过三次、四次或者五次重写。你可能会认为这样做使我们获得了一部经过千锤百炼的完美剧本，然而《极乐迪斯科》的大部分内容仍然血肉模糊并且欠缺打磨。我们没有在一个版本之上反复修改文本，而是分析它为什么没有达到我们想要的效果，然后彻底重写一遍。整个场景和人物被废弃。有些内容在发售前四个月的时候被重写，2019年春天已经没有时间再继续打磨，我们只想做到每个人物和场景不那么胡逼。
“Make it so that it doesn’t suck” was an oft-used instruction.
“再想想办法让这里别这么胡逼。”是我当时最常下达的指示。
This constant rewriting is not how it’s usually done. It doesn’t make for a smooth production. Large parts of the company have no idea what the writers are doing. It seems they’ve lost their minds. I hear Argo is rewriting Rene. Again!
这种持续不断的重写并不是一般游戏的开发方式。它不适用于平滑的商业作品。公司里的大部分人不了解作家们都在干什么，看起来这些作家都跟失了智一样。我听说Argo在重写雷内这个角色，又一次！
What it does make for are scenes and characters that are true. You fight to get to the true version of Rene. What he’d actually say. What he’d feel. We tend to think of our characters as real people. They have real dignity we need to look after. Real hearts we need to get across to the player.
不断重写真正的用处是使场景和人物更加真实。你努力去将雷内塑造得更加真实。他实际会说什么，他实际的感受如何。我们尝试把我们创造的角色当作现实中的人。他们拥有我们需要去顾及的真正尊严。我们需要将他们真实的内心传达给玩家。
Another unusual part of Elysium’s writing is the micro-reactivity. We did some spooky things with reactivity is this game, which required devilishly intricate writing. We decided every playthrough should include some examples of what we call “mind reading” - moments where you feel like a real Game Master is reacting to your choices. Especially the small ones. Micro-reactivity is the game reacting to a minor choice you made long ago. For example: you have the gardening gloves from Elizabeth the Gardener, and now, many hours later, in the middle of a completely unrelated quest, you’re considering what hobby to take on. Kim should say: “Why not gardening?”
《极乐迪斯科》故事创作中另一个独特部分是*微反馈*。我们在游戏中加入了一些难以差觉的反馈，这需要极其错综复杂的文案。我们认为每一个游戏选择都应该包含某种被我们称之为*心灵感应*的例子，就好像是电脑里住着一位真正的游戏之主在对你的选择作出回应。特别是某些小场景。*微反馈*指的是游戏会对你在很久之前做出的一个选择进行反馈。举个例子：你从园丁伊丽莎白那取得了一对园艺手套，而在几小时之后一个完全无关任务中，你开始思考该培养一个怎样的业余爱好时，金会建议：“为什么不试试园艺？”
This is cross-quest micro-reactivity and developers who aren’t brain damaged don’t have it in their games. Those moments are a doubled-edged sword. The player starts noticing when it’s not happening. Why doesn’t this guy react like that guy did? Why can’t I do this because I did that? Suddenly your whole RPG is one giant logic error that can only be corrected with endless writing. We had to write a mad amount of small content that few players will see - a big no-no in any kind of capitalist endeavor. You want to convert budget into customer enjoyment. That is: the enjoyment of the median customer, not the outlier who wants to talk about Contact Mike at the “appropriate” time.
一个精神正常的程序员绝对不会允许这种跨任务的*微反馈*出现在他们开发的游戏中。这种片段就像双刃剑一样。只有当事情没有发生时人们才会注意到它。为什么这家伙的反应不像那家伙一样？为什么我做了这件事就不能再做那件事？你的整个RPG瞬间成为了一个逻辑错误，它只能被无穷无尽的文字修正。我们不得不创作出大量根本没几个玩家有机会看到的小型对话场景，在任何资本主义最佳实践当中，这都是一个大忌。你想将预算转换为用户满意度，那么，一般玩家的诉求才是你该关心的，没人会在乎那些想要在*合适*时间去谈论一击即溃·迈克的冗长故事的离群者。
Rewrites and micro-reactivity are why it took us over half a decade to write Disco Elysium. Also, we did it in a program called Articy that’s slow as hell. Our monstrous, quadruple-distilled clusters of micro-reactivity were crashing the program. We still love Articy, though It’s so indelibly green. A green garden of cute little looping arrows - that’s what our minds became for half a decade. However bad it got in production, there was always something so nice about that green garden of visual programming nodes. The promise it represented, this sprawling Alhambra pattern that was becoming our lives’ work.
重写和*微反馈*是我们花了5年去完成《极乐迪斯科》的主要原因。另外，我们的剧本编辑工作通过一款名叫Articy的慢得难以忍受的软件完成。我们那些怪物般的、经过四次重写的*微反馈*无情地蹂躏着Articy。但我们仍然爱它，尽管它绿得如此不可磨灭（译者注：此处应该指的是整个Articy操作界面的背景是墨绿色的）。一个绿色花园中种植着几株可爱小巧的循环箭头——这就是五年中我们思想的种子所结成的果实。不管他在生产效率的表现上有多糟，绿色花园中的可视化编程节点总是那么美好。它所代表的未来，这种蔓延的阿尔罕布拉样式已经成为我们毕生的事业。
“They’re gonna f-n love it!” We were also quite sure of ourselves, I remember. And each other too. Writers are quite wonderful. They really care about people. They take responsibility for what happens in a stranger’s mind when it reacts to text. They care about the feelings that are summoned. Don’t let anyone tell you writers are self-centered assholes. Isaw so many of them work so selflessly to elicit a single giggle out of a stranger huddled over a laptop screen at 3 a.m. It was never about ego, it was all about You. That abstract unknown entity Disco Elysium is constantly addressing. You see this. You do that. We hope You are delighted.
“他们一定会爱上《极乐迪斯科》的！”我记得我们对自己充满了信心。其他人也一样。作家们快活极了。他们真的很关心人类。作家对他人在对自己的文字做出反应时在想些什么负责。他们在意被唤起的感受。不要相信任何人关于作家是自我中心混蛋的言论。我看见过很多作家为了引出他人一个单纯的傻笑而无私地在凌晨三点的笔记本电脑屏幕前缩成一团的景象。这绝对与自负无关，只与*你*有关。就像那个抽象且陌生的实体《极乐迪斯科》不断在陈述的一样。你看到了这个，你做了那个。我们希望你能开心。
“Oh, wow! I can nod till I die?”
“哇哦！我可以打盹打到死？”
In case you’re a writer yourself - I wanna close this off by saying something strange and megalomaniacal. (Megalomania is what happens when you’re starved for success for 35 years.) I think the cycle of novels - The Rougon-Macquarts, The Lord of the Rings - is no longer the biggest writing challenge out there for a writer. I think that’s now the Role-Playing Game. The colossal word count, the immense intricacy, the co-writing challenge - incorporating ten writers’ voices into a single text - is just so much larger than a cycle of novels. It’s harder to accomplish. And the payoff is greater. Strangers at night behind blue screens will be grateful to you - and there are many of them.
我想以一个奇怪而*狂妄自大*的话题结束这篇文章（当你对成功渴望了35年时，唯一能支撑你继续走下去的便是*狂妄自大*）。如果你本身就是一名作者。我认为成套小说，比如《卢贡-马卡尔家族》或者《指环王》，对于作家来说已经不再是写作上最大的挑战。现在角色扮演游戏的剧本接过了这个难题。巨大的文本量，毫无边际的琐碎细节，合作写作挑战——将十名作家的意见融入一段文本中，已经远远胜过成套小说。RPG剧本更难完成。然而回报也更高。入夜后那泛着蓝色光芒的屏幕前的异乡人将会欢迎你——他们无处不在。
Games spread like wildfire over the world, in a way novels never can. They cross national borders, languages, ideologies, age cohorts - in a matter of months. They change minds. They make minds. They’re so new it’s almost impossible not to innovate in them. In short, dear beleaguered colleague, consider dropping book-writing for game-writing. It’s worth it.
游戏的传播就像森林大火一般点燃了整个世界，以一种小说永远也做不到的方式。在短短几个月内，他们跨越了国境线，跨越了语言，跨越了意识心态，跨越了年龄隔阂。他们改变了思想，他们创造了思想。它们如此年轻以至于想不对它做些革新几乎是不可能的。简而言之，亲爱的被围困的同胞们，丢下书籍写作，去试试游戏写作。它值得一试。
Robert Kurvitz, lead designer / lead writer Brighton, England December 2020
Robert Kurvitz, 首席策划, 首席文案 布莱顿, 英格兰 2020.12
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