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Grognak Vs. The Red Menace

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Project Overview

  • Game Engine: CreationKit (4.71)

  • Dev Time: 10 weeks (210 man hrs)

  • Game: Fallout 4

  • Genre: Action-RPG

Responsibilities

  • Concept and Documentation

  • Dialogue

  • Gameplay Implementation and Iteration

  • Whiteboxing and scripting

  • Aesthetics​

Design Goals

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  • Provide Multiple Avenues of Play through Meaningful Choices

  • Create Humorous and Memorable Characters

  • Envision and Implement a Post-Apocalyptic Game Studio

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Level Overview

Grognak Vs. The Red Menace is a single-player narrative driven quest set in Fallout 4. The primary goal of the quest is to find the original source code of a special Holotape Game developed in the long missing RobCo Fun Studios. Along the way the Player encounters two warring factions: The Superhuman Sons of Grognak, and the Surviving members of the RobCo Fun Development team, led by Red the Robot. Both sides seek each other's destruction, and it is up to the Player who shall have dominion over RobCo Fun Studios, and find the fabled unreleased game.

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Design goals expanded
player choice

My first goal in Grognak was to ensure that Players had multiple avenues of Play, as one could never be sure who exactly was playing one's quest. I approached this challenge by building toward multiple endings with different rewards based on the Player's choices, and supporting several rewards for those with additional skills, such as High Charisma, and Lockpicking.

  • Helping Grognak rewards Melee focused players with powerful exclusive Armor

  • Helping Red the Robot preserves the sanctity of RobCo Studios and gives faction access to a host of weapons and supplies

  • Helping everyone results in more Holotapes recovered

  • Killing everyone results in the most loot, and a base to call your own.

Strong characterization

As this quest hinged on negotiation between factions, I emphasized strong characterization in developing the central characters, in an effort to make them memorable and exciting. For Grognak, I ensured that he appeared suspicious of the Player character and spoke in broken Supermutant english, much akin to the Marvel's Hulk, with a deep cultural worship of Grognak the Barbarian. For Red the Robot, I used very formal English, with longer overly sophisticated words, and a blind loyalty to RobCo Fun Studios, though now long defunct. I further underlined these faction leader's differences in their negative references to each other, and by providing Player's the opportunity to explore their faction's ideologies through dialogue.

world-building

Building a Game Studio in the ruins of the Commonwealth was one of the most enjoyable aspects of working on this quest. When designing a area in Fallout 4, or any post-apocalyptic setting, its important to illustrate 3 different things:

  • What was this place?

  • What is it now?

  • What has happened since?

To illustrate these ideas, I placed many integrated story vignettes all throughout RobCo Fun Studios, through Data Log Entries, dialogue, and physical set dressing. I designed these vignettes to work together to suggest and reinforce that RoboCo Fun was a corrupt and highly political game studio, preserved by a single surviving Protectron Robot and his QA servant, invaded by the Sons of Grognak who cannot infiltrate the top floor. ​

 

A solid example of this tying vignettes together, is in a Data Log Entry the Head of the Studio makes about earning more money through a government contract to store Nuclear Waste. This 


 

Layout and construction
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Construction began with paper maps and basic blockouts to get a sense of scale and pacing. Here you can see phases, NPCs, important events in number form, and Terminal locations marked throughout the map. Having this visual plan laid out ahead of time, helped immensely in the construction of RoboCo Fun's layout and design.

Main Floor

The primary design of the Main floor was to act as hub to send players to locations within RobCo Fun, and to ensure the Player encountered  Grognak and his Sons. ​Flickering lights from the ruined cafeteria draw the Player's eye to Supermutant encampments, while stairs flow up onto the second floor mezzanine revealing a well lit door to the second floor.

 

I wanted to be sure that the area's hub like nature reflected in the design, so I went for an atrium space, with plenty of wide flowing paths suggesting this area once handled lots of human traffic.

Other areas in this space are decorated to suggest a once wealthy high-tech facility, complete with a cafeteria, kitchens, security, and even bathrooms. 

Second floor

The Second Floor was more designed to expect combat, with feral ghouls, and old traps left for Grognak, there to harass the unwary traveler. As all of the encounters within this space lend themselves to stealth, I took effort to communicate to the Player the need to creep through the space, rather than running in guns ablazing, through cold, flickering lights, and obvious floor traps.

Tight corridors connect the Reception area to Main Office area, both connected via a Ruined Breakroom, to allow Players to move around freely to take out the sleeping ghouls should they awake. The ghouls themselves are asleep within the ruined offices, streaming out into these open spaces when alarmed.

The fortified Red Room lay within this space, filled to the teeth with armaments and supplies to fend off Supermutant invaders, with one large entrance and a much safer back entrance, barred to prevent incursion.

Basement

The Basement area is intended to act as a bonus zone for those interested in exploration. For this reason, the door to the Basement is not emphasized in the Main Area space, and is suggested to exist through dialogue deeply within the Main Quest itself. Within, Players are led to two main areas, either a locked door (lest they have the Employee Key), or a Power Room. The Power Room is filled with stimpaks and a few weapons, preparing the player and subtly suggesting the area beyond may be dangerous. 

The destroyed basement within is meant to house a large combat space, with enemies crawling from the floor up the ramp to attack the Player, giving the Player enough time to attack and move up and down the ramp to take out the foes, as the enemies cannot jump, giving the Player room to kite them around the space. 

The locked area of the Basement contains the QA Workroom, housing RobCo Fun's last remaining QA employee Randy. Here Players can receive rewards and rest from the previous encounter, picking up health items and Holotape rewards.

 

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Lessons Learned

  • When designing content for a pre-existing game, use the game's existing assets and themes to enhance and simplify your design, build on the shoulder's of giants.

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  • Thorough pre-planning and well defined milestones allowed me to produce a lot of quality content at an earlier stage, giving me time to spend on fun details within the space.

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  • Quest rewards must be balanced to ensure Players don't gravitate towards one path or another purely on the basis that they would be missing out if they went the other way. 

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  • Allowing too many open choices can lead to a spiderweb of consequences, oftentimes tripling quest complexity, guide these choices to a few specific relevant outcomes.

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  • When designing dialogue, ensure that the primary path with all necessary information, is short and to the point, to keep Players moving along. Keep extra details behind further questions to reward the interested, without punishing those who want to move on. 

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  • Visual vignettes and set-pieces do a tremendous job in telling the story of a space and adding to the atmosphere of the world.

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