Writer Ed Stern dissects Brink

By Robert Purchese Published 25 July, 2011

What worked, what didn't.

There were things in Brink that lead writer Ed Stern accepts didn't work.

Take repeated spoken lines, for example - Stern thought he could leave variation open to actors' interpretation. But in hindsight, that was "an absolute mistake".

"Do not leave writing to the actors," Stern instructed, speaking at the Develop Conference last week.

"Write out all of the alternate lines no matter how stupid you feel. I made an absolute mistake on that.

"I felt really stupid writing a script that said, 'Medic. Mediiic. I need a medic here. I need a medic. I really do need a medic. Medic here now need.' I just felt really stupid doing it. So I thought we'll get some basic ones and get some variations."

That lack of variation, magnified by a "critical periodic shortage of coders", meant lines of dialogue playing "again and again".

"That's my fault," accepted Stern. "That's nothing on the coding. I should have [had] more varied lines to start off with."

The performances of the characters in Brink were "a bit big", Stern admitted. But he said "bad direction" was to blame rather here than bad acting.

"It's really hard to judge the tone of a performance in isolation," said Stern. "I don't think there's any bad vocal acting, it's just the wrong size.

"It's obvious to the viewer or the listener, but that perspective is denied not only the performer but the director, because we don't get to hear that stuff in real-time in the engine; it's only after when we put all the ambient acoustic in, the music and all that stuff.

"The actor we had for Brother Chen ... he's fantastic. We just gave him bad direction."

Ed Stern, lead writer, Brink

"This was particularly a problem with accents. The actor we had for Brother Chen... he's fantastic. We just gave him bad direction. It just ended up being a bit big, and that was only apparent at the end and we couldn't redo it. That was my fault."

Another performance-related gripe of Stern's concerned multiple actors recording a motion capture performance together.

"There can be a lot of pressure when doing performance capture with several characters at once to show that you are doing full performance capture with several actors at once and to demonstrate that yes they are in the same place at the same time," explained Stern.

"Why would characters touch each other? How often do you touch anyone you're not related to or sleeping with?

"Battlefield: Bad Company did this absolutely brilliantly by turning their supporting cast, Haggard and Sweetwater, into idiots constantly shoving, tickling and rock, paper, scissoring each other. And it's not just Brink - lots of games contain all manner or gratuitous back slapping and collar grabbing and weapon gesturing and so on.

"In Brink we kept on having spitting and fist bumps," said Stern, who accepted again that "that's totally my fault".

"The thing is," he added, "it actually looked really good when we recorded the sample - it worked really well with the actors. It was only when we got it in game that we said, 'Ah it's kind of cheesy, isn't it?'

"When I'm in the office, the number of people who would go, 'Brothers!' or 'Men!'; 'Brothers! Men!'; 'We're shooting bad guys!'; 'Brothers! Men!' - your bad lines will come back to haunt you."

Splash Damage used many of those lines as 'buttons' - "the pithy thing that ends the scene".

"The classic example is CSI [Miami]," explained Stern, when lead character Horatio puts on his glasses and delivers a dramatically cheesy observation-cum-quip. The audience cheers. In Brink the buttons were things like, "Showtime!", "Let's do this!", "Safety's off!" and "Are you with me, Brothers?!".

"It felt like we needed a line to finish the scene, and honestly that was a mistake."

Ed Stern

"It felt like we needed a line to finish the scene," recalled Stern, "and honestly that was a mistake. You do not need a line you need an action. It just needs to be clear."

Finally, Ed Stern questioned the absence of the Founders, the creators of Brink's floating city setting, The Ark.

"They built The Ark; one does the opening narration, another does an audio diary. They do not appear in the game," said Stern.

"That was deliberate. We did not want a third faction; I didn't want a wizard to rule this Oz, because I wanted to say it was more complex than one character - one person's choices. And also we don't want them as non-fighting NPCs because The Ark is past the point of talking, it was all about force.

"Did this work?" he asked, "Was it fruitfully ambigious?

"Or was it just a bit confusing?"

Conversely, there are things in Brink that Stern is particularly proud of. Using head-mics, for example, rather than microphones on a stand in a recording booth.

"You get perfectly good quality using a microphone on a headband, the whole point of it being you can have two actors in the booth at once," said Stern.

"Actors are very competitive. For a start they can do proper exertions. They can f***ing jog around the room and it's much more natural, it really frees them up. When you've got two actors they can ping lines between each other. Also it's about reaction, which is always better than just action."

"[Audio diaries are] cheap, effective - they're really fun. Everything else, other than an audio or text diary, involves way way more expense and time."

Ed Stern

Stern also found success when mixing up actors' physical postures. "You're trying to write with gesture," he said, "show how people feel."

"Like a dog's tail, in all of those cinematics the way they hold their weapon reflects how confident they are," Stern expanded. "If they're happy they're up, if they're not quite sure it comes down, and if they're dejected it comes right down. You're subliminally signalling change in the scene."

But the thing Stern was most proud of was audio diaries, and he said Splash Damage "got loads of nice feedback about that".

"[Audio diares are] cheap, effective - they're really fun. It got to the point when I was just writing stuff in the lunch hour for the actors, because one of the actors in particular just got it," recalled Stern.

"And there was nothing in the way: I had an idea, I could write it down, and he'd deliver it and it would go to the player. Everything else, other than an audio or text diary, involves way way more expense and time."

Brink, a stylised multiplayer shooter, was released in May. Eurogamer's Brink review awarded 8/10.

The first moments of Brink.

Picture of Robert.

About Robert Purchese

Bertie is Eurogamer's Senior Staff Writer. When he's not hunting down news stories he's often found playing with his kids or gabbling about fantasy games and strange online worlds. @Clert on Twitter.

Read more articles from Robert by visiting the Robert Purchese archive page.

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Comments (50) Latest comment 10 months ago

Comments for this article are now closed, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • Gambit1977 #1 10 months ago

    Is this a wind up?
    I couldn't give two hoots about story or performances or script. It was an online based team shooter that didn't work online! There's the issue :-/

  • ruslan74 #2 10 months ago

    Oh well, at least the DLC will be free.

  • soviet_ #3 10 months ago

    Ed Stern, trust me, no one really cared about the stuff you got wrong

  • LeemanRuss #4 10 months ago

    I was gutted by how underwhelming Brink was - my gaming mates and I had been looking forward to it since the Developer session at the EG Expo in 2009, but the awful AI (including the insane bot accuracy) and lack of a lobby system (seriously - what MP-centric game doens't have one of these?! Schoolboy-error.) plus other issues with the game meant that we'd all traded our copies in within a fortnight.

  • superfurry #5 10 months ago

    Oh joy, another Eurogamer Brink story.

    I can sum up what was wrong with that game in three letters - lag.

    The fact that there's not a single mention of the very thing that destroyed the game says it all about the developers. I bought the game at launch and got rid of it a week later because it was an unplayable, broken mess.

    Splash Damage still refusing to recognise this leaves me with little desire to ever buy another game by them again.

  • Progguitarist #6 10 months ago

    Shit game, shit developer.

  • Bertie Verified Senior Staff Writer, Eurogamer.net #7 10 months ago

    Ed Stern is coming at Brink from a writer's perspective here. I'm sure someone like Wedgwood would analyse the other aspects such as lag.

  • kinky_mong #8 10 months ago

    "Things that did not work so well."

    Everything.

    Probably wasn't much point in even writing 90% of the game dialogue anyway, seeing as all you ever hear is "DEY'VE TAKING OOOOOR COOOOMMAND POOOST!"

  • arcam #9 10 months ago

    "Maybe next time they'll do..."

    *puts on sunglasses*

    "...the write thing."

    YEEEEAAAAAH!

  • tankboi #10 10 months ago

    The script was probably the most stable part of the game.

    I still cant play the training modes online (PC) to gain the upgrades..it just boots me out after 1 minute.

    There is a 50% chance I get booted from any online match too. This is MONTHS after release...

    THAT IS THE F*CKING PROBLEM.

    I bought it on Steam too so cant storm angrily back into the store demanding my money back.

    Also your POV fix for PC is a joke...now my avatar has tiny little arms. Total jip.

  • bumyoghurt #11 10 months ago

    I've heard of this online shooter called Modern Warfare 2 which apparently is really good even though there's a cockney twat who used to be on Eastenders saying "UAV Online" once every 3 seconds for 10 minutes straight.

    I seriously doubt repetitive dialogue ruins a true, quality gaming experience

  • arcam #12 10 months ago

    Need a dispenser here!

  • jablonski #13 10 months ago

    But there was nothing wrong with it?
    EG told me so

  • agparrot #14 10 months ago

    lol @arcam - solid work, mon ami!

  • addugg #15 10 months ago

    He's right, it had nothing to do with it being a first person shooter that felt like a team deathmatch type game that in fact, had no team deathmatch.

  • TheNinkyNonk #16 10 months ago

    Articles like this so close to the launch of a game make me feel sorry for people who bought a copy. I mean, do you hear U2 slagging off their latest album just weeks after you've got it or Tom Cruise saying his latest film was boring to make just as it launches on DVD?

    It's just not cricket.

  • DefendoCroc #17 10 months ago

    The more i read 'Ed Sterns' interviews the lower my opinion of him gets, no one gave a shit about *anything* you mention in this article Ed .. the f*****g game didnt work online! .. i would for the voice samples to have started to irritate me , really i would, but that would require the game to work for long enought for them to get annoying you tw@.

  • Lord_Gremlin #18 10 months ago

    Take a note: never buy a Splash Damage game. Now move on.

  • superfurry #19 10 months ago

    Remember folks, 8/10 - Very good. "This is often a more engaging, tighter experience than Valve's Team Fortress 2."
    Edited by superfurry at 25/07/11 @ 15:27

  • urban #20 10 months ago

    I've already binned my PC copy. Shame it'll be shackled to my Steam account forever. Sullying my good game list :(

  • jumpdeveraux #21 10 months ago

    Only game in recent memory where the dev has actually reduced the number of human players in a game. They might as well have reduced the human players to zero and let the bots touch each other all they like.

    Brink has surely done significant brand damage to Splash Damage - I doubt they will be able to command the level of marketing spend they had for Brink for future titles and now consumers will be vary wary of buying a future game from them that has online multiplayer.

  • yoomazir #22 10 months ago

    wtf, seriously, why didn't he talk about bad gameplay, bad levels, bad multiplayer instead of actors and acting?
    I had high hopes for Brink, and I'm saddened to say that it is a piece of trash.

  • LazyNinjaUk #23 10 months ago

    I thought everything but the really cool art style sucked.

    - Team mate AI was rubbish
    - SMART system was ARSE
    - All the weapons handled the same, you might as well have been using Nerf guns
    - Class system was woefully unbalanced
    - Campaign wasn't a campaign, it was MP maps with shit dialogue

    This game had the potential to be great, but it just turned out to be a wasted opportunity.
    Edited by LazyNinjaUk at 25/07/11 @ 15:51

  • LeemanRuss #24 10 months ago

    If they'd spent more time working on the net-code and put in a lobby system, rather than making their 184 quadrillion combinations of outfits for their characters, I'm sure Brink would've deserved that 8/10...

  • PaulieWaulie #25 10 months ago

    Post deleted at 14:23:40 06-01-2012

  • Arsecake_Baker #26 10 months ago

    I wrote on the official forums months and months before release that the game unless it was supported on a console dedicated server would fail and fail badly, i was absolutely attacked and called every name under the sun!

    I can practically taste the vindication!

  • Daeltaja #27 10 months ago

    The script and story are the least of their concerns, lol.

  • TheEarlOfZinger #28 10 months ago

    Well done, you've unlocked a beard.

  • Alestes #29 10 months ago

    I disliked the lack of support for subtitles.

  • metalangel #30 10 months ago

    Man, he even gets his examples of 'things done better' wrong!

    Bad Company 2 had almost none of the humour and characterisation of Bad Company. The one amusing thing that I almost heard was them bickering about Predator while we were in in the jungle. Alas, I was a bit too diligent a player and so their conversation cut off halfway through as the next objective unlocked and they reverted to their 'okay, move up' lines.

    And CSI? Jesus FUCK Horatio is TERRIBLE. The whole show is too (don't say that in front of your missus) but the reason Horatio is a meme is because he's terrible. Brink, in way, is a meme for being terrible, especially on here where the site was basically Brinkgamer for all of a week before all interest in the game quite rightly dried up.

    What you want is Halo. Yes, people mock Halo but a lot of people also respect and/or enjoy the game itself. More specifically, the number of random 'barks' for the NPCs... so many funny and interesting little things they say, you might never hear them all. Hell, you might not even get the same NPCs each time and so not even hear the same actor.

    But hey, it's cool, all your guys were all really deformed looking and the cutscenes sounded like the waiting room at the Home Office Passport Service in St James' Park.
    Edited by metalangel at 25/07/11 @ 17:12

  • Progguitarist #31 10 months ago

    Remember folks, 8/10 - Very good. "This is often a more engaging, tighter experience than Valve's Team Fortress 2."

    If by often he meant "never" and by engaging and tighter he meant "festering and shit" then yeah, that's accurate.

    Probably the worst EG review I've ever read.

  • kinky_mong #32 10 months ago

    I disliked the lack of support for subtitles.

    If it did have subtitles you would have the words "They've taken our command post" screen burnt on your telly.

  • Ahskay #33 10 months ago

    Of all the problems Brink experienced i reckon the voices were the least of its worries. Next time he should comment on the online infrastructure and as of two weeks ago the game was still unplayably with a full lobby, if you were that lucky to have a full lobby. Hence i sold that silly game.

  • captainrentboy #34 10 months ago

    No, no. I'll tell 'em what the actual big problem was. IT DIDN'T FACKING WORK for the two weeks or so that I owned it. An online task based shooter, complete with some of the most ridiculous lag I've ever witnessed, that is why I got rid of the P.O.S. :/

  • evnewell #35 10 months ago

    Love eurogamer. I mean it. You guys have integrity - more than any other review site IMO. Still though, you seem to roll out the red carpet for British devs - and you are too lenient with your review scores for these devs in particular. Brink is among them, so was Enslaved. Enslaved was a 5/10 at best - Brink too.

    Edited by evnewell at 25/07/11 @ 18:09

  • overcorpse #36 10 months ago

    'Take a note: never buy a Splash Damage game. Now move on. '

    If they make something involving the Wolfenstein universe ill be all over it like a rash.

  • KDR_11k #37 10 months ago

    I was hoping for talk about gameplay faults, not stupid story talk. Never mind that I played a localized version that didn't have accents.

  • DrStrangelove #38 10 months ago

    "Why would characters touch each other? How often do you touch anyone you're not related to or sleeping with?

    And Itagaki thinks Japanese devs lack social skills.

  • BishBashRoss #39 10 months ago

    @Progguitarist

    "This is never a more festering and shit experience than Valve's Team Fortress 2."

    You sure about that?

  • Progguitarist #40 10 months ago

    Cause yeah, that's exactly what I typed.

  • mukki #41 10 months ago

    Honestly the voice acting was the least of this game's problems. The German audio was also quite lame and badly translated etc. etc. Sadly I had been waiting to play Brink since first seeing early artwork, but was quite disappointed by the final game. Too bad really I quite wanted to like this one and be surprised by it...

  • super_monty #42 10 months ago

    I am just wondering how this got 8/10, was it advertised on the site?

  • afghan_jones #43 10 months ago

    I didn't buy it at launch. Got it a few weeks ago and it's great.

    And I've had very few laggy games. So there.

  • Murton #44 10 months ago

    Comprehension fail!

    Stern wrote the story and script, he's not a programmer and 90% of the comments are bemoaning technical issues. I thought the story was pretty good, it just needs fleshing out a bit, the first mission day 3 of the resistance movement? What happened in the first two days? Throughout the campaign I was always wondering what events lead to the mission I was about to fight and the 30 second cut-scenes didn't really do it.

    As for technical issues, shoddy AI and lack of a lobby are the only ones that really got to me. I encountered no lag in any of my co-op games and on the rare occasion that I could get a versus going, I had no lag there either. Shame really as Brink was perhaps the first MP FPS in a long time that actually made the effort to be decently balanced

  • gav082 #45 10 months ago

    The problem with Brink (aside from the lag) was that they tried to go straight to the finish line. This game was built up with audio logs and ideas that just weren't relevant for a first time IP.
    A more stripped down, more functional, game would have been better for a first time outing

  • Shagsmith #46 10 months ago

    The acting and script writing was absolutely the last thing you need to worry about your car crash of a game, it would be the dreadful server performance still there a month after release, moronic AI and crippling lack of content that you should be apologising for.

  • TudeScud #47 10 months ago

    @Murton If the tile of the article was "Brink's writer addresses direction flaws" rather than what it is ("Spash Damage post-mortems Brink";), you would be right to call the comments out. As it stands they might need a dozen of these articles with the exact same title, and it would be anybody's guess which one actually indicated the clearly main concern of the majority. In case you would like to point out the subtitle, it was: "Things that did not work out so well".

    Brink almost roped me in with it's hype, but the review pointed out it's average quality to me, unfortunately others obviously feel quite hard done-by with qualities which an initial review would have trouble with, like it's net-code. I personally liked it's "Mirror's Edge"-style shooter premise, but the sound of how it was really done underwhelmed. The cynic in me doubts Prey 2 for it's deja vu self-description.

    Edit: Well shut my mouth. "Writer Ed Stern Dissects Brink". Good job, EG!
    Edited by TudeScud at 26/07/11 @ 13:08

  • monkeywithnoeyes #48 10 months ago

    so the point of this article is to tell us you didnt do you job because you thought you were above it? and we're expected to feel what?? why on earth would this guy think this interview would be a good idea? Maybe you should put this omission on your cv.. makes as much sense.

  • ronorra #49 10 months ago

    A good game with a shit story is still a good game.
    A bad game with a good story is still a shit game.

    That is all.

  • trooperdx3117 #50 10 months ago

    I've really lost a lot of respect for splash damage and Ed stern as well since brink came along, i remember last year he was on the eurogamer expo podcast and he was actually quite funny but then he came onto the eg podcast with paul edgewood and they were crap all they kept talking about was how they thought that they had looked at all the problems that battlefield and cod and fixed thus making the perfect game which sounded like complete bs! Wasnt very helpful either that they were misogynistic as well