Bringing the story to the storybook.
Mist Legacy is a storybook-style fantasy MMORPG with a hand-drawn aesthetic, published by the French-Canadian Virtys Studios. I rewrote 90% of the game’s text, replacing the previously flat writing with prose packed with personality, humour, and affection.
Background
Having read my writing as editor-in-chief for MMOGames.com, Virtys reached out to see if I could fine-tune and localise their game’s text, which had been translated from French. When it became clear that the text needed more love than a casual touchup, I rewrote almost the entire game.
Solution
As a text-dense game with a not-inconsiderable grind, the dialogue and narrative needed to shine to maximise player retention.
Depth
Flavour
Humour
The pre-existing text, which was written in-house, was passable but uninspired. It didn’t give players a reason to care.
I started by sinking hundreds of hours into playing the game, discovering the story firsthand while identifying repetition, weaknesses, and inconsistencies that went beyond the grammatical.
Using Virtys’s in-house branching-narrative scripting software, I rewrote the game’s text from the ground up. Expanding on vague lore and bland factions, I packed the world with history, nuance, and tantalising enigmas that would leave players hungry to learn about a world that doesn’t begin and end with their journey.
As well as making the mysteries more mysterious, I went to great lengths to make the characters more characterful. Be they earnest or eccentric, loveable or loathsome, valiant or vacant, I made it my personal quest to give each of the hundreds of NPCs a distinct personality.
The once-flat world became contoured with humour, whimsy, and intrigue. It developed a pulse, in which player choices – such as which factions to favour – felt much more impactful than they truly were.
Mist Legacy’s Steam reviews are now at “mostly positive”, and it only takes a quick flick through to find comments such as “the story is a 10” and “the world feels alive”.
At the heart of the challenge was making a grind-heavy, text-heavier game entertaining in the long haul by giving players a reason to pay more attention and stick around. As one reviewer wrote: “The text actually entertained me! Which is good, because there’s a lot of it!”
Results
• Virtys retranslated my rewrite over the original French.
• Steam reviews mentioning the story and dialogue before my involvement are very negative. Afterwards, all mentions are positive.
"Alex has been working with us as a freelance text reviewer and improver for the MMORPG Mist Legacy for a year now and has consistently demonstrated his exceptional skills and expertise in this field. During Alex's tenure, he has successfully improved the quality and coherence of the game's text, ensuring that it is both clear and engaging for our players. His attention to detail, exceptional grammar, and extensive vocabulary have been invaluable to our team, and have contributed significantly to the overall success of Mist Legacy in the English language. Alex's creativity and willingness to take initiative were evident from the very beginning of his work with us. Rather than simply making improvements to existing text, he proposed a variety of new ideas and concepts that enhance the game's overall narrative."
Francois Desrosiers, CEO and Co-Owner of Virtys Studios