Dead State - Design Update

Brian Mitsoda has penned a new Design Update for Dead State, discussing how humans are the "meat of the zombie story":

I’m writing a lot of dialogue lately.  It quickly adds up when covering the player’s decisions, responses to people in the shelter, reactions to character deaths or fates worse than, etc. Sometimes, it’s easy to forget that there are zombies in the game. It barely ever comes up in dialogue, except when the player specifically asks about them or when they directly become a threat to a certain plan of action. The zombies are simply there, like bad weather or a chance of the bends while diving. Everyone knows they’re a threat, but there’s no point in constantly bringing it up. It’s surprising how infrequently or casually the undead get mentioned in this zombie story.

Doing dialogue for a character is different from conceiving of a character or quests. You really don’t figure out a character fully until you have to get in their head. Important story points you had listed for the character suddenly become unworkable because the character just doesn’t seem like they would do that. Run with a throwaway conversation idea and suddenly you’ve got an excellent and defining situation set up for that ally. It seems like it should be painting by numbers once you’ve documented every single interaction, but it’s a lot more like experimenting with new recipes. The results can sometimes be surprising, in a good way.