Chris Allcock: Writer
Chris Allcock wrote the script for Kameo™: Element of Power. Without further ado, we’ll let him speak for himself, as his own eloquence and wordsmithing talent shows through in his interview as much as it does in Kameo.
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 If you could be any of the Elemental Warriors or other characters in Kameo, which one would you be, and why?
Ahh, finally we reach the important question. Tempting as it is to respond with a typically coy answer, such as “I’d be the secret character from another much-loved franchise that no-one’s found yet,” I’ll say: the Warrior Trainer. He was the character I had the most fun voicing during our temping sessions and he’s got some of the best hidden stuff, too.
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Can you tell us something about your personal history, education, and work history?
As you’d probably expect, I got here through a love of video games—starting on the old rubber-keyed Spectrum and working my way up to more internationally-recognised hardware. As you might not expect, I never set out to become a video game scriptwriter; jobs like that didn’t even exist at the time when I’d decided games were what I wanted to get into.
Writing, on the other hand, was something I’d always played with in my spare time and something I really enjoyed—helped in part by a succession of excellent English teachers. I’d got a portfolio of short stories, magazine articles, that sort of thing...In my mind, though, writing was the hobby and Computer Science was the way to get into the games industry and start paying the bills.
So that was what I did—followed the standard route of UK education before getting thoroughly hacked-off with university and deciding it was time to get out there and give something back. I was working in the technical support department of an Internet Service Provider when a response came back to a letter I’d sent out some months previously and almost forgotten about...This one had a golden R logo in the corner and I couldn’t get to the interview fast enough.
Over the long course of the game’s development, how has your contribution ebbed and flowed?
Thanks to the game’s unique evolution there have always been challenges and opportunities to explore—I’ve always had a full plate! Although the script has been a primary concern of mine I’ve also worked as a designer on the game, and have most recently been helping to ensure we get a stellar quality of script and speech in a multitude of languages across the world.
Have you had to write extra material for the Xbox 360® version of the game? What can you tell us about it?
Well, it wasn’t so much “having” to write extra material—which makes it sound like a burden—as much as being given the opportunity to expand Kameo’s world even further. The Battlefield is a perfect example: as our lead designer was able to introduce these stunning gameplay elements and epic battles, so I from a story perspective was able to explore some of the avenues that had always nagged at me when I’d played games.
A case in point; everyone’s familiar with the concept of the hero who sets out to save the universe, but all too often you find that everyone else in the game world is sitting back and living as normal...while the teen with the sword is single-handedly defeating every single minion of the final boss.
Now, though, we can take a step back and say ‘how is everyone else in the world dealing with this?’ So you’ve got an epic struggle playing out on our Battlefield between good and evil, and characters in that struggle with their own motives and problems who can now be directly affected by the actions of the player. The possibilities with Xbox 360 are limitless.
If you have to name only one thing that you hope players will appreciate in Kameo, what would it be?
Diversity. Spearheading a wave of titles that move above and beyond traditional gamers means you’ve suddenly got to find ways to engage and reach people that we as an industry have been ignoring for far too long.
Kameo can appeal to all sorts of people on different levels at the same time—a rough-and-tumble action fan will gravitate to the Battlefield and all of the amazing things we’ve got going on there. Aspiring adventurers can amuse themselves seeking out every nook and cranny in the game world—and believe me, they’ll be rewarded for doing so—and obsessively stalking the villagers. The hardcore gamers will be setting these incredible scores online but the socialites of the world will be making life-long friends that can help them beat those scores...
I’ve actually cheated and named several things, but I’ve barely scratched the surface...
Is there a character in Kameo that you found particularly fun to write? One that was particularly difficult to get into?
Ortho was particularly fun to write because he’s a miserable, sarcastic old codger—if he weren’t sat in a magical book, he’d be chasing children away from his bins. He gets to be sarcastic and cynical, and that’s always fun. Kameo herself was actually surprisingly tricky to write for—strong female characters who can hold their own without being sassy or losing their femininity are a much more complicated prospect than “man who sells potions.”
Fortunately, there have been some excellent interactions from other industries as of late. Our Hollywood consultant, Alex, and Kameo’s voice actress both did a superlative job bringing the character to life.
What’s it like to hear the words you’ve written recorded by the voice actors? Are you pleased with their performances?
Spooky! As long-time Rare fans will know, voices in our games have previously been long-suffering Rare staff and a number of those veterans stepped up to ‘temp’ the speech while the game was in development. I somehow wrangled my way in front of a microphone, too.
Without warning, I’m down in London. These people I’ve never met before walk in, stand behind some glass, and the characters we’ve been forging through the game suddenly spring to life in front of me, bending and waving their voices in ways that really shouldn’t be possible according to medical science. “Sound like a thirty foot Troll,” you say, and it happens. It’s ace.
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