pr//WITNESS is a game developed for the 2024 Interactive and Linear Storytelling with digital media course at the University of Gothenburg. It is a 10-15 minute linear story game in which you play the role of Dwade Romer, who is experiencing odd feelings after having taken an experimental medication.

Made with Unreal Engine 5.

The Setting

Dwade Romer struggles with a light case of schizophreniform disorder. Gets by with the medicine he’s been prescribed, but struggles with its side effects: dizziness and numbness.

A new study at Elwood and Co., the company where his fiancée, Lucia Duarte, works as a biochemist. Upon arriving to the Elwood and Co. pharmaceutical branch, he is met with Dr. Wilmer Armaan.

Dwade is given the experimental pills by Dr. Armaan. This is where things start taking an odd turn.

Motion Capture

We believe this story required more realistic looking visuals than we usually use within our projects. It had to be more cinematic. This is why we decided to use Unreal Engine, as it has the Metahuman system.

Since we wanted the game to have very distinct scenes, we needed motion capture to really capture the events that transpire in the game.

This proved to be doable, albeit challenging. We didn’t have access to conventional motion capture equipment, but we used a combination of video-based motion capture tools. Namely, Rokoko Vision for body motion capture, and Live Link Face for facial.

Since facial and body motion capture had to be done separately, we opted to record audio with facial motion capture recording, and then the scene would be performed for the purposes of body motion capture.

I was the body actor for all characters, and voice for Dr. Armaan.

Datamoshing

The whole story is centered around the datamoshing artifacting effect. We used this effect to show moments in which Dwade can’t trust his own vision.

To implement it, we acquired an asset that supported building datamoshing effects, and liberally created interesting transitions, relocating the player into different rooms, toying with their perception.

In the game, the cause of this effect is a drug developed in secret by Elwood and Co.: Ophtalmolysis. Breakdown of the eyes.

The implementation was largely done by one of our team members, and I built the sequences in which the effect triggers.

Storytelling

We wanted to make a story that was fiction-first. We chose a gimmick to center our story around, which was the use of datamoshing artifacting, and built the story around how it could present itself to the player, and more importantly, to the character experiencing it.

With this, we decided to create a story about medical malpractice. Dr. Armaan has inserted himself into this position in order to personally attack Dwade.

To tell this story, we decided to go with a linear approach, with constant flashbacks to give more context about the events unfolding in front of the player. Since we had the datamoshing artifacting gimmick as our core, we used it ton diegetically trigger these flashback cutscenes, and slowly reveal to the player the true nature of their situation.

I took part in the creation of the story, writing of the characters, and their dialogues.

Planning whiteboard