Narrative Lead

Off-Leash Studio

Engine: Unreal Engine 5

Team Size: 5 -> 20

Production Time: Pre-production -> Production (9 Months)

Platform: PC

At Off-Leash, I worked as a Narrative Lead, joining early in pre-production and continuing through production as the team grew from 5 to 20 people.

My role focused on bridging narrative and design. I wrote dialogue, characters, and lore, while structuring and integrating narrative into gameplay systems to ensure it was both engaging and implementable.

Responsibilities & Ownership

As Narrative Lead, I owned the narrative development pipeline, from concept to in-engine implementation in Unreal Engine 5.

• Maintained and evolved the Trollheim IP, ensuring consistency across all narrative content
• Embedded with a partner studio, acting as a liaison between teams to align narrative, design, and production
• Worked closely with the Game Director to define and position narrative within the player experience
• Proactively identified opportunities to elevate the game through storytelling and worldbuilding
• Delivered narrative across writing, systems, and implementation, including hands-on work in Unreal Engine (Blueprints)

How I worked

My primary responsibility was translating abstract narrative vision into functional design.

Working closely with the Project Manager and the IP Owner, I bridged the gap between thematic ideas and gameplay implementation.

While the IP owner explored themes and concepts, the team required clear and nailed down ideas that would not change due to new ideas and story moments within the IP, to acomplish this I worked by:

• Talking with the IP owner to understand the idea
• Break it down into something usable
• Work with the rest of designe and art to fit it into gameplay
• Test it in engine to see if it actually works

This meant narrative wasn’t just written, it was built, tested, and adjusted like any other system.

Dialogue & Narrative System (UE5)

Tool: Narrative 3 (Unreal Engine 5 plugin)

One of the systems I worked alot with was the groundwork for all quests & dialogue that would react to the players actions.

Using the Narrative 3 Plugin we had a ground work for how everything would function, by using triggers and conditions we could change entire dialogue trees or open up new options by simply just using these conditions.

Building Structure in an Unclear Project

One of the biggest challenges was that the story was still being figured out while we were building the game.

To handle that, I:

• Locked down important things early (rules of the world, tone)
• Kept other parts flexible
• Updated things in small steps instead of rewriting everything

This helped the team:

• Keep moving forward
• Avoid redoing large amounts of work

By doing this we spent more time working towards our goal and less time re-working large elements of the game every week as the IP changed and took form.

Narrative Documentiation

I created and maintained a Narrative Design Documentthat the team used.

It included:

• World and lore
• Characters
• Quests
• Systems and ideas

Instead of rewriting everything constantly, I:

• Updated it continuously
• Kept it aligned with the current state of the game

One of the larger tasks I worked with was the constant flow of communication from the IP owner and our game, I nailed down important moments from the rich histroy and lore already created, locations, characters and large events and started to place our game on the timeline of the world which brought important questions to the surfrace usch as:

• Where would it make sence for the game to take place?
• Who can and can't we mention or use if the game takes place during this time?

It is a simplification to say that It wasent a easy task to take care of as the IP changed weekly and so the documentation updated with it.

Working with the Team

One of the more enjoyable parts of my role was collaborating closely with the rest of the team. A key responsibility was ensuring that everyone had what they needed from the IP when designing systems. I spent many hours supporting this process, as we had many exciting ideas we wanted to explore that sometimes fell outside of the IP’s limitations. In those cases, I focused on finding alternative solutions that achieved similar results while staying within the IP’s constraints.

I worked with:

• Designers
• Programmers
• Project Manager
• IP Owner

This involved:

• Answering design and world-building questions
• Adjusting narrative elements to better fit gameplay systems
• Ensuring that gameplay systems and story remained cohesive and aligned

What I Learned & Key Takeaways

This project taught me that narrative design is not just about writing dialogue or lore, but about building systems that support and deliver story through gameplay. A large part of my work was translating narrative ideas into structured, implementable features that could function within Unreal Engine and evolve alongside the rest of the game.

I learned how important it is to design with uncertainty in mind. Working with a developing IP meant that ideas, tone, and world details were constantly evolving. To handle this, I had to balance structure with flexibility, locking down core rules early while keeping other parts adaptable so the team could continue building without constant rework.

Another key takeaway was the value of clear communication between disciplines. Acting as a bridge between design, programming, production, and the IP owner required me to constantly translate abstract ideas into practical solutions that each team could work with. This improved my ability to think in terms of both creative intent and technical constraints.

Finally, I gained a stronger understanding of ownership in a production environment. Maintaining narrative consistency, documentation, and system alignment across a growing team reinforced the importance of keeping a clear narrative foundation while still allowing space for iteration and collaboration.

If you’ve read this far,

I just want to say thank you for reading and taking the time to go through my work.