Newly Released Diagrams Show How Narratives Play Out on Galactic Starcruiser
This week the Game Developers Conference took place in San Francisco and there was a panel during the event titled ‘Starting with the Ending: Narrative Design of ‘Star Wars: Galactic Starcruiser'” During the event there were some interesting details revealed about the narrative progression that fans experience on the Galactic Starcruiser.
Spoiler Warning: If you’ve yet to go on a Galactic Starcruiser adventure and want the narrative elements to be a complete surprise then give these images a pass! We don’t want to spoil the surprise for you.
Appearing at the event were Anisha Deshmane and Sara Thacher of Walt Disney Imagineering. The event description reads “Join two Walt Disney Imagineers as we upend narrative design strategies to create compelling, impactful conclusions to each guests stories developed for the multi-day immersive adventure, Star Wars: Galactic Starcruiser.”
During the event, the GDC took to their official Twitter account to share a few images with us of the narrative structure from the Starcruiser experience.
A long time ago in a #GDC22 far away… learning about the narrative design of the ‘Star Wars’ Galactic Starcruiser! pic.twitter.com/DevQ6kctOs
— GDC 2022 (@Official_GDC) March 24, 2022
For those unfamiliar, the Star Wars: Galactic Starcruiser is a new hotel experience at Walt Disney World. It’s booked similar to the way you would book a cruise with guests paying for an all inclusive-package over two nights that includes room, board and a visit to Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge at Hollywood Studios.
Integral to the Starcruiser experience is the story that is supposed to evolve through a guest’s stay, sort of like a choose your own adventure playing out live Discussing the preplanned narrative structures was the subject of this GDC event.
The ‘Star Wars’ Galactic Starcruiser operates as a 3-act play, with the passenger choices impacting the structure and storyline of your custom performance. Fascinating! #GDC22 pic.twitter.com/o0sTghmuox
— GDC 2022 (@Official_GDC) March 24, 2022
Disney sees the Starcruiser experience as a 3 act play and above is a graphic demonstrating how that plays out over the 2-night experience.
Above you can see the multi-day connected “RPG” where a guests personal story unfolds through physical exploration, responsive environments, interactions with live performers and more. Throughout the event, guests can make choices that change the path of their experience while immersing them in a range of Star Wars stories.
During a visit, a guest can make decisions about what side of the adventure they want to be on as evidenced by the narrative slide above.
In the image above you can actually see how the narrative experience aboard the Starcruiser is split up into three acts: Character Intros & Set up which happens on the first night, the Missions which take place during a visit to Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge at Disney’s Hollywood Studios and the third and final act, the Finale which takes place the evening before you check out.
What we also find interesting is that you can also see the areas of the ship where the different elements play out. This includes Batuu (Galaxy’s Edge), Lounge, Bridge, Atrium, TSR, Engine Room and Training Pod.
The purpose of the presentation was to show narrative designers, creative designers, escape room designers etc. how Walt Disney Imagineering developed a cohesive connected Star Wars story.
Though Starcruiser has faced its fair share of criticism, its evident that a considerable amount of thought and planning went into creating an experience with “mechanics that embrace play” as well as moments of agency to create galactic narratives for Star Wars fans.
Readers are encouraged to keep following along with MickeyBlog for further Walt Disney World news and updates. Thinking about blasting off on a Galactic Starcruiser adventure? Then fill out our form below to get your FREE, no-obligation quote.
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