The Matrix Online Interview

The guys at Newsarama have done an interview of sorts with Paul Chadwick, whose current work includes writing the storyline for Monolith’s The Matrix Online. Not only that, but apparently Paul was also one of the first comic creators the Wachowski brothers approached to create a comic story based on The Matrix, back before the first movie was even made. Here’s a quick snip from the interview:

To date, Chadwick has only worked in linear storytelling, where he, as the creator, controlled the pace, as well as the rate at which and method information is relayed to the audience. As Chadwick sees The Matrix Online, it’s more like 4-dimensional writing, as players can follow the meta-story by a variety of methods, and can learn it at their own pace.

In short, (It’s very headache producing,) Chadwick chuckled. (The difficulty in writing this was that you really had to access both sides of your brain while you’re writing it. You’ve got the very logical, timed-out doling out of information, as well as the very creative side of things, and there are so many technical requirements in this kind of storytelling as well. It’s hard to get into that altered state of consciousness that you can get into when you’re just writing prose.