banner
LightNews
haraldhagen.bsky.social
Harald Hagen 🏳️‍🌈
@haraldhagen.bsky.social
180 followers 180 following 220 posts
[ Available for work! ] ✍️ Game Writer + Narrative Designer, to the great disapproval of my cats. Based in Yorkshire. He/him. 🎮 BG&E2 ▪︎ Game of Thrones: Tale of Crows ▪︎ The Stillness of the Wind ▪︎ NEO Scavenger ▪︎ etc. 💼 haraldthehagen.com
Posts Media Videos Starter Packs
Pinned
haraldhagen.bsky.social
Harald Hagen 🏳️‍🌈 @haraldhagen.bsky.social · Aug 28
Welcome!

I'm a game writer and narrative designer from 🇮🇩🇧🇻, now UK-based. Over the past decade, I've worked freelance on a bunch of cool games, including the ones below.

Indie/AAA, sole writer/team co-writing, joined early/recruited late. All sorts of shenanigans.

Feel free to connect and say hey!
Collaged image. Left is promo art for Beyond Good and Evil 2 depicting an aircraft in space, coloured white and black with red highlights, with a planet beyond it, and the game logo in the top left. Right is promo art for Beyond Good and Evil 20th Anniversary Edition depicting the main character Jade against a green stellar backdrop of spaceships, a planet, and a green wormhole, with the game logo front and center. Key promotional art for the game Game of Thrones: Tale of Crows. Depicts three cubic dioramas beneath the game logo at center top. Left diorama shows a wintery landscape dotted with trees and a river. Right diorama shows a slice of a giant wall of ice with a rising winch cage connecting the top of the Wall to Castle Black below. Middle diorama shows a zoomed out slice of the Wall with snowy wilderness south and north of the structure, marked by snowy grounds, some forest, and fading footpaths. Key promotional art for the game The Stillness of the Wind. Depicts a two-house farm standing in the middle of a golden desert beneath dusky skies and a darkening storm to the distance, rightward. The farm is fenced with a windmill to one side. Outside the fence, standing near a well, is the small figure of an old woman and a goat. Key promotional art for the game NEO Scavenger. Rendered in pixel art style. Depicts a neon-lit city half faded into rust brown smog with the blacn silhouttes of trees cutting into the foreground. Logo is centered low in black and white.
3
haraldhagen.bsky.social
Harald Hagen 🏳️‍🌈 @haraldhagen.bsky.social · 38m
Oh how much the world's fuckedness is caused just by people looking for things in the wrong places.
haraldhagen.bsky.social
Harald Hagen 🏳️‍🌈 @haraldhagen.bsky.social · 9h
Still, I need to see where Rebirth goes from here. These thoughts may all be void if there's a worthy payoff down the road. On I go!
haraldhagen.bsky.social
Harald Hagen 🏳️‍🌈 @haraldhagen.bsky.social · 9h
One of the best strengths of FF6 was its strong cast, each well defined with their own motivations. No better demonstration of how vastly different characters can align goals is with the great Ruin at halfway, shifting the primary POV (arguable) from Terra to Celes.

Still the cast gathered again.
1
haraldhagen.bsky.social
Harald Hagen 🏳️‍🌈 @haraldhagen.bsky.social · 9h
The bartender quest could have centred Tifa and another side of her beyond martial arts (multiple interests!). The flower crown quest could have focused on Aeris and maybe what she thinks of the close Chocobo Ranch siblings when she herself grew up an only child.
1
haraldhagen.bsky.social
Harald Hagen 🏳️‍🌈 @haraldhagen.bsky.social · 9h
Still early in my FF7Rebirth run, but some of these early sidequests around Kalm really show how Cloud-centric the remake is, ostensibly despite the fact that it is a many-times expanded sequel-retelling of the original.

There is so much more room for them to breathe. Who are they without Cloud?
1
haraldhagen.bsky.social
Harald Hagen 🏳️‍🌈 @haraldhagen.bsky.social · 9h
This might also explain why certain human-shaped garbagefires march unimpeded into, say, a somewhat circular office in a bleached building.
1
haraldhagen.bsky.social
Harald Hagen 🏳️‍🌈 @haraldhagen.bsky.social · 10h
Suzie Plakson casually chewing and chiseling every line with great relish. I noticed it only now with the Klingon character. Gonna have to rewatch her other roles soon!
haraldhagen.bsky.social
Harald Hagen 🏳️‍🌈 @haraldhagen.bsky.social · 11h
As I continue moving through TNG for the first time, I once again jump with glee at reaching another K'Ehleyr episode. Superb performance.
a woman sitting in a chair with the word no written on her shirt
ALT: a woman sitting in a chair with the word no written on her shirt
media.tenor.com
1 2
haraldhagen.bsky.social
Harald Hagen 🏳️‍🌈 @haraldhagen.bsky.social · 14h
Link
jadedsynic.bsky.social
She-wolf of Naarm, Prowling for Narrative Work @jadedsynic.bsky.social · 16h
Link
sahilbajaj.dev
Sa-ilent-hill Bajaj (Still Looking for Work) @sahilbajaj.dev · 16h
Link
1
haraldhagen.bsky.social
Harald Hagen 🏳️‍🌈 @haraldhagen.bsky.social · 15h
I'm many many years late to this realisation but A SHORT HIKE is a deft and deeply elegant game that remembers the innocent side of fun.

Exploration over indulgence.
Personal stakes over global crisis.
Slice of life over grand epic.

Beautifully done!
haraldhagen.bsky.social
Harald Hagen 🏳️‍🌈 @haraldhagen.bsky.social · 1d
Weekly photo op of The Dark Sisters.
A photo of two cats napping next to each other, close up on their faces.
1
haraldhagen.bsky.social
Harald Hagen 🏳️‍🌈 @haraldhagen.bsky.social · 1d
Me and a couple of friends have had one of those as well - the ones that got away, so to speak. We carry them like old wounds.
1 1
haraldhagen.bsky.social
Harald Hagen 🏳️‍🌈 @haraldhagen.bsky.social · 1d
Welp. Time to get me jab jabbed.
haraldhagen.bsky.social
Harald Hagen 🏳️‍🌈 @haraldhagen.bsky.social · 1d
Sad is the basket of parted socks, until the day it fills and I get to play match-2 and watch each pair fall in love all over again.
Reposted by Harald Hagen 🏳️‍🌈
writingstudio.bsky.social
David Varela @writingstudio.bsky.social · 1d
Creative Assembly is looking for a Principal Narrative Designer.

No affiliation. Just sharing the link...

jobs.jobvite.com/creative-ass...
Creative Assembly is looking for Principal Narrative Designer.
Creative Assembly is one of Europe's leading games development studios, founded in 1987 and located in West Sussex, UK, Newcastle, UK and Sofia, Bulgaria. We craft deep and detailed games that matter...
jobs.jobvite.com
47 56
Reposted by Harald Hagen 🏳️‍🌈
writingstudio.bsky.social
David Varela @writingstudio.bsky.social · 1d
Two Point Studios is looking for a Senior Designer/Writer.

No affiltiaton. Just sharing the link...

jobs.jobvite.com/sega-europe-...
Two Point Studios is looking for Senior Designer/Writer.
Two Point Studios is looking for Senior Designer/Writer. Learn more or Jobvite a friend.
jobs.jobvite.com
18 19
haraldhagen.bsky.social
Harald Hagen 🏳️‍🌈 @haraldhagen.bsky.social · 1d
It's a kind of writing that is overwrought and loaded with long sentences and words, often drawing attention to itself at the expense of the story.

But the line between excess and detriment can be subjective at times. A text that's just very flowery for some folks comes across as purple to others.
2
haraldhagen.bsky.social
Harald Hagen 🏳️‍🌈 @haraldhagen.bsky.social · 2d
Much as 'purple prose' denotes an intended criticism, I absolutely love that shit. Reading and writing. I maintain 3 things:

1. There is good purple and bad purple.

2. It doesn't belong everywhere and it isn't for everyone.

3. By god if there IS a place for it on a project, I will FIND it.
1
haraldhagen.bsky.social
Harald Hagen 🏳️‍🌈 @haraldhagen.bsky.social · 2d
Trying to think of a specific food or drink that I really enjoy but cannot have more than a portion of at a time because it's just too rich and complex in flavour or too heavy.

Anyway that's how I feel about the Interview With The Vampire series. It is so devoted to its purple, i fucking love it.
1 3
haraldhagen.bsky.social
Harald Hagen 🏳️‍🌈 @haraldhagen.bsky.social · 2d
Surely at this point it becomes about not getting hit, in which case-
a man in a cape is flying through the air
ALT: a man in a cape is flying through the air
media.tenor.com
haraldhagen.bsky.social
Harald Hagen 🏳️‍🌈 @haraldhagen.bsky.social · 2d
Nooooo :(

Every week now? Twice a week? It's a bloody streak and it's just horrible.
haraldhagen.bsky.social
Harald Hagen 🏳️‍🌈 @haraldhagen.bsky.social · 2d
😂 entirely valid way to say it
haraldhagen.bsky.social
Harald Hagen 🏳️‍🌈 @haraldhagen.bsky.social · 2d
Oooooh THAT'S how you pronounce agate!
1
haraldhagen.bsky.social
Harald Hagen 🏳️‍🌈 @haraldhagen.bsky.social · 3d
Life can change so quickly.

One morning you may wake up while a family member will not. One day you might find pain has made a home in your bones, turning every travel plan into an audit of rationed energy and stolen will.

Speak your heart. Affirm your love. Do the thing today.
essencesimmone.blacksky.app
essencesimmone.blacksky.app @essencesimmone.blacksky.app · 8d
Those who are 35+, what advice do you have for people just entering their 30s?
3
haraldhagen.bsky.social
Harald Hagen 🏳️‍🌈 @haraldhagen.bsky.social · 3d
The beauty of that little moment in which Data imitates the smile of the Mona Lisa isn't just in the silliness, or even the innocence, curiosity, and reverence he has for humanity.

It's in knowing that there must be others out there like me who've done the same silly thing in the mirror.
2