Character Saves Carrying Over?

[cepukon]

I know there have been talks of possible sequels depending on the success of Project Eternity, it would be really great to be able to carry over your character from the previous games, a la Bioware's Mass Effect series.

 

I find it adds a great deal of intensity to the bigger game decisions because you never know if or how that decision might affect you in further sequels. It's also a great way to tie the way the story is unfolding into common gameplay (such as an NPC recalling how you saved someone's life in a previous game that was a friend of theirs, which allows them to be more open to speaking to you, etc.).

 

Has this idea been discussed at all from a development standpoint?

[The Sharmat]

If it's possible I would absolutely love it. Mass Effect was so full of (unrealized, in my opinion) promise in that regard. If anyone could do it right, Obsidian could. But then, it might be impossible without a substantial budget.

[Luckmann]

I think it is a bit early to start talking about sequels.

[Gazoinks]

I'm pretty sure Feargus said somewhere that they plan on (if this is succesful) making multiple adventures in which you can carry over your guy.

[Shardbearer]

They have in fact already mentioned carrying over to further adventures if we can support the game that far.

[Makura]

Even if it crashed quite hard with the infamous ending, Mass Effect did a really great job on that side, many small things making a small appearance from the 1st to the 3rd, and it really helped making the world feel persistent and coherent around us. For PE, even if it's not time for sequels already, that kind of things should be considered early in the thinking process so it can be integrated nicely when the need arises.

[The Sharmat]

I really don't think Mass Effect did a good job with that even before the ending. Most of the seemingly major decisions took you to the exact same result regardless. The Rachni Queen perhaps being the worst offender.

Edited September 21, 2012 by The Sharmat

[Shardbearer]

I really don't think Mass Effect did a good job with that even before the ending. Most of the seemingly major decisions took you to the exact same result regardless. The Rachni Queen perhaps being the worst offender.

 

Big decisions like the rachni queen and such ended up being fairly pointless, but all the small details carrying over all 3 games were quite impressive. Being approached and thanked by an NPC character in a bar and having to thoroughly scratch my head before realizing it was someone I saved in the first game years ago was pretty cool.

[leshy]

Big decisions like the rachni queen and such ended up being fairly pointless, but all the small details carrying over all 3 games were quite impressive. Being approached and thanked by an NPC character in a bar and having to thoroughly scratch my head before realizing it was someone I saved in the first game years ago was pretty cool.

 

I agree that the many details that were the most fun part. The NPC you saved in the previous game and have a short conversation in the sequel or some changes in the way the conversation is carried out.

Fact is that many big decisions were pretty much meaningless (but definitely not all). However I think it's hard to blame BioWare for that. The big decisions always had some impact, but to make it more significant would mean to make a second game. So maybe the execution of continuity was not perfect in some cases, but to be frank it was on a scale never seen before, and was not bad. I think with time this feature will be more visible in games and definitely more polished.

[Shardbearer]

 

I agree that the many details that were the most fun part. The NPC you saved in the previous game and have a short conversation in the sequel or some changes in the way the conversation is carried out.

Fact is that many big decisions were pretty much meaningless (but definitely not all). However I think it's hard to blame BioWare for that. The big decisions always had some impact, but to make it more significant would mean to make a second game. So maybe the execution of continuity was not perfect in some cases, but to be frank it was on a scale never seen before, and was not bad. I think with time this feature will be more visible in games and definitely more polished.

 

I definitely agree, it would have been a monumental undertaking.

[Aedelric]

I do not mind if we carry over the actual character, but important choices made in each game should be reflected in sequels. Being isometric text, and not cinematic voiced it should not be as hard to do such a thing.

 

I want my choices to have real consequences and actually matter in subsequent games, not Bioware type "consequences", if you know what I mean.

Edited September 21, 2012 by Aedelric

[leshy]

I want my choices to have real consequences and actually matter in subsequent games, not Bioware type "consequences", if you know what I mean.

 

 

Sorry I couldn't stop myself...

[Lurky]

Ah yes, the Mass Effect series. Because the final game of the trilogy is a great place to start the series, obviously. Fortunately, here we don't have to deal with publishers that dictate that sort of thing, so that's a point in favor for PE

 

Regarding choice acknowledgement, I think one of the biggest problems the Mass Effect series had was that it aimed for Big Choices that would have a large impact in the setting. Choose if a species can return to the galaxy or be extinguished forever. Choose whether you want to mantain the status quo of the government or put in charge your own species. Choose who lives and who dies out of pretty much all the companions you can have. Things like that.

 

These choices felt big and meaningful and empowering at the moment we faced them, sure. But the problem of choices that should have a great impact in every aspect of the world is that accounting for them all is exponentially more difficult the more of them you have. In order to acknowledge them all, either the overall impact is lessened (thus the choice itself loses impact), or the scope of the choice would have to be narrowed (thus the impact of the choice on the player is lessened). Though personally, I would go with the latter approach. No need for big and epic, subtle changes can be good.

 

Also, I believe I read that the problem with the Rachni choice was that they had no budget for two different sidequests for each variation of the choice. Since they didn't want to deprive some players of content, they gave the same quest for both with a few lines changed. Which was a stupid decision if you ask me: better to leave some quests exclusive for some playthroughs than rendering the choice meaningless.

 

 

 

I think the conclusion is that, if you want to make sequels where choices carry over, design the sequels and the choices with that in mind, and start doing that from the beginning. Maybe you could place each game in one region of the world and constrain the choices to impact only that region, so that their consequences would be felt indirectly in the sequels, or the choices would be about your character and in what direction you want to take the PC in the game, or... I don't know. But if Obsidian can learn from the mistakes the Mass Effect series commited, it would be very interesting to see this implemented

[Aedelric]

Rachni is not a bad example. I would rather loose out on an hour or two of gameplay if it meant my choices carried over. I am sure others feel the same, if I want to play the content I miss out on, I will just use one of my other play-throughs with the according choice.

 

Project Eternity has a chance to be the first franchise to deal with consequences correctly, to give players more control over crafting their own adventure. I wonder how far Obsidian will go with player freedom and consequences, or will they opt out for the easy and more traditional "the canon ending is..." and forsake player choice.

 

More clarification on Obsidians stance on this subject would be nice.

[Monkcrab]

I'd be happy with a Quest for Glory-styled character carryover, too. ME and DA's carryovers ended up being lackluster, and it seems that the flags are hell to do well. They STILL haven't fixed the bugged dialogue flags in DA:O!

 

....although some choices carrying over will not be bad. No. Implying that every single one of your choice of import will affect the world just seems to be setting yourself up for the impossible later on.

[Brishingr]

bieng text based, one could agrue that you could have lots more to carry over, but I think its a wee bit earily for this.

[Zed]

I think the character should be exportable, like in the IE games.

 

But I don't want a save game thing and decisions from one title affecting another. I don't like having to sit on old saves.

The Mass Effect games were terrible. I hope they influence this game as little as possible.

[Jaesun]

I think the character should be exportable, like in the IE games.

 

Agreed. I'd like this as well

 

 

 

But I don't want a save game thing and decisions from one title affecting another. I don't like having to sit on old saves.

The Mass Effect games were terrible. I hope they influence this game as little as possible.

 

Agreed that was handled a bit poorly. Also unless Obsidian specifically had C&C being a central theme of this game and it to carry over to the next, that is way too much resources for them to spend on this and the next game (all the branching stuff due to your players choices).

 

Unless they are fake meaningless Bioware choices. Which I'd prefer Obsidian avoid.

[cepukon]

Well seeing how this game was just funded to be created, I know it is premature to start planning ideas for sequels, but if they do plan on making a series at all, they need to start making these decisions now.

 

If the game is to be decision based, it will be impossible to design a sequel that will be customized based on the players decisions without carrying over a save of some sort. WIthout carrying over a save, all the connections to the first game will be generic and you lose an opportunity to connect the player to the game world that much more.

 

For example, tThere were some big decisions required of you in Dragon Age, but upon playing the sequel, I was extremely disappointed to learn that those decisions were not connected in any way, and you never got the payoff of seeing how your decisions affected the world. This sucked the life out of the sequel for me as I knew my decisions were meaningless in the big picture. I know it's hard to implement with the uncertainty of any sequels, but it would be a huge boost to the depth of the game.

[nikolokolus]

Assuming they didn't go overboard with this sort of thing, I'd be happy to see some elements carried across sequels. Theoretically it shouldn't be too hard to have the save game set a flag on an environment variable and then that variable manifests itself someway in dialogue or perhaps in the presence or absence of some entity or group in the next iteration of the story.

 

But really it should be little touches and not major story elements ... it could get really "branchy" and hard to manage

[WintermuteOmega]

Carrying over Characters would give this game a real old-school feel. I like that. I wonder, why carring over characters from wasteland to wasteland 2 got so much hate...

 

I also liked the Might&Magic approach of combining 2 worlds into one.

And i never felt more of a badass than importing chars from Wizardry 6 to 7.

[Theobeau]

Good comments about choices carrying over actually having consequences.

 

From memory the romance options from BG 2 to ToB carried over. It has been a while since I played the games but I remember being pleasantly surprised that these choices were remember.

 

Hopefully NPC interactions, PC development and certain quest lines will carry through. However as pointed out earlier, major quest lines generally would have to follow clear pathways otherwise the writers would be spending lots of time fleshing out potentially conflicting pathways to the detriment of their writing. Again, from memory that was one justification quoted as to why the BW writers made fixed choices for certain story lines in ME3.

[Luckmann]

[...]

 

From memory the romance options from BG 2 to ToB carried over. It has been a while since I played the games but I remember being pleasantly surprised that these choices were remember.

 

[...]

They did. You could even have a child with Aerie, or make Viconia Neutral instead of Evil.