Player Triggered Main Quest

[Osvir]

Could the Player take the "Quest" in a completely new direction by the actions he/she is taking?

 

Say, there is a Side-Quest to banish a Demon, but instead you release him and becomes his master. Now this wasn't just some "Hey Demon become my summon!" but an actual "Doomsday Demon" making it even more threatening than the task previous task at hand, and he's on your leash

 

Could the player produce some "doom events" themselves? Basically, instead of facing Sarevok, the Bhaalspawn goes off elsewhere on a "X" choice. Choosing to face other player triggered events that is way more a problem than Sarevok. Or stumbling into some dark deep place and accidentally summon Cthulhu (in a side-quest).

 

Sarevok is just an ant in a much larger scheme after all... no?

 

Basically, can the Player kind of become the "threat" narratively?

[Dream]

Yea, if Obsidian had a 100 million dollar budget.

 

Cool idea though.

[TMTVL]

It could work... if you keep the game on a small scale, see the Way of the Samurai games: the story can go a multitude of ways, but the events are contained in both space: a single village+environs/city/... And time: a limited amount of days, seperated in phases(early morning, morning, ..., evening, late night).

 

To expand those factors, you'd need exponentially more memory for storage and designing/production time.

Edited December 29, 2012 by TMTVL

[Osvir]

There are some alternate endings in PS:T? I know you can become the Skeleton King (or w/e it was) and get an early ending (bad) ending.

 

This thread pretty much goes into that bin I guess. "Early Endings" and "Alternate Endings" I guess.

[Felithvian]

Sarevok is just an ant in a much larger scheme after all... no?

 

He's a simpleton, wouldn't last a day without his stepfather. In fact, all Hell breaks loose after you murder his stepfather.

 

Nobody needs a 100 million dollar budget. Darklands delivers Osvir's idea quite well, and it's a 1992 game. Blame the developers for linear game design.

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MxLgFbNPB9s

[Haerski]

I like the idea, but the new plot still has to tie into overall storyline of the game. If I work possibly hours to achieve one goal and then the game introduces me completely new one and just tells to forget about the former it would probably feel like I wasted that time. "Why didn't they make game about this in the first place? Why did I have to play that x hours long, completely irrelevant intro before getting into this 'real' plot?"

 

What I'm trying to say is, if the game for example introduces you new main enemy, you still would have to find and confront your former enemy to convince him/her to become your ally against this new, greater evil or if that doesn't pay off, kill him/her. Or maybe both enemies join forces and become something far worse than anyone could imagine. Anyway, whatever happens they have to bring the original storyline in some kind of conclusion. Not like "Let's forget about Sarevok. This Demon Lord of All-kinds-of-nasty-things is far more important now!"

[Nonek]

I'm always in favour of a pro-active protagonist and a more reactive world. In both New Vegas, Alpha Protocol and to a lesser extent Dungeon Siege 3 it is the protagonist who decides (whether knowingly or not) whom his primary antagonists and allies are, therefore I see no problems with taking a more active hand in Eternity.

 

I've completed two playthroughs of Alpha Protocol and the differences could not be more startling. As a recruit I played as a stupidly naive puppet, dancing to my masters tunes and maintaining a righteous sense of outrage throughout. In the veteran playthrough I slowly but surely built my power base around the world, and come the denouement usurped the antagonists throne. If Eternity is anywhere as ambitious as that, i'll be more than happy.

[Lephys]

This makes me think of how Batman inadvertently "creates" all his own villains, haha. It could be pretty cool. I like controlled usages of the "I tried to good, but evil ended up coming of it because of factors unknown to me and now must deal with this new evil" thing, and vice versa.

 

I dunno about doomsday-level ramifications. It's not that it couldn't be done, but, I would think "doomsday" is pretty much the highest threat-level you can have, so, it would kind of defeat the imperative nature of the main story's threat (assuming consequences of something that isn't directly part of the main quest-line), whatever it may be, methinks.

[Sacred_Path]

Wait... this and the "PC death" topic and the Darklands reference melted together in my head and... why couldn't the game go on with the PC dead in the way of

 

a) main quest is botched and it's becoming entirely a sandbox game

 

b) main quest can be completed but would consist mostly of fighting and scripted encounters

 

It all made sense before I wrote it down, I swear.