Between story and freedom - how to combine

[Yonjuro]

I just ask, why NOT have a connection to the main story? Even if it just changes a tiny, tiny factor, why NOT have some effect carry over into the adjacent content? Why isolate something to the point of seeming pointlessness?

 

 

 

I agree. Going back to the earlier example, in BG1, your PC should have some motivation for visiting Durlag's Tower late in the game that connects to the main story. As is, the player has two motivations, fun dungeon with great loot (not to mention XP), but the PC ... nope why would they go there? And, it doesn't have to be deeply intertwined with the main story and it can be optional, but it is better if it connects.

 

 

Local group of bandits raiding a small village? You don't HAVE to get rid of them. The story doesn't rely upon that small village's banditlessness. But, maybe if you DO stop them, that village can ship more of its local crop to the larger cities. Maybe some NPC from that village ends up being in a different location, later on, because they can now use the road again to travel. *shrug*. Why does it need to be forcibly made SO isolated that it literally had nothing to do with the rest of the world and the narrative that's occurring within that world? I personally don't believe that it does, and I think having those ripples occur, as they would naturally, only helps the coherency of the overall experience. 

 

 An example that I mentioned briefly earlier in this thread was Yoshimo's story line in BG2. It's optional, but it ties in nicely with the story and even back to BG1 where you may have met the character in Yoshimo's journal and felt sorry for her at the time. I thought this was very effective (and I didn't even know about it until, I think, my third playthrough since I had never kept Yoshimo in my party before that - so it was a nice story that really added replay value to the game).

 

 In your example, in one game, maybe you don't clear out the bandits and then, in another, you do and are rewarded with some changes to the story that you didn't experience the first time. It doesn't need to severely help/handicap your gameplay doing it one way or the other (it probably shouldn't) but it adds to the atmosphere and replayability of the game. It probably works best if you get storyline A when do that quest and equally interesting storyline B (with comparable XP rewards available - if any) when you don't do it.

 

 This gets rid of the completionist mentality that can be immersion breaking in a game (when metagaming and gaming don't match).

[Lephys]

^ Very much so. No need for more/less, better/worse absolutes. Just pleasant differences, really.

[eimatshya]

I don't necessarily think that side quests need to be connected to the main plot in all games; I just don't like it when the main story makes it feel like you shouldn't be doing the side quests. Fallout 2 is a good example of a game that's mostly sidequests with little effect on the main story. The main story has you just wandering through the wasteland looking for something you have no idea how to find. As such, doing a lot of random stuff along the way doesn't feel wrong. You don't feel like there's something more important you should be doing because you don't have any clear idea where your main quest should take you.

 

Fallout: New Vegas is another example, depending on how you play. If you do what the game seems to want and go chasing after Benny, then doing side quests feels incongruous. However, if like me, you decide that you aren't eager to tangle with someone you thoroughly owned you during your last encounter, you are free to just wander around doing whatever you want.

[Lephys]

I agree regarding the main plot, but I do feel like it's never a bad idea to have them connected to something else in the world/lore/circumstances in some (even tiny) way. I mean, one could argue that "you got this piece of loot you wouldn't have had if you didn't do this side content" affects how you get through the main plot. And that's true. But, wouldn't it still be nice if that affected more than just the direct benefit of the player's toolset? Maybe some people notice that piece of loot and react slightly differently than if you didn't have it. Or maybe people react to news of your efforts in that side quest. Maybe you run into someone somewhere else who's a relative of that person you did the quest for, and their personal reputation with you is changed now, upon hearing about your deeds from the quest-giver. Even if that relative isn't directly affiliated with the main plot.

 

I guess it's just nice when something other than your party's equipment and stats actually acknowledges the fact that you did something, as opposed to not doing it. In whatever way. Or, to put it another way, the effects of your actions should almost always be evident in something beyond for-the-player's-eyes-only stuff.

 

Take the typical "kill 10 rats" quest. Obviously someone will pay you if you kill 10 rats. But, what if there was actually SOME effect from the absence of the rats, beyond just "well, someone said they'd pay you if you killed the rats, and you did, so money"? Even it was just people mentioning how rat-free the place was, or the person giving their cat to some little girl in town because they didn't need a rat-hunter anymore. *shrug* Without that, it kinda just feels like "there was absolutely no point in this at all, except to appease this person, and there was no point in appeasing the person except to get gold."

 

The actual effects of your actions in undertaking a quest should not always stop at the mere happiness level of the quest-giver.

[JFSOCC]

I agree regarding the main plot, but I do feel like it's never a bad idea to have them connected to something else in the world/lore/circumstances in some (even tiny) way.

I mostly disagree; While I think it is a good idea to have most of the content support an overarching theme of the game,(such as the nature of the force in KOTORII) I think it will get thoroughly annoying when every single quest is hitting you over the head with the main storyline.

[Lephys]

I mostly disagree; While I think it is a good idea to have most of the content support an overarching theme of the game,(such as the nature of the force in KOTORII) I think it will get thoroughly annoying when every single quest is hitting you over the head with the main storyline.

"Hitting you over the head," while probably a mild exaggeration for effect on your part, indicates a MUCH stricter criteria than I'm suggesting.

 

Example: Time. You don't do a side quest and go straight for the main storyline, the next major plot sequence takes place/begins in the afternoon. You do a side quest first, THEN go for the storyline, it now takes place as darkness is falling. That's a simple factor. You haven't altered the events/progression of main story. You've got the same people at your disposal, you're fighting the same foes, etc. You didn't remove/introduce a new character to the sequence, or alter what's going to happen, etc. You simply altered factors. Your side content affected the time of day, and the time of day affects the plot, quite minorly.

 

I simply ask for evidence of my actions. It gets very boring when 70% of the side content alters ONLY the state of the player's controlled assets, as if the rest of the game world is simply in limbo until you're done performing completely foreign tasks. That's all.

[okkoko]

well i think fallout newvegas with all expansion made a wery good open game

[JFSOCC]

@Lephys:

 

OK I think I understand what you're getting at; You want some reactivity in the world that doesn't just affect your character, but also the game world.

That's cool, but what I don't want to see is a world where let's say the story is about an Army of Orcs invading the country, every side quest suddenly becomes slave to the main storyline of Orcs invading.

 

This can work for linear games, especially when the big theme is a pressing issue. (Orcs are on your doorstep, it truly is the only thing that should occupy your mind) but not so much where the Orcs are far off on the fringes of the nation, you haven't determined yet what your interest in them is, and the local populace has different problems to worry about.

Even then I'm fine with an occasional "supply routes are raided by orcs which is why we don't have item x in stock" but I mostly want to do my own thing.

[Lephys]

Indeed. To put it in a sill-ily worded fashion, I'd like to see effects that affect things that affect the main story, but not necessarily effects directly linked between the side quest/content and the main story. It would be indirect stuff the vast majority of the time. Maybe at some point you have to help prepare a town to defend against that Orc army. Maybe (and this would be a pretty major indirect effect, as far as the whole scale is concerned) the outcome of a side quest earlier in the game causes Tim the Orphan to make his way to this town, rather than not-making his way to the town (whether from being dead, or from simply having other plans not involving this town until you altered some factor with your side-quest completion). So, now when you prepare the town for the orc onslaught, you've got one more person at your disposal. He doesn't introduce some crazy game-changing factor to the orc battle, but he could alter how things go down in a minor way (maybe he's really fast and good at slipping past things and in-and-out of buildings without getting seen, and he allows messages to be delivered between units/groups while the attack's underway? *shrug*).

 

Again, Tim the Orphan's presence and contribution as the result of a side quest would be one of the more substantial effects. But, the point is, the quest that causes Tim to ultimately reside at the town in question doesn't have to have ANYTHING to do with the orc onslaught, directly. It doesn't have to be "Little Tim the Orphan wants to go to the town where the Orc Onslaught will be, but he can't leave 'cause his sister's sick. Help his sick sister so he can bolster your ranks in the Orc Onslaught!"

 

I'd really just like a lot more minor, pleasant ripples in the fabric of the world (whether they just cover a small area of a village, or an entire village, or extend to other settlements, even) when you actually perform actions and fulfill tasks that tangibly change things.

 

I mean, if someone wants 5 plants, and you get 5 plants. Well, you probably didn't affect anything by getting the plants. So, the only potential opportunity would be the effects of what that person actually does with the plants. They COULD brew something that affects the local clinic, or tavern or something, I suppose. That COULD even go as far as to have word spread to some group/individual who greedily wants to forcibly take that popular recipe for their own gain and make sure no one else has it, out of pure greed. *shrug*. Really depends on who lives where, and what kind of people are around, etc. But, back to the point... if a person wants you to get rid of a bandit camp in the woods, then the removal of those bandits probably DOES affect things. It wasn't just something that would please this one person who tasks you with getting rid of them, while everyone else is totally fine with the bandits. Bandits aren't herbs in the woods. They blatantly affect things.

 

And maybe you can kill them, OR intimidate them so hard they run off (and potentially show up later in some respect), or maybe you can capture them (or subdue them and allow local authorities to capture them), and maybe that affects something somehow. Maybe there was a shortage of workers in the area, and the authorities use their new prisoners as forced laborers to do work that was going undone. *shrug*.

 

Things like that. Everything I can think of COULD have quite minor effects, or decently major ones, so it's hard to make examples without really just brainstorming both. But, really, ANYTHING that makes a lot of the side quests more than just "Oh, you did something that is magically of NO consequence, whatsoever, except that I'm cognitively deciding to give it value!" is great, to be honest. You know, "Oh, you cleared out the mine! Great! I like that it's cleared out, 'cause I sometimes like to go in there and look at the pretty rocks, so thanks! No one else is EVER going to know the mine's cleared, or want to use the mine in any way. It's only value, cleared, is for me to be happy and give you a reward, ^_^"

[Ulquiorra]

Gothic 2 night of the raven.

 

You have freedom, you chose three possibly fractions and after a wile you starting to go in tu the main plot.

 

Fallout New Vegas

 

Let's say you have a freedom (but let's face it not so many possiblitys like in skyrim) You are doing subquest visiting citys and then after a while you pick a side of conflict ...

 

Those two was propably the best linear plots combined to "in some way open world"

[MattH]

My problem with the Bethesda style of Open World is that every situation, conversation and character feels the same. It's almost like they could give you a couple of things to click and an independently moving background and expect you to feel on a varied adventure. The world doesn't feel real to me in fact. Nothing in it seems to matter, and whether you kill someone or not or feel yourself on this or that side of the story is completely random, a different texture or a name tag that props up for a moment. At the beginning of Skyrim I got the sense I was involved in some epic world full of conflict, strange places, story and opportunity like in the Silmarillion, but no matter what I did, where I went, to whom I talked or what happened to me, it felt more and more empty. I didn't care for any of it.

 

I think Bethesda is on a wrong path with their design. It might be valid, but I don't think it achieves anything special. It only provides a shadow of its promise so that it might as well not try at all. Maybe the fault lies in deliberately, out of a mistaken understanding of openness, not making anything interesting by itself, or thinking that one-note-interestingness (Fus-Ros-Da) is enough for a large open world with hundreds of NPCs and hundred of hours of gameplay. A world full of uninterestingness cannot be especially immersive.

Edited August 21, 2013 by MattH

[mcmanusaur]

My problem with the Bethesda style of Open World is that every situation, conversation and character feels the same. It's almost like they could give you a couple of things to click and an independently moving background and expect you to feel on a varied adventure. The world doesn't feel real to me in fact. Nothing in it seems to matter, and whether you kill someone or not or feel yourself on this or that side of the story is completely random, a different texture or a name tag that props up for a moment. At the beginning of Skyrim I got the sense I was involved in some epic world full of conflict, strange places, story and opportunity like in the Silmarillion, but no matter what I did, where I went, to whom I talked or what happened to me, it felt more and more empty. I didn't care for any of it.

 

I think Bethesda is on a wrong path with their design. It might be valid, but I don't think it achieves anything special. It only provides a shadow of its promise so that it might as well not try at all. Maybe the fault lies in deliberately, out of a mistaken understanding of openness, not making anything interesting by itself, or thinking that one-note-interestingness (Fus-Ros-Da) is enough for a large open world with hundreds of NPCs and hundred of hours of gameplay. A world full of uninterestingness cannot be especially immersive.

 

While I agree that Skyrim's world wasn't perfectly executed (and indeed other aspects of the game were arguably even executed poorly), I have to wonder how much of this criticism actually has to do with Skyrim's design philosophy. Yes, the world could probably be more reactive, but that's not because Bethesda decided that wasn't important; rather, it's because that takes a huge amount of resources to achieve, especially given Skyrim's scope.

 

There simply hasn't ever been a game the size of Skyrim that has done most of the things you've mentioned better than Skyrim does, at least as far as I know (though I would be delighed to be proven wrong). As much as I understand how strongly people feel about the classic RPGs that inspired Project Eternity, I would seriously question how people could find them more "immersive" (strictly speaking, which is different from how much the player is invested in a story) than Skyrim.

 

The only real design point I can see being argued here is that Skyrim prioritized width over depth too much, but otherwise I have to wonder whether the issue might be personal tastes in setting. Quite evidently, most players (even in this relatively niche forum, I would suspect) do appreciate Skyrim's setting, and they don't seem to see its comparatively minor failures as sufficient reason to give up on open worlds completely.

 

Perhaps it's simply the case that certain settings resonate with particular people for reasons not related to design, such as style, mood, or theme. The world of Fallout has never really appealed to me personally, and I'd expect that for other people the same holds true for Middle Earth, Tamriel, or the Star Wars universe. Some aspects of immersion are just extremely subjective, and maybe we shouldn't assume that even "perfect" settings will appeal to everyone.

 

Even to me, Tamriel does feel hollow and lacking in certain ways, but I don't think that it's necessarily a problem with the approach Bethesda takes regarding world design, nor is it a reason to indict the open world approach. At the end of the day I think that for the sake of true immersion freedom is what everyone wants, but we're still sort of stuck on the methods of other non-interactive media.

Edited August 21, 2013 by mcmanusaur

[MattH]

 

There simply hasn't ever been a game the size of Skyrim that has done most of the things you've mentioned better than Skyrim does, at least as far as I know (though I would be delighed to be proven wrong).

 

 

It's not so much a matter of direct scope-comparison as what other developers (or a developer with certain qualities and competence) would likely have done differently or better, not necessarily in mechanics and basics, but tone, substance and many different things of focus and balancing, and I think the differences between the Fallouts is a valid example to go by. But it doesn't have to be a different developer but could be Bethesda themselves considering they would have handled things a little differently, paid more attention to some things instead to others. We can compare this to Oblivion which supposedly was much worse than Skyrim. But Skyrim isn't the only possible result of a "better Oblivion". For one, they might have distributed the writing jobs in a way that a number of central quests, characters and personal reactivity would have been simply better, more involving or more interesting, whereas it's now all very same-y and seamless with the automatically created stuff. The main quest feels very hacked into different parts and there is no deep sense of anything important for the world it plays in about it. It's held together by dragons roaming the land and being relatively easily slain. They might have been a bigger deal. The Dragonborn could have been acknowledged more, in potential, and taken different roles. Or maybe the story could have made "sense" more and be more believable. The different factions might have real characters at their tops, and the history might actually matter a bit and give better incentives for different playtypes or dispositions, and not be so totally indifferent to the player, with the faint excuse of "grey morality", as in "nothing going on here".

 

I have never thought very systematically about it, and maybe what I'm thinking of is simply a more talented job at fleshing out the world, and making it more emotionally involving on the most important levels... In any RPG, and open worlds are not exempt, insofar as it has to have some semblence of reality or "immersion", anything I do has to feel as though as it "means" something in that context. Or else it's basically just something for making pointless Youtube videos.

 

 

Perhaps it's simply the case that certain settings resonate with particular people for reasons not related to design, such as style, mood, or theme.

 

 

Maybe, but I don't think it's because of setting, as I liked the sense of Scandinavia, the Silmarillion and even Moby-**** (or The Whale) I got of it beforehand, but it can be a thing of "resonating" nonetheless. But since you mentioned theme, maybe themes (in another than graphical sense) would have been good and might be a central word here.

Edited August 21, 2013 by MattH