Update #73: Narrative Design: A Day in the Life, Companion Goals, and the Undead

[Ffordesoon]

What I really despise in companion writing: When all the issues and problems of all your companions are solved solely by you, and travelling with them or talking to them feels like playing a psychiatrist's office simulation - dialogue about a companion's character becomes a therapy session, and it culminates in you sorting out the companion's longstanding psychological issues with basic advice from a self-help book (with something to kill thrown in, because it's a video game), or something like that. "Personal quests" and especially romances tend to fall into that trap. It may be appropriate in each case for itself, but with all party members combined, it's usually too much. Character flaws are necessary for giving the companion a personality, but they don't have to be "solved" or overcome, and not necessarily by the player character. Aerie may have to get over losing her wings at some point, but it doesn't have to be you who cures her of her problems.

Amen to this. I like following character arcs to their conclusions, and I'm good with helping characters see their own personal story through, and I'm even okay with playing a role in their journey. But even though I'm real and they're not, I hate being Mary-Sued into the role of their savior just because some idiot in Peoria can't stand the idea that his ego might not be given a tongue bath for two seconds.

[ManifestedISO]

 

So alone.

 

Haha, fantastic, well-written update. What, exactly, is a fenster, and how do you make one?

 

Fenster means "window" in German. So, Fenstermakers, collectively, means those horrible, inhuman creatures who made the Windows operating system... KOS, I say.

 

 

Ah, sehr gut. The weird thing is, I watched Die Hard last night, and Hans Gruber says ... "Scheiss dem fenster." Shoot the glass. I should have known.

[Jajo]

Ah, sehr gut. The weird thing is, I watched Die Hard last night, and Hans Gruber says ... "Scheiss dem fenster." Shoot the glass. I should have known.

 

 

I don't think that word means what you think it means and I'm sure he doesn't say that.

[ManifestedISO]

scheiss, schiess, what's the difference    My bad, sorry. 

Edited February 27, 2014 by ManifestedISO

[Alfiriel]

@Alfiriel In my experience the best programmer-deisgners are the lazy ones. They'll always find a way to do the most with the least amount of effort, and they'll know to have a break before they're so tired they'll start to do damage. The ones with a strong work ethic are the worst; they'll sit there all night and produce gigantic quantities of garbage code nobody's able to understand except them.

Maybe true I am not really deep enough into programming to judge how it works best. I just have to put up with the **** they produce.

 

All off them kinda think they are artists and while that is true for games... it is not really a quality useful for getting the software for our safety equipment done... this **** needs to be understandable and functional not your own little masterpiece ^^

 

aside from that someone here called amouen a good charakter example over Jaheira... wtf... while amouens twist is nice 90% of the time he is just tge worst annoying **** in history. Why would anybody keep him around... only in ME1 I was more happy when I finally killed of a character... he is unbearable... (maybe intended to be so). Jaheira at least has a reason to be emo and works great with Vico.

[RabidRatMonkey]

[...]

aside from that someone here called amouen a good charakter example over Jaheira... wtf... while amouens twist is nice 90% of the time he is just tge worst annoying **** in history. Why would anybody keep him around... only in ME1 I was more happy when I finally killed of a character... he is unbearable... (maybe intended to be so). Jaheira at least has a reason to be emo and works great with Vico.

 

In my first playthrough (good party) he was quite annoying and I left him behind. When playing an evil bastard (having the REAL fun out of BG2) he became interesting after his "twist". I had to put him down eventually, though...

I have always thought of Jaheira as a whining, judgamental bitch even since BG1. In BG2 she is also grieving, so I tend to leave her to rot in Irenicus's dungeon.

 

Oh, and shame on me on account of forgetting Garrus as one of my favourite companions ever.

Edited February 27, 2014 by RabidRatMonkey

[PrimeJunta]

Maybe true I am not really deep enough into programming to judge how it works best. I just have to put up with the **** they produce.

 

All off them kinda think they are artists and while that is true for games... it is not really a quality useful for getting the software for our safety equipment done... this **** needs to be understandable and functional not your own little masterpiece ^^

Writing code that's understandable and functional is hard. I haven't met anyone who can do it who isn't fiercely proud of what s/he does. There is something similar to an artistic temperament about being able to do that, although IMO a great coder/designer is more like a great swordsmith than a great artist.

 

OTOH being fiercely proud of what you do is no guarantee of quality, especially if you have people with an inflated sense of self-worth. There are lots of those around. IME most coders can't actually code worth a damn, even if they have the formal qualifications to do so.

 

If you have that problem, I only know two ways to solve it: bring in someone who's ten times better, who proves it to them by coding circles around them, then proceeds to point out exactly what they're doing wrong... or give them about ten years to figure it out themselves.

[Quetzalcoatl]

I like this take on the undead. It would be cool if their evolution (or rather, devolution) would be something that you could witness dynamically in the game. So that if you don't you visit a fampyr-filled area until late in the game, they will have become (dar)guls, revenants or even skeletons.

Edited February 27, 2014 by Quetzalcoatl

[Hormalakh]

Why does eating human flesh restore an undead's body? Even with the dead stomach still there I don't think stuff would be metabolized? How about other meats, why don't those work? If you'd bind a dog's soul to it's body (if they have any) would it crave dog flesh? What about a human soul to an animal's body, does that change the rules? How exactly do you differentiate between the stages of the undead? It seems to just be a continuous progression, yet there are stages to it. What happens if you forcibly strip the flesh off of an earlier stage undead, do you get a smart skeleton? How do undead move or even just stay together? If you cut an undead to pieces which piece will be the one with the soul. Or is the soul cut up? Does it permeate the entire body? What happens if the rich guy that got his soul bound got an artificial leg, does that also count as part of his body? If he replaced various parts of his body so that he had less flesh, would he then have to eat less as well? What if you put together the whole person from artificial parts and bound the soul of someone to it. Why is the last thing remaining of an undead's psyche a murderous rage, is that the natural state of a naked soul? If you put together parts of multiple undead would they work together or each on its own? What if the person with the bound soul got resuscitated, does it make any difference? How about the manner of death of the person, if you cut off the head which part will be undead? Can you use embalming techniques to preserve the body? Would the psyche then still degrade? Do undead feel anything? If yes the rotting body sounds pretty bad, if not then how do they even function in the world? What if you replace undead parts with living parts or vice-versa?

 

I think these animancers would need pretty large laboratories to conduct experiments, too and would probably have every do-gooder in the region on their ass :D . Opportunities aplenty for the classic horror themed asylums/hospitals/orphanages/prisons etc.

"The problem with you non-animancers is that you think you know everything when it comes to explaining the bigger picture to you. Do you not think that we animancers have thought about holding the body together when the spirit is linked to it? There are more mysteries to the human body than your puny minds can comprehend and even greater mysteries to the soul that even we can comprehend.

 

While your questions are intriguing to one such as yourself, they are not new questions for those of us who have spent our entire lifetimes practicing these arts. We have been thinking about these questions and finding their answers. Your questions remain those: merely questions. We, however, strive against those who wish to harm us and destroy our work -your so-called 'do-gooders'- to answer those very questions you pose. Yet, with every solution, new problems arise and we anticipate them and endeavor to solve them.

 

The short answer is 'We do what we can with the tools we have available.' The creation of an immortal being is not a simple incantation to 'spark' their longevity. As with anything complex, what lies before you is the culmination of many years of study and research, multitudes of failures, and the application of a series of what you call 'spells' as well as a bit of ingenuity of those that came before us. What looks like patchwork animancy to you, is in reality the creation of a sculpture using mud with many hands- as we adjust one aspect of it, another aspect shifts out of place. To explain the decades of research and study to one such as you would take longer than I care to spend explaining the nitty-gritty of what we have wrought. Suffice it to say that we 'link their souls to their bodies' and leave it at that. Anything more will probably be more than you can understand and I am not one to sit here and waste my breath."

 

 

 

Being an animancer is sorta like being a game-developer.

 

Edited February 27, 2014 by Hormalakh

[Hormalakh]

double post

Edited February 27, 2014 by Hormalakh

[Ineth]

I like this take on the undead. It would be cool if their evolution (or rather, devolution) would be something that you could witness dynamically in the game. So that if you don't you visit a fampyr-filled area until late in the game, they will have become (dar)guls, revenants or even skeletons.

 

If you don't visit it in the fampyr stage, how would you "experience" the change?

[Lysen]

So no 'normal' vamps then, who drink blood and stay forever young? Well, this is kinda sad, I like those guys.

[Quetzalcoatl]

 

I like this take on the undead. It would be cool if their evolution (or rather, devolution) would be something that you could witness dynamically in the game. So that if you don't you visit a fampyr-filled area until late in the game, they will have become (dar)guls, revenants or even skeletons.

 

If you don't visit it in the fampyr stage, how would you "experience" the change?

 

Well, replays obviously. Or you could visit it and bypass the fampyrs with a non-combat solution, only to return later and see the change. Just an example.

 

 

So no 'normal' vamps then, who drink blood and stay forever young? Well, this is kinda sad, I like those guys.

Who says they won't stay young forever? The major difference I see is that they eat human flesh rather than drink human blood. That, and I assume no weakness to sunlight.

Edited February 27, 2014 by Quetzalcoatl

[forgottenlor]

one thing i dont see often, is the death of companions due to the player's actions. and i do not mean for them to die in combat. for example in ME2, depending on what you did about your companion's quests and the ship's upgrades, you could keep or lose the companions during the last mission. 

another example would be to make a companion hate you, then he betrays you and you have to fight him later. or he is taken hostage, you tell the kidnappers that they can shove it and they kill him. or you hold onto a rope to help him climb up a wall, but you dont have enough strength and he falls to his death

Other than ME2, I can think of some occasions. In KOTOR2 the Handmaiden died when I played a dark side playthrough. In DA:O I was betrayed by the assassin. Also in Planescape:Torment you must fight one of your companions. In the original Neverwinter Nights 2, you either have to fight BIshop, or everyone else.

[teknoman2]

 

one thing i dont see often, is the death of companions due to the player's actions. and i do not mean for them to die in combat. for example in ME2, depending on what you did about your companion's quests and the ship's upgrades, you could keep or lose the companions during the last mission. 

another example would be to make a companion hate you, then he betrays you and you have to fight him later. or he is taken hostage, you tell the kidnappers that they can shove it and they kill him. or you hold onto a rope to help him climb up a wall, but you dont have enough strength and he falls to his death

Other than ME2, I can think of some occasions. In KOTOR2 the Handmaiden died when I played a dark side playthrough. In DA:O I was betrayed by the assassin. Also in Planescape:Torment you must fight one of your companions. In the original Neverwinter Nights 2, you either have to fight BIshop, or everyone else.

 

yes there are some cases in games, but it is never something complex. in ME2 it was "did you do the quest? he lives! you did not? he dies! in other games like DAO it was just a numerical thing. you do and say some things, you get points and they like you or you lose points and they hate you. what i'd like to see is a chain of events that leads to death and/or betrayal. for instance, the companion has a story that involves a number of quests. what you do in each will determine how his story will end and it could be with his death

[Ffordesoon]

 

 

I like this take on the undead. It would be cool if their evolution (or rather, devolution) would be something that you could witness dynamically in the game. So that if you don't you visit a fampyr-filled area until late in the game, they will have become (dar)guls, revenants or even skeletons.

If you don't visit it in the fampyr stage, how would you "experience" the change?

Puberty?

[Ffordesoon]

 

 

 

 

one thing i dont see often, is the death of companions due to the player's actions. and i do not mean for them to die in combat. for example in ME2, depending on what you did about your companion's quests and the ship's upgrades, you could keep or lose the companions during the last mission.

another example would be to make a companion hate you, then he betrays you and you have to fight him later. or he is taken hostage, you tell the kidnappers that they can shove it and they kill him. or you hold onto a rope to help him climb up a wall, but you dont have enough strength and he falls to his death

Other than ME2, I can think of some occasions. In KOTOR2 the Handmaiden died when I played a dark side playthrough. In DA:O I was betrayed by the assassin. Also in Planescape:Torment you must fight one of your companions. In the original Neverwinter Nights 2, you either have to fight BIshop, or everyone else.

yes there are some cases in games, but it is never something complex. in ME2 it was "did you do the quest? he lives! you did not? he dies! in other games like DAO it was just a numerical thing. you do and say some things, you get points and they like you or you lose points and they hate you. what i'd like to see is a chain of events that leads to death and/or betrayal. for instance, the companion has a story that involves a number of quests. what you do in each will determine how his story will end and it could be with his death

Not true on either count, though I don't blame you for thinking it is, since both games make few systemic efforts at actual C&C. There are certain actions in DA:O that, if taken, will cause characters to leave the party permanently no matter what, and may force you to fight them.

 

In ME2, loyal characters can still die if you assign them to the wrong roles on the suicide mission, and disloyal characters can still live if you assign them to the right ones. I believe there's also a small amount of randomness to it as well, with loyal characters being less likely to die and disloyal characters being more likely to.

[Bryy]

@Alfiriel In my experience the best programmer-deisgners are the lazy ones. They'll always find a way to do the most with the least amount of effort, and they'll know to have a break before they're so tired they'll start to do damage. The ones with a strong work ethic are the worst; they'll sit there all night and produce gigantic quantities of garbage code nobody's able to understand except them.

This makes no sense.

[Ineth]

 

 

I like this take on the undead. It would be cool if their evolution (or rather, devolution) would be something that you could witness dynamically in the game. So that if you don't you visit a fampyr-filled area until late in the game, they will have become (dar)guls, revenants or even skeletons.

 

If you don't visit it in the fampyr stage, how would you "experience" the change?

 

Well, replays obviously. Or you could visit it and bypass the fampyrs with a non-combat solution, only to return later and see the change. Just an example.

 

A whole new game mechanic (with all the development effort that goes along with it), for something that only might be experienced by some players (within one playthrough)? Not sure that's a good investment.

 

As for "realism" between playthroughs (or, more abstractly, between the outcomes of different possible player choices), I never understood players demanding that.

Each playthrough of an RPG is supposed to tell its own story, and construct its own universe. Just as a DM can make stuff up as the party goes along during a P&P campaign, a cRPG engine can arbitrarily choose not-yet-uncovered parts of the game universe to be different for different prior player choices, without needing an explanation for doing so. The only thing that matters, is that everything is consistent and plausible within one playthrough.

If you go at it from a meta-level that takes into account knowledge from reloads or previous playthroughs, you've already left the confines of the game universe and "realism" becomes meaningless.

 

[Quetzalcoatl]

 

 

 

I like this take on the undead. It would be cool if their evolution (or rather, devolution) would be something that you could witness dynamically in the game. So that if you don't you visit a fampyr-filled area until late in the game, they will have become (dar)guls, revenants or even skeletons.

 

If you don't visit it in the fampyr stage, how would you "experience" the change?

 

Well, replays obviously. Or you could visit it and bypass the fampyrs with a non-combat solution, only to return later and see the change. Just an example.

 

A whole new game mechanic (with all the development effort that goes along with it), for something that only might be experienced by some players (within one playthrough)? Not sure that's a good investment.

'A whole new game mechanic?' They would just have to replace a fampyr with a different form of undead after a certain amount of in-game time has passed. It would be a cool way to show off reactivity and integrate the lore into the gameplay at the same time.

Edited February 28, 2014 by Quetzalcoatl

[Blarghagh]

While I like the idea of that for flavor, living world idea I dislike it very much from a gameplay perspective - if I'm slow enough, I stop facing interesting undead and get only skeletons? Cool as an idea, but practically a punishment in the game for being too slow.

Edited February 28, 2014 by TrueNeutral

[RabidRatMonkey]

While I like the idea of that for flavor, living world idea I dislike it very much from a gameplay perspective - if I'm slow enough, I stop facing interesting undead and get only skeletons? Cool as an idea, but practically a punishment in the game for being too slow.

Also, I doubt that the campaign takes more than a few months in the game's world. I don't think that span of time would be enough to see any of those transformations.

[Ffordesoon]

@Ineth:

 

"Witness dynamically in the game" was probably a poor word choice, as it implies directly experiencing the change, but I believe the idea was that you would come across a group of darguls or revenants if you decided to go to the fampyr-filled area a long time after you got the quest. And there are plenty of ways to communicate the change indirectly, the easiest being to have the quest-giver tell you a given area is a "fampyr meeting place" or something. When the player comes upon a group of darguls, you could have a journal update that says something like "It appears I have tarried too long in resolving this matter, for the fampyrs have become darguls!" Or something. BG did a lot of stuff like this.

 

Whether it's worth scripting (especially if the passage of time only applies to this one quest) is an open question, but in isolation, it wouldn't be much harder to script than, say, Xzar and Montaron turning hostile if you take too long to go to Nashkel in BG1. It's just a state change or two, nothing major, especially if the only ones that talk are the fampyrs. There's already a day/night cycle, and I believe a clock and an in-universe calendar have been promised as well. No new mechanics required.

 

Not saying it should or shouldn't be done, but it's hardly impossible.

[Blarghagh]

Still doesn't solve the "if you're too slow, we'll punish you by giving you a bunch of boring skeletons instead of the cool undead types" problem.

[teknoman2]

 

 

 

 

I like this take on the undead. It would be cool if their evolution (or rather, devolution) would be something that you could witness dynamically in the game. So that if you don't you visit a fampyr-filled area until late in the game, they will have become (dar)guls, revenants or even skeletons.

 

If you don't visit it in the fampyr stage, how would you "experience" the change?

 

Well, replays obviously. Or you could visit it and bypass the fampyrs with a non-combat solution, only to return later and see the change. Just an example.

 

A whole new game mechanic (with all the development effort that goes along with it), for something that only might be experienced by some players (within one playthrough)? Not sure that's a good investment.

'A whole new game mechanic?' They would just have to replace a fampyr with a different form of undead after a certain amount of in-game time has passed. It would be a cool way to show off reactivity and integrate the lore into the gameplay at the same time.

 

that is possible, but i would think it takes several months if not years for a well fed fampyr to deteriorate enough to be a gul. do not forget that most fampyr that would be able to hide their nature, are unscrupulous rich people, who would have no qualms with hiring a band of thugs to kidnap their food. a begar that became undead due to illegal experiments would have been found almost imediatelly and would have a faster deterioration if not destroyed by the guards first. in both cases however, i dont thing that game design will be such that will give us reason to just go around for the  months it would take for a type of undead to deteriorate into another.