Lore consistency, story depth, and changes

Modding has been a little light on in the last few weeks, because I'd been told that there were some significant lore reveals in Dragon Age: Inquisition (DAI). Since I care about how my story relates to lore as it stands in the Dragon Age setting, I wanted to make sure that I wasn't writing anything that would contradict established. Admittedly changing things now would be pretty tough, but I just wanted to check nonetheless, just in case there were any inconsistencies and if there were any corrections I needed/could make. I will, however, keep the post spoiler free for DAI

This actually took a lot longer than I was hoping. The problem is that DAI is *big*, but a lot of its size comes from breadth rather than depth. The main story arc is actually pretty damn short - my initial assessment when I started playing DAI was that it was more of a Skyrim approach, and the more I played it, the more it felt that way. There is a lot of "content", but a lot of it doesn't really have much relevance. There are a bunch of lore tidbits hidden away in various sidequests here and there, but many of the quests are very shallow in terms of story depth. There are a handful that have some lore in them, albeit in a subtle world-building style, small mentions and snippets of information, meaning that you really need to do a *lot* in order to dig into the depths of the lore. Given that there were a couple of instances relatively early on in the game where I was doing a quest that seemed "insignificant" (even including a couple of the War Table operations), but actually gave some very interesting lore information, I realised that this would be a serious undertaking. On the plus side, it has reinforced my dedication for getting The Shattered War complete, because DAI has left the lore and world in a far more interesting state than at the end of DA2.

Fortunately for me, there were no issues with anything that I've written. Now, I'm actually pretty happy about this. Keep in mind that I wrote this story in its entirety after finishing Dragon Age: Origins. While yes, I'm taking damn forever to release the mod, even though I went out on a fairly serious limb for some of the lore, everything I've done has slotted in nicely with some fairly significant developments that have occurred in Dragon Age 2 and also DAI, and only a few minor details needed tweaking. What's even more interesting is that I feel I definitely captured some of the themes and precursors to events I knew nothing about while writing and developing the story.

This isn't to say that the mod hasn't changed during development. Various plot ideas and quests were canned, others changed in terms of implementation or details for various reasons, and a couple of new smaller items added along the way. Sometimes it was toolset limitations that meant I could not do particular set pieces or level designs that I was hoping for. In other cases, my playtesting made me realise that a particular approach wasn't really working that well and I needed to take a different tack in order to make it more interesting for the player. It's my hope that I will have created an interesting and enjoyable adventure for people - and given the different ways that things can play out, one that they'll be willing to revisit and make completely different choices when they do.

Filling out content

In addition to the playtesting I've been doing to piece the core plot of the game together from start to finish, I've also been working on designing and adding in some extra content that has been in my mind for a while. I'm talking about "light content", which is the little subquests that revolve more around exploration and puzzle solving that reward the inquisitive player.  Generally, these things are much less time consuming and demanding to implement for me than fully fledged quests. Think of these quests like the "Chanter's Board" quests from Dragon Age, but without a central location to kick them off for you.

There are a few things that I want to make sure that I do with these quests in order to make them interesting, and so am trying to follow a few principles when creating them.

Don't make it immediately obvious

The point here is that I want the player to start the quest by finding something, not by going to a person with a marker above their head or a notice board in the middle of a village. It could be a journal, a scrap of paper, a strange item, some kind of key, or anything really.  The main point is that the player should find something that gives them a clue that there is something else that they could do or find.

Require exploration
These objects should be spread out across the areas that the player will explore - they won't just be found in the main locations that every player will have to visit. The levels I've created for the mod are reasonably large - and I'd like to encourage players to explore them. With many modern games, we're often forced down very linear paths, so trying to get players to search and experience the fun of exploration is something I'd like to be able to do.

Monsters are easy to find, these should require more effort

Puzzles can be fun
One thing I find really annoying about puzzles in many games is that they're either really obscure and illogical (the worst of Monkey Island syndrome, or Anna), or blatantly obvious (Towers of Hanoi).  The other annoyance is when puzzles are presented in a way that they're not solvable when you encounter them, either because you don't have the right skills/items to solve them (e.g. Batman, Assassin's Creed), or worse, that the player cannot complete the puzzle until they are explicitly told what to do. Where I implement puzzles, I want the player to be given enough information to carry them out, but without beating them over the head with an answer. This is a tough balance, but I'm hoping to provide a mix of puzzles that should be interesting.

Use player skills
Skills like tracking, herbalism, pick pocketing and the like are things that are often neglected by designers. Even in Dragon Age itself, it felt like these were mostly for facilitating combat rather than being useful for anything else.  I want to be able to use these skills to assist, or possibly even be required to complete some of these quests.

Give rewards
The player should get something from these kinds of quests. They're exploring, uncovering secrets and the like, and thus should be rewarded with different and unique items as a result. This is the icing on the cake to make the player go "that was awesome!" This is where I'll be giving out the most interesting and powerful items in the game, because it rewards dedicated players, and makes people want to explore and find those hidden secrets.

So that's my update for this week. Stay tuned for another update next week!

(Don't) Add multiplayer to ALL THE GAMES!

Every game must have multiplayer, or at least that's the mindset of many publishers of AAA titles. Mass Effect 3 added it, so did Dead Space 2, and Dragon Age 3 and Dead Space 3 are set to as well. GTA IV, BioShock 2, Max Payne 3, and a list of sequels a mile long all have added multiplayer gameplay into their titles. The big question I have is simple: Why?

The immediate answer is "because players ask for it". So many fans on forums when asked "what do you want?" immediately jump to "multiplayer" as a default response. Playing with or against friends is an immediately popular concept, either from a competitive "I want to prove I'm better" mindset, or a "yeah, I'd like to have fun with a friend" ideal. I don't begrudge this desire at all, but it needs to suit the game. To simply say "I want multiplayer" is a horridly shallow, shortsighted, and unimaginative response. I expect better from the gaming community at large. We all should.

Skyrim, even with its flaws, showed that single player games can still sell. Lots.

To demonstrate how terrible this "adding multiplayer equals better game" mindset is, take the example of a roleplaying game that according to its design ideals and marketing is focused on choice and consequence. It's a game that provides an ongoing, complex narrative that is as a cinematic experience. The default choice for story based (and roleplaying) games used to be a cooperative approach, because this allowed players to work together towards a goal. When you introduce this kind of narrative, particularly when you have a voiced protagonist (which is becoming increasingly popular), then a second player becomes a second-class citizen. Of course, the problem isn't limited to this type of game.

Even to pull one of the worst examples from the action roleplaying genre, Dungeon Siege 3 offered no ongoing benefit to the second player in a multiplayer game, who couldn't import their own character, or gain any items or experience from playing with a friend. Imagine playing as Commander Shepard's mute henchmen, Geralt's of Rivia's nameless sidekick, a silent mook accompanying Nathan Drake, or any other equivalent. Or take Gears of War 3, where a playable character (for the second player) is summarily killed and they're forced to play another character instead. The fact that character is new, underdeveloped and not really all that interesting is just a further kick in the guts.

Imagine Mass Effect where you can only shoot bad guys. Not really as much fun.

On the other hand, we have multiplayer. Looking as Mass Effect 3 as a prime example, we've got a fairly simplistic cooperative "horde" mode, which lacks any long term depth or challenge. The difficulty levels don't really differentiate between player skill to a large degree, but instead are heavily reliant on gear, which is obtained through either the repetitive grind of playing lots of matches to obtain virtual credits or spending real money to obtain the virtual loot which allows you to deal more damage.

The only ongoing effect is these standalone matches is the equipment, and a rather clunky mechanic whereby the multiplayer affects the outcome of the singleplayer experience. The loot grind is a more like an MMO grind than anything else, but the bigger problem here is BioWare's insistence that an "ideal" ending can be obtained without playing multiplayer, which unfortunately is a false claim. In order to obtain the "best" ending of the game, it's necessary to play multiplayer in a series which had previously been exclusively single player. This is a terrible way to treat fans: forcing them to play content which they may not be interested in order to get a reasonable outcome from the gameplay they actually wanted and which had been the reason they became invested in the series.

Horde mode isn't for everyone

The core problem is that a story driven cinematic single player experience and a "game-based" pure gameplay multiplayer experience don't fit well together. It's an attempt to get different player sets to buy one game, and is likely to not deliver sufficiently to either group. Yes, there is going to be some overlap in the audiences, but I know more than a few people that would have never touched ME3's multiplayer had they not needed it in order to get the best ending.

The choices, consequences and cinematics, along with the choice of a single voiced protagonist, have made the inclusion of on-going co-operative play a la Baldur's Gate and Neverwinter Nights undesirable. This means that whenever players cry "we want multiplayer", the only choice is for developers/designers to take the existing ruleset/mechanics and shovel it into a standalone experience separate to the main game.

 You have been waylaid by multiplayer and must defend yourself

The problem is that frequently the ruleset or mechanics for a singleplayer experience aren't balanced for competitive Player versus Player (PvP), particularly for roleplaying games, which means that this idea is off the table. This means the only choice is a Player versus Environment (PvE: fighting against computer-controlled AI enemies) experience, and given that it has to fit into budget contraints and timeframe of the single player game (which is the "main" drawcard), it will be small in scope by necessity.  It's a single AAA title, and thus has the budget of one. Putting resources into one takes away resources that would be used for the other. That's simple business. Yes, I know this will cue cries of people spouting the defense "ME3's multiplayer was done by a different team", but the fact is the money spent on that (not to mention the mediocre kinect integration) is money that could/would have otherwise been spent on the singleplayer experience - which was the prime reason people were interested in the series.

The simple truth is that multiplayer isn't a vital part of the gaming experience, and many times it's underwhelming and underdeveloped when included in a game. However, this is not necessarily any fault of the designers. It's often the case because multiplayer was never intended to be the primary selling point of the game. The single player experience was meant as the drawcard, with the multiplayer there as a bit of a bonus. In some games, it's the other way around.  Battlefield and Call of Duty thrive on their multiplayer, and the single player aspects aren't the main selling point.

Let's be honest, CoD isn't really about its single player

If the producers/publishers demand that multiplayer be included (and I only say that because of EA's policy that "every game will have multiplayer"), then sell it as a separate product for a substantially reduced price. Sure, piggyback on the engine and assets of the core game, but don't include as part of the same game. Spend a little longer on making gameplay with a little more depth, and release an associated multiplayer game. If the game/brand is strong enough, then both games will sell, and they'll cater to the different markets that go for those different experiences. Heck, from a publisher standpoint, they have the opportunity to make even more money.

If such a multiplayer experience doesn't sell, then this either says:
a) This isn't a viable market, or;
b) The product isn't good enough.

What if Mass Effect 3's multiplayer had been a standalone game that could be purchased for $10? It would have lost some sales from people not interested in multiplayer at all, but at that price, I imagine plenty of people would have gone "that's cheap, I'll check it out." I'd hazard a guess that it would have even got some sales from people not interested in the single player at all. BioWare could have still even pushed linkages between the two games and maintained the (awfully designed) linkage between the singleplayer and multiplayer.

Shoehorning a conflicting multiplayer experience into a singleplayer game isn't satisfying for the consumer. Don't attempt to appeal to everyone with a single product by adding in popular gameplay elements from everywhere.  If you do that... you end up with Darksiders. Its attempts to cater to everyone detracted from the game rather than adding to it.

Not every game needs to have multiplayer. Not every game should have multiplayer. If the industry maintains this kind of mindset, then the gaming market is going to become even more stagnant with cover based multiplayer shooters than it already is. That is not a good thing for an industry that has the potential to be so much more.

Action, Reaction: Rewards

In my last post, I discussed the benefit of rewarding the player for specific actions. This is the means to train a player how to play a game "successfully" and gives them something to aim for apart from mere completion. However, rewarding specific behaviour can be a problem if a game allows multiple solutions to the problems it presents to its players. 

One of the best cases in point here is Deus Ex: Human Revolution, a game which I should say that I mostly enjoyed. Everyone knows the boss fights were awful, though I also found the entire plot to be woefully predictable, Adam Jensen utterly idiotic whenever I didn't have control of him, and the final phase of the game was nothing short of rushed and a little bit tedious to boot. Those issues aside, the game failed to deliver on its idea of allowing a player to take any approach they wished. Why? Because they provided inequitable rewards for those solutions.

The "best" Adam Jensen was a stealthy, elite hacker, explorer, pacifist. He skulked around the shadows, meticulously exploring every nook and cranny, hunting down every hidden corner or passage way. No computer system was left untouched, and even if he had the password to a computer account or code for a keypad, he hacked the thing anyway, just for fun. He didn't kill anyone, but prided himself on artful takedowns, preferably incapacitating two people simulataneously with his superhuman reflexes. Why was this the "best" Adam Jensen? Because the game told you so.

Ideal Adam Jensen visits the Inaugural Belltower Slumber Party

Non-lethal takedowns gave more experience than kills, particularly when you took down two people at once. Every secret hiding hole gave you experience, but blasting through a level quickly rewarded you with nothing. Every hacked device gave you experience, but entering a passcode or password gave you nothing. The "best" Adam Jensen was a super-augmented super-human, able to solve almost any problem. An Adam Jensen who went in guns blazing, solved problems in half the time and left a horde of corpses in his wake instead of incapacitated foes, was far inferior, ending up with far fewer skills and abilities.

Now, as someone who happily jumped into the role of the "best" Adam Jensen by choice without knowing about his inherent superiority, I was surprised when discussing the game with some of my friends about their different experience with the game. Their challenge of scrimping and saving praxis points to spend on only the essential skills didn't match at all with the game I was playing. Simply put, the game wasn't rewarding them equally for their behaviour. The game was mandating a "best" option, despite telling the player through narrative and other gameplay elements that "any approach works". This was also part of the reason why the boss fights were so heavily criticised - because the "best" option that had been mandated throughout the rest of the game suddenly turned into the worst option for the boss fights.

You picked stealth? Oh dear.

Counter to this, one of my flawed game darlings of the past few years, Alpha Protocol, didn't fall into the same trap. Alpha Protocol gave numerous rewards to players as a result of their actions and choices, but these were distributed evenly, and furthermore even helped augment your chosen skills. If you engaged heavily in stealth and non-lethal takedowns, cooldowns for related skills could decrease. If you went in guns blazing and killed lots of foes, you'd get damage and/or accuracy bonuses to your weaponry. Even your relationships with NPCs worked in this manner of providing different benefits; if someone liked you, you'd receive a bonus. If you didn't get along with them, you'd get a different bonus. Both options represented a different kind of relationship with your "handler" providing different advantages to your character.

For me, this was a superb example of how to reward player decisions differently, but equitably. Alpha Protocol wasn't without a bunch of other flaws, but ultimately I found that the concept of choice and the ability to choose how you wanted to play was more meaningful than compared to DE:HR, because those choices ended up with the player being given different options rather than fewer options.

If you're going to reward a player for taking successful actions, but offer different approaches, then unless you're specifically looking to promote a particular course of action, all rewards should be equitable. The rewards can be different, and I would contend this is the ideal situation, but a player should never feel penalised because they made a specific choice that was offered to them by the game.

Choice and Endings

More and more games are pushing the concept of choice in gameplay, whether it be as simple as skill trees, or as complex as plot changing decisions. However, one problem that many, many games, particularly when it comes to plot changing decisions, is that they do not understand how to reconcile those choices with an ending. There are some spoilers for Alpha Protocol and Dragon Age: Origins here,  so if you haven't finished those games and intend to, you may want to tune out...

The greatest trap that many developers seem to fall into is the concept that the player must decide the ending. Now, I'm a firm believer in allowing the player to make decisions and to have those decisions affect the outcome of the game, however, there is a time for the player to make those decisions. The key thing to remember here is that in the majority of cases, the time for the most important decision is not right at the end of the game. This isn't to say that there shouldn't be some kind of ability to make a decision at the end of the game, but this should not be the primary decision point.

 The main part of the game is where decisions should occur

Let me reiterate this point: the player should not be making the overriding and ultimately game-changing decision in the last five minutes of the game. Certainly, a very significant choice right at the end of the game is great. In, Alpha Protocol, deciding to side with the final antagonist or go against them is a significant point. In Dragon Age: Origins, deciding who will deal the killing blow to the Archdemon and hence die is a significant choice. However, in both of these cases, previous choices affect this outcome. In Alpha Protocol, the final enemy in the game varies based on decisions that you've made earlier. That's right, the final boss changes based on previous choices. In Dragon Age: Origins, the person making the killing blow doesn't have to die if you've performed a magic ritual (with suggested bad consequences) earlier in the game. These games have decisions at the end, but they are not the be-all and end-all decision.

This concept has been overlooked by many designers in recent years, and I'm certain that you can quite easily think of one or more titles that have this approach. Now, this isn't to say that this is always equivocally bad, but it is very challenging for it to fit thematically with a game, and for it to happen in a way that doesn't make the player feel like they've been cheated. If the player has had decisions to make before this point, such an ending largely invalidates the meaning of all those choices, making the journey (which some would argue is more important than the destination) pointless. Again, there are some cases where this kind of end-game decisions does work, but these are rare games, typically ones that have a significant philosophical thematic focus during the rest of the game.

Planescape: Torment is a rare gem for which an end-game decision works

I'm not going to point the finger at games that have made errors in this area, but it's a worrying trend that has been showing up more and more. From a personal perspective, I'm making certain that I will not include this shortcoming in any of my creations. The Shattered War will feature decisions throughout the entire game which will ultimately affect the final stages of the player's journey and its ultimate conclusion.

Frequently, the most cohesive ending that makes the player feel like their story is complete is to have the end of the story play out logically without any overarching decisions that invalidate previous choices. When players finally discuss the ending with their friends who made different decisions, that's when they'll realise the effects that their choices made. That will provide them with the inspiration to go back and play the game to see how things could have turned out differently.

The Shattered War: Combat Design

Since I've been doing a bit of playtesting of The Shattered War, I'd like to talk about some of the design aspects of the mod.  While I often talk about things like dialogue, choice and character design, in this post I'm going to deal with the crucial gameplay aspect of combat.

The first important decision was to decide which level to start the player. Most players who play mods, particularly a stand-alone mod not part of the main campaign, will be familiar with the Dragon Age mechanics, and know how to conduct combat. Thus I don't need to hand hold people with basic fighting tutorials (as happens within the start of DAO), or how to create a character. For most players, it's also more interesting to not start at the lowest level. As such, The Shattered War starts players around level 9, and gives them some basic supplies suitable for this level.

Of course, there will be enemies to match your level...

As the player starts as a more powerful character, their companions must also start at a higher level. Because of this, there is the possibility that the player will decide a particular playstyle is not working, or that they don't like it. As a result, I'm also going to include the possibility of re-creating a character - by adopting the re-spec mod. This has been on my to-do list for a quite a while and I've only recently begun to look at it. This is a crucial part of having an adventure starting at a higher level, as it allows the player to redesign their character and their companions to create a balanced party. This is also essential because of the limitation in the mod of there only being four companions, meaning there is not necessarily the ability for the player to simply "take a different character" if the existing character build does not suit them.

The next point is to attempt to introduce new mechanics or combat scenarios to enhance the gameplay. Due to technical and balance considerations, I am trying to avoid creating new abilities or spells for players to use. Despite this, I trying to introduce new mechanics through usable items and placeables, as well as enemies with slightly different behaviour to the default game. It is important to understand that increased difficulty does not come simply from adding more monsters, but at the same time, I do not want to introduce effects or situation that seem far fetched compared to the original campaign.

So there's a short discussion of the combat of The Shattered War, if you have any questions about the combat (or maybe even some suggestions), please feel free to comment!

Mass Effect, multiplayer, and sequels

So in case you hadn't heard, Mass Effect 3 will have co-op multiplayer, but I'm not going to discuss that. I could suggest that it just sounds like a less polished version of Gears of War's Horde mode but that sounds far more dismissive and negative than I'd like. I quite enjoy horde mode. I'd like to think there's some good potential for where they could take the idea - but I guess this multiplayer is a feeler to gauge potential interest in the idea, and I'm fine with that. Heck, I encourage it... but I digress.

What I really want to focus on is a line from Casey Hudson near the opening of the video: "If you haven't played a game in the Mass Effect series before, Mass Effect 3 is really a great place to start." Yes, it's one line, and it was potentially given to him by their marketing director David Silverman (who makes me cringe every time he says something about a BioWare game... that's another story/post), but this is pretty much exactly the opposite of what I want to hear from Executive Producer of the series. I'm going to be upfront here and point out that, yes, I'm taking way too much from this one line in order to create this post, but the overall message I'm going to convey here is one that I think is important.

Our sequel will be awesome because it will have twice as many "lasers".

Someone in charge of the production of the game is telling people that it's designed for new players. This is meant to be a trilogy, where decisions in the previous games have flow on effects for subsequent titles. Suggesting that new players are going to get the best possible experience is not what dedicated fans of the series want to hear. They want to hear that the Mass Effect team has the same guts as the team working on Lord Of The Rings did when they made the great effort to produce that movie trilogy. The second and third movie had absolutely no hand-holding when it came to the story. With virtually no explanation of events in the previous movie, or the characters or setting, they simply expected viewers to know what was going on.

Admittedly, the Lord of the Rings movies had so much associated publicity and a large fanbase that there was no way that anyone who was watching subsequent movies had missed the first. That said, Mass Effect 2 was a huge game with a massive audience and a very large number of people who have played it. While Mass Effect 1 might feel a little long in the tooth for some players now, it should be a reasonable expectation that anyone who is going to pick up the third copy in a trilogy should know or understand what has gone on before.

The funny thing is that exactly the same thing was said in the lead up to Mass Effect 2. Mass Effect 2 was "a great entry point into the series" in a lot of the promotional material. I'm not trying to paint myself into a corner and proclaim doom and gloom and that Mass Effect 3 won't feel like a true sequel merely because it's trying to offer the potential for new players. Technically, it's possible to enjoy Mass Effect 2 without having played the first, although if you think about all the things that aren't explained in detail, it can be seen that there is some expectation that players will have played the first game.

 If you didn't play the first game, you won't care about meeting Garrus "again".

From a marketing and business perspective, having a product that new players won't feel is accessible unless they've played the previous titles is a double-edged sword. It's likely to engender some "brand loyalty" and encourage people to buy a previous game to get "the full experience" (just as some people jumped on the Lord of the Rings or Harry Potter bandwagon part way through), there's also the potential to turn off people because of that same reason: "You mean I have to play the old game first?"

Am I making a mountain out of a molehill with this statement? Sure. The real issue demonstrated here is that game companies do not feel confident enough with their products that they are willing to say "you can't come in part way through a series." It seems that games remain apart from other story-telling mediums in this respect. People don't expect to be able to pick up a book trilogy at the third book and have everything make sense, nor join a tv series towards the tail end and understand the ramifications of events or the intricacies of the characters and their respective personalities.

Why can't we respect storytelling in games as much as we do in these?

When I first heard Mass Effect was going be an ongoing trilogy with decisions that would affect each game and the long term outcome of the trilogy itself, I expected the same kind of continuity as I would get from a novel or television series. You missed out the first game? Tough. You'd better go back and play it, because otherwise the sequels aren't going to make sense. I know that the likelihood of any company taking a risk like that, particularly with what was billed as a AAA title from the beginning, is effectively 0%. It's not going to happen. That's not going to stop me from wanting it, because I want to see games that have that kind of story continuity. At this point, people could almost argue that Mass Effect is being outdone in that regard by Assassin's Creed, which is far less about the story than it is the gameplay if you compare both series.

I want to see games that tell players "we have a fantastic story to tell and some great gameplay to go with it, and if you want to enjoy that properly, you're going to have to come along for the whole ride." Maybe that's something that's better delivered as "episodic content" rather than sequels if business concerns are fully considered, but if companies are going to create sequels, don't players deserve to be given "real" sequels? For the most part, gamers get franchises, games loosely connected to one another with flimsy plot devices and some common game mechanics. If games are becoming a story-telling medium, let them tell epic stories spanning multiple titles. If the only addition to a game's title is a number on the end, then that number should mean something.

Unfortunately, the drawcard of a name like "Halo" or "Call of Duty" mean that this practice is not going to die any time soon, because those two franchise names sell games to the tune of millions of copies before the game even hits the shelves. This isn't necessarily to say they are bad games, or don't deserve to sell millions of copies, but the fact is that they do sell inordinate amounts of pre-orders and day 1 copies based on the name and nothing more. If gamers don't demand more of sequels, then we will end up with Final Fantasy 25 and Call of Duty 16. I think both developers and players deserve better than that.

Dialogue, animation and camera work

Recently I've being playing Deus Ex: Human Revolution between my modding sessions, and found reason for all the effort I've been putting into dialogue integration within The Shattered War. Rather than attempting to explain what I mean, it's far easier to show it with a video:

Now, I'm using Deus Ex Human Revolution as an example here simply because that one conversation demonstrated both good and bad ways to use animation and camera angles. I could have quite easily used another game to demonstrate these flaws - the Dragon Age franchise is certainly guilty of over-animation on more than a few occasions, as is virtually any game featuring "close up dialogue".

A lot of non-verbal communication cues are given through body language and facial expression, two aspects that are difficult to convey on a virtual actor. This is a big reason why video games resort to more "animated" characters with more hand, head and body movement than a normal person or an actor on-screen. The problem is that when these go too far (as demonstrated in the video), it ends up hindering the dialogue rather than helping it. Just as overacting on the television or movie screen harms the quality of their media, so too does virtual overacting.

The take home message here is to make sure that when designing dialogue (or cutscenes), someone has to watch the work to make sure it looks believable. It's a time consuming process, especially as the amount of dialogue increases, but if the virtual actors are going to be convincing, it is necessary. If a player is paying attention to the movement of the character rather than the lines they are delivering, it's too much.

Encourage players towards mastery

In my last post I talked about the game Darksiders and some of its shortcomings in relation to gameplay.  One area that I thought the game was quite fun for the most part was in its fighting mechanics.  As a beat-em-up game, it is mandatory that these mechanics be enjoyable.  However, there is one significant deficiency in how the combat plays out that fails to capitalise on a potential means to improve it: the game does not provide incentives for players to master of the fighting mechanics.

The immediate and knee-jerk retort to this criticism is that the incentive is "not dying", which is accurate. However, this ignores the vast potential for improvement in the form of player-defined challenge.  This is whereby players set themselves goals above and beyond what are enforced by the mechanics of the game itself. In stealth games, it may not just be to survive the level, it may be to do the entire level without being seen. Or it could to an entire level and to leave everything exactly how it was before the player entered - every door opened is shut, any light turned off is turned back on, any item (barring that which the player intends to steal) is returned to its rightful place. Other genres might see the player attempt a "no-reload" challenge, or a speedrun to finish the game in the shortest time possible, among many other possibilities.

It's possible to finish Morrowind in under four and a half minutes

These examples push the boundaries of what most players might do, and in the case of speed runs often "break" the normal mechanics of the game. However, the concept of providing players with self-governed challenge above that provided by the game is not only a great way to encourage players to replay a game, but also to improve their skill in the mechanics of the game. For an example, let's compare Batman: Arkham Asylum (B:AA) to Darksiders.  In Darksiders, upon defeating an enemy, you claim "souls", typically blue souls, which represent the currency in the game used to buy items and upgrades. In B:AA, you gain experience from defeating enemies, which allows you to level-up and "buy" items and upgrades. The core difference is that B:AA actively rewards you based on how well you have mastered its combat system. Furthermore, it directly tells you what aspects of that combat system you have mastered.

These two games (as with many beat-em-ups) feature a "combo counter", keeping track of how many hit you've strung together in a sequence without missing or taking a blow. However, B:AA rewards the player who has a high maximum combo counter, using more challenging moves, and also for using a variety of different moves throughout the fight. It shows a separate message for each of these in an unobtrusive manner to show to the player how well they did in a particular fight. Furthermore, the "combat challenges" outside of the main story campaign push this concept even further, giving the player a points score based on their success, and allowing them to create a "leaderboard" of their scores and that of their friends.

How well did you do? Arkham Asylum tells you.

Darksiders on the other hand does none of this.  There is seemingly no benefit from generating large combos, and the game provides you no feedback about how well you are doing in combat besides the life meter of your character.  It's not even clear whether "instant-kill" moves that the player can do offer any additional benefit aside from killing an enemy quicker than they otherwise might.  It does incorporate fighting challenges into the main game, which offer additional souls based on your performance, but it never makes it clear exactly how much that bonus is - the player is merely left to guess how well they may or may not have done. These feel more like "training exercises" to teach the player particular basic mechanics and strategies rather than real "challenges". While this is appropriate given they are a mandatory part of the campaign, they lack the "challenge" of those in B:AA. Furthermore, they can't be repeated as individual challenges outside of the main campaign to allow the player to practice mastering a particular fighting technique or scenario.

Do I instant-kill or not? I don't know; the game doesn't tell me!

B:AA encourages players to master its mechanics, to practice and learn to excel. This sort of encouragement results in greater player engagement, because while they can just "muddle through" with enough talent to get by, most players will want to achieve and gain the rewards that come from increased skill. The key is to tell players what they are doing right, and assign them a clear and tangible benefit from doing so. Simply saying "bonus" without saying why, or worse, invisibly rewarding the player, does not provide them with any incentive to "do well".  Additionally, also make sure that this is done in an encouraging fashion. Don't penalise players for doing something wrong, but instead reward them for doing something right.

This encouragement will keep players coming back for more, make them want to improve their skills, master the mechanics of the game, and ultimately make them more engaged with the game - and an engaged and engrossed player is a happy player.

Don't Forget Fun

A while ago I played through Darksiders, a beat-em-up where you play the role of "War", one of the four horsemen of the apocalypse. Now, while the writing most definitely fell into the mediocre category, the game on the whole was quite fun.  However, there were design aspects that meant the game fell far short of what it could have been.

Part of the problem with Darksiders is that it cobbles together a whole bunch of ideas from different games.  Platforming and puzzles have become standards in the modern beat-em-up, and the Prince of Persia series was great for mixing these aspects together with beat-em-up combat.  Darksiders does okay in this regard, but its shortcoming is that the game is schizophrenic in its presentation and design.  You have completely new abilities and mechanics dumped upon you as the game progresses, but few of these mesh well together. You get a gun, then a horse, then a grappling hook, then a portal gun, then "see invisible" mask, and a few other goodies besides. All these things might be interesting in their own regard, but they simply don't work well together and force you to engage with new mechanics which are used for a period and then largely abandoned.

Copying portal was out of place, and generally not a good idea

Worse still, some of these mechanics become tedious.  Playing portal in Darksiders for the most part requires little thought or puzzle solving, for all the portal locations are predetermined, leaving the player with few possible options to solve a problem.  Worse, the game counter-intuitively has the mechanic such that it is possible to shoot a new portal through an existing portal, yet at no point is this actually explained to the player, which resulted in many players engaging in intentional suicide/respawn patterns in order to establish a portal in what seemed like an otherwise unreachable location. Movement mechanics and particularly the "see invisible" mechanic led to backtracking that added very little to the game except extended playtime.

Players should not need to come to the same location over and over again

This was one of the contributing factors to the game's main problem: it stopped being fun. The backtracking of the game meant players were going over old territory repeatedly, but even worse, they were dealing with enemies that became increasingly less fun to fight. This was through the introduction of single enemies that could deal a large amounts of damage and required a largely defensive strategy in order to defeat. Considering much of the fun of the combat of the game (as with many/most beat-em-ups) is the challenge and skill involved with stringing together combos in order to defeat a large group of enemies.  Staged boss fights are the icing on the cake, but the bread and butter is the defeat of enemy hordes - a recipe that the Dynasty Warrior series understands implicitly, as that is the entire point of the game.

As the game progressed, the introduction of enemies such as Wraiths, Grappleclaws and Undead Shield Lords forced the player into more defensive fighting strategies, undermining the fun of the fighting activities the player had experienced early in the game.  As Darksiders continued, its combat became less fun, and its gameplay more repetitive.  Darksiders is one of those rare cases where it would have been much better if the game had ended half a dozen hours earlier. A shorter game would have cut out the additional repetition introduced by the tail end, not to mention the more tedious fighting sequences in the game. While it's an enjoyable romp, Darksiders will ultimately leave you feeling a bit irritated by the time you reach the end because of these shortcomings, and the fact that the boss fights become progressively easier until the fight battle feels wholeheartedly underwhelming.

These were dull and annoying to fight

The take home lesson from Darksiders is to not forget what makes your game fun.  Good design is not about trying to pack as many different mechanics into a single game as possible, even if you're taking them from games that are very popular. It's not about making the game as long as possible if it's at the expense of the quality of the gameplay

Focus on one gameplay mechanic within a game (probably three at most) and make sure it is fun and has depth in order to make your game as enjoyable as possible.  Try to make a gameplay mechanic easy to pick up, but difficult to master. Make it possible for the player to succeed, but if they wish to succeed at a higher degree of difficulty or earn some recognition of increased skill from the game (e.g. via a points system), they will have to learn and practice mastering the mechanic.

Make your primary mechanic fun and make sure the player can enjoy it for the entire length of the game, and you will have avoided the mistake that Darksiders makes.

Developing a protagonist (Part 2)

In my last post I discussed the tendency of games to provide players with choices that were either good or evil or fell into "categorised" choices of personality.  One potential issue with such "choices" is that the player is not ever having to think about their protagonist's true character or how they would react in particular circumstances. These people are effectively metagaming, with only one option that they can pick during dialogue when making a decision, and that is based on a choice about the mechanics presenting the available personas to them. Such characters don't have the depth of a protagonist in film (or even in some games where the player gets no choice in terms of dialogue) because they operate on a predefined set of rules that can be very cleared outlined from very early on in the game.  If we're taking a good/evil dichotomy (as is common in many games), the delineation is simple:

Good: Selfless, will give up rewards, protects innocent people, hunts bad guys, etc, etc.
Evil: Selfish, will threaten/bully/kill to gain rewards, doesn't care about innocent deaths, kills anyone who gets in their way, etc, etc.

These two opposite ends of the spectrum don't offer a whole lot of depth in terms of personality. One's a rampant goody-two-shoes, the other an egotistical psychopath, and never shall the two meet.  Of course, this isn't to say that players can't decide to create a character with more depth that might provide a mixture of both personalities, but they need to be provided with reasonable choices in which to do so. Blanket black and white choices don't and can't provide this depth of character, even for the player who is trying to create it. We're frequently given choices equivalent to rescuing a stranded cat in a tree (and potentially breaking a limb in the process), or setting the tree on fire to incinerate both it and the cat. These aren't challenging choices that make for interesting or complex protagonists.

Rescue the innocent girl or "harvest her for power" isn't exactly a complex choice

Why should writers care about this? After all, flat characters can be a part of entertaining movies, and some of the best selling video games have featured some fairly uninspired and one-dimensional characters.  However, this comes down to whether the writer wants to convince the player to take on a predefined stereotype persona, or help them create a complex and meaningful character as they go through the game. If players are presented with choices that don't neatly fit into Good/Evil or Paragon/Renegade (and don't have gameplay mechanic implications associated with them) then they are more likely to analyse the choice they are about to make and try and develop a rationale behind their decision. The aim is to stop players from going "I'm being good" or "I'm being evil" but actually have them engage with the game to the extent that they are creating a multi-dimensional protagonist of their own imagining.

If we're dealing with a roleplaying game, should the writers not attempt to get the player to create a character equally as complex as a protagonist from other storytelling mediums? Should the designers not only facilitate but actively encourage players to create a fully fleshed out and realistic protagonist with a believable personality? The player may start the game with a shell of a protagonist, maybe even one of the three basic stereotypes listed above.  But by the end of a story with well-crafted decisions, they will have developed a character with a set of morals and values every bit as complex as the most fully realised characters within the game.

Faith really didn't gain any personality in Mirror's Edge

It should also be considered that some people play their protagonist as a virtual avatar - they "are" the protagonist within the game world, and make all decisions as though they are the main player in the story. Arguably, these players offer potentially the greatest reward for a writer: the ability to teach the player something about themselves. 

If a player is forced into a true dilemma where they are forced to pick between two very hard choices, then they will potentially learn something about themselves. Would they risk lives by letting a criminal go free and tracking him to potentially catch a bigger fish in the pond, or would they bring them in straight away? Would they allow a mother to sacrifice her life to save her son's, or would they risk both of their lives in an attempt to save them both?

Save a friend/ally/lover or the lives of strangers... now we're getting warmer.

The protagonist should be the most important and complex character within the story.  This axiom is commonly used when determining the overall worth or emotion or long-lasting impact of a film.  Given this is such an important aspect of storytelling in film, theatre and prose, why is it such a frequently neglected aspect of storytelling within computer games? Gordon Freeman is a blank, emotionless, silent slate: it is up to the player to "be" Gordon and provide him with their thoughts. War from Darksiders has little personality, and along with Marcus Fenix from Gears of War, is practically a static character despite the events within their respective games. Even Alan Wake, a story about a writer, has a personality that's almost as flat and lifeless as they come.

In part, this flat nature may be because these characters never really progress beyond the basic traits that are shown to the player in the earliest stages of the game. They're never forced to develop or show what they are made of besides the straightforward collection of stereotype traits because they're never placed in a situation where they have to make a tough choice. If the protagonist can be placed into a true dilemma, where there is no clear "right" or "wrong", then just as with other story telling mediums, they must display their true character and their values through this choice. These choices are where protagonists from other mediums really shine and mature as characters in front of the audience's eyes.

Games that feature defined characters where the player does not make key game decisions can and should evolve through the story. The protagonist is a willful character that the player is taking through the events of the game, so they should be placed into situations that will demonstrate their true personality and values to the player. This will let the player see more than just surface characterisation, and show a deep and complex protagonist. In Assassin's Creed, Altair goes from being self-centred and arrogant to a more humble and understanding hero. In Thief 2, Garrett leans to trust a former adversary and even laments her death.  These characters retain the core personality introduced very early on in the game, but grow and mature throughout their storytelling.

Garrett didn't let Viktoria die for nothing

If the player is defining the personality of the game's protagonist, force them to make situations that are truly dilemmas. Force them to pick between the lesser of two evils, or alternatively the greater of two goods. They might moan afterwards that they "had to play through the game twice" or "it didn't make that much difference" or "why couldn't I do both??!?", but ultimately this kind of choice makes the protagonist of the game more complex. This forces the player to examine what their character (or they themselves, if they are playing a "virtual protagonist") would do when placed into this situation. 
This is practically the ideal situation for a roleplaying game, as the player is truly forced to adopt a role.

However, there are two very important caveats when dealing with these types of choices. Make sure that these "true dilemmas" are not hamstrung by heavy-handed "alignment" systems that assign a "value" to each decision. If you have a good/evil scale (regardless of what your chosen axis/axes might be) do not modify it because of a player's choice in a "true dilemma". Doing so immediately assigns a value judgement to each option within the dilemma, which means that it is no longer a dilemma and hence the immense value of the choice is lost.

Why did Mass Effect 2 have to dish out paragon/renegade points?

The second caveat applies to all video game choices, but it is even more important when it comes to dilemmas: Don't have a protagonist say "why" they acting the way they are. For one, it sounds unnatural. Only the most poorly written characters verbosely explain the rationale for their actions, because people don't act that way in real life. Secondly, the player is the one making the decision, complete with their own rationale. There is no possible means for the designers to think of every possible rationale that players might have for making a decision, and attempting to do so will only annoy the players that have come up with something you haven't thought of. And that will probably happen in more cases than you would care to imagine.

Designer should be able to get players emotionally and mentally involved with protagonists by giving them true dilemmas to deal with. Let them evolve, grow and show real character and personality throughout the game, and you'll have a more interesting hero for your players to empathise with as they take that journey.

Developing a protagonist (Part 1)

Writing in video games is a unique challenge. While elements of writing, structure and story are common across writing, theatre and film, each have their own idiosyncrasies and challenges that demand different styles and approaches. The same is entirely true of video games, for while writing in this medium certainly shares many basic elements with these other forms, the video game writer has to deal with problems not faced by other writers. One of these key issues is that the player is the protagonist of the story - the player is taking the actions that will drive it to its conclusion as opposed to the being a passive viewer watching a defined character progress through it.

In many cases, this allows the player to project some degree of their own personality (or another desired personality) onto the protagonist character, whether it be through gameplay (e.g. a fastidious hero who meticulously searches every area for whatever supplies he or she can), or directly through persona-defining actions (e.g. picking a course or action or dialogue style). This can happen to an extent in other media, whereby people have slightly different interpretations of a character within the bounds of the scenes and events presented to the reader/viewer, but rarely is there the level of freedom granted in games, particularly when dealing with RPGs that allow great variance in defining the protagonist's persona. Since it's easier to work with the extreme case to illustrate a point, I'll focus this discussion on roleplaying games.  Admittedly it's my favoured genre of video game because of the strong story-telling elements and the player's ability to define their protagonist, but the ideas that follow can to some extent be applied to all video games.

We don't want games to have protagonists with as little depth as in this movie

However, it is important to take established principles of story-telling from these forms and examine their usage within video game writing. One such principle or idea I was presented with recent struck a great chord with me and its application to video game writing. The idea was simple: The choice between good and evil is no choice at all.

As this idea was presented in terms of theatre or film, the issue is presenting a character with a "dilemma" in which the established character can only logically make one of the choices without completely undermining their established persona. It's where a character is presented with a choice that effectively provides no choice, because they cannot make any other decision apart from the one that the audience expects.  The argument that follows is that the only interesting decisions are where the character must wrestle with their own morals or values in order to make that decision. The interest frequently comes from characters that make a decision that is difficult and shows the character undergoing a great change.

District 9 climaxes with the growth of a character's persona

This isn't to argue that these foregone conclusions can be uninteresting in and of themselves. James Bond never has to make a decision as to whether or not he will save the world, but the Bond films never lack in drama and excitement. Pirates of the Caribbean sees Jack Sparrow wrangle his way to getting his hands on The Black Pearl and double-crossing Barbossa after striking a deal with him. There is very little drama or interest in their actual decisions, but there is a great deal of excitement and interest generated by the events that result because of those actions.

Of course, the question to ask now is: "How can this principle be applied to games?"  How many times have you played an RPG that provides dialogue options like:

• Sure, I'll help you.
• Only if I get paid.
• You must die!

The problem with this is that it typically doesn't actually present the player with a difficult choice. There's no wrangling from the player in trying to work out what they will do. We have responses based on three character archetypes: the hero, the mercenary, and the evil-doer. Many players will decide upon a particular type of character that they want to play and will merely pick the relevant choice based upon their chosen persona.  This means that the player generally doesn't really care about the dialogue, because their choices are largely predetermined based on the chosen archetype they've picked. They might care about the character and story and be involved with how the plot develops, but ultimately they've gone down one path that was chosen from the very beginning.

Which archetype: James Bond, Jack Bauer or Jason Bourne?

First off, I should say that this isn't necessarily a bad thing. I know many people who have played the Mass Effect series in this way - always picking the paragon option or always choosing to act like a renegade. They've still had a lot of fun playing the game, potentially even going through with both options in two separate playthroughs, and have come to really like their character, even though they're a very simple character in terms of the depth of their personality.

The trend towards voiced protagonists can accentuate this tendency, as the player builds an "image" of a particular personality because of their protagonist's spoken dialogue reinforcing one of the chosen archetypes that the character can portray. Unvoiced protagonists may offer the player more nuance and variance in how the player imagines the exact delivery of the line, which may increase the likelihood of them not neatly fitting into a predetermined archetype. Of course, this is speaking in generalities, and players can still make complex characters even with voiced characters.

From personal experience in Mass Effect, I constructed a mostly paragon character, but one who wasn't afraid to stray into renegade territory where conflict was inevitable. However, mechanics like the paragon/renegade scale mean that players will almost certainly focus predominantly on one such path because of the vast gameplay advantages obtained from doing so. As much as this type of mechanic is pushed as a means to enhance roleplaying it frequently ends up detracting from it instead because the player can end up more concerned with being able to receive the rewards that only come from pursuing one path exclusively rather than walking some kind of middle ground.

I'll discuss the ramifications of these types of choices and how we can work towards more developed protagonists in my next post...

Party NPCs: Interaction Mechanics (Part 2)

My last post on NPC interaction mechanics focused on interactions initiated by the NPC's themselves.  Interjections and time-based dialogues would result in the NPC starting the conversation with the player rather than the player choosing to talk to the NPC. In today's post I'll cover two common mechanics used to control conversations and NPC relationships where the dialogue is initiated by the player.

Event-based
This is an easily understood mechanic that is used in many RPGs. When the player talks to an NPC, the responses they can give and the questions that the player can asked are based on the current events of the plot. If the player has just met the NPC, they will likely be able to ask them about how they came to be here, or their current situation.  As the game progresses, they might be able to ask them about previous victories or upcoming events.

Instead of having conversations based purely on specific events, the event-based option can also progress in a phased approach, as per Mass Effect or Mass Effect 2. In this case, it is often possible to be able to "progress" your personal (and/or romantic) relationship with a character after completing certain missions within the game. In Mass Effect, after every "core" mission, you can "do the rounds" and find out more about each of your party members.  In Mass Effect 2, the progression is not quite so clear cut, but you can regularly return to find out more about them... provided they're not "busy".

Enough with the damn calibrations already, Garrus!

There are definite advantages to this kind of phased approach.  For one, it allows the developer to space out the development of the relationship with the NPC. This prevents the possibility of the player exhausting a character's story arc or personal development in the early stages of the game by dishing it out at specified intervals. It is still the player's choice if they wish to find out about the character (unlike interjections or timed conversations), but it is done in such a manner that their character development can much both the actual and implied relationship between the player's character and the NPC. The direct relationship is the player's interactions, but the implied relationship is that suggested through the dialogue: e.g. passing mention of events that never actually occur within the game and the development of a relationship from being in close proximity to someone over a time in terms of the reality of the game world. These are things that the player infers would naturally happen; if you're traveling with someone for weeks and potentially months (or even years) on end as most RPGs tend to, it is natural that some sort of relationship (whether friendly or antagonistic) would form. The event-based mechanic implicitly plays upon this natural development of relationships.

Another positive is that the relevance of a discussion to recent or upcoming events helps to reinforce the consequences of past actions or increase the stakes of upcoming quests/missions. This is an excellent means to keep the tension and player motivation high. If a party NPC whom the player likes is telling them how important a particular quest is to them, then the player will be more likely to do it. Of course, the counterpoint is true also, if they don't like the party member, they might delay doing the quest until the latest possible moment out of spite. Provided that the character is being disliked because of the character's personality - rather than the lack thereof, poor writing, poor voice acting, or something similar - then this is still a positive outcome. Even if the player doesn't like the character, they've still had an emotional reaction which increased their engagement with the game. The player might begrudgingly complete the quest in the end, but in the meantime they've gained enjoyment from not doing so, and in some cases they might choose to not do it at all.

Some people wanted to kill off crew members

The major drawback to this approach is the visibility of mechanism. It's frequently obvious to the player what is happening. In Mass Effect 1, it quickly became obvious that the player could only progress a relationship after a "core" mission. In Mass Effect 2, the progression was less clear, resulting in annoying situations where the player would talk to everyone only to be given a stock line indicating the NPC had nothing new to say. Garrus' "Can it wait? I'm in the middle of some calibrations" line was so frequently repeated due him typically being one of the first crew members to be collected, and having a relatively small number of dedicated conversations.

The blatant nature of the conversation mechanic means that it can make the relationship feel artificial. Without some supplemental conversations in other areas, it can feel extremely mechanical and forced, meaning that it loses much of the emotional impact or connection with the character. This isn't to say that it is impossible, but it the player is acutely aware that the only reason for the culmination of the relationship (particularly if it's a romantic one) is because the final battle is just about to start, then it will likely feel less important.

Approval based
The mechanic relies on an existing "approval" system being built into the game's logic. This kind of system has been built into many games, where the player's friendship with an NPC is given some sort of numerical value dictating how "friendly" the relationship is. This number might not ever be explicitly shown to the player, maybe just as a measure on a scale or possibly not even shown at all, but it the key that drives the conversation mechanic. This played a key part in development of the relationships within Dragon Age: Origins, and the nature of the relationships within Dragon Age 2.

Friendship or Rivalry: which dictates your NPC relationship?

The key issue here is that it is the approval rating value that provides access to new conversation options. Much like with the event based system, new conversations will not open up until the approval reaches a set point. This has the advantage of feeling much more organic than the event based system, as approval may increase through the player's decisions with the player in the party, providing gifts (as per Dragon Age: Origins) or other external factors. This makes the relationship feel much more believable, particularly when the player is traveling with the party member and performing actions on which the NPC approves of, as it gives the impression the the NPC is "opening up" to the player character because they trust them more and more.

At a first glance, this seems like a fantastic system, until some of the ramifications and dependencies are analysed. For starters, this implies that the player is going to have a relationship such that the NPC's approval moves a large amount (in either direction) across the course of the game. Without this change in approval, additional options are never unlocked, and the character feels flat and lifeless. Players who perform actions which both anger and please an NPC run the risk of not seeing of their character at all because the approval rating stays at a fairly neutral state. Furthermore, it will likely be necessary to write a lot more dialogue to account for the potential that the NPC may hate or mistrust the player, or alternatively trust them or love them entirely. These cases should require vastly different dialogue for a well written character, particularly if the player is pursuing a romance.

Are we talking love-hate or love-love?

Another potential issue is the ability of the player to short-circuit the relationship early on in the game. If the player has access to gifts, then it is potentially possible to increase the approval rating of an NPC to a significant extent early on in the game, opening up all the conversation options as a result. This can quickly develop and subsequently exhaust all the conversation options with a character very quickly, having them declare their undying love for the player near the very beginning of the game. This is more artificial and undermines the believability of the NPC far more than the event based system ever could.

This is also a potential problem when dealing with the natural gains of approval throughout the game. Often an NPC's approval will be modified because of a player's actions, but only if the NPC witnesses it first-hand, i.e. they are in the player's traveling party at the time. Metrics collected from RPGs have suggested that most players tend to have one specific party for the majority of the game and rarely deviate from that group of players, at least for a first playthrough. Despite this, there will typically be enough approval points dished out throughout conversations such that the party members will reach maximum (or minimum) approval part way through the game to account for party variation (among other factors). As such, even without gifts, it may be possible to exhaust the relationship "too early" within the game.

Leliana: from guarded companion to lover in six simple chantry relics

Lastly, there is a problem for the player in determining "when can I talk to the NPC next?" Without some clear indicator, the player has to periodically "check-in" on their NPCs to see if they have anything new to say. This potentially runs the risk of being every bit as annoying as getting "calibrations" lines in an event-based system.

In closing...
Party NPCs are arguably the most important characters within an RPG, so any time dedicated to making them and their relationship with the player seem more realistic is time well spent in order to increase the player's level of engagement with the game. Having addressed the need and importance for such relationships, and the mechanics to do so, I hope I've given people some food for thought on the subject. I'm contemplating a final post on this matter, covering up a few issues regarding mechanics and general ideas for designing NPC relationships that I've not addressed along the way. If readers are interested in these, let me know and I'll do a final wrap-up.

Party NPCs: Development

In my last post, I discussed the importance and value of party NPCs. However, in order for benefit to be gained from these characters, they need to be well developed characters. As with many elements of writing for video games, basic tenets of writing should be observed. There are some specific areas that should be addressed, because there are concerns that are unique to video games.

Complexity
While complexity is important for many characters, it is almost essential for party NPCs. These characters will frequently fill the role of player character's friends within the adventure, and thus it's useful if the player is able to develop some sort of connection with the NPCs.  A shallow character with lacking depth or real motivations will usually feel like a hollow shell or cardboard cutout very quickly. It is good for characters to have some defining characteristic that makes them immediately interesting to the player, as this makes the player want to find out more about them. Keep in mind that if the character is one-dimensional and relies solely on that attribute, they will often be discarded because they are dull or uninteresting.

It is important to note that sometimes there are extreme exceptions to the rule - in this case one of the most memorable party NPCs of all time was amazingly one-note: in the form of the overwhelmingly single-minded violence loving character of HK-47 from Knights of the Old Republic. His character revolved around the desire to kill and/or assassinate, but the eccentricity of the character, not to mention the hilarity that ensued from the majority of his conversation, meant that he was a hit with players.

HK-47: One of the best robots of all time

NPCs should grow
Characters generally should not be static during a piece of writing, and games are no different. Characters should be affected by the situations they are placed in: they should react, learn and grow based on what happens to them in an adventure. This may result in slowly exposing more of the NPC's personality to player, but it also can modify the personality traits that they have already seen.

More importantly, in a video game the player has the opportunity to make decisions, and those decisions could potentially affect a character's outlook on certain subjects. This is where character growth differs from other mediums, as the player can potentially be given the chance to direct an NPC's development. When used correctly, this is a powerful tool to truly empower the player and make them feel like they have a meaningful relationship with the character. When a player's relationship with an NPC could actually result in different events occurring in the main story, the player gains a real sense "changing the landscape of the game world".

A "hardened" Leliana or Alistair can behave very differently

Forming an emotional connection
Players should be given a reason to care about a party NPC. Whether they save their life, have some personal investment in their safety, or perhaps they are essential for the plot, the player should be given some rationale behind wanting or needing an NPC around. Ideally this should ultimately come about because the player finds the character interesting rather than having some forced justification for their presence.

Strangely enough, it should also be considered that the player need not actually care about a character in order to like them. It is always important to note that a character that inspires any sort of strong emotional reaction from the player, provided it is to the personality of the character itself (rather than poor writing or the like) can be considered a good thing. In my first playthrough of Dragon Age 2, I found myself detesting the character of Fenris, yet at the same time forced to acknowledge it was the character's personality that I hated - which indicated good writing, not bad writing.

I couldn't wait to kill Fenris

HK-47 also forms a great example for me in this case as well. In my first playthrough I never liked taking him along with me because he would inevitably cause havoc and death that my peaceful Jedi protagonist didn't want. However, I would talk to him whenever I had the opportunity, simply because he was so hilarious. My character could not have disagreed with him more if he'd deliberately tried to be antagonistic, but the unique nature of HK-47 meant that I as a player had to talk to him.

Romance
For many gamers, BioWare started this trend back in the days of Baldur's Gate 2. It has only become increasingly popular as games develop a more cinematic approach with increasingly complex and visually appealing (both aesthetically and graphically) characters. Some players may have struggled to care about a character that was little more than a small portrait comprised of a few hundred pixels, but a voiced acted NPC with a full range of emotions and a wide gamut of non-verbal expression through their face and gestures can provide a powerful entity for developing an emotional connection.

People formed emotional connections with these

This is in some ways the logical extension of the above two points, as a romance not only allows the player to exert a force on the NPC, but it also enables the formation of an emotional connection with the character. Going back to Baldur's Gate 2, many players were outraged when their love interest was forcibly taken from them and their life was in serious danger. This provided a powerful incentive to push forward and rescue their "virtual loved-one", and made the victory in battle over their captor significantly more rewarding.


The fervent adoration for characters, not to mention the keen interest in announcements of love interests within RPGs only goes to demonstrate the popularity of type of character development. It is unlikely to disappear any time soon, but provided it is done well, it adds a great deal of depth to a character, not to mention provides the player with a potent reason to be engaged with their gaming experience.

Having defined the importance of well written party NPCs, and the means by which meaningful characters can be written, the last key issue to address is to define how the mechanics of the interaction between the NPC and the player will work. But I'll leave that discussion for my next post.

Are we that juvenile?

It seems we've reached another low in gaming history.  Duke Nukem Forever, that game for which we've been waiting forever, released a new trailer... where Duke throws faeces. That's right, as part of the promotion material for the game, the developers thought it would be fun and encourage people to buy the game by demonstrating that you could throw faeces and that Duke would comment about it.

Really? Are games that lacking in creativity that they need to resort to that kind of advertising in order to gain attention? Sure, the "Your Mom Hates Dead Space 2" campaign was bad enough, but now we're forced to endure garbage like this? Surely games as a medium have more credibility than that? Let's just consider the history of Duke Nukem for a moment to realise how stupid this truly is.

You just flushed your credibility down the toilet.

Duke Nukem 3D was released in 1996, and was rated 18+ in most countries. Even if we consider that the youngest players might have been around 10 years old when it came out, those same people would be 25 years old now. Do the developers honestly think that this kind of toilet humour is going to win over a faithful audience of 25 years or older? If we're going by people who were legally allowed to buy the game when it came out, they are now 33 (or 30 in Australia) years old. To me, this video is a prime example of the kind of hideous mis-steps that developers, publishers and marketing teams are making when creating games. I, for one, will not even remotely consider a pre-order of Duke Nukem Forever now because of this video. In fact, I imagine that I'll probably wait until it drops significantly in price before I bother buying it, even if the reviews are overwhelmingly positive. How can I expect to be treated to a fun and witty gaming experience if this is what was chosen as "good advertising material"?

Of course, I can't let this pass without lambasting IGN for their comment when posting this video... "The insane shooter game Duke Nukem Forever may have a Mature rating, but this trailer shows the fun things you can do with poop." There you go, IGN approves of this marketing and declares this gameplay to be "fun". Neither "absolutely disgraceful" nor "utterly shameful" come close to accurately describing the situation.

Perhaps they are trying to capitalise on a different market? Maybe we need more promotional material like the brand-new super-exciting, put-you-on-the-edge-of-your-seat, "No-way!-It's-going-to-be-the-best-game-ever!" trailer for Modern Warfare 3. I loved MW1, thought MW2 was a serious step backwards, and based on the trailer, I'd say that MW3 looks set to continue that downhill trend.  Given the incredible hype, I almost wondered if I'd watched a different trailer. All I saw was something that looked like it was trying to imitate the "non-stop action" and "cinematic excitement" of something like Michael Bay's Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. The methodology appeared to be to cram as many famous landmarks as possible in the video and blow them up or have exploding vehicles near them and watch the fans go crazy.

MW3: Has a higher protagonist death toll than ever before!

Yes, I'll admit that I'm exaggerating (though only slightly) to demonstrate a point, but I feel it's something that simply doesn't seem to be gaining much credence in the biggest AAA franchises. As someone who loves video games I'm ashamed by the large number of developers selling big name titles that resort to this ridiculous over the top attitude, cheap-tactic marketing campaigns, or purile attempts at humour in order to get attention. What worries me more is that in many cases it seems to be working. The frenzy over the MW3 trailer was phenomenal, and the Duke Nukem juggernaut appears unstoppable riding on over a decade of "Are we there yet?" waiting.

Where are the intelligent advertising campaigns? Where are the games that are actually trying to be bigger and better rather than simply trying to break a new "explosions per minute of gameplay" record? Where are the games that are actually trying to be funny instead of making bad attempts at toilet humour? They're out there, certainly, but they're overshadowed at times by uninspiring material like these two examples.

More importantly, why is the gaming population pandering to such behaviour? Why are we not telling publishers "we deserve better" when terrible marketing campaigns (or games) are shoved in our faces? Or am I as a gamer that far removed from the pulse of the general public that I no longer accurately represent that biggest market segment that publishers are trying to get to buy their product?

There have been some truly great gaming titles that not only provide some fantastic gaming experiences, but also give us something to think about long after we've put the controller down. We've played games that have given us amusing quotes or lines just as powerful as any book, movie or tv show. Gamers have grown up. Games have grown up. Can't advertisers and developers get on-board and deliver the type of experience that our favourite entertainment medium deserves?