New Shattered War Trailer

In order to showcase some of the work that I've been doing recently on The Shattered War, I thought it was time to release something that people could look at to see and hear everything as it goes on during the game. To that end, I have a brand new trailer showcasing some of the voice work and level design that has been taking place over the past few months.

In addition, for those who want a bit of a closer look at some of the action, I've got a screenshot for your viewing pleasure.

Fighting to save a town

Until next time...

Shattered War: The Many Faces of Dialogue

When people think of dialogue in a roleplaying game, frequently mentioned items tend to be the content, the player responses, the player's choice and the quality of the voice acting (if it exists). Lower on the list of things mentioned tend to be the expression or movements of the virtual actors, except for when they are notably bad. A twisted head or a cross eyed expression will draw some raised eyebrows, but a wooden performance will not.

Working within the bounds of the Dragon Age toolset, it's impossible to break free of the "BioWare face" for the NPCs within the game. NPCs can gesticulate fairly wildly, and sometimes in a fashion that makes absolutely no sense in the context of their conversation. So such, it comes down to me to manually tweak the animations for each line of dialogue within the game after I've received the final recording from the relevant voice actor. I've been doing this a lot lately, so I thought I'd talk about some of the associated issues in today's post.

Stay a while and listen. Wait, that's not my line...

Now while this might seem like a fairly trivial and insignificant thing to some readers/players, having believable gestures actually goes a long way to assisting the believability of the delivery of the lines. If someone is upset or angry, they're more likely to wave their hands about, and they're more likely to move them faster. Someone who is calm and confident is much more likely to have smaller and/or slower movements while they're talking. Manually adjusting these actions can support the delivery of the line, or help uncover the truth that the character is trying to hide.

However, if you study people in real life, you may notice that some people barely gesture at all. Now while it should follow that some characters should also not gesture, this should be kept to a minimum. Even small and subtle movements suggesting some type of body language can make a big difference in helping convey the line delivered by the character.

The other key part of adapting the character to the delivery of the line is their expression. This can make a huge difference in how the line comes across while viewing it. The exact same line can give  a different impression upon the player when combined with the facial expression. Take the following screenshot for comparison:

Neutral, happy, and coy

These three different facial expressions, especially when carried through the delivery of the line, convey quite a different feel to the player as they are watching. The expression can help convey a subtext for the character's emotions that would not be present otherwise. A nervous or worried expression while talking about another person can help imply that they care for that person, adding an extra depth to the character that never has to be explicitly stated, but can be determined by the player through the combination of voice acting and facial expressions.

So every single line you'll see in The Shattered War has been watched and listened to by me, and for a significant percentage, I will have manually adjusted the emotional expression and hand and arm gestures, and/or body and head movements for those lines. I'll also have picked which camera angle I want to use, and any transitions that occur. Dialogue is a very important part of The Shattered War, so I want to make sure that every single line is as good as I can make.

Mass Effect 3 Extended Cut

In case you hadn't heard, the Extended Cut for Mass Effect 3 has been realised. This is apparently BioWare's "clarification" of the endings that shipped with the game. After repeated adamant and somewhat sanctimonious statements that the ending could not and would not be changed, BioWare have demonstrated that their original ending was poorly written and overlooked basic elements of the Mass Effect lore and setting. However, it seems that the people responsible ultimately failed to recognise its fundamental flaws.

Bandaid solutions were implemented to solve basic and superficial flaws like Joker's inexplicable retreat and crash landing, the magical appearance of your squadmates on the Normandy and why Hackett suddenly attempts to communicate with Shepard on-board the Citadel. However, each one of these introduces more completely irrational consequences and questions. How Normandy wasn't shot by Harbinger as a result of landing right near the Conduit beam it was supposedly protecting, why the Normandy decided to land on a random jungle planet for some rest and relaxation after the biggest galactic war ever, or even why the ridiculous stargazer sequences is included when the epilogues suggest a huge technologically advanced spacefaring galaxy, are just some of the new issues introduced.

 We could always just forget everything after this

What's arguably worse is the fact that BioWare did change their ending despite saying that it was unchangeable. The destruction of the Mass Relays, which was specifically stated as an outcome from the Catalyst no longer occurs. In fact, this line has been removed entirely from Shepard's exchange with it. After BioWare staff insisted "the relays are only disabled" despite the Catalyst explicitly stating they would be destroyed, and The Arrival DLC indicating the destruction of a Mass Relay was equivalent to a star going supernova, BioWare were seemingly forced to recant this assertion from the Catalyst. Other changes, including adding a completely new ending where Shepard can refuse the options presented and instead ensure the galaxy's defeat also is a change to the ending. In doing this, BioWare have seemingly attempted to appease fans, but ultimately all they've done is admit through their new content the original ending was grossly flawed and poorly executed. To simultaneously insist it was not in any way flawed or that fans "misinterpreted" the original ending is a misappropriation of blame. The blame lies squarely on one end: BioWare's.

Furthermore, the Extended Cut does nothing to address the fact that the Catalyst's arguments classically beg the question (i.e. it uses its own assertion as proof of its assertion), are logically inconsistent for every provided option, and the ending is inherently at odds with virtually all the key themes pushed by the series up until this point. The Extended Cut is a series of bandaids across a series of mortal wounds that do nothing to address the ultimately fatal blow to the coherency of the Mass Effect series.

It's okay if everyone turns into this. We have green lights instead of red! That's makes it good! You watched Star Wars, right?

That the Extended Cut just presents a new flaw for each one it attempts to solve is a testament to its failure. I thought for a while on how I would describe the Extended Cut to Mass Effect 3 in one word. Eventually I managed to think of something suitable, though it applies equally to the original ending, and it disappoints me greatly to have to say it:

Götterdämmerung.

Diablo 3 Design Flaws (Part 3)

If the my previous posts about items and general design issues with Diablo 3, herein lie the final nails into the coffin of Diablo 3's credentials as well designed game.

Inferno difficulty, which is the hardest difficulty in Diablo 3, showcases the sheer laziness and lack of consideration on Blizzard's behalf when it comes to gameplay.  As can be seen in this video, Blizzard's approach to difficulty is one of the worst possibilities: Just increase the numbers.

Jump to 38 seconds in: "We doubled it."

If your difficulty is such that designers can simply "double it" in order to increase the difficulty, then you need to hire new designers. Also, if you think that your test team is half as good as your playerbase, then you probably need to hire better testers. There is absolutely no excuse for this type of laziness. It is indefensible.

Nor is there a justification for taking skills and dramatically reducing their effectiveness, even doubly so when there is no indication this has occurred. On Inferno difficulty, life steal operates at 20% efficiency. i.e. A weapon with 3% lifesteal per hit will drop to 0.6% per hit on Inferno. However, there is no indication that this occurs, so it is up to the player to realise (and calculate) this based on observation. Despite this being grossly misleading for the player, it raises serious questions about the competency of the design team. If a skill must suddenly be rebalanced by such a huge amount upon changing to the highest difficulty level, then this indicates a gross imbalance in the difficulty balance before or after this change. A well designed skill and power curve should not require such colossal changes, particularly in a single hit.

The real issue here is that Blizzard and Diablo 3 are both suffering from an ingrained and systemic case of duplication. There is virtually no inspiration and practically nothing original in the concepts that have been put forward in the game. Arguably the special abilities of the boss monsters/elites are somewhat new, but these really don't add a whole lot of depth to the gameplay in most cases. Teleporting and vortex monsters simply making it frustrating for characters attempting to maintain distances, and abilities like jailer and waller often constraint and/or stop movement entirely, which is one of the few tactics at the disposal of players given the extremely small usable skill set that players have available to them.

Let's just add more stuff, shall we?

The above monster can trap with walls so you can't run away, make you lose control and your hero run away when it hits you (although you'll get trapped because of the aforementioned walls), throw grenades that do lots of damage if you happen to get away (which will be guaranteed to hit you if your hero is uncontrollably running away), and has minions that you can't hurt but can also throw grenades and make you run away scared. The "good" news is that this isn't the hardest combination of enemy abilities you'll face.

Instead of coming up with new ways to increase the difficulty of the game and actually let or make player develop new strategies, they just tack more of the existing modifiers that players have already seen onto those enemies. This is the most arbitrary and simplistic way of increasing difficulty, and can lead to some combinations that for all intents and purposes, are effectively unbeatable. Certain skill combinations effectively lead to certain, unavoidable death for virtually all characters.

In a recent patch, Blizzard reduced the benefits of running Act III (particularly on Hell difficulty, which comes before Inferno), because "too many people were farming it". This is exactly the wrong approach. Instead of making such areas less appealing, they should instead be focusing on how to make other areas MORE appealing. Why aren't people trying to go through Act IV? Is it perhaps because it is ridiculously short in comparison to the other acts? I'd suggest so. Why aren't people playing Act I Inferno instead? Probably because the difficulty curve takes a massive jump that most players can't cope with, forcing them to farm in Hell difficulty, leaving them with the undesirable option of Act IV or going to Act III. I know which one I want to pick.

More spiders please

Act 4 is annoying because of the tactics employed by several of the bosses. As a ranged character, the two major demons before Diablo, Rakanoth and Izual, feature the ability to deal massive, unblockable damage from a distance that is liable to kill or seriously wound the character. For a start, this is awful design, but what's worse is that Diablo himself can actually turn out easier by compasion. Even more galling here is that Diablo does hardly anything significantly different from his incarnation in Diablo 2. Given at the end of the game he has absorbed the essences of all the other major demons, the fact that he has virtually no new tricks up his sleeve is pathetic. This is in fact representative of the real problem with Diablo 3.

Diablo 3's biggest crime is that it is little more than a reproduction of Diablo 2. Act 1 is a similar to Act 1 from Diablo 2 - dark forests, caves, a monastery, Tristram. Act 2 is roughly the same as Diablo 2 - another desert city, parading through its sewers and palace, and an ancient mage stronghold. Act 3 is mostly a reproduction of Diablo 2's Act 5, or the Lord of Destruction expansion - with a army battle, a frozen wasteland and caves, and a descent into a hell. Act 4 is heaven corrupted, which is again similar to Act 4 from Diablo 2. There is nothing new in the level aesthetics for a game that has been in development for years. Taking inspiration and referencing previous titles in the series is fine, but copying them wholesale is nothing short of insulting.

Copying your own expansion pack is really the best you could come up with?

Diablo 3 effectively just revisits old locations rather than providing something genuinely new to players. Its locales are the same, the majority of its monsters are the same and even behave in almost exactly the same way as they did before. Act 1 and Act 3 even occur in previously visited places. Is the world of Sanctuary created for Diablo so small and uninteresting that the game can't explore new places and characters? The question this raises is what is actually new in Diablo 3? Unfortunately, the only honest answer is "very little". A lack of originality and new ideas can be seen all throughout the game. Whether from the characters classes, loot structure, the items and bonuses on them, the monsters and areas that just feel like copies of previous games, everything demonstrates a complete lack of originality. Effectively, Diablo 3 has more or less just copied all of its idea from Diablo 2. For a company like Blizzard, this is appalling. It has millions of dollars in its coffers, and has spent years working on this game, yet all it can come up with is something that feels like a twelve year old game with a new coat of paint.

I got my money's worth out of Diablo 3, but it's left a bitter taste in my mouth. There's no real depth to the game, and it offers nothing more than a continuous grind to try and roll a lucky number on the item generation slot machine. The simplistic and inequitable gameplay from enemy abilities and lack of any meaningful strategies makes the Diablo 3 experience shallow and repetitive after a while, and presents very little for players after they've reached the maximum level in the game. As a game focussed purely on grind, there is no clear desirable goal to reach for players, merely the lure of "better" items at some point should they be persistent enough. This is the most crude and base player objective in a game: repeat what you're doing so you can repeat it again but more easily. Blizzard should be able to do better, and so should players. I'm glad I experienced Diablo 3, but only because it provided me more lessons on how bad game design. That said, I'm disappointed that I was one of the people who contributed to the game being a success. It doesn't deserve to be.

If you're thinking about buying Diablo 3, do yourself a favour and don't. Go back and play Diablo 2 again, or maybe Torchlight, or wait for Torchlight 2. You'll get similar gameplay and you won't be supporting a major publisher producing stale, self-derivative work. Games and gamers deserve better.

Diablo 3 Design Flaws (Part 2)

Here I'll take a grabbag approach to Diablo 3's problems, focussing on a few more key areas.

Plot and writing
Writing has never been Diablo's strong suit. The writers have tried somewhere to create a setting, and in that there is some vague success, albeit in a fairly generic fantasy style. However, Diablo 3 really draws a short straw when it comes to writing. Which would be so bad if it wasn't actually trying to pass itself off as having good writing. It's obvious that it's trying to be well written and have a plot that is engaging to the player, but in no way does it succeed. Blizzard have been asked questions about the quality of writing, but have insisted that they have mostly received praise for their writing. How anyone could possibly praise the writing in the game beggars belief, and this kind of hollow self-praise does nothing to further the gaming industry's reputation as far as producing good writing is concerned.

Perhaps two of the most laughable things (and there are many) are the demons Belial and Azmodan, who are supposedly known for their skills in deception and strategy respectively. Yet neither of these demonstrate any whit of either trait. The demon Belial poses as the junior ruler, Emperor Hakan, although it becomes patently obvious to the player that this is the case. For a demon who is meant to be a master of lies, his deception is so transparent that even the player's character isn't fooled, and calls out the trick at the end of Act in what is obviously intended to be a reveal for the player. In the next act, the "master strategist" Azmodan simply places obstacle after obstacle in the hero's path, and is so stupid as to effectively tell them what they need to do next. He is even so foolish and brazen as to tell the player that he sent an enemy to destroy from the inside via the basement of the castle the player is defending. No master of strategy would ever tell their adversary their true plans and actions, yet Azmodan does this virtually every time he speaks.

 Watch as I reveal my entire battle plan!

Always online
Yes, many, many people have already complained about this, but there is really no excuse Blizzard can come up with that should be acceptable for users. Their prime argument is to stop people from hacking/glitching the game and producing items to then flood the auction house. That is a developer problem, and as such should not force a problem onto the users. Variable latency (or any latency at all) can cause player issues, hit detection, lag spikes, or being unable to play the game at all. Preventing piracy is another rationale for this approach, but why is it that every approach produced so far to combat piracy in games has a greater negative effect on legitimate owners of a game than those who pirate it? I have a fairly good Internet connection, but I still occasionally suffer from wonderful issues like this...

No, that's not Diablo 3 music. It's much more interesting.

Useless items and modifiers
I find it hard to believe that for all the advancements we've had in games and technology and the myriad of clones and failings we've seen, that action RPGs still insist on having magical modifiers that are completely useless. No one likes getting a magic item that is completely useless, as it ruins the enjoyment of obtaining the item. No, not every item should be excellent, but no individual property on an item should be useless to every single player. One of the best cases within the genre is "damaged returned to attacker" modifiers. This is where an enemy is damaged upon dealing damage to the player. It needs to be removed from the genre. No ifs, no buts, no maybes. Get rid of it. 

To anyone who has played an Action RPG, this has almost universally been considered an utterly useless attribute on any gear. It's simply not a useful proposition, and Diablo 3 does nothing to improve that. At higher levels, you can find gear that reflects a couple of hundred points of damage if you're lucky. However, monsters have tens of thousands of hitpoints, meaning it would take dozens of hits to even have an appreciable effect on their life. Of course, it's not possible for characters to take dozens of hits, making this statistic worthless. The genre is all about dealing damage to enemies and trying to minimise the damage the player takes, and reflecting maybe 1% of an enemy's total health when each of their hits likely dealing 10% or more to the player is nothing short of worthless. Blizzard's insistence on keeping this modifier in demonstrates a lack of imagination.

Even at level 7, that returned damage is useless

The Auction House
This is where Diablo 3 really shows it true colours, and it is found wanting. The auction house allow people to purchase items for money they've earned in the game, buying their way to advancement through virtual or real currency. In essence, this gives the player the option of convenience to obtain items from others than would take a lot time for them to find. However, this highlights the vapid nature of Diablo 3: it is nothing more than a grind. Kill monsters over and over in order to be lucky enough to find an item you want/need to progress, or simply pay to do so. Kill monsters over and over until you make enough money to buy the thing that you want/need.

Roll up, come get your items here!

This demonstrates that gold farming has effectively become the player's job. Repeat a mindless and fairly menial task over and over again until you are fortunate enough to make sufficient money to obtain something you want/need. I thought games were supposed to be entertainment, fun, and enjoyable, not a repetitive task requiring no real thought or skill. Diablo 3's Auction House says otherwise. It says they're all about grinding and making money. If that's the case, count me out.

In the next post, I'll be bringing these points together (and a couple more) to point out the ultimate flaw of Diablo 3.

Diablo 3 Design Flaws (Part 1)

I've spent far too much time playing Diablo 3 since it was released. Blizzard have once again recreated their magic formula to try and addict people to playing a game over and over again in search of "the next great bit of loot" that the Action RPG genre is famous for. The problem is that it's awful. It's addictive, I want to play it, but it suffers from some massive design issues that are truly terrible. I'm going to discuss some of the games issues, in the next few posts, but today I'm going to start with items.

For anyone who played Diablo 2, they remembered traveling Act 1 and getting a set item or maybe even a few. If you were lucky, you might get a unique item with some cool statistics or bonuses you couldn't get elsewhere. Some of these were quite powerful and you might end up using them for quite some time, others were viable if you pursued a particular style of play or tried something a little different to normal. Either way, they added flavour and were something that spiced up the play experience. Players would talk about how they used particular set items or uniques in a fun way. It made the play experience more interesting.

A lower level set item from Diablo 2

In Diablo 3, Set Items and Legendary (equivalent to D2's uniques) items are rare. I'm not talking "rare" as in yellow items which are called "rare", even though you're liable to get at least a couple in your inventory every single run. I'm talking seriously rare. I'm talking you can play for in excess of 100 hours and never see one drop. There's very little chance that a standard player will see even a single set item drop, let alone be able to form a complete set without doing some serious gear grinding. There are also significantly fewer sets around, and the bulk of them are only available on the hardest difficulty level rather than allowing players to find some of these as they level up.

Now, this might all be somewhat acceptable if these items possessed power commensurate to their rarity. The sad truth is that they don't. Even worse is that their power is not even remotely close to justifying their rarity. In virtually all cases, these items will be worse than the rare items that your character is wearing, and even quite possibly worse than blue items your character may have recently acquired. In short, these extremely rare and hard to find items are mostly useless. Yes, Blizzard have said they will improve these items, but the fact they didn't realise how pathetic they were says a lot.

 Legendary items... currently a bit of a waste of time

Presumably this exists as backlash against the perceived problem of World of Warcraft and Diablo 2 whereby unique, set items, crafted items and runewords became the ultimate items for everyone to aim for. Once these items were obtained, there was nothing else for the player to do because they had obtained the optimal loadout for their character.

This arguably indicates Blizzard's ultimate problem and the design flaw of their game, and potentially the entire Action RPG genre. The genre is a grind. It is a grind for the best loot, the biggest numbers. If the biggest numbers have been obtained, then there is no point for players to keep playing. Blizzard have recognising that their Legendary/Set Items are underpowered and working to fix this issue fails to realise the true fault with their design.

The ARPG genre needs to improve. This is Blizzard's chief failure with Diablo 3. They brought this genre to the fore with the original Diablo. They made numerous changes and significant improvements to the formula with Diablo 2. With Diablo 3, they've failed to do much except serve up exactly the same formula as before. New difficulty level? That's okay, just increase the numbers: more damage, more HP! That was okay in 2000. It's been 12 years since then, so it's time to evolve the genre a little. There are indications that they had some vague understanding of this. The concept of not having to rebuild a character because you picked some bad skills is a good one. The abilities they added to bosses to force different strategies helped modify gameplay a little (though their execution was flawed in this regard, they did have the right idea). The problem is that there isn't enough of this approach. By and large, it's simply a "make the numbers bigger" approach... and it's simply not damn good enough.

Implement real difficulty? Naaaaaah. Just make the numbers bigger!

The reason why Diablo 3 ultimately falls short of what it should be is because Blizzard focussed on grinding as the core aspect of the gameplay rather than the action of playing the game itself. The problem is that Diablo 3 is designed with a World of Warcraft (WoW) mindset. Inferno (the highest difficulty level) is designed to be a difficulty that will force players to grind over and over again in order to get gear with high enough numbers that will allow them to reach the "end" of the game. This is much like how many of the quests in World of Warcraft required months and months of communal grinding to obtain the gear necessary to complete them, (until complaints saw those tasks become easier) the optional content/tasks that can only be completed through ongoing commitment, and time or date based challenged and achievements. All these things are designed to keep people subscribed and keep them paying money. It's designed around a collective mindset and an inherent social gameplay design. Diablo 3 has none of these things.

The social aspects of Diablo 3 are minimal. Yes, you can play with your friends, but it's not an inherently social game that requires player cooperation, unlike WoW. Many/most things can be done solo, and it can actually be easier this way. This isn't the case in WoW. Raids are not designed to be run solo. Despite its forced online requirement and the multiplayer aspects of the game, many people still perceive Diablo 3 as a single player experience. Many people want to "take down boss X on their own" because it seems like a rite of passage. Having someone help you would be the "weak" option. When the game first game out, players in a group would see significantly better drop rates of items, which encouraged group play. Now, that bonus appears to have been dropped, and bonuses to magic find are split across a group. So unless someone has a higher magic find percentage than you, you can actually be worse off than if you were by yourself.

"Real players" kill Azmodan solo

Compare this to WoW, which encourages and fosters people to cooperate, because no one can learn all professions, and you can always trade favours with friends or guildmates who have different skills to you. The grind exists as part of a social dynamic that allows you and your friends to cooperatively improve and succeed. The grind is a shared task whereby you and your social group improve together. The lack of the strong social aspect of Diablo 3 is why the grind feels so impersonal, and the Auction House exacerbates this problem. Why? Because your friends probably can't help you. They might be able to find something better than your current gear, but that's not likely to be the case, unless they're more advanced than you. Finding better gear is an extremely challenging task, because quite often the gear required to succeed in an area is not found until you are in that area. Thus getting items from other players often makes the player receiving an item feel like they're getting hand-me-down or otherwise "gifted" something that is an advancement rather than earning it.

Diablo 3 rarely fosters the personal touch of a mutually beneficial exchange whereby two friends can both give each other items that significantly improve each other's characters. Blizzard have failed to understand that exchange is what made the social dynamic of WoW function successfully. Despite the griefers, the rage, the grind, WoW was successful because it got people enjoying a gameplay experience of working together and helping each other. The unfortunate reality is that opportunities to do that in Diablo 3 are very limited. The loot you get while adventuring together with your friends might be better than your current gear, but it typically takes a lot of grinding in order to do so to get the gear you need to progress.

Unfortunately, Diablo 3's design issues don't end there, even though this post has reached its limit. Stay tuned for more comments soon...

Action, Reaction: The Shattered War

Recently I did two posts about a player's interaction with a game, covering how the game can train a player and how this can led to an undesirable narrowing of gameplay options chosen by the player. So, in the spirit of continuing this series of posts, I want to discuss how The Shattered War reacts to the player, and how this can affect and influence their gaming experience.

Within the process of playing a game, the first step is for the game to introduce itself to the player and explain its mechanics. While this is essential for a game to ensure the player is not overwhelmed, gradually new elements are introduced to increase the complexity of the experience. As the Shattered War is a standalone experience set after the main campaign, it can be expected that most players will have played it, and thus have some background in the mechanics of the game and the setting itself. As such, The Shattered War does not start the player at level 1 and force them to start off with a miserly array of combat options. Right from the start of the module, the player is given numerous tools to deal with all situations. However, new items and placeables have been created to add a little more creativity to the mechanics.

One such example is the medic table, which allows a player to rejuvenate their health/mana/stamina. This is only available at certain encounters, and can prove the difference between life and death in challenging fights. Of course, doing so takes time and will remove the character from the fight, making it more difficult for party members still engaged in battle.

One character runs to heal while Taraz kills an ogre

In addition to fighting, another key aspect of the game's reactions to the player is the way that the narrative progresses in response to player actions in dialogue and even in their quest choices. One of the things I'm aiming to do is to make it such that the player will need to make choices that they won't be able to have everything they want, but more importantly that they feel like those choices have been validated. For anything the player might have lost from not pursuing one course of action, they will gain something else that may be useful to their cause.

A key concern here is that the player feels that their action was a perfectly valid choice. Every decision must feel like a logical extension of the story and must flow naturally, else the player will feel as though their actions have been penalised. Every possible outcome presented should be as though it is the only story, and do as little as possible to draw attention to the variations within. Whether characters live or die should feel natural to the player.

Will these characters survive the experience? It could be your choice.

In this regard, some of the choices are designed such that the player should not necessarily realise they are making a choice. The approach is such that a player makes decisions or choices in the people they support and the quests they choose to pursue. Furthermore, the player is not given a penalty for pursuing different roleplaying options. Decision making can be pursued regardless of the character's moral disposition, allowing them to side with one person or another with freedom. The actions of the player are met with equal, but different reactions for every choice.

Gameplay decisions with significant benefits will also cause comparable negative consequences, but these are balanced among different choices. This way each set of choices allow the player to feel some reward, but also some temptation to wonder "what could have been". This is the way for every action and reaction to feel unique and special to each player, and to allow them options to play and replay the adventure to experience different outcomes.