What is this fortune cookie I speak of?
Its my way of describing a mission that felt as though it was read off a fortune.
The king requests I go to a dungeon. The CO requests I go infiltrate the enemies compound.
They don’t even try to hide it, they straight up tell you “Do this.” As if you could say no, besides, even if you could, the most you’d get from them is a "Don’t be a coward, or “Ha ha ha funny, now go do it.”
In stead of offering such a decision for a little chuckle, immerse the player into the position they need to be in to do the task at hand. Give them a reason!
Remember all tasks should have a risk reward. You help someone, you get something in return. You don’t help you don’t get something or worse, something bad happens story wise.
Night when is it ok to present a choice to the player, and when is it not?
For this I can only give you my best answer.
Giving a player “choice” isn’t really so much giving them a choice as it is an “illusion” of choice.
The illusion of choice, or sometimes called “the magicians choice” is a way for us to deceive the player into doing what we want them to.
I present to you two horses, you may select one. I don’t tell you why, I merely ask you “to select a horse”
You select horse #1 and I say “You have saved this horse and condemned the other,” I change the other into a dragon.
or
You select horse #2 and I say “You have condemned this creature!” and I change it into a dragon.
It doesn’t matter what horse you choose, #2 will always be a dragon.
So doing the same thing in game, by offering good dialog to the player, they feel as though they made the choice.
But you want to know about choices that actually affects the player.
Nothing to it, offer them the choice, in code you’d place a flag here saying “Player chose a b or c”
Later down the line, that flag will be called upon and thus whatever choice the player had made, will be shown here.
To better plan your story for this. Think of a peggle board, like the ones you played with as a kid. You drop a ball, it hits a series of plastic columns, and finally lands in one of many slots.
The ball is our player. The columns or choices, the walls our boundary, and the slots our ending.
Can you see it? TO make it even more interesting, put a line that separates these choice columns, this line represents that the player has made a choice which keeps him from either falling to the the left end, or the right end of the board. Such as a major npc being saved or killed. Saved you head towards the normal or good end. Dead you head towards normal or bad end.
This idea actually came to me when I was helping a friend write a story, I saw one of these toys at a dollar store and it suddenly came to me.
The next day we had a quark board filled with sticky notes (each being a column) and ending with a few slots (endings). Using a marble (player) I slid it along the board to each column to see how and where I would place borders to allow the player to advance to one ending or another.
Realistically, if you were to take any game out there and plot it out, you’d get this peggle board!
You’d easily see where you story unfolds, becomes linear, and then ends.
Night what if I put the player on a linear path?
The roller coaster rail, nothing wrong with it at all. Generally most genre’s of games put you on a set of rails. It becomes a movie that you can interact with. Its the easiest style of gameplay to follow.
Fear is a great “linear” game with an intriguing story and very creative A.I. I felt like a powerful Ops soldier as I took on the opposing forces. I even saw how tough they could be as they flanked me, ambushed me, all while a little girl played with my mind.
There are many others I can list for having a good linear story.
This brings me to the final point
Night, are you telling me cliché’s are bad?
No, not at all. cliché’s are a nasty little bug thats necessary to move the player along. The best that we designers can do is to make sure that this little bug is prettied up with dialog and emotion.
Think of it in terms of real life. What would convince you to do something? Maybe something materialistic? Maybe the had of a very pretty girl?
Maybe your life is threatened and this is the safer choice of answer.
Here’s a way of breaking the Kings quest cliché.
Your asked by the king to defeat Sir Robert the Red. You say no and go on your marry way.
You arrive home to find your family has been attacked, your son kidnapped by none other than Robert the Red.
Here’s the trick, Robert the Red knew the king was going to try to hire you anyway, so he kidnaps your family anyway to bribe you.
How would you reward the player for their choice? If you say yes to the king you earn a monetary reward. If you say no, what then? Maybe you take a different approach to Sir Robert, rather then storming the front t with the kings guards, you sneak in through some caves and along the way find a magical sword.
With the money you earned you could have bought a magical sword afterward, but here since you aren’t given the money, you are awarded it for choosing a different path.
There you have it, two questions from a cliché quest, which emotionally tries to involve you because the threat of your family dying. It offers a risk reward and a different way of getting to Robert.
Next Week: Forums choice, what would you like me to discuss?
