Quote:Original post by Todemu
Listen, I'm all for PLAYING games with branching stories. Writing them, though, I'm not a big fan of. Writing a multi branched story is ridiculously time consuming, ESPECIALLY when the player wants to be given a chance to change track at random places in the gane. Instead of writing a 40 K word script for 14-20 hour RPG, you've written 120K words for a 14-20 hour RPG.

So use less script :) I'm not joking, use script in places where the events in the game are prescripted, and AI to create the interactive portions of the game. AI doesn't only have to be used to make character walk around and slash swords. One of the best examples I've seen comes from a mediocre book called Swords and Circuitry.

The blacksmith is building swords. His script is:
- Get the materials from his stash.
- Take them to his anvil.
- Work for X hours to create the sword.
- Take the sword to the shop.
- Rinse. Repeat.

His son brings the materials in from the castle. His script is:
- Get money from the shop.
- Walk up the road, past the woods, to the castle.
- Purchase the goods.
- Walk back to town.
- Put the goods in the stash.

Now we have some conditions for each action:

Blacksmith
- If there are no materials in the stash, wait X hours.
- If X hours have passed without new materials, he leaves to look for his son.
- If he reaches the castle and can't find his son, go into the woods.

Son
- If there is no money in the shop, wait until there is.
- If there are no goods at the castle, go home and come back the next day.

So here we have a well-oiled machine that scripts a number of actions for two characters. Now lets put a kink in the machine: The player robs and kills the son. This can cause a chain reaction of events that might lead the father into discovering who killed him (If the game is written as over-the-top high fantasy he can recognize the cuts as being from a sword that he sold you.) Or it might lead to the father going into the forest and being attacked by goblins. Maybe you can even go into the forest and save his life.

Or goblins are scripted to attack somebody on the road once per month. The kid happens to be the unlucky one (it could have been any other scripted character instead). The father goes into the forest and finds the kid locked up, and the player can find him there spying on them. He then asks the player to save his kid.

What happens when there is no blacksmith? There are no swords. Or if a large number of people in town leave or die? There is no money to buy materials. If the player makes a huge purchase, better materials can mean better swords. A rich and powerful knight comes into town and buys weapons for his army. Player can take advantage of the increase in production. Etc.

This sounds complex, and is, but even smaller versions of systems like this are far more intricate than the linear crap we currently have. The nice thing about a concept like this is that each action can create a chain reaction that can reshift the balance of the world. And all of this can be done with very little writing if the situations are carefully planned ("My son has been kidnapped by forest goblins, please save him" can be used whether you meet the dad in the town, castle, or in the forest spying on the camp).

The downside is that this brings the focus away from singular "heros", the game needs to continue even if Dark Knight Uberificus is killed. This can make the game less epic, it is a completely different type of game than Final Fantasy or Kotor.

Quote:Branching storylines take more than one writer, and I suggest starting out as simply as you can if you're new at writing for games.
Go old fashioned. One storyline. Write an epic. Just mind the cliches, because everyone hates them like poison.

I feel exactly the opposite. RPGs don't always have to be epic, cliches are fine, as long as you bring something interactive and new to the table. Of course, if you can make something interactive and avoid cliches you have a winner, but if I had to choose I'd play a LotR ripoff with a real interactive story any day.

Quote:What do I want to see in an RPG?
Passion. Enthusiasm in the story. I want to love my characters.

What do I want to see in an RPG? Less focus on story and more focus on interactivity. Theres nothing wrong with epics, but if that's all we have then we are stifling real interactivity.

Quote:Original post by Todemu
You misinterpreted my post.
My SCRIPT, I meant one of these:
(Hero moves through the doors and into an open field. He is greeted by Character 1 and 2.)
Character 2: Hey, Hero! I'm really stupid!
Character 1: Me too!
Hero: (Choices)
A: Yes, I hate you both. (Causes characters 1 and 2 to no longer travel with hero and therefore introduces characters 8 and 9, as well as animal 4)

B: No you're not stupid! (Causes them to be in your party, and they love you. )
C: Fart. (Makes you fart)


Well, you need to write an entire new script for each character there. And each character needs depth, a history, a personality, etc. It's hard to do.

If you're talking about the world being a living breathing thing for interactivity, I agree with that. But I still don't think it's a good palce for a new Game Developer to start. Chances are this person is not a programmer and will be looking for someone to program for them for free. And some free programmer isn't going to want to do a zillion pages of technical script for some unpaid probably wont be completed project.

Get me?

I got your post, I think you didn't get me [grin]

What I'm saying is that you don't need an "entire new script for each character" because you don't need dialogue choices at all. Have you ever seen the movie The Triplets of Belleville? They managed to make an entire animated movie, with a rich and complex storyline and interesting characters, with absolutely no dialogue at all. The living world I'm talking about isn't in addition to a pre-written story, it is a replacement for it. Something that has never been done before.

(...Continued)

Part of the problem with dialogue choices is that there is an expected outcome. If somebody says something out of character, it breaks the suspension of disbelief. This creates a shit-ton of extra work on the part of the developers because they have to make content for each "branch".

On the other hand Mario gives you a small number of choices (run, jump, grab something, spit fireball) and uses the context of the world to create a deep environment. A small number of verbs, and a world that reacts to those verbs in interesting ways. Believe it or not a "Talk" button is not necessary to make a deep and complex storyline (how often did you use it in Half Life?).

Accepting that this could work is difficult because we have been hardwired since Ultima to focus on player-chosen dialogue as the main method of storytelling in games. I can't remember where I read this, but there was some book that discussed the "Players story" and the "Designers story".

The designers story is "It was a dark, cold night when the three travelers first set out to find the infamous vibrating blue squirrel...".

The players story is "... and then I stole the sword right out of his hand, ran him through with it, and flew away on the back of the dragon".

Designers story: "Please rescue the princess from the evil King Koopa"

Players story: "I deftly dodged koopas hammer onslaught, barely escaping them as I leaped over his head. I broke the bridge, sending koopa plummeting to his death. The princess, at last, was free".

What I'm suggesting is putting the designers story in the background and bringing the players story to the forefront, something I haven't seen an RPG do yet (Grand Theft Auto, on the other hand, does a great job of this).

In an RPG, this doesn't mean eliminating writing. This means writing a different kind of story, and is (to me) a much more interesting challenge. Write a story that can be told through actions and not just by dialogue, write a world that can tell an interesting story without resorting to cut scenes. This, I believe, is the future of interactive storytelling.

Quote:Your rebuttal? ;)

Who says I have one? Oh, wait, this is GameDev... everybody has a rebuttal... for everything [grin]

Quote:Let's face it, Grand Theft Auto's characters aren't the most multidimensional people out there.

Nope, but when I'm playing GTA I feel closer to Tommy Vercetti or Fido or whoever then I ever would feel toward Cloud or Vaan. I am Tommy Vercetti, I only control Vaan.

Quote:I see what you're saying, and it probably is the best way to make a game, but I think the game Fable tried to do that, and it didn't work well at all.

Fable was the first tiny step in a long, long road. Fable was the interactive version of a fashion show, where what you look like and what your name is becomes more important than what you do ("Chicken Chaser? You chase chickens?") Oblivion went the other direction, trying to drive everything by AI and the game broke so bad that they had to remove it at the last minute.

I like to use Zelda: Majoras Mask as an example of "the first step". The characters in the world act according to simple scripts, but you can interrupt these scripts to a small extent to change what happens later. The time travel aspect lets them do some interesting puzzles that involve knowing what somebody is going to do and beating them to the punch.

Quote:That's alright, but I don't think it allows for as much character development as an RPG calls for.
...
RPGs need more depth IMO, and I think dialogue is probably the most effective tool for that.

Oh, certainly. That's why there will always be room for the Final Fantasy games of the world.

Quote:Sure it might be possible, but it would require really good modellers to do really detailed facial expressions and other things.

True, among many other technical hurdles if you are making a AAA ubergame. The lower tech you use, the more you can get away with. If your game looks like Diablo (or even like FFIV) then you can get away with simple sprite motions and minimal animations. I have worked on a demo for getting an idea like this off the ground using simple 2D graphics, but I keep getting distracted with things like Rumble Box (and my current unannounced project).

The question was what do you expect in an RPG storyline, and I expect that storytelling will branch out from the simple prewritten stuff that we're used to. Despite Chris Crawfords crazy rantings, fully interactive stories will never fully replace prewritten stories in games, but maybe there is a place for them amongst the pack.