Personally, in a story driven game, I think that you can focus on the immediate situations you place the main character in, while only hinting at the grand scheme of things.
I liked how Final Fantasy IX accomplished this. *Spoilers* You were in a briefing of sorts, discussing the immediate matter at hand(Acting out a play, and during which, kidnap the Princess). The player didn''t need to know anything about the play, nor the particulars of why they are kidnapping her. Later there excape vehicle crashed, and the focus was on survival, while trying to get to their destination.
There was always immediate circumstances, including personal ones such as love interests, friendships, and personal crisis, that kept the story interesting. However, pieces of the plot were thrown in, yet immediate concerns always took presidence.
So I believe that a player need not know entirely what the main character(s) knows. Thus, amnesia isn''t the only valid solution to this problem.
Amnesia, false memories, etc.
Flashback had a great story based on this type of thing.
I think it might be confusing for everyone to have full amnesia. Partial amnesia (and electronic equipment faliure leading to corruption of records) could maybe be caused by a massive EMP weapon.
The PC's mission could be to discover not only who they are but also who set the weapon off and why. You can make up your own who and why if you like but maybe a rich powerwul guy was gradually engineering society to be more and more under his sway (owning major banks, transport systems, hospitals, prisons, getting the big military contracts etc. ) until his evil schemes were finally exposed ( by the PC, of course ) and he set off the weapon to erase the evidence and cover his escape.
Naturally, he would have protected himself and a chosen few and would be using his advantageous position to recover control of a world in disarray. To most of the amnesiac population he would probably appear to be a good guy but the PC's investigations would soon put them back on his trail and once he knew the PC was after him again he would send his minions to kill them. Because of his influential position a majority of the population may turn against the PC if he told them to. Paranoia! Creepy atmosphere! But, of course, there would be a resistance movement who instinctively rebelled against this guy's attempts to impose his order on them and they would help the PC out. Rebellion! Freedom!
Bah. Story based games are difficult to develop, though, without access to professional resources. It's much easier to make SuperCrashHyperDestructionApocalypseGunVII where you shoot at big green blobs because otherwise they shoot little green blobs at you.
Geocyte Has Committed Suicide.
edit: grammar and spelling.
[edited by - geocyte on July 20, 2003 9:03:57 PM]
I think it might be confusing for everyone to have full amnesia. Partial amnesia (and electronic equipment faliure leading to corruption of records) could maybe be caused by a massive EMP weapon.
The PC's mission could be to discover not only who they are but also who set the weapon off and why. You can make up your own who and why if you like but maybe a rich powerwul guy was gradually engineering society to be more and more under his sway (owning major banks, transport systems, hospitals, prisons, getting the big military contracts etc. ) until his evil schemes were finally exposed ( by the PC, of course ) and he set off the weapon to erase the evidence and cover his escape.
Naturally, he would have protected himself and a chosen few and would be using his advantageous position to recover control of a world in disarray. To most of the amnesiac population he would probably appear to be a good guy but the PC's investigations would soon put them back on his trail and once he knew the PC was after him again he would send his minions to kill them. Because of his influential position a majority of the population may turn against the PC if he told them to. Paranoia! Creepy atmosphere! But, of course, there would be a resistance movement who instinctively rebelled against this guy's attempts to impose his order on them and they would help the PC out. Rebellion! Freedom!
Bah. Story based games are difficult to develop, though, without access to professional resources. It's much easier to make SuperCrashHyperDestructionApocalypseGunVII where you shoot at big green blobs because otherwise they shoot little green blobs at you.
Geocyte Has Committed Suicide.
edit: grammar and spelling.
[edited by - geocyte on July 20, 2003 9:03:57 PM]
Reading some of the posts on the first page of this thread got me thinking back about the "Foundation" books (Isaac Asimov).
At the beginning of the books a character named ''Hari Seldon'' basically predicted the entire course of history for the next few thousands of years, and created a ''Foundation'' to store all of the galaxy''s knowledge. Now, someway along the line there was a random mutation which couldn''t be predicted, and this caused the whole of the predictions to be set askew.
The character could have been put into ''statis'' and wake up expecting the world/galaxy/universe to be how they had predicted, but wakes up instead completely unprepared for how the universe really is.
On a side note, I think I''m going to go read the Foundation books again soon.
At the beginning of the books a character named ''Hari Seldon'' basically predicted the entire course of history for the next few thousands of years, and created a ''Foundation'' to store all of the galaxy''s knowledge. Now, someway along the line there was a random mutation which couldn''t be predicted, and this caused the whole of the predictions to be set askew.
The character could have been put into ''statis'' and wake up expecting the world/galaxy/universe to be how they had predicted, but wakes up instead completely unprepared for how the universe really is.
On a side note, I think I''m going to go read the Foundation books again soon.
quote:Original post by Anonymous Poster
Personally, in a story driven game, I think that you can focus on the immediate situations you place the main character in, while only hinting at the grand scheme of things.
I liked how Final Fantasy IX accomplished this. *Spoilers*
THANK YOU! I hate it when people don''t post spoilers messages...even if it is a PS1 game! I haven''t beaten the game yet, and it''s greatly appreciated. Okay, on topic, how about everyone else in the world except your party is simply not real. The world in a sense...does revolve around you. Perhaps it''s some big experiment to see if the characters would accept a false reality. That''s what I think this world is anyways...
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