Well, the job system is a good one, but it does tend to undermine the story just a little bit. If you''re going to have a strong, independent character interacting with a weaker, meeker, more timid character, and the big tough guy is a healer while the damsel-in-distress is an invincible axe-wielding barbarian, the dialogue will seem a little bit weird. Not that it can''t be done, but if the story is written without a solid idea of the roles the characters will fill in-game, then it can never be as fluid or appropriate as it would be with static characters.
As to making a story tree that the player can control by choosing different in-game characters, it is the very soul of compromise. You lose some of the concreteness of the story, and some of the customizability of the party, in exchange for some of the story quality and some of the customizability. Ogre Battle games are very good at this. Sometimes whole sections of the map will be opened up by acquiring the right characters. Other times, you''ll have to choose between these two neat characters or those two, or you''ll have to align yourself with a faction to gain certain soldiers.
The FF6 system, where you get all the characters, and they all have concrete presences in the story, but you can teach them all kinds of magic and whatnot until they''re all absurdly strong and you''ve learned all their backstories is a different kind of compromise. It takes away a little of the specialization (they all have special abilities, but by the end you can have them all be both invincible melee warriors and master wizards), but it gives you infinite flexibility in party structure and it also retains much of the story quality, although there are many who would disagree with that second assertion. I think it was the crowning glory of the FF series, and FFVII was a wrong turn that hasn''t yet been corrected. The Ogre Battle series also had a little of this property as well, but not so elegantly implemented.
RPGs: Should there be Party Selection?
quote:Original post by TechnoGoth
...Chrono Cross was the worst offender for this. There must have been 50 npcs you acquire through the course of mulitple play throughs of the game...
Hey, what about the Gensou Suikoden series, with the (in)famous
line up of "108 Stars of Destiny" that you can recruit?
With a large pool of selectable characters, the story loses the
focus and tends to become generic.
With fixed characters, the story is more focused but also leans
towards being linear.
It''s the designer''s job to balance out these two extremes (or
just use the extremes). There is no single "best" way.
Kami no Itte ga ore ni zettai naru!
Author
quote:Original post by TechnoGoth
If a strong story is your aim then why can't it include party selection? Lets say at story point four you have a choice of two npcs to be your companion. Why can't you have the story point change depending on which npc you bring? You could altar the story in ways depending on how the story points play out.
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A strong story can't exist with party selection (compared to a linear story). It has to do with limitations. I guess if you had infinite time to make a story very dynamic it could work, but realistically, if you have to have one story when one character is in a party and a different story when another character is in the party, you may end up needing as much as 2x the story than if you just forced the player to use the characters you wanted. Now imagine this if you have 8 characters to choose from and a party can only be as big as 4. It's too much.
The solution is to make the story watered down so it can apply to anyone and by definition this means less character development.
Let's take FFVII as an example *spoiler*. I promise you if you go out of your way to never put aeris in your party as often as possible, you will barely care when she dies. I know this because this is what happened to me when i played the game. I saw her as a weakling, decided to switch her with barret who was strong, and completely forgot about her for the rest of the game until she died. I really didn't understand the big deal with her death. Everyone was saying it was so sad. I explained why her death didn't effect me like i'm explaining to you guys now and they replied that the reason they kept her in their party is because she had an awesome overcharge (or whatever it's called) that would cure your whole party.
Now, either i didn't care about that overcharge or didn't notice it, but because i had the choice not to use her, I didn't get the emotional experience out of her death that I'm sure the developers intended. But it was totally their fault. If they forced me to use Aeris, i probably would have cried like a little bitch at her death.
This is the point. All the people that love or at least think of that scene as memorable felt a connection with Aeris. That connection existed, even though they are probably not aware of this, because they chose to have Aeris in their party throughout the game. Because i chose not to, her death had little emotional weight to me. It was like watching a stranger die: Tragic, but at least it's not someone i'm close to.
[edited by - tieTYT on March 31, 2004 8:34:22 PM]
quote:Original post by tieTYT
Now, either i didn''t care about that overcharge or didn''t notice it, but because i had the choice not to use her, I didn''t get the emotional experience out of her death that I''m sure the developers intended. But it was totally their fault. If they forced me to use Aeris, i probably would have cried like a little bitch at her death.
Why not just remove all choice from the player, and make them experience the storyline in exactly the way you want them to?
Oh wait, that''s not a game, it''s a movie.
Games are about giving the player choices. If you go for storyline at the expense of player choices, you end up with one of those horrible ''interactive movies'' that no one ever remembers or cares about.
Author
quote:Original post by Sandmanquote:Original post by tieTYT
Now, either i didn''t care about that overcharge or didn''t notice it, but because i had the choice not to use her, I didn''t get the emotional experience out of her death that I''m sure the developers intended. But it was totally their fault. If they forced me to use Aeris, i probably would have cried like a little bitch at her death.
Why not just remove all choice from the player, and make them experience the storyline in exactly the way you want them to?
Oh wait, that''s not a game, it''s a movie.
Games are about giving the player choices. If you go for storyline at the expense of player choices, you end up with one of those horrible ''interactive movies'' that no one ever remembers or cares about.
Actually, i''d say you end up with Final Fantasy 4j, a game that most OG RPG gamers agree is the best of the whole final fantasy series. It''s not like a horrible interactive movie. You have plenty of things you can do while the story is not unfolding.
I think a good compromise would be a small, mostly selectable party that gets frozen at the beginning (or at least early on). For example, say you have one non-selectable main character around whom the the bulk of the story is constructed, and two selectable slots that you fill early on out of a pool of four NPCs. That gives you (4 choose 2 = 6) party configurations, which is bad, but avoids the worst of the combinatorial explosion.
The main quest remains largely invariant under the different party configurations, and most of the important, emotionally charged scenes occur between the main character and assorted NPCs; however, each party configuration carries with it a handful of unique side quests (say 3), that develop the personality and interrelationships of the selectable PCs. That's 18 extra quests, which is big but still manageable.
It also yields loads of replay value, in much the same way that FF 1 is fun to replay to experiment with different party lineups, only in this case each combination of characters would carry with it some unique story development, as well as different character abilities.
[edited by - Muse on April 1, 2004 7:10:35 PM]
The main quest remains largely invariant under the different party configurations, and most of the important, emotionally charged scenes occur between the main character and assorted NPCs; however, each party configuration carries with it a handful of unique side quests (say 3), that develop the personality and interrelationships of the selectable PCs. That's 18 extra quests, which is big but still manageable.
It also yields loads of replay value, in much the same way that FF 1 is fun to replay to experiment with different party lineups, only in this case each combination of characters would carry with it some unique story development, as well as different character abilities.
[edited by - Muse on April 1, 2004 7:10:35 PM]
Author
That idea works. What i think may be even better would be to have some unique way to literally create your party. You have a main character and maybe some others and you''re forced to have them in your party. But because of some spell or some innovative system, you are actually able to create your own "monsters" that you can add to your party. This way, you can create them any way you want and it gives the player a lot of customizability. Because they''re simply monsters, you don''t even need to create dynamic stories depending on which ones you have in your party.
If a game is going to have a "You", and this "You" is the one who''s going to be forming the Super Adventuring Group, then all party selection methods are just a workaround to the hypothetical ideal of being able to simply turn down any offers you get for assistance during your quest. Enforce supporting characters in the name of progression and there''s a chance players are going to mutiny if they don''t like them (Mmm, Carth*) but give them too many choices and, unless the game adopts a blank slate design that encourages using your imagination, no character is going to have the time or effort put in to be a satisfactory companion.
Of course, most games in the traditional Band Of Heroes mould will at some point need to have a supporting character tag along or be immune to the rules of the world to further the plot, but if you haven''t convinced the player to agree with your design decision before you make it, you''ve just put up a huge neon sign with the words "YOU ARE NOT IN CONTROL" blinking at them.
* Although in my opinion just about every character in KOTOR felt like the designer was grinding the harsh stubble of George Lucas across my testicles.
Of course, most games in the traditional Band Of Heroes mould will at some point need to have a supporting character tag along or be immune to the rules of the world to further the plot, but if you haven''t convinced the player to agree with your design decision before you make it, you''ve just put up a huge neon sign with the words "YOU ARE NOT IN CONTROL" blinking at them.
* Although in my opinion just about every character in KOTOR felt like the designer was grinding the harsh stubble of George Lucas across my testicles.
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