I'm curious about people's views on having the player (optionally) experience the same story from three different perspectives in different playthroughs. I was originally going to post this in the Writing forum, but realized the question is more about the overall player experience in terms of progression rather than the story itself. Apologies if I was wrong and placed this in the wrong forum.

The idea: The core mechanics basically involve an Asteroids-like multi-directional shooter and build on that. The player selects a character they want to play out of three at the beginning (female, male, AI) based on a brief description and an overview of strengths/weaknesses. Player completes playthrough with that character, then optionally chooses another character to use and starts from the beginning of the overall story timeline. I'm guessing each character's playthrough may take 45 minutes to an hour (but this estimate is still very flexible).

Progress: Most of the core mechanics are complete (with much refinement to go), but in terms of content right now I am building levels for the first character, allowing me plenty of opportunity to vary up what I'm going to do with the other two based on feedback I receive here.

Question: As a player, would you prefer to experience the same series of events through another character's eyes/personal perspective or would you prefer to just have each character progress you further in the main story of the game without overlap? Do you see the former working? As an example:

[color=#ff0000]Character A: Starts at Level 1, Day 1.
Level 1: Recover Blue Widget from planet.
Level 2, 3, etc
Finish playthrough

[color=#0000cd]Character B: Starts back at Level 1, Day 1.
Level 1: Defend main ship from attack for X time while Blue Widget is being recovered from planet.
Leve 2, 3, etc.
Finish Playthrough

versus

[color=#ff0000]Character A: Starts at Level 1, Day 1, finish at Level 10, Day 10
[color=#0000cd]Character B: Starts at Level 11, Day 11, continuing where A left off.

The first case would be a matter of optionally restarting from the lowest difficulty after you are done with whatever character you chose to play first.

The second case would be a matter of continuing the difficulty progression with each character. You would have no choice in what character you use - you'd start with A, go on to B, finish with C. I guess technically here you don't even have to have multiple characters with this option, so the main question is - do you see the first case working to deliver a positive player experience?

Original Rationale: I had hoped that if I can do this right, I can potentially have the player glean new pieces of understanding or information as they experience what's happening from varying points of view. Seeing things from different perspectives is interesting to me personally, and trying to intertwine three paths in that way successfully is even more so. However, I'm not sure if this is actually as potentially fun and interesting as I'm hoping it could be, or if this would give the player the most enjoyable experience even if I manage to do it right in terms of writing this thing. Which is why I'm here, looking for opinions

I like the basic idea and it has been used in movies (Run Lola Run) or even games (resident evil, kind of in SC I).

The trick is,that even when using the same timeline you should deliver only a part of the story per playthrough with overlapping events, which will start as random event the player will not really recognize as story plot at first , but will resolve as clever story plot later. But avoid redundant story playthrough, the story telling should show really unique views of the same story which construct to an unique experience once you see the whole picture (after playing all game sessions).

I like the basic idea and it has been used in movies (Run Lola Run) or even games (resident evil, kind of in SC I).

The trick is,that even when using the same timeline you should deliver only a part of the story per playthrough with overlapping events, which will start as random event the player will not really recognize as story plot at first , but will resolve as clever story plot later. But avoid redundant story playthrough, the story telling should show really unique views of the same story which construct to an unique experience once you see the whole picture (after playing all game sessions).

Thanks, Ashaman, that helps. I think I need to figure out a good way to balance just how much you can resolve as one character. That is, should playing through all three characters be considered a requirement to reaching some sort of satisfying conclusion or should the player be able to finish one playthrough with Character A, B, or C and be satisfied with the ending, then play the others if they want to gain more interesting but not necessarily required insights into the overall events of the timeline? This is all in terms of revealing the overall story of this journey - each character will of course have their own missions that are relevant to their individual narrative and progression through this timeline.

should playing through all three characters be considered a requirement to reaching some sort of satisfying conclusion

I would vote for this one.

I really recomment to play Star Craft I (might be the same for SCII, but I never played it), considering that it is a RTS, uses three different armies and three interweaved story parts, which combines into a single (epic) story plot (though I'm not 100% sure if they share the same timeline).

[quote name='Drakonka' timestamp='1349943145' post='4989015']
should playing through all three characters be considered a requirement to reaching some sort of satisfying conclusion

I would vote for this one.

I really recomment to play Star Craft I (might be the same for SCII, but I never played it), considering that it is a RTS, uses three different armies and three interweaved story parts, which combines into a single (epic) story plot (though I'm not 100% sure if they share the same timeline).
[/quote]

I think the fact that I haven't played SCI yet is shameful, and now that I know its story elements are relevant to this idea it's doubly shameful! Will definitely be getting it.

Thanks again!

That is, should playing through all three characters be considered a requirement to reaching some sort of satisfying conclusion or should the player be able to finish one playthrough with Character A, B, or C and be satisfied with the ending, then play the others if they want to gain more interesting but not necessarily required insights into the overall events of the timeline? This is all in terms of revealing the overall story of this journey - each character will of course have their own missions that are relevant to their individual narrative and progression through this timeline.

I personally like the second option more.

But please understand that these are completely different game design options. The first is designing a game for a single playthrough of three-part story. The second is designing game for replayability.

In second case you could even do the following:
Save all relevant decisions/events of playthrough with character A. When replaying with character B, insert these events into story as computer-controlled events. When playing with C insert the events of both A and B. If playing again with A, insert B and C events, but let player to choose new storyline for A...

[quote name='Drakonka' timestamp='1349943145' post='4989015']
That is, should playing through all three characters be considered a requirement to reaching some sort of satisfying conclusion or should the player be able to finish one playthrough with Character A, B, or C and be satisfied with the ending, then play the others if they want to gain more interesting but not necessarily required insights into the overall events of the timeline? This is all in terms of revealing the overall story of this journey - each character will of course have their own missions that are relevant to their individual narrative and progression through this timeline.

I personally like the second option more.

But please understand that these are completely different game design options. The first is designing a game for a single playthrough of three-part story. The second is designing game for replayability.

In second case you could even do the following:
Save all relevant decisions/events of playthrough with character A. When replaying with character B, insert these events into story as computer-controlled events. When playing with C insert the events of both A and B. If playing again with A, insert B and C events, but let player to choose new storyline for A...
[/quote]

I was originally leaning toward #2 as well, but am still weighing my options. The idea was quite similar to what you suggest, though I haven't yet done any real experimentation with that mechanic because right now I've only gotten as far as one character.

Using the example in my original post with Level 1 objectives for characters A and B, I was thinking perhaps I could check if the player had already completed Level 1 with character A (retrieving Blue Widget from Planet) and how long it took them to do so. Then if they go back and play character B, the amount of time they have to defend the ship for their level 1 scenario (defend ship while Blue Widget is being obtained) could be equivalent to how long it took character A to complete that level.

I plan to do something similar in my game. There will be two sides of a single story - girl and boy viewpoints. The first playthrough will always be as a girl and the second character will only be unlocked after finishing with the first one. The main story will remain the same - and does not require second playthrough to be understood. But there will be many new details in story, game mechanics and environment to be explored.

One thing that has to be thought out is how to "force" player to be at the right place at right time if story requires so. I.e. if during the first playthrough character B was covering character A in certain quest then what to do, if player decides to ignore character A completely while playing with B?

In your example - what to do if something has to happen according to scenario A logic but not according to scenario B logic? Say computer-controlled player B defended the ship of A and destroyed enemy mothership (with big explosion). Now when playing as B player will not attack mothership, but simply keeps it away from A while mostly dodging missiles. So according to game logic mothership should not explode, but according to story logic it should.

My current plan is to be flexible with timings - i.e. all important events from the first playthrough will become "checkpoints" in second. The story will not advance until player has gone through them. But I have no idea whether it works.
Such things have to be solved in game logic level. But if done right they can make story much more engaging - at least for those players, who like familiarity.

I plan to do something similar in my game. There will be two sides of a single story - girl and boy viewpoints. The first playthrough will always be as a girl and the second character will only be unlocked after finishing with the first one. The main story will remain the same - and does not require second playthrough to be understood. But there will be many new details in story, game mechanics and environment to be explored.

One thing that has to be thought out is how to "force" player to be at the right place at right time if story requires so. I.e. if during the first playthrough character B was covering character A in certain quest then what to do, if player decides to ignore character A completely while playing with B?

In your example - what to do if something has to happen according to scenario A logic but not according to scenario B logic? Say computer-controlled player B defended the ship of A and destroyed enemy mothership (with big explosion). Now when playing as B player will not attack mothership, but simply keeps it away from A while mostly dodging missiles. So according to game logic mothership should not explode, but according to story logic it should.

My current plan is to be flexible with timings - i.e. all important events from the first playthrough will become "checkpoints" in second. The story will not advance until player has gone through them. But I have no idea whether it works.
Such things have to be solved in game logic level. But if done right they can make story much more engaging - at least for those players, who like familiarity.

I think to get around the kind of issue you describe I'll need to not have too much involvement between characters in any one character's playthrough, which I think may not be how you were envisioning your version of this kind of scenario in your game . My characters will be operating in the same timeline, but with their own missions and paths that are not necessarily intertwined in each level. Eg when playing A, you won't often be directly involved with B and C in the same level at all. A is flying to some position to recover Blue Widget while B would be staying behind to defend their main ship. Because each character as I envision it now has their own "job" (eg A is a Scout, B is a Defender/Fighter), they will have different kinds of missions and objectives that are designed for their role and while they'll be going through the same journey from Day 1 to Day X, they will (mostly) be doing so in different locations, scenarios, and kinds of objectives.

I did plan on having the kind of scenario you describe - having Playable Character B defend NPC version of A in a particular mission. In this case PC B will only need to follow the path that NPC A takes and keep it alive. If NPC A dies, the player (as B) fails. However, I don't think much disruption would be possible here because:

1. Any such interactions between characters would not involve a computer ever killing a mothership (and then when played as that character being able to do something different). A mothership would be a boss, so I see no reason to have an NPC as opposed to the player fight a boss.
   
2. In addition the defence mission PC B gets (where they are defending NPC A) would likely not appear as a playable level when playing through with as A at all. It would simply be an "event" that happened as part of their narrative, not necessarily something they directly play through.
   

So the two characters, when played, would not be able to create different scenarios on different playthroughs and NPC characters do not perform elaborate or extremely significant actions (like killing a mothership).

I plan on allowing the player to play characters in any order, so it will be interesting to try and tie in the pieces of information they get in their missions in a way that makes sense regardless of which playthrough comes first.

This is an ambitious project (for me) because of these kinds of challenges and the amount of content involved. I have built a large portion of the core mechanics already so it definitely feels doable, but I'll need to be careful to keep my scope in check.

The idea you described sounds very interesting also, would love to keep up with your progress if you keep something like a dev blog.