Slashdot Mirror
The Evolution of RPGs, Storytelling
Sessions held yesterday and today touched on the future of games and story in this new generation of games. Yesterday Microsoft held a panel with RPG veterans Hironobu Sakaguchi (currently working on Blue Planet), Peter Molyneux(Fable 2), and Dr. Ray Muzkya(Mass Effect). Between the three of them, these well known designers offered a view of the next step in RPGs. Sakaguchi in particular was vocal about his love of online RPGs, and there was some talk of differing player experiences the content-heavy titles genre. Meanwhile, on the heels of Phil Harrison's keynote, Warren Spector took the stage in a conference room to discuss next-gen storytelling. His biggest complaint was the linear nature of games today, and the sameness of experiences. Different talks, with insightful and similar conclusions.
With the fluid dialogue model in Mass Effect, finally we're approaching the "interactive movies" that have been promised ever since the days of wing commander III.
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
Fable was an overhyped turd of a game. Molyneux is still managing to fool the gaming press that he is still relevant.
Mass Effect is just another crappy Unreal Engine 3 game. Oh look shiny armor with bright lights on it! Every game that is stuck with the UE3 engine has that same ridiculous look that low poly highly normal mapped models end up looking like. And the game itself sounds dreadfully boring. Bioware has really gone downhill since BG and BG2.
There are people to speak about the history and future of RPGs. None of these guys are one of them.
His biggest complaint was the linear nature of games today, and the sameness of experiences.
Its kinda hard to totally remove the linear nature of any game. Even MMORGP. If a game is good enough you wont even notice (Final Fantasy 3, 7)
Libertarian Leaning Political Discussion Forum.
The problem with non-linearity is that then you're paying to produce content that any single player is probably not going to experience. Sure, he can play the story over again to explore the different branches, but who except hardcore fans wants to do that? The challenge, rather, is to create mainly linear story lines that seem non-linear, by giving the illusion of choice, such as giving several choices that funnel back into the main thread. Another possibility is to give the player control over chronology: he chooses which parts of the story he wishes to advance when he wants. Both of these have applicability limited by the dictates of the story, of course.
The only place true non-linearity fits is when it's the primary selling point of the game. Sandbox games like the GTA series or world-based MMORPGs require non-linearity by their very nature (Of course, they also have storylines but those clearly aren't the main selling points). RPGs, though, are meant to be story-driven, and a story is primarily linear, since that's the way we humans experience time.
ceci n'est pas une
In Soviet Russia, RPG plays you.
I think quite a lot changed in RPGs since the beginning. For example, now you have to kill 50 fully 3D goblins to collect their fully 3D noses, instead of boring 2D goblins or, worse yet, ASCII characters that look nothing like goblins.
The reason why RPGs seem linear is because they are. The industry fails to learn from RPGs at the pinnacle of storytelling, instead churning out more and more Final Fantasy clones for easy sales with brand name recognition and marketting. As the consumer base and budgets grow bigger and bigger the video game industry resembles Hollywood more and more. Too much risk deviating from the tried and true rehash.
It's "Ray Muzyka," not "Ray Muzkya."
Against stupidity the Gods themselves contend in vain.
I guess Vista really was designed for games, huh?
You are attempting to post to Slashdot.
[ Allow ] [ Deny ]
That's all I ask. Forget about any other game ... I just want a Fallout 3 that is worthy of the title.
... but that's never going to happen :(
Arcanum 2 would be nice too
The reason why most plots are linear is because nonlinearity simply does not make much sense in the context of most games. Take your typical Square infinite loop choices, i.e. an example from Chrono Trigger:
Marle: Crono, let's save the world! Yes/No?
While answer = no, repeat question until answer = yes
Now really, what kind of additional experience do you get by being able to say no? Do you see Lavos blow up the world and then the game telling you sorry, that was the wrong choice? Does that even add anything? In Breath of Fire 3, you can choose to either fight the Goddess or get locked up in a box for the rest of your life. Here you're allowed to make that choice and the game basically tells you 'whoa that was dumb, you lose!' and then you get to go through the same 30 minutes unskippable sequence again if you want to answer differently. If the choice is so dumb that no one would possibly ever want to go on the other path, then it might as well be a single choice.
Now if in Chrono Trigger when you choose to not save the world, the story shifts to Magus, who continues his plan to summon Lavos to 600 AD and now his plan won't be messed up by the heroes because they quit. Then it might make sense to have the choice to give up. If you give people the choice to branch, there has to be meaningful content on either side of the branch.
And even if there is content, it's hard to balance it so that they're at least both attractive. Let's say you're on your generic journey to stop the world from being destroyed, and some random town asks you fix their bridge and put your world saving quest on hold. So you want to make this nonlinear and actually a choice. So what's the drawback for not saving the town? Maybe another town gets nuked while you're doing this? Maybe some guy on your party decide you're a fool and leave the party forever? Maybe the boss actually becomes more powerful since you're slacking and the final fight is now twice as hard?
But then what do you get back for giving that up? More insight on a character's past? A piece of inexplicably powerful item? No matter how careful you are, you'll usually end up with one choice that is still better than the other, so that choice will get picked as the 'right' one anyway.
Yes, so just imagine six adventurers fight off four groups of 99 berzerkers in full 3D!!! In Bard's Tale, all you had to do was press 'F'. Wouldn't be fun to look at if you remade this in a modern engine.
Sessions held yesterday and today touched on the future of games and story in this new generation of games
Where were these sessions?
Zonk, can you at least get the journalism questions answered in the summaries, if you're not going to bother with typos and mispellings? The critical one here is "where?" (I think we got the "who?" and "what?" ok.)
Comment of the year
The most recent generation of games has been fantastic. The last few years has seen a revolution in RPG design, and has opened up a whole new line of story oriented games. We have games that are designed to be truely player driven now, not just slightly influenced by the players, or even only given the illusion of influence in the story.
RPGs have massively broken out of the old mold in the last few years. No longer do we have something that's just a step above a computer game on paper in terms of narrative control of story.
CRPGs? They're still stuck in the old model, as far as story is concerned... the only way to fix that is to have real AIs. You need imagination and creativity for it.
I remember a game called Psychic Detective. The premise is that you were investigating a crime, but could jump into other people's minds and watch things unfold from their point of view. As you played through the game, you would only see a certain part of plot unfold the entire way, because the game progressed linearly and following one storyline prevented you from following another that happened concurrently. Moreover, the choices you made would influence the ending. If you replayed the game, you could view the game from other people's point of view and other aspects of the plot would unfold.
I always found this concept to be pretty brilliant, but I can't think of any other game that utilizes it. It showed that you can have a linear plot but allow the player to make choices that influence the ending. Why have other games like this not been developed?
Linear isn't all bad.
The game has a system where all the party members in your group have a stat based on how they like you. There are tons of question spots where you get to choose what to say/do that add/subtract to this stat. At the end of the game these values decide who sticks around in the party at the end, who dies, who betrays you. So even though your choices don't really have any immediate direct effect on how the game is played in the end it does change the outcome for your characters.
The problem is that computers are still computers, dumb as shit, and that coding is still coding, an amazingly labor intensive task requiring a high degree of skill and a proffesion were throwing more people at it don't help.
Coding is expensive, if you want a dozen armour models/textures you can put a dozen artists on it. A dozen coders working on the same code just does not work.
Computers are dumb. Well they are. Comic/manga readers might be familiar with CBZ/CBR archives, nothing more then zip/rar files renamed. Yet most downloads still come with the zip or rar extensions meaning YOU have to tell the computer to open it with a comic reader rather then your regular archive reader. It don't matter wich OS or file explorer you use. NONE of them can tell a image archive from a regular archive. Humans on the other hand can do it in an instant just by the name alone.
Amazing!
This matters in games. There is NO magic that allows NPC's to adress you as female/male. Someone somewhere has spend a lot of time writing a lot of if(x) then Y else Z statements to deal with the fact that you were given a choice of sex. What sex to play, geez. Don't get your hopes up, you are still a CRPG player.
The more choices the more IF statements and it goes up in the way one of those curves go up that go up faster then the other value increases. Logo something (and people say playing computer games improves your brain)
NWN2 suffers from this in a bad way. You have so many choices that even the main story can't cope and you end up with the ultimate weapon being a sword. Nice, my monk sure could use that. Your wizard didn't like it much either?
It is even worse, in all the talks about the dwarf becoming a monk never once was the fact mentioned that I was one. Or did the thiefling mention I was a thiefling.
For that matter as you gained more potential party members the interaction between them in the game became less and less. Not because it wasn't designed, simply because at location X where A and B were to have a discussion you had A and C in your party so it never triggered.
Free, non-linear play doesn't make it any easier, playing a monk I offcourse build the monestary. I kept checking back to see if that dude was finally going to offer me some training. No deal, told to come back later.
Yeah great, was there something there after I got fed up? More linear play would have prevented a dozen checks and lots of frustration.
I wonder what could then be done in NWN2 had axed half the choices and instead fleshed out the remaining content more. Say that you had only first party members. Would they then have been able to get a lot more interaction. Might you have been able to influence anyone else then the dwarf to change proffesions.
A gameboy game solved that nicely, despite a HUGE party from wich you had to select a cast for battle ALL characters were present during cut scenes even if they had been critically wounded in a previous fight (not killed just not available for future combat missions). The game still had the problem that certain paths could only be opened in combat with the right character but that was usually hinted at in the briefing.
NWN2 totally did that in the wrong way. It FORCED you to take certain characters while at the same time punishing you (by not showing interactions) for not choosing the magic combo. I am not talking about the female that became a fixed member of your group, that worked, but those quests you had to take for instance bishop with you.
What about freedom to roam then? Well that was what Oblivion had. But in order to prevent you to be killed to easily OR find nothing a challenge things had to scale. So in the beginning even remote areas were a cakewalk and later on you would face thugs on imperial roads in million dollar outfits demanding loose chance.
Now compare this to the far more linear, less freedom, Planescape Torment. Areas were locked off, stopping you from going to far too fast, you couldn't p
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Exactly! I'd mod you up if I could.
To expand on the grandparent's example, suppose you're on your way to save the world and a village asks you for help with some unrelated problem. The choice here isn't about what gets you the biggest advantage later in the game, it's about what kind of character you're playing. Are you playing someone who only cares about the final goal, or are you someone who helps people because that's the right thing to do? Even if it risks your final goal?
In the end, roleplaying isn't just adventuring and overcoming obstacles, it's also about exploring the role you're playing. That's why Torment was so brilliant, while the protagonist of Baldur's Gate 1 was little more than a collection of stats that the rest of the party gathered around.
As I recall it was 99 groups of 99 beserkers
*Warning: I don't have any specific message in mind, and I'm just trying to include whatever responses occur to me. My thoughts may be a bit disjointed.*
IMHO, the neccessary quality would be that the presence of you, the player, creates a unique game experience- this is totally impossible, of course, when someone has to code it all ahead of time. This is the reason people play tabletop RPGs, of the D&D variety.
I notice a lot of discussion about "linear" games, or a "linear" story, or "linear" whatever else. I have to say this: "linear" means following a straight line, right? Time is more or less linear. That is not really an issue in games. The talk is about gameplay, where calling it linear is a little more ambiguous- do you mean you progress at a steady pace towards your goal? Do you mean that you have no real choices within the storyline? Do you mean that the game is literally a straight line, ala Crash Bandicoot? I guess what I mean is: please find another word to express your idea- "linear" is currently fully booked for the rest of the discussion.
I have to go now, so I've forgotten my other random points.
You live and learn. At least, you live.
Along those same lines, another of my favorites is in "Resident Evil" style games:
NPC: "I really need some Medicine to clear up this infection, I can't go with you while I'm injured. I think there is some in the infirmary down the hall."
Player: [walks down hall, opens door to infirmary, then sees Locked Cabinet]
Game: "You need the Blue Key to open this cabinet."
Player: [Tries to chop cabinet open using fire axe]
Game: "You need the Blue Key to open this cabinet."
Player: [Fires shotgun at lock on cabinet from point blank range]
Game: "You need the Blue Key to open this cabinet."
Player: [Points shotgun at own head and fires]
*sigh*
It's great to hear that game makers are taking story more seriously than in the past. Personally, I've never been satisfied by a 'branching' storyline; too often, it's just the illusion of choice. I remember reading in Nintendo Power a year or so before Final Fantasy 6 (then dubbed 3) came out that there were "3 separate storylines to explore!" with a screenshot of a black backdrop with 3 characters to choose from (I think it was Terra, Locke and Edgar? I'm not positive about that though). When I got to that point in the game, I was so excited to choose something in a game and have my choice matter. I was excited by the prospect of getting to play the game three times and have three different stories. When I discovered you only got to choose the order in which you played those sections of the game, I was quite disappointed. It's still one of my favourite games of all time, and perhaps in retrospect, as an adult, I might not want to play the game three times through to feel as if I've 'beaten' it. Still, that was the one criticism I had on the game as a kid.
There will always be a market for the linear game model, but I believe that the future of RPG's (and other genre of game) includes dynamically generated storylines. Research into interactive storytelling has been going on for a long time. A research project at the University of Alberta that I will be working on this summer deals with player-specific storylines in an RPG domain. I believe these games have great potential to be incredibly immersive and fun, and fun is what it's all about!
Wait - the article says Sakaguchi is working on Blue Dragon, the xbox 360 game. Blue Planet the game is http://store.fantasyflightgames.com/index.asp?Page Action=VIEWPROD&ProdID=45