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The last poll looked at stats in cRPGs, and not surprisingly for our audience, 90% of respondents liked stats in their RPGs. A little over 7% wanted them kept simple and a handful thought they were outdated - although we didn't get any clear feedback on alternative mechanisms. This week we look at the future of narrative in cRPGs (potential Fallout 2 spoiler follows).
This year has seen heightened debate over the role of stories in games on many sites around the internet. While gamers have long argued about the quality of stories, there hasn’t been much prior debate over their role or whether traditional story-telling techniques even belong in games. Slate seemed to start the ball rolling, with this article railing against excessive use of cinematics. Games, they assert, should be an interactive medium -- and they’re right. Going further, the article goes on to hint that traditional narrative has no place in games – that the focus should be on emergent gameplay.
Some of my favourite cRPG moments are story related (and by “story” I’m going to throw plot, narrative, dialogue and character development into the same pot). Planescape: Torment enthralled me with a compelling setting and fascinating characters. Sometimes while playing I would sit back and wonder for a while at characters like Trias the Betrayer or the idea of dozens? thousands? of iterations of Nameless Ones through the years. The ending of Fallout shorted synapses in my brain – brilliant.
One moment in Fallout 2 (the first time I played it) stands out in my memory and illustrates the interactive nature of games. It was an insignificant part – one most gamers would think is unremarkable – but it caught me by surprise and drew me deeper into the game. Little Jonny was captive in the Slag caves and I was trying to resolve the tension between the townsfolk of Modoc and the Slags…the sort of routine quest we’ve all done a thousand times and always ends well. Somehow I screwed it up; it was like being hit with a sledgehammer when I returned to town and found they had attacked the Slags…and everyone was dead. That’s the thing about a good game – and particularly a cRPG – the player has a chance to make decisions and participate in the creation of the narrative.
But only as far as the developer has scripted. As time goes on, it seems I routinely hear developers saying “we can’t include that – that would make the scripting unmanageable”. In fact, with the success of Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic it seems the industry has largely embraced a “good” path and an “evil path”, which doesn’t leave a lot of room for player expression.
Perhaps the next evolutionary phase in cutting-edge cRPGs is greater use of emergent gameplay through advanced NPC and faction AI – the RPG equivalent of procedurally generated graphics. Imagine Oblivion’s Radiant AI ratcheted up several notches and able to interact with the player in more ways. The recent Oblivion fan interview included this question:We're aware that RAI gives schedules and desires to individual NPCs, but how will RAI work on a larger, social scale? For example, how might an NPC work in a guild environment, based on both its own goals, as well as those of the guild it is a part of?
It doesn’t work on a grand scale like that. We give the individuals of the guild goals that match with what we know they should be doing. But since they have ownership rights and are friendly automatically with others in the guild, we do get nice behavior from guild NPCs as a group.
Now imagine if it did work on a grand scale – if those NPCs could respond to the player’s actions and even generate quests on a bigger scale.
At the end of the day, no amount of clever AI will ever replace quality writing, creative scenarios and intriguing characters – but perhaps there’s room for a combination that yields greater scope for players than two pre-determined paths.
What do you think? Is the story critical or a distant consideration behind the gameplay? Are traditional storytelling techniques out of place in games? Think nothing can replace hand-crafted quests? got a comment on your favourite game story? Hit the poll and don’t forget to comment. |
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Side Quest: Emergent Stories
