Interactive Storytelling
- Thread starter Yahtzee Croshaw
- Start date
It's a problem all games face, the claim of change and great choices (first noted in your Fable review) and then it's inevitably smashed to pieces by the fact that games have to be structed and programming that much choice into a modern game would probably take 2-3 years of solid game making.
From what I can tell, that is.
From what I can tell, that is.
I don't necessarily agree on the hole non-linear storytelling issue. I think there is non linear storytelling, but it's definition isn't what everyone thinks it is. My personal definition of non linear story telling is that the order in which you experience events is (1) not in chronological order, (2) has no particular reason for progressing in the way that it does, and (3) doesn't always yield new information (aka goes through the same event twice).
I'm probably asking to be argued with though.
I'm probably asking to be argued with though.
Columbo always reveals the killer at the start so it's not impossible to have a murder story be engaging when the killer is known but then again we're asking Heavy Rain to stack up to Columbo.
By the looks of it it may not even hit retail shelves in Australia [http://aussie-nintendo.com/news/21914/], the good news is that a European version will run just fine in an Australian Wii and supposedly Game Traders has import copies.
I'm surprised you haven't opted for a wrap-around system for the space game. It gives the illusion of space and freedom, but still restricts the player to one overall area.
Of course, trying to implement something like that is likely much more trouble than it's worth.
Of course, trying to implement something like that is likely much more trouble than it's worth.
Honestly, I've always found the Insta-Kill beginnings to be rather cheap, cause frustration, and dissuade the player from trying to repeat the same narrative path (so if you want them to get close to one of these ships later in the game, they'll likely need major prodding). A player should never be punished in the first portion of the game. This was the cop-out used by developers in the early years of game and should have been Insta-killed itself.
Now, it is far better to alter the narrative to force the player along a set path, without their 'knowledge.' Dead Space's beginning handled this very well. Isaac was seperated from the group and was able to see the danger from the safety of isolation. Then that isolation - apparently - becomes extremely UNSAFE... forcing him to run like hell (but never actually killing him off). This technique was also perfectly utilized in the beginning of System Shock 2 (where it appears that you're about to be sucked into the vacuum of space).
If this initial setting is an asteroid or debris field, it is likely the Don't-Point-That-At-My-Planet ship will begin forcing the debris out of its path (by shields or blowing the debris away with very big guns). If the player is thusly warned, 'Get out of here now or you die,' they will move... usually away from the Big Bad that's tearing up the place.
No 'you are dead' or 'game over' to frustrate the player... just a not-so gentle nudge in the direction you want.
Now, it is far better to alter the narrative to force the player along a set path, without their 'knowledge.' Dead Space's beginning handled this very well. Isaac was seperated from the group and was able to see the danger from the safety of isolation. Then that isolation - apparently - becomes extremely UNSAFE... forcing him to run like hell (but never actually killing him off). This technique was also perfectly utilized in the beginning of System Shock 2 (where it appears that you're about to be sucked into the vacuum of space).
If this initial setting is an asteroid or debris field, it is likely the Don't-Point-That-At-My-Planet ship will begin forcing the debris out of its path (by shields or blowing the debris away with very big guns). If the player is thusly warned, 'Get out of here now or you die,' they will move... usually away from the Big Bad that's tearing up the place.
No 'you are dead' or 'game over' to frustrate the player... just a not-so gentle nudge in the direction you want.
May I please make a small suggestion to the terrain problem in FSG? You could say that the battleships use undodgeable lazer cannons, but due to the immense amount of power required to use it, they only arm them when they decide that a target is a serious threat (something to do with the technology you collect). Also, firing the lazer too close to the ship would not only be inaccurate and potentialy damaging, they only fire from a large distance; encouraging players to stay as close to the ship as possible.
Yeah, maby the story isn't non-linear but there is no reason the telling can't be.Yahtzee Croshaw said:
Yahtzee, my man, you are wrong. I've written a few non-linear stories before. Well, no, I guess there was a linearity to the story itself, but it was told non-linear manner. Scenes were intentionally broken up and moved around out of order, the beginning was told side by side with the ending and not all of the story was given to the readers. I did this with the intention of creating a reading experience where the audience got to have some control over the story, they got to fill in the gaps with their own ideas about what happened. You could do that with a game just as easily, and, yes, I think you could do it well, although it probably would never get past the producers, who fear strange and unique approaches to making games/movies/whatever.
Yeah, I was talking to you, and the clarity should have been self-evident by the context of the link to the post where we left off on this.A1 said:I can only assume that you're talking to me with that first part of your post (thank you for lacking clarity on that).geldonyetich said:Okay, he just said it was "not non-linear," like, a million times. Happy now, A1? [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/jump/6.181376.5383260]If not, I wish I could afford to fund a trip so you could visit the Mana Bar and ask him to write "linear" on a piece of paper. Then draw a line under it to clarify he understands the concept of linearity.
A-freaking-men. I must have created over a dozen little projects over the last couple years that I abandoned for this reason. Right now, I'm thinking maybe it's best to go completely freeform, which refutes something I believed earlier: that it's best to have the entire game designed in advance.Yahtzee said:
Curses. I need to win the lottery so I can have that in-person Yahtzee line drawing exercise I was talking about done.
Ah well. As I've surmised for awhile now, some matters cannot be resolved via talking them through, but rather by a fundamental change of the nature one or more involved parties. It seems to me that it's just too important for you right now to believe that Heavy Rain is a "great game" to try to understand how it is that Yahtzee has painstakingly explained it is not.
I think the clock tower series used the whole "The killer can be different people depending on how you play the game" angle.
Honestly I get the feeling that's what they started with originally for Heavy Rain, but somewhere along the line it got cut for time. I mean the first 3/4 of the game are basically spent setting up EVERYONE as a viable suspect, even the big reveal was animated in such a way that it seems like they could easily use the same scene and swap the names out where appropriate. It could be that somewhere along the way they just went "fuck, now I've got to write like 8 different endings to get each killer, and then every possible permutation of those endings depending on who lived and who died..." and decided to just stick with making it the same guy every time.
As for the space game, why not have the game spawn more enemies closer to you if you get away from the first one? Maybe every time you evade a group of enemies, the next group to spawn has even more, thus having the game become gradually more challenging as you accomplish the objective (Assuming the objective is meant to be "Get away from the bad guy". It could be something entirely different in which case this might not work).
Honestly I get the feeling that's what they started with originally for Heavy Rain, but somewhere along the line it got cut for time. I mean the first 3/4 of the game are basically spent setting up EVERYONE as a viable suspect, even the big reveal was animated in such a way that it seems like they could easily use the same scene and swap the names out where appropriate. It could be that somewhere along the way they just went "fuck, now I've got to write like 8 different endings to get each killer, and then every possible permutation of those endings depending on who lived and who died..." and decided to just stick with making it the same guy every time.
As for the space game, why not have the game spawn more enemies closer to you if you get away from the first one? Maybe every time you evade a group of enemies, the next group to spawn has even more, thus having the game become gradually more challenging as you accomplish the objective (Assuming the objective is meant to be "Get away from the bad guy". It could be something entirely different in which case this might not work).
Because adding easy "I win" buttons does not make for entertaining games.DuLt said:
Although I guess it depends if avoiding detection is 100% the goal or not.
Welcome to the forums, by the way. Not to be too alienating - your question was a bit more interesting than most of the stuff I see bouncing around here.
There's a whole lot of stuff that can easily destroy a ship and most of it is invisible. Maybe the area is surrounded by a "shell" of anti-matter and you can't leave until the big ship has mined it all for its weapons research or all your atoms will be neutralized and turned into nothingness. The anti-matter was probably be drawn to the gravitational pull of the asteroid cluster, hence why is wasn't there before you flew into the area, you could even have the skipper saying something along the lines of "if it's not bad enough that I'm surrounded by anti-matter, I'm also cornered by the second-biggest ship I've ever seen. I better hide."
Well, there's my useless suggestion quota filled for the day, now I'm off to sell doors, door-to-door.
Well, there's my useless suggestion quota filled for the day, now I'm off to sell doors, door-to-door.
I swear this sounds familiar, wasn't it in the opening sequence on an episode of Firefly?jVictor said:
Even though I'm not a game designer in any way, I have the unquenchable urge to give you advice. For the problem in your game in which the player may just run away like a little shit from the enemy ship. You could have it that the enemy ship will detect you if you move too much, thus giving a reason that a player can't high-tail it out of there.
when talking about a game being fundamentally flawed yahtzee, it's funny that you seem to be finding fundamental concept flaws in your own game.. a little sad maybe, but funny in that sort of high cognitive function way that appreciates irony
good luck with tackling that beast, seems you started a project just because of a control scheme, and unless your games called bionic commando, don't think that was a very bright idea, but maybe you'll salvage it once you can spend time with it.
good luck with tackling that beast, seems you started a project just because of a control scheme, and unless your games called bionic commando, don't think that was a very bright idea, but maybe you'll salvage it once you can spend time with it.
The choices you make lead to different areas with different pieces of evidence and different leads that point to different people. They could have programmed different killers who did things for different reasons, and because they spent most of the game trying to point fingers at everyone, it wouldn't be hard to justify that anyone did it.Journeythroughhell said: