Yahtzee, if you missed out on Chrono Trigger, I might suggest you find it and play it. Well worth it - no tedious random battles, and hey - what other game gives you the option of taking on Main Bad Guy right from the get go?
Interactive Storytelling
- Thread starter Yahtzee Croshaw
- Start date
I suppose it is *not* non-linear but it is still well written to me.
Your DVD analogy is apt, but like a DVD if I love the story I want to see the special features, if I love the film I want to see it over and over again, even if the same person is still the killer.
I fully agree with you though I still love "Heavy Rain".
Your DVD analogy is apt, but like a DVD if I love the story I want to see the special features, if I love the film I want to see it over and over again, even if the same person is still the killer.
I fully agree with you though I still love "Heavy Rain".
Ironic that exactly what he's talking about storytelling wise was done to perfection in his least favorite genre.J-Alfred said:
Yahtzee, about your opening confrontation. There's a couple of ways to play it:
1) someone mentioned drones earlier, and that was my initial idea. basically, you're looking at a Wheel Carrier, and it will deploy an unbeatable force of fighters if it detects you. The obvious problem here is that a carrier ship would be difficult to code and design, so it's not the easiest solution.
2) you want to make sure players recognize it as an immense threat without thinking it is unkillable. a death beam would enforce the wrong idea I think. if you were going to go with a death beam, the simple answer is to go the freelancer route of having cruising engines take a second to charge before they fire, and making it so that charging cruise engines makes you a glowing, white hot bullet on sensors. this would be a good cop-out, as the player can believe that suddenly generating a huge amount of heat would make the wheel ship simply switch to a weapons system with heat-based tracking and blast you into nothing.
3) you like the idea of divergent plots, so how about making it so that the player can potentially screw up and still live? let's say you've got a hold full of cargo in addition to the salvage you've just retrieved. If the wheel ship spots you, it tractors you in and they do a search and seizure of contraband. this means that you start with no resources instead of the meager ones you would've had had you not been caught. whether this makes sense largely depends on what sort of image you want Wheel to have; this will make them more of a group that polices technology, where the previous two suggestions make them someone who hoards it. perhaps they're trying to prevent the use of alien tech in terran vessels, and the reason they are capable of this is that they use alien tech in their own ships. perhaps they are called "Wheel" because alien tech is so advanced that it brands old terran tech as useless and obsolete. maybe the reason you're willing to risk your life in a salvage op is because their tech is so valuable, that even a basic alien engine or alien ship-to-ship weapon is light-years ahead of the most advanced tech available to anyone outside of wheel. just some ways to expand the plot.
4) I think a really interesting way to go about it would be to have whatever destroyed the wheel ship that you're salvaging come back to attack the new wheel ship. it would give you a sort of "small player in a bigger world" feel right off the bat, and would give you an excuse to escape, since concievably, wheel wouldn't leave without salvaging the equipment off the destroyed ship and finding you in the process. It would also explain why they didn't kill you or capture you; they suddenly have bigger problems than a lone pissant salvaging their tech. I'm also a fan of any way of presenting the politics of a setting to a player without doing it in a boring text wall or droning speeches. This delivers the politics with a quick punch: Wheel bad. Guys killing Wheel, also likely bad. Both groups dislike you, and you'll want to avoid them, but you may be able to play the groups against each other.
I think my ideas are good. Perhaps you will too.
1) someone mentioned drones earlier, and that was my initial idea. basically, you're looking at a Wheel Carrier, and it will deploy an unbeatable force of fighters if it detects you. The obvious problem here is that a carrier ship would be difficult to code and design, so it's not the easiest solution.
2) you want to make sure players recognize it as an immense threat without thinking it is unkillable. a death beam would enforce the wrong idea I think. if you were going to go with a death beam, the simple answer is to go the freelancer route of having cruising engines take a second to charge before they fire, and making it so that charging cruise engines makes you a glowing, white hot bullet on sensors. this would be a good cop-out, as the player can believe that suddenly generating a huge amount of heat would make the wheel ship simply switch to a weapons system with heat-based tracking and blast you into nothing.
3) you like the idea of divergent plots, so how about making it so that the player can potentially screw up and still live? let's say you've got a hold full of cargo in addition to the salvage you've just retrieved. If the wheel ship spots you, it tractors you in and they do a search and seizure of contraband. this means that you start with no resources instead of the meager ones you would've had had you not been caught. whether this makes sense largely depends on what sort of image you want Wheel to have; this will make them more of a group that polices technology, where the previous two suggestions make them someone who hoards it. perhaps they're trying to prevent the use of alien tech in terran vessels, and the reason they are capable of this is that they use alien tech in their own ships. perhaps they are called "Wheel" because alien tech is so advanced that it brands old terran tech as useless and obsolete. maybe the reason you're willing to risk your life in a salvage op is because their tech is so valuable, that even a basic alien engine or alien ship-to-ship weapon is light-years ahead of the most advanced tech available to anyone outside of wheel. just some ways to expand the plot.
4) I think a really interesting way to go about it would be to have whatever destroyed the wheel ship that you're salvaging come back to attack the new wheel ship. it would give you a sort of "small player in a bigger world" feel right off the bat, and would give you an excuse to escape, since concievably, wheel wouldn't leave without salvaging the equipment off the destroyed ship and finding you in the process. It would also explain why they didn't kill you or capture you; they suddenly have bigger problems than a lone pissant salvaging their tech. I'm also a fan of any way of presenting the politics of a setting to a player without doing it in a boring text wall or droning speeches. This delivers the politics with a quick punch: Wheel bad. Guys killing Wheel, also likely bad. Both groups dislike you, and you'll want to avoid them, but you may be able to play the groups against each other.
I think my ideas are good. Perhaps you will too.
Bah, hiding schmiding! How about this: The big evil ship has stuff you need, and can detect your engine emissions. So you have to shut down, drift with the trash and when it comes close, shoot it with your grappling hook and reel yourself in so you can grab the McGuffin from it!
Feel free to steal this idea, as long as I get a free copy.
Feel free to steal this idea, as long as I get a free copy
.
I think Yahtzee just answered his own question as to why Heavy Rain didn't have everything non-liniar - who can realistically say that they can write 60 dozen alternate paths and stories? He himself said that his project was never finished because it was too much work.
Not sure about Silent Hill 2 though... more or less all the endings remain the same since the killer is always the same person, just like in Heavy Rain. I do agree though that they did other stuff more subtle, which is exactly why I love SH2.
Not sure about Silent Hill 2 though... more or less all the endings remain the same since the killer is always the same person, just like in Heavy Rain. I do agree though that they did other stuff more subtle, which is exactly why I love SH2.
I dunno.. I liked it in Indiana Jones Fate of Atlantis where you got to choose whether you were going to strictly puzzle-it-up or use your fists on Nazis, and also whether you worked with the woman or not, it didn't change the ending but it changed the path through the game (I remember watching someone else playing it and was like "Hey, how come you're on a submarine?! That doesn't happen in the game!") and that for me was great. I prefer that to the end level of Streets of Rage where you get to choose whether to work for the boss or not, and if you both disagree you have to kill each other, or go back to level 5 with those ridiculous conveyor belts or something. Summary: Indiana Jones FOA was awesome. Why can't there be more games like that?
I couldn't agree more. These are becoming articles are more opinionated than anything when he starts criticizing a game like Heavy Rain, saying its flawed in concept. Then goes on to say he's making nearly the same type of interactive experience but it will be better (mostly just because he says so)... Yet, I cannot some how stop feeling that these will never actually be complete, and when/if they are ever complete and he releases them out onto the internet; how do we know its not flash game or something that we could just find on Newgrounds?twm1709 said:
... I expected like five more pages... WTF?
I dont' think, "It's not hte game I would have made" is good enough an explanation.
And continuing on on a completely different tangent(your own work) made it feel like you were going to come back to heavy rain. But you didn't.
Short, lazy piece.
I dont' think, "It's not hte game I would have made" is good enough an explanation.
And continuing on on a completely different tangent(your own work) made it feel like you were going to come back to heavy rain. But you didn't.
Short, lazy piece.
Yahtzee, you may be able to give the player character's ship a certain stealth mechanic. They can be discovered by one of your big-bads in events and such which makes their stealth mechanic worthless, so they must hide in more traditional ways.
This would make it so players wouldn't avoid your enemies, but would also allow you to use the idea you mentioned in the article.
This would make it so players wouldn't avoid your enemies, but would also allow you to use the idea you mentioned in the article.
I hate the idea that the identity of the Origami Killer would change depending on your actions, I really hate it. For me with stories and games I want the choices of other people to remain constant and consistent with their character. The only way something they do should change would be if you do something to influence them.
If the identity of the OK changed in Heavy Rain, that may have made more interesting game play, but it would have been awful storytelling. The kind that would cause Annie Wilkes to go white with rage.
If the identity of the OK changed in Heavy Rain, that may have made more interesting game play, but it would have been awful storytelling. The kind that would cause Annie Wilkes to go white with rage.
At all times, I try to stick to the issue and not the people involved. However, there reaches a certain point of any discussion where the depth of the issue is exhausted and there's no place left for progress to go but over the limitations of the participants.A1 said:Upon closer inspection of your previous post I think you may simply be starting to project now.geldonyetich said:So how would this be different from any other one of your replies to me so far?A1 said:
However, to hold an aspirations that anyone on the Internet would change their mind about anything seems to be a naive hope. I just find this particular instance with Yahtzee flat out calling Heavy Rain a bad, non-interactive game in direct words and your refusing to believe that he meant what he said to be an incredulous example.
The conclusion that you've just been bad at exerting the necessary effort for comprehension all this time, as you inadvertently admitted to doing in the topmost quote, is the more feasible explanation. Bad luck you stumbled across a tireless rebutter [http://redwing.hutman.net/~mreed/warriorshtm/tirelessrebutter.htm].
Easy. It's long-range scanners aren't affected by the field, it's short-range are. Moving outside the field means you'd get detected instantly, and taken out just as quickly.
This basically means that you have to play cat-and-mouse with it in the field, evade it's sensors for long enough to make it think there's no-one there. When it leaves, you can go.
geldonyetich said:At all times, I try to stick to the issue and not the people involved. However, there reaches a certain point of any discussion where the depth of the issue is exhausted and there's no place left for progress to go but over the limitations of the participants.A1 said:Upon closer inspection of your previous post I think you may simply be starting to project now.geldonyetich said:So how would this be different from any other one of your replies to me so far?A1 said:
However, to hold an aspirations that anyone on the Internet would change their mind about anything seems to be a naive hope. I just find this particular instance with Yahtzee flat out calling Heavy Rain a bad, non-interactive game in direct words and your refusing to believe that he meant what he said to be an incredulous example.
The conclusion that you've just been bad at exerting the necessary effort for comprehension all this time, as you inadvertently admitted to doing in the topmost quote, is the more feasible explanation. Bad luck you stumbled across a tireless rebutter [http://redwing.hutman.net/~mreed/warriorshtm/tirelessrebutter.htm].
That's exactly the point. "Yahtzee flat out calling Heavy Rain a bad, non-interactive game"? He hasn't done any such thing. And that's exactly the problem. If he had, we wouldn't be having this debate.
What you've described is actually your opinion, not Yahtzee's. It MIGHT be Yahtzee's opinion but there is no way to know for sure without Yahtzee's own verification, which we may never get.
Why not make it so that the enemy ship's speed is determined by an equation wherein the farther away from the enemy you are, the faster the enemy can go. You'll have to put some limiters on the equation, so that it doesn't get too slow when you are close to it, but it should be nothing less advanced than a few Equal To Or Greater Than signs. Also, if you can somehow put a bit of a pause into it, so that the player is able to think that they've escaped for a little bit, before they notice the ship they thought they'd left in the SPAAAACE-dust is right behind them. And you'd need some way to make the equation not cyclical, in that the ship would keep getting closer to you, and then farther away as its speed wears off because of your proximity, because that would not flow well gameplay wise. So, maybe not a simple equation. But I still think that it wouldn't be too hard to do, with the right mathy person help.
Is it really that hard to understand that I'm under the opinion that what Yahtzee expressed was a clear opinion while you're under the opinion that what Yahtzee expressed is an unclear opinion?A1 said:That's exactly the point. "Yahtzee flat out calling Heavy Rain a bad, non-interactive game"? He hasn't done any such thing. And that's exactly the problem. If he had, we wouldn't be having this debate.geldonyetich said:At all times, I try to stick to the issue and not the people involved. However, there reaches a certain point of any discussion where the depth of the issue is exhausted and there's no place left for progress to go but over the limitations of the participants.A1 said:Upon closer inspection of your previous post I think you may simply be starting to project now.geldonyetich said:So how would this be different from any other one of your replies to me so far?A1 said:
However, to hold an aspirations that anyone on the Internet would change their mind about anything seems to be a naive hope. I just find this particular instance with Yahtzee flat out calling Heavy Rain a bad, non-interactive game in direct words and your refusing to believe that he meant what he said to be an incredulous example.
The conclusion that you've just been bad at exerting the necessary effort for comprehension all this time, as you inadvertently admitted to doing in the topmost quote, is the more feasible explanation. Bad luck you stumbled across a tireless rebutter [http://redwing.hutman.net/~mreed/warriorshtm/tirelessrebutter.htm].
What you've described is actually your opinion, not Yahtzee's. It MIGHT be Yahtzee's opinion but there is no way to know for sure without Yahtzee's own verification, which we may never get.
I mean, you could keep insisting that Yahtzee wasn't clear ad nauseam, but it's not going to change my opinion to the contrary.
geldonyetich said:Is it really that hard to understand that I'm under the opinion that what Yahtzee expressed was a clear opinion while you're under the opinion that what Yahtzee expressed is an unclear opinion?A1 said:That's exactly the point. "Yahtzee flat out calling Heavy Rain a bad, non-interactive game"? He hasn't done any such thing. And that's exactly the problem. If he had, we wouldn't be having this debate.geldonyetich said:At all times, I try to stick to the issue and not the people involved. However, there reaches a certain point of any discussion where the depth of the issue is exhausted and there's no place left for progress to go but over the limitations of the participants.A1 said:Upon closer inspection of your previous post I think you may simply be starting to project now.geldonyetich said:So how would this be different from any other one of your replies to me so far?A1 said:
However, to hold an aspirations that anyone on the Internet would change their mind about anything seems to be a naive hope. I just find this particular instance with Yahtzee flat out calling Heavy Rain a bad, non-interactive game in direct words and your refusing to believe that he meant what he said to be an incredulous example.
The conclusion that you've just been bad at exerting the necessary effort for comprehension all this time, as you inadvertently admitted to doing in the topmost quote, is the more feasible explanation. Bad luck you stumbled across a tireless rebutter [http://redwing.hutman.net/~mreed/warriorshtm/tirelessrebutter.htm].
What you've described is actually your opinion, not Yahtzee's. It MIGHT be Yahtzee's opinion but there is no way to know for sure without Yahtzee's own verification, which we may never get.
I mean, you could keep insisting that Yahtzee wasn't clear ad naseum, but it's not going to change my opinion to the contrary.
It's not my opinion. It's just an observation.