Fallout is, unsurprisingly, a game that is coming up in my thoughts more recently - not only was Fallout 4 just announced, set in my own hometown no less, but I also saw Mad Max: Fury Road not too long ago, so the idea of a post-apocalyptic landscape is kind of... not really zeitgeisty, but something that I've been thinking about.
Fallout 3 was a great game, but it had its flaws. And one of the biggest flaws (spoilers for a rather old game) was the way it ended. After tracking down your father's water-purification project, the Enclave tries to sabotage you and you basically are forced to sacrifice yourself in order for the project to start up - you're bathed in radiation and die. This was made all the more frustrating by the presence of a supermutant follower, who is immune to radiation. Wouldn't it be far easier to just have him enter the code?
I'm led to understand that some DLC fixed this - allowing you to recover afterward - but it's really an odd idea in the first place - to have an open-world game... well, end. Games often have linear narratives, but this makes sense for some genres more than others. In linear games, it makes sense to have a story that hits plot points in a straight line. But the open-world game is more about setting than plot. Plot and characters inform that setting, to be sure (all the elements of storytelling are pretty inextricably linked anyway,) but the core engagement with your open-world games is a sense of freedom and exploration. The danger of having a main quest is that you essentially tell players "you can do anything here! But remember that if you aren't on this single path, you're on a side quest."
Now perhaps that isn't so bad. In Skyrim, I've created assassin-type characters who really just do the Dark Brotherhood and Thieves' Guild chains and basically feel complete (Dark Brotherhood especially.) But I think there are ways to tell compelling stories that don't push a single one to the forefront.
Probably the most culturally relevant fantasy work at the moment is George R. R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire, which you probably already know is the series of books upon which HBO's Game of Thrones is based (though the show and books are deviating more as the show has caught up to or passed Martin's writing.) While there's every possibility that the various plot threads will ultimately entwine to give us the series' endgame, for much of its run there have been wildly different events going on - all of which are certainly important.
The two most important supernatural forces in the story are separated by thousands of miles. Jon Snow, up at the Wall, is desperately trying to work out a peace deal with the Wildlings because of the necromantic Others (White Walkers in the show.) Meanwhile, Daenerys Targaryen achieved a miracle in bringing three fossilized dragon eggs back to life, and has her legitimacy as a conqueror and liberator backed by her status as "Mother of Dragons."
These are both hugely important things happening in the world, but the meat of the series has been more concerned with political intrigue in King's Landing. But that's not all - you've also got the chaos in the Riverlands, possible treachery in the Iron Isles (something the show hasn't dealt with all that much,) and a religious order of badass, terrifying assassins across the sea in Braavos.
The point is, Game of Thrones isn't just one big fantasy epic - it's like ten of them all happening at once.
And an open-world game could work that way.
World of Warcraft actually manages this, somewhat as a consequence of its periodic structure. Each expansion has focused the story somewhat, but generally, we move on to fairly different threats each time we go somewhere new. The Lich King and Deathwing were both existential threats to life on Azeroth, yet they felt very different and involved totally different "major players."
The leveling experience in the old world, even post-Cataclysm, really embodies this idea - you'll start in your own racial starting zone (and the fact that there are so many allows you to have quite different experiences even early on,) and while you can see how the various plot threads are connected, you can have a pretty different kind of adventure depending on where you go.
Is this all that different from how games like Skyrim work already? Perhaps not. The question is whether games would work if the makers tore up the signs that said "this way to most important plot." Does the main quest act as a crutch - a little linear game to provide structure lest people be overwhelmed by the freedom they're given? And would taking that crutch away make them fall? It's certainly possible, and I'm definitely an armchair game designer here.
But it might be cool to play a game where you really don't know which of the world-ending threats that pop up is the biggest one.
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