Putting the Player in Control - Ramble Rant

Plenty of games offer choices of dialog in response to NPCs in an attempt to allow the player to shape the conversation, and even parts of larger segments of the plot. You know, the thing which Bioware has been showing off since Knights of the Old Republic, and is present even now in Mass Effect 2 and games by other developers, like Fallout 3 and Alpha Protocol.

Mass Effect's Branching Dialog System

The key part, and problem, of this system is that, with a few exceptions, it is totally reactive. You walk up to an NPC, the game transitions to a sort of pseudo-cutscene, and with hardly a word of greeting the NPC will immediately ask you to save their cat or something, from which you can choose to help them or butcher their immediate family. You're given a very limited set of options made by the developer, so you can't, say, ask whether you can replace the cat, or whether she might prefer a dog. Of course, you could say it isn't always totally reactive. In the above screen of Mass Effect 1, we can see Commander Shepherd seems to have the option of asking a couple questions, or just blowing the NPC off and leaving. Still, I will guarantee you that this Gianna Parasini was the one who opened up the conversation by introducing herself. You're still in a reactive mode, and the dialog options you have will always guide you towards what the developer wants. You can't ask Parasini to save your cat or cough up her lunch money.

In other games, especially sandbox games such as Grand theft Auto or Saint's Row, you actually do have the option to open up interactions with NPCs on your own terms. Unfortunately, your only real option is shooting them in the face, or driving over them with your car. Not exactly the kind of social interactions you'd want for a friendly, or at least interesting, conversation.

Like I said, there are exceptions. Mass Effect 2 introduced the ability to interrupt NPCs while they're in the middle of saying something. Of course, this really only plays out as a sort of quick time event, as you can only press the interrupt button when an on-screen indicator comes up and tells you to. It is still reactive, the developers are giving you a prompt and you can either follow through or leave it alone. When I first played the game, I was hoping I'd be able to slap an NPC in the middle of conversation whenever I wanted. As it is these interrupt actions server only as rewards if your morality bar is high enough in either the "paragon" or "renegade" direction, and almost never have negative consequences for you.

There are some games which experiment with more emergent systems of giving the player the ability to say whatever they want to any NPC. One example of this, is the system of giving the player a number of keywords which they can learn, like "The Flaming Sword" and "The Orcs of Death Cliff", and then while they are in conversation with an NPC they can bring up any keyword they have previously learned and ask them if they know anything about it.

Shadowrun, a game which incorporates the ability to ask NPCs about specific keywords

Unfortunately, 90% of the time, when you ask an NPC about something they will say something along the lines of "What? I don't understand." This is rather frustrating for the player, and they end up asking every NPC they meet a string of keywords in hope that one of them will trigger the NPC's knowledge of that term. This method of giving the player control does not really accomplish its goal because the player is still activating little triggers put in by the designers when they ask an NPC about a keyword they know something about.

And now for something totally different...

ArmA II

ArmA II is a military sandbox sort of sim. I've only played a little bit of the demo, but the thing which really stuck out to me was your ability to say various things to your squadmates in game. Since the game is a tactical shooter, most of these options are things like "Hold Fire", or "Get in the Hummer!". However, there's a surprising amount of commands you can use. I found this system to be very organic. It's all operated with a system of in game menus, and even while you're choosing an option you can move and look around. This is way different then most other games, which take you into a cutscene sort of view for NPC interactions. Even Fallout 3 and Oblivion do that creepy thing where it zooms into people's faces so you can look into their creepy, soulless eyes. Sometimes, when you talk to an NPC, it doesn't go to a cutscene, but this is usally when talking to an "extra" character, who will only shout a line of dialog at you as you walk by. Since you can't actually respond, it isn't necessary to restrict your movement.

An example of Oblivion's Creepy Dialog Sequence

While I was playing ArmA II, I thought about how interesting it would be to apply the same sort of system to an RPG, or some other sort of game. It would feel a lot more immersive and organic, because you can say whatever you want (within the limits of what the designers think of), to any NPC. Obviously, this would take a lot of work, both in the writing and voice acting departments, especially if you want to avoid the problem I mentioned earlier where 90% of the time people's response to you will be "What?". ArmA II itself "overcame" this problem by stitching the lines together from small segments of audio consisting of little more than a word or number. This creates a very artificial and disjointed voice, which breaks any immersion gained from the system.

Anyway, putting a dialog system in-game instead of restricting it to those cutscene-style sequences may not seem like a big deal, but I would say it's a similar concept to allowing you to kill any NPC you want. Many games make NPCs who are important to the game's plot or story invincible, or just give you a game over if you kill them. Games like Morrowind let you kill anyone, and although killing someone vital to the main quest will make it so you can't progress along the main plot, it works because the main plot is not incredibly important in that style of open world game. Of course if you actually do kill any important characters on purpose, then you are probably a pretty sadistic and twisted person (don't worry, I am too), but having that freedom can still be very immersive and rewarding.

To be continued...?


Extras:

-ArmA II gameplay footage showing command system (and terrible voice acting): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ogaRAYbqtgc

-An article by Steve Gaynor which does a better job of explaining the different approaches for simulating dialog with AI characters: http://fullbright.blogspot.com/2009/12/quick-hits.html

Dialog in Games

Let's face it. Most writing in games is terrible. Dialog is the portion of the writing that is observed by players, and so it is usually considered the most important part of writing. This is untrue. If the writing of a game is like a car, then the dialog is the shiny (or not so shiny) exterior which is seen by everyone when you drive past. However, dialog is only the symptom, not the cause of bad writing. A bad engine will ruin the car no matter how much paint is on the outside. Have a good engine, and you'll be able to go wherever you want, no matter what the condition of your paint is. The "engine" of game writing is having interesting characters who are placed in interesting locations. If you have boring characters talking in an equally boring location, nobody is going to care about the dialog because they're rapidly hitting the A button to skip over it!

Now, besides just interesting characters and locations, what makes dialog sound good? Perhaps... realism? No. Wrong. Have another guess? I humbly insinuate that it is the appearance of realism. Take a moment and think about it: in real life, most conversations are very unfocused. They wonder around. People speak in sentence fragments and say "um" a lot. In a game, dialog needs to be focused. It has to communicate a point to your audience. It could tell the player information about the world, or it might demonstrate characterization. You shouldn't just throw in some dialog because it's easy. You need to be as concise as possible, so that you stay focused and don't lose your over-caffeinated players.

Despite this, realism still plays a part in dialog. Great authors, like Dickens or Shakespeare do an incredible thing with their dialog. They give just about every character a unique and identifiable way of speaking an acting. You can often times identify a character just by hearing a few lines of dialog from that person. Even if you can't guess the specific character, you can usually identify the social class which they belong to. For example, take this line from Chapter 3 of Great Expectations, by Charles Dickens.

"I'll eat my breakfast afore they're the death of me," said he. "I'd do that, if I was going to be strung up to that there gallows as there is over there, directly afterwards. I'll beat the shivers so far, I'll bet you."


From the character's manner of speaking, the language he uses, his bad grammar, that he belongs to the working or lower class (the character in question is actually a convict). Now, try contrasting that example to this one:

"It seems to me that in the despondency of the tender passion, we are looking into our gift-horse's mouth with a magnifying-glass. Likewise, it seems to me that, concentrating our attention on the examination, we altogether overlook one of the best points of the animal. "

This person uses much more flowery language and has the decency to use correct grammar. He is certainly of the upper class, or at least a rich member of the middle class. All this from only a couple lines of dialog! A good author can uses dialog to indirectly characterize characters by exploring their manner of speech, a lesson which many writers should take note of.

That's it for now. See you next time.

The Nonlinear Game I Want to Play #2

Player Driven Design
In my last game design post, I talked about a nonlinear game with an environment which allowed emergent gameplay through the creation of many different elements which all interacted with each other in different ways. However, a sandbox world does not make a game by itself, although it provides the basis for nonlinear gameplay.

I also talked about taking out the boring quest/mission mechanic found in many open world games, which basically make you perform a linear mission in an open world. Some of these missions aren't totally linear. They might be something like "kill 10 henchmen", and require you to explore the open world a little and find the henchmen you need to kill. Sure, its not really linear, but this is usually fairly boring because the game designers are just shoving their open world down your throat. You're not really exploring it because you want to.

To truly create an open world, you shouldn't have such boring and linear goals at all. Many simulation type games do this. In the Sims, your only long-term goals are to make a family and retire. Even these are optional, depending on how you want to play. However, there are a lot of short term goals: buy some food, read a book, flirt with another sim, etc...

Another example is the fantasy simulation Dwarf Fortress, where you control a bunch of dwarfs in a randomly generated world. Your only long term goal is to make your fortress survive and prosper. Short term goals might be to harvest enough food to live off of, or to fight off any goblins who might be attacking you. As you progress, more and more challenges present themselves. Satisfy the various nobles who come to live in your fortress. Fight bigger and more powerful creatures like titans and dragons.

In both of these games, almost all of the goals are created by the player. The game never tells you what to do. Instead you think "Hm, I think I want to cover the ground outside my fortress with so many traps goblins won't want to come within two miles of my walls." I think this is the kind of attitude which needs to be taken when creating nonlinear games in a more "standard" genre, such as a shooter or action game.

The Nonlinear Game I Want to Play

What's Wrong With Nonlinear Games?

I'm not a big fan of nonlinear games. Games like Grand Theft Auto, or Infamous. Most of them aren't really nonlinear, but just a series of linear quests, or missions, in an open world. You go do a quest, and each quest is very linear. Then you walk through an "open" world, which is basically just a series of random enemies, until you get to the next quest. This is a concept which showed up in the first Zelda! In Zelda, there's an open world, broken up by a series of linear dungeons. Yet nobody thought to call that a sandbox game, or a nonlinear game, because it wasn't. And that's totally fine. I still love Zelda. However, with newer games like Grand Theft Auto, and Infamous, they're basically the same thing. Except they're called missions and not dungeons, and sometimes you can do them in a slightly different order. The difference is that (in my opinion) the gameplay is boring at best. Often times, its downright horrible.

So how would I go about creating a nonlinear game? First thing: take out quests. They're not really helping anything. They're just linear gameplay events, and we want to eliminate linear gameplay. However, I wouldn't take out goals. Goals are there for a reason, so that players will want to get through the game. You can still have goals without quests, they just won't be goals like "kill ten bad guys", or "collect ten packages".

Nonlinear Gameplay

Most of the gameplay in these "nonlinear" games is actually very standard, and rather boring. We've been shooting random guys with a shotgun for years, and most "nonlinear" games don't do much to change this. Games have been able to implement nonlinear gameplay into a game for a long time. Metal Gear Solid let you approach a given situation in tons of different ways. You could be stealth, or use brute force. Be nonlethal or kill everyone you come across. Spelunky is another great example. There are a million things to do in that game, even though it has a very linear progression. You get past one stage, and then you move on to the next. The difference is that every stage is randomly generated, and each of the elements of the stages interact in different ways, giving you endless possibilities. A snake might seem like just a snake, but there are about a dozen ways you can go about trying to kill it or get past it. You can jump on it, Mario style. You can use your trusty whip. If you've bought/stole another weapon like a machete or a shotgun, you can use that. Or, you could use the environment to your advantage by luring it into some spikes, or into a arrow trap. This is just with a snake, which is probably the most boring thing you encounter in the game.

So why is it that these linear games like Metal Gear Solid and Spelunky pull off this whole nonlinear gameplay thing better then actual "nonlinear" games like Infamous? In my nonlinear game, I would start by adding just a few elements, and making all of these elements act together in different ways. If added something like a spiked pit, I would make it so you can interact with that spiked pit in as many ways as possible by making it so you could lure enemies into it, or place something over the spikes so they don't harm you. If you can imagine an entire open world with all of these different items in the environment which are able to act together in an infinite number of ways, I think you would have the basis for a truly nonlinear game.

Further Reading/Watching:
Is interactivity inimical to storytelling? (by Chris Crawford)
Rev Rant: True Nonlinearity

Morality

Morality in games is a topic which is often brought up in articles, blogs, and conversations. The ability to play a game however you want seems very appealing, but I find that I am almost never satisfied with the choices given to me. In Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, you can make many morale choices. Do you want to help the alien, or kill him? Give the beggar some money, or kill him? Kill Darth Malak, or... well I guess that's actually the only choice you have. My point is that many of these choices are rather black and white. In KOTOR you aren't given much reward for staying neutral and making each decision the way you think would be best. Instead, most people seem to decide if they want to be evil or good before they even start the game, and make all their decisions accordingly. In more recent games, I've heard that they are doing a better job of this kind of stuff.

However, this black and white approach to morale decisions isn't the only thing that bugs me about these games. Its also the fact that the gameplay doesn't seem to match up with your morale decisions. Often times, morale choices are made outside of the normal gameplay (like in a scene of dialog). In KOTOR, you can decide to be good, but to get through the game you will still have to kill dozens of people. There isn't really any way to be a total pacifist, which is rather unrealistic. The same is true of Mass Effect and Fallout 3.
Iji is an indie game which gave you the choice of killing everything you came across or avoiding them. However, this decision is rather unrealistic. The only way to be a pacifist is to try to run through all the levels dodging as many bullets as you can. Iji is a great game, but I found this aspect to be rather unrealistic.

There are some games which have this degree of morale choice in the gameplay: on example is the Metal Gear Solid series. These games weren't really focused on morale choice, but let you play through them without killing a single person (for the most part). This didn't involve running through the levels trying to dodge bullets, but allowed you to tranquilize people you came across without killing them.

Another game which did this well is Deus Ex, which also allowed you to use nonlethal weapons to knock out enemies. In fact, Deus Ex handled the whole moral choice thing very well. The choices weren't always black and white. In one pivotal moment in the game, you are ordered to kill the leader of the terrorist organization you have been fighting. However, you have reason to believe that the organization you are working for is corrupt, and that the terrorists may actually be the good guys. You can choose to follow orders and kill the terrorist, or you can go back to base without killing him. You can even disobey your orders and kill your superior. Now that's a morale decision.