What a week we have had! So many new players to join our community, many awesome ideas, and our Kickstarter Campaign is now 60%+ funded! We are very keen on reaching 100% soon to unlock many stretch goals like Real Time With Pause combat addition, voice acting, tactical gameplay advancements, advanced pets and localization.
In today's diary we'd like to share with you about Choices & Consequences We have posted a few more updates on the Kickstarter. We avoided writing you with daily updates and articles, to avoid spamming you and planned to write these articles on steam with more of a delay between updates. But if you would like for us to post such articles 3~4 times a week. Then we'd be very happy to share them here as well. Let us know in the comments! #1 Justice system and Law #2 Superstitions and Omens #3 Character Creation Options #4 Hunting Mechanics #5 Factions

Choices and Consequences

Choices and Consequences in interactive stories can be very exciting when done right, and they can be very frustrating and disappointing when they dont quite work or matter in games.
Without some sort of futuristic storyteller AIs, that can spin the tales in real-time and populate the game with cinematics, simulated voice acting and build new game maps in an instant. The C&C of video games will be a limited experience. There is only so much handcrafted content you can have in a game, and there is a limit to how long procedural stories can keep their impact. But within these limitations, its possible to create engaging C&C stories that add to replay value and make your experience more personal. So, what makes choices good and interesting? We believe the choices work best when they let you achieve your overarching plans and explore the personality of your character. Help to build relationships with other characters and challenge you with interesting dilemmas. And they are at their worst when you are ambushed by unexpected choices with vague implications on their outcomes. That leave you confused and frustrated over being forced into picking between good old "bad & worse". We try to include what we believe to be good values of C&C into the choices we design.
When we iterate over our quest we ask ourselves.

Are you able to have agency over your story? Can you make your own plans and follow your own goals?

We try to design quests and gameplay in a way that clearly introduces you to the dilemmas and problems at hand. And after that gives you freedom and options to solve those dilemmas the way you see fit. Almost every problem the player faces will have multiple solutions. Some tied to players' reputation or skills, some to previous choices, and others can be discovered through deeper exploration. There are many degrees to failure or success and there are no wrong choices.

Are you already invested enough into the world to care about the choice you make?

With our day passage system and personal stories for each NPC, you will get to know each character and faction very well over the course of the game. Choices you make will affect them deeply, and you will get to experience many consequences during your playthrough rather than only at the end of the story.

Does the dilemma make sense? Does it resonate with you?

We chose to focus the story on character conflicts and make their problems grounded in the reality of the setting. This way we get more opportunities to focus dilemma on things that feel relevant and real to the world you are exploring. Things that have more chances to make you really think about how you and your RP character would approach such problems.

Are you able to make an impact on and share meaningful experiences with characters you care about?

Listening to exciting character backgrounds can be fun, but if you dont get to experience similar stories with those characters during gameplay it sometimes can feel like their best stories happened without you. We focused on exploring characters through shared experiences with players, rather than their past. There are many more considerations that go into C&C, and well explore them in future updates and quest design live-streams. Tell us what you love or hate in C&C in the comments. We'd love to hear what you think!

[ 2021-02-09 19:19:34 CET ] [ Original post ]