How To Gate Non-Linear Stories
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 31 ม.ค. 2024
- I talk about methods to make sure that the player sees some story events before others, and why you should rarely do this.
I explain more about non-linear game design in this video: • Non-Linear Game Design - เกม
I could listen to Tim explain to you how to do your taxes.
How to pay taxes as a dev company owner, yes that could work!
@@Ramiobombtroika used professionals for that im sure
@@jtaco4101 Well, they did that professionally for 7 years straight, and Tim mention specifically before that they did indeed pay taxes!
@@jtaco4101 Well in the later years Tim himself had to do HR so he knows his stuff.
@@Ramiobomb I would actually pay for consultation on how to do this.
The more videos I watch (almost all caught up) the more questions I didn't even realize I had, get answered. You are a treasure Tim.
Thanks. I get asked some VERY insightful questions here.
I love how Morrowind added a completely optional way to complete the main quest objectives without even having to go through the main quest, just improvising the tools to kill the Big Bad, so, in a sense, you could deify yourself through the main quest, through an alternate main quest solution, cheesing alchemy, or cheesing enchantments. Nice.
Exactly what I wanted to comment!
I cant not kill vivec in morrowind, backpath for life
Kellog in Fallout 4 is like the anti-Essential character: the character you MUST kill to advance the plot, even though it's the stupidest and most self-defeating thing your character could do at that point in the game. But you have no choice. Same effect as the worst Essential NPCs: you are robbed of all agency.
nice comparison, you're right
Emil Whatsisname is a talentless hack who shouldn't be allowed anywhere near a keyboard.
I really like killing kellogg in fallout 4. And if you could spare him that would make killing him feel even more satisfying. That is the thing about choices in gameplay, just knowing you can do it diffrently makes your own choice feel so much sweeter.
Bethesda has relied on essential NPCs more and more with each game. Starfield makes pretty much everyone essential.
@@blacxthornE another reason I probably won't be playing Starfield
I will never forget the moment I entered the Brotherhood airship in Fallout 4. I entered a room where a guy was giving a big fascist speech. I pulled out the hunting rifle, fired at his head, watched him flinch.... and continue giving the facho speech as if nothing had happened. I later read you could kill him at a certain point, but I felt so robbed of agency in that moment.
You can only kill him when Bethesda wants to let you. What an RPG.
FNV really surprised me with no unkillable NPCs. Crazy how that game was 14 years ago…
I don't make games, but this channel feels like an encyclopedia of good practices/ideas/musings that I can come back to and reference if I do ever start making games. I love it, thanks Tim.
even if you don't make games, it gives you a perspective that will help you think more critically and substantially about games you play.
Will definitely be saving this one to show to people who ask why game writing tends to be more theme-focused than plotting-focused.
I find it really interesting to have you lay out the example from ARCANUM: The need to get to the VOID to face the BOSS, which previously requires a certain DEVICE to reach the void, which previously requires a series of QUESTS to have been done, which previously requires interacting with a set of NPCs to do those quests, therefore you know the player has experienced all of those storylines and activities before finishing the game. That is great. Very helpful to get me thinking about a good structure for a game story and gating system that is logical and satisfying. :)
Thanks for the tip Tim! looks like the real question isn't how to gate non-linear stories but rather why we want to gate them in the first place.
It’s astonishing how much a game designer and a dungeon master have in common.
Invaluable insight for an up and coming DM in DnD (and other TTRPGs)
That "everybody" caught ne off guard 😅 Jokes aside, thank you again for the amazing content!
I recently heard about the passing of Jennell Jacquays, who is often credited with developing a lot of these non-linear gating designs in dungeons ("Jacquaysing" a dungeon), making the first dungeons and dragons modules built around non-linear exploration in the late 70s. Her widow, Rebecca Heineman, the Interplay cofounder who you mentioned on this channel before, is still struggling with costs related to her illness and death.
Were you familiar with Caverns of Thrtacia or Dark Tower when you were starting out designing nonlinear games?
Yes, those modules and several other game aids by Jennell Jacquays were huge influences on my tabletop and computer RPG playing, and later on my making cRPGs. I plan to make a video about it later this month. Right now, it feels too soon.
I do have a video about the influence of Judges Guild (who published Caverns Of Thracia and Dark Tower) here:
th-cam.com/video/jGixGnDa-ck/w-d-xo.html
@@CainOnGames Dunno if you know the name, Ree Moorhead Pruehs, she and her husband wrote an adventure for Judges Guild called Escape from Astigar's Lair around the same time, it was a "Tournament" convention game that required players to successfully roleplay two prewritten characters with detailed backstories in order to succeed, and then there was a scoring system to compare who "Won."
I was so incredibly lucky to know her and play in/observe her DMing 5e adventurer's league, and she raved on many occasions about her good friend Jennell and the incredible times she had DMing epic modules like Dark Tower in a single, 12 hour marathon. She'd been messaging a group chat for the game store that I'd known her from about Jennell's passing a few days before passing herself, and when the sadness passed it just left me feeling like the history of that period of game development is so important, and we're losing primary sources in a hurry-- so I just want to again thank you for taking so much of your own time to say all this. Games are magic and I have so much love and appreciation for the people who make them possible
@rebeccanagy2962 I have that module! I ran a couple of my friends through it years ago, using their own characters and not the ones provided. It was fun.
We are losing too many good designers.
@@CainOnGamesRee's signature was having goblins train pigs to transport their wine, so that she could drop a mini of a potentially explosive pig into the middle of an encounter. Wizards, for all their supposed intelligence, often did not put two and two together
Hey Tim, just wanted to say thanks for all your videos! It's as always very interesting and very relaxing to listen to while learning a lot from an experience person. 🤗
If I had to ask you a question, it would be: how do you estimate the budget for the development of game? What would go into your consideration to get an overall picture of the budget needed if, beforehand, you have an idea of what you'd like to do but not everything set in stone?
Do you estimate a budget after you did a Vertical Slice, or can you do this before entering this stage?
Have a lovely day Tim and as always, thank you for your videos! 🙏
PS: I'm not sure the question has already been asked, but I'll check your channel once again in case you already did answered it and I just happened to miss it. 😄
One way of fixing the Oracle problem without making it unkilleable and the dungeon available from the start is making him droping an item that has the password but it's on an old language that the other person descifred, you can also add ways of knowing what the text says without using the NPC that gave the mission in the first place like for example a wisdom trait or skill, you can also create old shrines around the map world and after X interacted shrines you know what it says or maybe another NPC knows that language or other NPC sells a translator.
You can also make the Oracle drop a puzzle item that requires crafting or fixing and maybe the other NPC has the materials but you can also find the materials in the wild.
And if the door can be open without even talking to the other guy that give you the mission you can make him become hostile because he wants the rewards to himself or thinks that you know too much.
Wonderful video, i am making my first game right now and your videos have been so nice to help supplement my learning
These videos are some of the best on the internet.
I've played through Fallout 1 at least 3 times, and I've never attempted to take out frustration on the overseer, for some reason. You mentioned that Fallout didn't have enough main quest plot points, but I think this was one of its biggest selling points. It was one of the things gamers talked about the most - the fact that you can almost walk directly to the end of the game. The heart of Fallout was in exploring its world. At the time it came out, main quests of other games liked to get in your way when you wanted to explore. But Fallout just sends you out of the vault and away you go, wherever you feel like going. It was pretty amazing.
I think this is my favorite video so far! Thanks Tim. :D
It's a kind of simple example, but when I was a kid, the original King's Quest (1984) did this so well, in it's own simple way. You had 3 magic items to recover to win the game, but you could wander the world freely, do things in any order, explore and discover and ultimately everyone played and solved the same game/story, but there was immense freedom and experimentation in how you achieved it. I've been in love with the magic of the medium ever since!
Hi Timothy,
Thanks for your videos! I'm constantly pondering game design while playing games, so your insights are always truly fascinating to me. I even wrote my bachelor's thesis about my initial attempt at creating a document/wiki (for the university, I had to structure it as a document, but I initially wrote it as a wiki). It wasnt that good because it was my first attempt, as my original field of study was 3D. Still love game design and i learned a lot for my dnd campain i ran at the time :)
Anyway, I'd be really interested in your more analytical take on games like Baldur's Gate 3 and Divinity: Original Sin 2, which share many similarities in terms of game design.
Morrowind has such a great system for 'essential' NPCs. Whenever you kill someone that should be 'essential' for the main story, the game just tells you you've broken the prophecy and need to reload a save or keep playing an unfinishable main quest. But then if you're savvy, you can actually complete the main quest even with the prophecy broken, you just won't get the 'proper' resolution. Multiple layers of respecting both player agency AND time.
I know you're not big on sequels, and I can see why since your games are non-linear. But if you had to make a direct sequel to a non-linear game, how would you deal with the different endings and player choices?
I really like how Mass Effect did it and although I'm sure it's a lot of work, I'm surprised it hasn't been done more often.
It’s hard to make a sequel to a non linear game with multiple endings, but there are techniques you can use. I’ll make a video about them.
@@CainOnGames looking forward to it! Have a great day!
"Dragonbreak!"@@CainOnGames
This is part of the reasonwhy direct sequels are a bad idea. But even worse is that it is just tacked on an allready great and done story.
As much as i love New Vegas i wouldnt want to play a game now set right after the 2nd battle of hoover dam. Or play the vault dweller establishing Arroyo. Just awful ideas.
Set New Vegas 2 in New Orleans/New York etc with a new protagonist. Much better idea.
Personally, I'd abuse Achievements for this feature.
Have each distinct outcome for the important quests be a separate achievement.
And then once it's time to make a sequel, aggregate this data, and and look at which outcomes were more popular (or not), to decide which outcomes are canon.
There's obviously room for interpretation (not to mention contradiction), and if every outcome is unpopular, you can also say the canon ending is that the player never found it.
As a bonus you technically also encourage replaying to see the other outcomess.
Love your videos, very educational, helps me a lot thank you❤️
One thing i liked about the rpg morrowind was the more you encounter of the leadership structure of the sixth house the friendlier they tend to act. Sharing a drink with the antagonists wasnt something you expected when you initially find out about them and their ash blight
thanks for the video!
5:06 - "...I hate essential NPCs.": One of the reasons that made playing Starfield as a "bad guy" so unsatisfying.
A question: opinion on down time in games for side quests, and balancing it with tension and urgency for a more engaging main storyline? Also, some randomness elements to give side quests more replay value.
Hey Uncle Tim,
do you think Obsidian would ever decide to use something like Godot for one of their RPGs? I work in industry already - using C++ - but I love the C# language. I know we typically use UE because source is modifiable, it has high fidelity, and what have you, but as Godot grows it is starting to feel mature, and the source is available to modify - and without royalty fees! I'd love to have my cake and eat it too; use C# to make a Cain-style RPG with a team like Obsidian. Thanks!
Oblivion had perhaps the best essential NPC in Sheogorath; I'll never forget the view!
Hi Tim, it's us, everybody.
I think a few games could have marked npcs as 'semi essential' Morrowind has a couple that can be kill byvthe environment if you get too close to them without noticing. At least one of whom you're supposed to see being attacked and rescue them, or fail and get info from theor body. The problem is it's entirely posdible to run past and for them to die without you noticing them, or for you to get there when you're not strong enough to save them. I hate that, I want to save them and bad luck killing them is frustrating.
It's also possible for bad luck to kill other NPCs too in Skyrim, there's lots of npcs that wander around and they can be killed by dragons or bandits.
9:08 I love this so much
Now that I remember the only "essential" character in Arcanum might have been the Silver Lady? I think there was no way to kill her.
Haha had forgotten about that. You are right. She cant be killed. Then again is she really alive as the game tells us she is mostly on the other side.
@@fredrik3880 That's true, she is special and that's the in-game explanation for that.
Also she doesnt attack the player even if you kill all the elves to get to her. She is in the game like tim said a ball of light, mist, ghost etc
I recall a building in fallout 4 that had an access blocked by debris that magically vanished when a certain quest was triggered. This breaks the immersion for me, especially since it's a fed-ex quest and there would be no difference in the quest WHEN you found the item in that area.
This seems like a shortcut that was left in that probably should have been changed to a locked door or passworded terminal.
Additionally, and this might be a Bethesda issue, fully exploring an area (looting and killing everything lets say) and having the area *reset* when you are directed back there by a quest is really irritating. I have three copies of the same "unique" weapon in Skyrim because of this... 🙁
I think every combat orientated non-linear game should have a murder-hobo default baseline story and then everything else is icing on the cake.
Maybe the initial question regarded the story telling from programming side of view, for similar reason why you had a programmatic solution to dialogue in arcanum.
Similar approach should be done for story writing.
A lot of programmer methodologies seem to be around writing constraints first and then fulfilling them.
Kinda like test driven development or logical programming or the case class sytem and algebraic types.
It just all hovers around the same idea that there are some implicit rules and constraint that need to be fulfilled, but if they aren't defined then they can't be automatically validated.
You did work in the industry, seems like the big hitter BG3 didn't actually use any tool based approach to forcing writers to anticipate all the interactions in the world. Or maybe something like "out of sequence" interactions were purposefully marked wrong.
I'm sure any story telling game would benefit from a tool that is aware of game interactions at large and their impacts on the other parts of story.
th-cam.com/video/Nm4OIhjjA2o/w-d-xo.html
this talk about type induction sort of has examples of programmatically classifying branches based on rules at compile time and gives hints on where you can look further, but that's not about gaming industry.
Maybe writers would hate using a tool that forces them to classify what state the story progresses to and from, but I have no idea how without story writer laying out state changes across the interactions, a tool would automagically validate if the story writers story actually makes any invalid dead ends.
Also obviously you can just outsmart the tool and mark things the way that the warnings/errors go away without doing it the "right" way resulting in like unsatisfying "game over" on runtime.
Maybe the old rpgs were better because the story writing/validating was done in a table top setting, and people don't do that as much.
Also I remember that specific question you answered here and I gave a dumb answer to it(when it was originally asked), I'm not a game developer, and for novices type induction and logical programming would probably be a bit too academic and not practical enough.
It's probably good to have a sophisticated solution in a large scope project tho.
Maybe the solution in modern game studios is about using some c preprocessors and build tools to generate boilerplate for each special state that any quest could be at in a large enough system.
Maybe it really is just paper post it notes and string on a large enough wall.
Either way, maybe give an example how to dungeon master for a good campaign, I'm sure it comes with practice, but overall you must have some insights when you dissect your own decisions as DM.
The question I always have to ask about the "kill anyone" design is if it's actually worth spending the time to make all the alternate paths, for something most people won't do.
Is that the best way to spend that development time? I don't know what the answer to that is.
Hey Tim, how do you design a game to have emergent storytelling. Something to the effect of Kenshi or RimWorld? The game never tells you a story, but almost every players have a story to tell about their playthrough.
I've always hated essential npc flags, even if I like a game that has them. I can look past a small handful of unkillable npcs if there is an in universe reason like they are immortal or something but otherwise it's really frustrating and takes me out of the experience.
Not only do essential flags break immersion, they also take agency and consequence away from the player.
I realize it may take more work on the devs part to account for quest breaking or providing alternative ways to progress a quest ect. but I don't have any problem with being locked out of content for choices I made. Especially if you can save at any point and have multiple save files, I really feel there's no excuse to handhold the player like a child.
I would also put game areas that restrict aggressive player actions on the same level.
Hi Tim, so as a fledgling developer, I've heard from elsewhere that before making your big passion project game, it's best to work small or on other people's projects, for the former, how does one go about making a small scale non-linear game?
Hi Everybody Its me Tim
I got to the void just fine without the chain...
By killing everyone I met. The church dude in Caladon who isn't usually there was there and banished me. I loved that you included that, but it must've been confusing to any new player who got banished before getting far in the story.
Though, I suppose anyone doing a genocide run is probably beyond caring about the story...
I liked how Zelda breath of the wild/tears of the kingdom did it. You could go and get the master sword and the four powerful abilities or you could run to the final boss after the tutorial with 4 hearts and kill him with random weapons you find in his dungeon
I think Morrowind was good with essencial NPCs. You can kill anyone but text saying you probably made main quest uncompletable appears
Unrelated but do you think New Vegas is a good fallout game? What would you have done differently if you developed it?
Edit: I know this is a random question, I wasn't sure where else to ask it. I thought your critique could be insightful as an rpg developer.
Hey! In Planescape Torment, Amnesia was pivotal plot point, not lazy plot device.... The plot wouldn't work without it, really. It was exactly the kind of narrative amnesia of main protagonist makes sense....
Hi tim it's me, everyone, and our question is: what is fun? it's an ad hoc definition but do you chase it through iterating prototypes like nintendo or have you found the recipe of fun to you?
you really don't know what fun is?
@@yamo511 can you predict what will be fun and what won't?
I have the same view as you on linear games: if I can't choose what to do, why am I "playing"? Make a movie. There are many linear games with a story I would watch as a movie or animation. I just don't want to walk through a tube for 10 hours watching cutscenes every 5 minutes and call it a game.
Alternative approach: provide an in universe reason why all NPCs are unkillable. You’re in a city of gods! Or, everyone here has personal force fields! You could get funny with it, lol.
The gates could also be "soft", by requiring the player to gain a certain amount of skill, a protection or companions to pass a bottleneck (like a dungeon, group of enemies, an environmental effect or boss). So the average player cannot pass this early, but really skilled players might. I never liked the classic "locked" door trope, especially when you break locks left and right.
Arcanum has 27 acts ? I wonder which all they are...
I went to the bottom of scuzzblott and all I got was this t shirt.
I would say setting them up front with a collect 12 X's is enough to put the player off. If I'd had known all those damn puzzle temples in ffx I'd have told her to shove her pilgrimage
I really dislike essential NPCs too. But also, if a game has lockpicking (and many RPGs do), having unpickable locks on doors feels equally bad. They're like "essential locks" that need to be there to advance the plot.
I'll Say Morrowind and Fallout new vegas share, in my opinion, on how you break up linear stories. For instance killing Vivic does break the story..up front,,but there is a work around that can be done to get Wrathguard to complete the main story. Also, no one in Morrowind was "essential" and some characters death literally could break the story. Same with FNV, But a lot of other Beth games after that are so guilty with having characters you can't kill it felt very lazy
The other BGS games still aren't all in the same basket, though, in that Oblivion and Fallout 3 still had comparatively less essential NPCs than Skyrim and Fallout 4. For instance, if the player kills Moriarty in Megaton then Gob takes over the bar.
@@aNerdNamedJames that is very true. I'm actually going back though a tale of two wasteland right now
Pretty sure you can kill Father as soon as you meet him in FO4. Same with the Railroad/BOS.
@@PedroGomes-cx7ku I refuse to play Fallout 4. That game was extremely boring lol p
@@jakeen229 That's okay, it's by far my least favourite Bethesda RPG. But if you haven't played it, at least research what it does or doesn't do in order to give accurate and constructive criticisms.
I also hate essential npcs. Fallout, Arcanum and New Vegas did it great.
You cant kill the overseer during gameplay in fallout 1. With the Bloody Mess trait, the Berserker or Childkiller titles, or a low reputation, right after the overseer's goodbye speech at the end of the game, the vault dweller kills him without the player getting any say.
Player agency shouldn't be thought of merely in terms of who players can kill. This was the mistake Divinity Original Sin 2 makes where so much of players' "choices" is basically a binary decision of kill or spare. There should be non-violent ways of resolving conflict. The Fallout series handles this somewhat well though by far my favorite is Disco Elysium.
Hi Tim
all stories are linear, what determines a "non"-linear story is the time in between plot beats and what a player does with that time i:e - doing a B plot quest that may add another option once you decide to continue the A plot.
Fair point but, what is meant by non-linear is that you can do the 'beats' in a different order.
Thats only true to some extend as he explained that for example Fallout had 3 Acts but you didnt need to do A and B plot , you could run straight to the final boss which you could argue is a 'beat' but since the game doesnt continue after that I think it doesnt count because a game/story/movie must have an ending at some point haha
muh semantics
@@oedipamaas2067 this! the entire comment is meaningless quibbling
Yes and no. If you mean that human language does carry an inherently sequential quality, then yes, but that's not what people mean.
Also if you make an open world with lots of cool stuff and people travelling and whatnot then the player doesnt want trader Joe to die without meeting him or later as he sells the best plasma gun then you can make it so other npcs cant kill trader Joe but the player should always be able to kill him. And if you do, though luck getting x quest or that plasma gun. You made your choice now live with it.
Bethesda has since Morrowind gone haywire with essential npcs. The absurd thing is though they have also a setting the could have used that is essential against NPCs only. It baffles me why they didnt use that instead! They use it a few times only. Why??
@3:30, this is why I think Morrowind is my favourite game until I die. It has the side option to go with the weapons to the end boss, even if some of the essential NPCs died. The game developers (Bethesda) chose then to show a placate that you broke the main story. But if you know what to do, you can beat the game, and as speedruns show, you can do this game no one played usually to the end, in 5 minutes speedruns ,"emergent gameplay" at it's finest. Actually, the speedrunning scene is always the group that will always be on the forefront of new "emergent" gameplay, even for older titles, maybe that's fun way to think about it, for those who don't follow it, of course it doesn't include everything.
"How to gate a non-linear story" == How to make a non-linear story into a linear story. 😂
Not how linearity is defined, but okay.
Tim: “Essential NPCs spit in the face of player agency.”
Bethesda: *Makes nearly every plot-relevant NPC in Fallout 3 unkillable and has them do all the important story stuff while the player just watches in silence.*
my quesiton is why not fallout 1 ps1 and sega saturn ports. if it was you were rich.
If you're trying to force a story...
Man, this is where games like Call of Duty (single player campaign) really are on rails, like a movie,, or theme park ride. Then the multiplayer parts have NO story really. While I agree with you about game stories, many people are content, and perhaps even prefer stories that are very linear and on-rails. I have theories about all this, but they're not super relevant to this comment.
Various RPGs over the years have had more or less flexible stories, and different people like different flexibilities.
"setting, story, system mechanics. It's easy to remember cause it's alphabetical'
Is this what naturally happens to you brain after 40 years of coding?
*_cough_* Emil *_cough_*
I don't care if Arcanum is decades old. I can't believe you spoiled that I have to meet NPCs, do quests, and get a thing to beat the game. Unbelievable.
ill gate you bill
there are stories where it is absolute impossbile to allow the player just to kill everybody, imagine the Witcher 3 where Geralt is just allowed to kill anybody, or imagine Dragon Age Inquisition where you could just kill the Council, nonsense, it is a waste of time to try to design a game based on this _"agency"_ notion, complex multi faceted stories need restrictions
Those stories and their gameplay would have been better if more options were possible. Like allowing you to kill everyone.
I might rank f4 as the best game ever (or f3 or NV, maybe F2) and it is chalked full of essential npcs. Which is one of its greatest flaws. You should have been able to kill preston. It wouldnt been hard for bethesda to allow the player to use the "mm ending" by simply allowing them to use the sewers to enter and blow up the institute solo.
And complex multi stoies dont need these restrictions. New Vegas showed that so hard it makes a nuke seem like summer wind.