I was reading the 5th Covenant book.
There is a scene I want to write about, as I, while reading the scene,
suddenly realized how it would work in a game, as what I call a volitional
story-event.
Scene backround information. Covenant, main character
one, is currently incapacitated into a mind-blank state where all he can
say is 'don't touch me'. Linden, main character two, is the viewpoint character
for this scene, and kind of an indecisive and powerless feeling character.
The Giants are a noble race about 10 feet tall, fond of long stories, laughter,
seafaring, wine, and the like. The important giants for this scene are:
1) the First, who is the leader of the group and the typical 'female who
learned swordfighting and was rose to a position of power despite male
ridicule' archtype; 2) Pitchwife, who despite the name 'wife' is the husband
of the First, possessing a cripped small (for a giant) and weak body, and
is the ship's stone-repair man; 3) Honninscrave, who is the captain of
the ship; and 4) Seadreamer, who is Honninscrave's brother, mute, and possessing
of a strange sixth-sense like sight. There are perhaps 120 or so miscellaneous
Giant sailors. There are four Haruchai on the ship. The Haruchai are and
ascetic, almost monk-like, people which are basically human, but with the
distinguishments of being extremely integrated and principle driven, never
confused about what to do, very strong minded and heroic, never doing much
wrong, never really making a mistake, neither in big things nor in small
things. They are very military. Think of them as each being Howard Roarks
or Mr. Spocks of the discipline of fighting and other physical feats. Their
only flaws are that they are too loyal to orders, and that they lack of
individuality... everyone of their people basically thinks and acts alike,
with only the most minor of differences. In this scene, these characters
are on a ship, and evil-possessed eels are attacking the ship while it
is inclined and sinking, due to a storm. It is night, without stars or
moon, and with very few lanterns. The storm that had knocked the ship over
was still going on, and there were many powerful winds, although no rain.
The eels glow red, and explode when hit, causing nerve damage and incapacitation.
There are maybe a thousand eels or so.
At the beginning of the scene, the eels begin
to climb the ship. Pitchwife was nearest to the eels (he was singing the
song there to increase morale while the sailors pumped water out of the
sinking ship), and so he was the first to attack them. They exploded when
hit, and he fell down. A Haruchai went after him, jumping to save him from
sliding off into the water. He attacked some eels that were near the fallen
giant, and went into nerve convulsions, but was still able to hold on to
something, preventing himself and the giant from falling into the water.
The First then approached a different section of the eels, and slashed
at them w/ her sword. The sword was engulfed in an explosion, and she lost
it, and fell down wounded. A second Haruchai had had the foresight to tie
a rope to himself, and he threw the end of the rope to one of the miscellaneous
Giant sailors, at the same time jumping after the First to stop her fall
into the water or death by the eels. He was able to catch her, and both
of them were pulled up partially and stabilized by the Giant sailor. Seadreamer
at this point perceptively realized that all the eels were heading toward
the blank-minded Covenant, and being mute and unable to tell others of
this, grabbed Covenant and started running with him to a different part
of the ship, to draw the eels away from all the people and from the wounded
Giants and Haruchai. One of the Haruchai chased after him, thinking that
the Giant had gone mad (Covenant is in the care of the Haruchai and they
won't tolerate any perceived danger to him). The Haruchai and the others
saw that the eels had diverted their path and were now heading toward Seadreamer
and Covenant and the Haruchai who had followed them. The Giants then began
to use ropes as whips to hit the eels, causing them to explode from afar,
but destroying the rope in the process. Seadreamer, the Haruchai, and Covenant
were now on the roof of a small structure, and had nowhere to flee to.
Linden at this point had the notion that it might be effective to throw
an oil lamp at them... she did so, and the oil in the lamp caught fire,
killing a half dozen or so eels. Honninscrave saw this, and ordered his
men to bring up some oil, and the last Haruchai and two giants went belowdecks
to get the oil. Concurrently, the Haruchai and Seadreamer were only barely
holding their post by cutting some rope (there is apparantely a lot of
rope on a ship) and using that to attack the eels which were climbing the
structure on which they stood. The Haruchai, being the fastest, returned
with the first of the oil, and sent a stream of it toward the defended
structure, clearing many eels with its fire, but only reaching the ones
nearest to he himself, not reaching the ones nearest to the people on top.
He then started heading toward the structure on a cable that was attached
to it. More Giants arrived with oil, more eels were killed. When a certain
number of them had been killed, the evil force left them (it could only
control them while a certain number lived, apparantly) and they became
normal non-dangerous eels, just in time to prevent them from killing their
target.
Now, I was thinking of how this could be done
inside of a game with the player participating.
The gameplay would be arranged to match the scene.
All the eels would appear and being to progress steadily toward Covenant.
There will be various allies (the Haruchai, the First, Seadreamer, the
Captain, various giant sailors) which would act on their own. You'd be
a certain character, and have a choice of what to do. It could be set up
so that after throwing the Lamp at the eels, your allies would see the
use of this and go for the oil belowdecks. It could be set up so that you
would have the option of going to get oil, or the option of cutting ropes
for those throwing the ropes, or the option of throwing ropes at the eels
yourself, or the option of heading directly toward the eels (and your demise
if you touched them), or various other options. Perhaps you could go to
the wounded and heal them, with the result that they are able to fight
again. Each of your actions would change the battle slightly but importantly,
each action would cause slight but important other actions by your allies,
or changes of their actions. Perhaps if you kept indiscriminantly throwing
lamps, everything would go dark and the aims of you and your allies would
be diminished.
The main determinant of whether you survive or
fail the battle, ie the conditions of goal-success, would be whether you
are able to kill enough eels in time to save Covenant. There aren't really
that many other options. If you don't kill enough of them in time, there
is no way for him to flee, they'll just keep progressing toward him. If
you do kill enough of them in time, you win. All actions you take in that
story-event are related to those the goal-condition. There is a limited
amount of oil, a limited amount of Giants, a limited amount of rope, a
limited amount of eels, etc., and each factor is connected to eachother
gameplay-wise. In addition, just to make the event more gameplay-like,
you should have specific allies that you can tell to do different tasks,
according to your knowledge of their abilities.
I do not know if such an event has been done to
this extent in any game yet. Yes there are story-events which are gameplay-like...
for example there is that 'protecting the esper from kefka's guards' event
in ff6... you split up your team in three groups, place them, make them
walk around, and manually try to prevent the guards from reaching bannon
(and the esper). However... that had no where near the freedom of this
percieved story-event. It has the same basic idea, protecting something
from steadily advancing enemies, but it isn't very complex at all. You
can basically just place all your characters right in front of Bannon and
let the enemy come to you and defeat them as they arrive. In this Covenant
defending, you can't do that... for ONE because you start the event far
away from what you are protecting, and for TWO because you can't fight
the eels directly, you have to hit them indirectly, and for THREE that
you have a lot of 'npc' allies which are not under your control directly,
but are only influenced by your actions indirectly. And FOUR you have a
lot of options as to what to do. You can order someone to go heal the wounded
and order someone else to try to reach Covenant (if you order him to go
alone and he's too weak, he might die, if you order everyone to go reach
him, they will eventually be outnumbered or run out of oil or something
like that). Obviously the more complex situation would be a lot more fun
to play in.
Now, imagine a story-driven game composed of soley
these types of dramatic events, each where your actions are free and complex,
where you can win the 'battle', or meet the goal, in a variety of ways,
where tactics, strategy, quickness of decision, and integrated thinking
matter more than leveling-up and trial and error. Imagine a RPG without
repetetive battles and dungeons and town explorations. Imagine a game where
you have allies which you don't control directly but which actually do
things to help you reach your goals instead of stupidly walking into walls
or standing around and letting you do all the work. Imagine being told
to do something by your 'leader', but seeing a better way to do that thing
and doing it that way instead. Imagine a betrayal in the heart of a story-event
battle where you are almost sure of victory.
Now, I'm not going to claim originality for this
type of thing. There are some complex story-events in such games as Wing
Commander which also involve such choices on the part of the player (although
most of the missions in that game are as simple-brained as 'go meet ship
blahblahblah and bring him here' or 'go patrol this sector' or 'protect
our base from attack', there are also well-designed dramatic missions in
that game as well). I have yet to play the more recent Wing Commander games,
and as well, there are some events in American PC RPGs like Baldur's Gate
which are also about making decisions and coordinating your allies and
managing resources. But no game that I know of does this as well as I imagine
it can be done, or makes these events as exciting, dramatic, or as balanced
as I would like to make them. Usually the games with the most complex battles
are strategy games... Tactics Ogre and Final Fantasy Tactics, or Panzer
General, or Warcraft II. But those 'missions' don't really progress the
story per se, they are merely -obstacles- which you must pass in order
to see more of the story... and also in those games the story is very very
secondary to the gameplay. I have yet to see a game that merges story events
and gameplay to the extent that I can see they can be merged... the closest
to this that I have seen are, as I said, certain rare parts of Wing Commander
and Baldur's Gate (and the other games using that engine by that compnay),
and a very few of the battles in Parasite Eve II and the Resident Evil
series. I see soft touches of what I know is possible in parts of Mega
Man Legends 1 and 2... and in that game The Horde... and in Kagero's Deception...
and in the large-scale battles of Suikoden... but all of them fall short
of my vision.
Imagine Final Fantasy 4 if it had used what I
am thinking of for the battle of Fabul. To refresh your memory, Cecil defends
Fabul from Golbez and his attack, fights Kain, and fails to protect the
crystal he was guarding. Now imagine that part of the game as it should
have been. Fabul soldiers moving about, engaging the enemy. You deciding
where to send your team members, what tasks they will do, each task relating
to how long you are able to hold out against the enemy. Setting up ambushes
and traps to surprise the monsters. Rydia standing on a tower and hurling
lightning spells at the flying airships dropping monsters. Sneaky monsters
disguised as soldiers unlocking doors, and you discovering them. Various
spatical paths to the crystal, each needing to be guarded. Kain with his
group of monsters charging in, and challenging you when he sees you, and
you losing. Now Rosa rushes toward you, and Golbez then captures her, the
story plays out as normal, but altered slightly.depending on how many guards
and monsters are left, and on what room you are in, and on other things...
the battle might determine also how much damage the castle recieves, giving
a further touch of reality. Perhaps, depending on how well you did, there
are less monsters to fight your party in the tower of Zot. Let's say those
three sisters were part of the attack. If you manage to kill them in Fabul,
you wouldn't have to fight them in Zot, but if they live through this attack,
they appear there. This is just one example of how you can connect your
actions in this battle to later happenings in the game, I could think of
more if I gave it the time.
Now compare that complex event and the various
things you imagine might happen, and compare that to the structured linearity
of what actually happens in the game... the same basic story events happen
in each, but there is a lot of difference gameplay-wise. Of course, no
matter how well you play, you'll still have to lose the crystal of fire
and Rosa, but there is a world of difference in being directed through
those events without so much as the freedom to walk where you want to walk,
and this new alternative I described. I predict that in the future, as
the art of video games matures, games will become more and more like how
I picture them. You won't -watch- the story, you'll -play- the story.
Of course, I'm cheating on that prediction, because
what I describe here is going to be seen in Ergintandal 1/5.
Yesterday, I read again the Chris Crawford game
design book, written in the early 1980s, it is the first, and still in
my mind the best, book on game design, although I'm currently working on
a better one. Crawford was amazingly prescient of what would happen after
games became mass-marketized... he predicted that they would become formulaic,
each copying from eachother The battle against 'the art industry' (by which
I mean the book 'industry', the movie/television 'industry', the visual
art 'industry', the music 'industry', and the game 'industry', and to lesser
extents things which are not often thought of as being mass-market, like
the poetry 'industry' and the architecture 'industry') is one of my main
battles in this world, and I will devote a large section of the heroic
manifesto to that subject. Later. Now, I wish to point out Crawford's understanding
of theme in game. He did not exactly understand the idea of theme as well
as I do (for how I define it, see issue#5 of ohrrpgce monthly's game design
article), he saw theme as a general 'point' of a game, and it's educational
value (he saw games, correctly, as being necessary in education) where
as I see theme as the 'worldview, or model of the world, which the player
gains from the playing of it', the 'change in thought do to the experience
of playing the game'. They almost amount to the same thing, however, and
I'm sure if he had given it more thought he would have arrived at my understanding
of it.
To give an example, take the game Railroad Tycoon.
This is a game where you operate a railroad, and compete with other railroads.
It's particularly interesting if you play the game in conjunction with
the novel Atlas Shrugged... both involve railroads, and how they are important
to a civilization... moving goods from place to place, transportation of
people... transportation is the bloodstream of the world, and most things
are transported by railroad. Both Atlas Shrugged and Railroad Tycoon show
you this, although in different ways. In the game, you get to control an
actual railroad, compete with others, build rails, and in general make
many of the decisions Dagny makes in Atlas. There are mines, there are
steel mills, there are food products, there are cities... and connecting
them all are your trains. Cities grow if they are given the conditions
of growth, you use money to buy new trains, you try to build a transcontinental
railroad... etc., etc... after you play the game for awhile, you begin
to actually feel it, the railroad-as-bloodstream model of the world. Not
only that, you begin to be able to recognize actual types of classic trains
that were made in that era by sight. Another side benefit is that you learn
geography, learn where cities lie in relation to other cities. The game
is of course contains direct facts about railroads, but it is more than
facts, it's about managing resources, and about decision making, as all
games ideally are. Should you use this money to buy a new train, to repair
track, to build a bridge and new track, to upgrade one of your train stations,
or to buy company stock? What type of train should you buy? What type of
bridge? Should you build track in steep areas or go around them? You also
learn how goods go from crude to refined... oil and coal are necessary
for the working of a steel mill, so unless you bring them to a city with
a steel mill, it won't produce steel. Of course, it isn't as complicated
as real life, in real life there are multitudes of considerations, more
than the game shows. For example, there are no copper mines, no salt mines,
no gem mines, no gold mines, only coal mines. The most important parts
are in the game, and the less important things had to be left out to save
space (it is an old game) and programming time. If I were to remake the
game today, I'd put a lot more into it, and include more information about
railroads, biographies of famous railroad tycoons, bits about how the railroad
was invented, about how coal engines work... I wouldn't just include them
as side-facts, either, but integrate them into the gameplay. I'd include
a part where you have to find, hire, and assign various people and put
them in charge of operations of various train stations. There is a lot
that I, or Sid Meier (the author of that game) could do to make the game
more complete as a game about railroads. But there is no question that
it when it is finished, I had a stronger understanding of (I'm getting
tired of typing this word, but I can think of no ready synonym) railroads,
a particular viewpoint on them, shared by the author, and transmitted from
him to me, through the thing called a video game.
Now. Is it more fun to learn about railroads from
playing Railroad Tycoon and reading Atlas Shrugged, or from a textbook-based
class about the history of railroads?
