[Orange Brat]

Not only that, you can't write as good of a story no matter how good of a writer you are. You can't foreshadow, you can't use plot twists. You can only write a mediocre story where the player feels a sense of control.

Poppycock. :p

[Lee in Limbo]

I've never understood the resistance to the notion of multiple endings in Adventure Games. Surely that is the most fundamentally unique aspect of storytelling in an interactive medium. Right at the very core of the adventure is this notion that, unlike a novel or movie, you get to inspect and solve the story in your own way, or at least by following different available paths.

This resistance I speak of may be due to a question of quality writing, but it may have more to do with the conflict of interests involved. Some folks want to be challenged, and other entertained, but ultimately, anyone who is more interested in playing puzzles doesn't necessarily need great story writing, and anyone who is more interested in reaching the 'good' ending probably isn't really all that interested in the true nature of interactive fiction.

I've believed for some time now, and especially in the last year or so, that what's really needed is a deliberate push or shift in the medium or sub-genre of Adventure Games to get this concept of multiple endings more into the mainstream. Ways of coding things so various past achievements often reveal divergent endings can be the point of playing the game in the first place. It merely behoves the developer to come up with a short series of arc endings that tie up a series of possible end game scenarios with enough punch to make them feel complete.

You (Squinky) did something very like that with your online IF tale, but it was both personal and subjective, and not really meant to appeal to more than a small group of people, like myself, who want to get to know you better and enjoy experimenting with things friends make.

In order for a graphical interactive fiction to succeed on the level that certain classic games did using multiple endings, but allowing for the greater interactivity necessary to eliminate the use of arbitrary puzzle challenges, it is necessary for writers to think outside the box, creating scenarios and conditions, but allowing the structure to be more free-form. This is a discipline in itself, and requires a certain degree of design sense that enables the writer to perceive situations that can be scaled and shifted to suit numerous preconditions, and thus enabling a wider variance of perceptible differences in each player path.

The player that picked up the sharp implement will be able to cut their way through an obstacle to go one way, but for those who brought the blunt instrument, they'll have to take the available path that cannot be accessed without the blunt instrument. But for those that were particularly perceptive, they may have actually found the key that unlocks the door, allowing them safe passage where other methods might bring unwanted attention.

Experiences can also factor into this. Having the game factor in certain values for specific experiences encountered and resolved, later encounters and situations can be tailored differently to take into account past experiences and the relative success or failure thereof. It's all a question of looking at each situation and each resolution, and placing a certain amount of experience value on them, which when combined with other similar experience values tallies up differently, and tells the game computer to scale or refit a new section with possibilities others won't or can't handle as well.

Add to that the fact that choosing different means of problem resolution can make certain paths more obvious than others, paving a gilded path of sorts favouring certain forms of gameplay, and it opens up the possibility of directing specific scenarios not meant for other gameplay styles, like the arbitrary puzzle machine that activates the balloon ship to fly to the next objective/scenario. An action gamer would ignore such devices, and would expect to have to batter their way to a solution, perhaps by jumping down and snagging a guide rope to slide onto the balloon ship, and finding a simpler bellows mechanism on-board to get on their way with.

It's merely a question of finding creative ways to implement multiple problems and resolutions. It gives designers and coders more to do, yes, but it makes the playability more about what the gamer is used to, and ultimately increases the potential audience. It also does this while telling facets of the same overall story as you go along, and yet allowing the player to define the details of the ending.

This becomes even more relevant if you're delivering an episodic adventure, where the values of the previous ending can effect the starting values of the next chapter. It becomes even more important to design the game in a very modular fashion, but keeping a close eye on the impact of those story arcs, so that all of the variables tally into one of a set of satisfying endings that nevertheless open up possibilities in each succeeding chapter, or in fact to non-concurrent chapters, each playable in their own right, but being affected by previous chapters if you so choose.

Ultimately, the most elegant of designs would integrate a pattern that can be completed satisfyingly no matter which direction you go in. The player may have to backtrack through previous terrain to acquire the means to access sections they shouldn't be able to access directly if they skip chapters, but it's down to implementation of unique solutions with each chapter that can be added to the whole to provide the most satisfying experience possible, whether you collected all nine chapters, or in fact skipped from three to nine, and then bought four through eight afterwards.

Modular storytelling and problem resolution chains will become an artform in itself and will rewrite the nature of good storytelling, once more people figure out how it works and what the point is. Once more players experience it, they'll be able to comprehend what it does and what it means to them, and will be able to decide whether they enjoy it more than traditional storytelling or problem resolution-oriented games. Lacking the definable genre or medium in which to conduct such experiments and educate your audience, it becomes necessary to subvert ones that already exist, and the most obvious poles to guide by are Action, Adventure and Roleplaying Games, with an eye on how IF handles interactivity and storytelling.

Done properly, you'll wind up with a new medium that shares traits of all of the above, and allows you to tell stories to anyone who can handle whatever control interface you hand them to manipulate the story with.

For the writer, it is the challenge to make every possibility relevant to the whole, and to remove their ego from the equation enough to invest depth and meaning into every reasonable outcome. They become writer and producer, but allow the player to be the director... the auteur as it were. Let the player find the ending that makes the most sense to them, while hinting at possibilities that may persuade them to reinvestigate other paths. When you broaden the potential reach of your story and your medium, you will achieve something that can truly be considered an art form, and one that will be recognized in the same way that film and theatre and literature and art and music are.

Play to a genre's conventions and you will always be genre fiction. Play to the gamut of human experience and you can draw in people who might never have considered playing a video game otherwise.

Whoa. Haven't done one of those in a while.

[fireside]

I've never understood the resistance to the notion of multiple endings in Adventure Games. Surely that is the most fundamentally unique aspect of storytelling in an interactive medium. Right at the very core of the adventure is this notion that, unlike a novel or movie, you get to inspect and solve the story in your own way, or at least by following different available paths.

I've just never found it interesting when it's been done in the few adventures I've played that used it. I ended up choosing a path which I had no real idea what the outcome was, and moving on with the game as if the choice wasn't there. It seems like a waste of time to me. Giving the npc's some A.I. would be a much better use of programming. It gives different outcomes but doesn't rely on huge amount of scripting. It's a matter of, if I can't see it, does it really exist or not? If an npc has ai and I see it react differently to different situations, I'll say, wow, that's really cool. If I'm given the choice of a different ending, I'll shrug my shoulders, pick a path, and get on with it. I'll get the same enjoyment from the game as if I didn't pick the path. Do I care if Mabel marries George? Not really. Stories are at their best when they are vicarious as far as I'm concerned. So I might not like it when a character is threatened or hurt, but it still has an emotional impact. If I'm given the choice if they are threatened or hurt, then I'm something else entirely. I would much rather help solve a situation using puzzle type game play and only move the story. No matter how many paths are given, it's still seems contrived to me when I make story choices.

As far as the other point about writing good literature using multiple endings, there really aren't any of those choose your endings books in any classics lists and there never will be. Real authors use characters and events to describe a basic underlying truth about life.

[LeisureSuitedLooney]

I really like what Lee said, it seems like the time is right for more innovations in ways we view gaming. It reminds me of a discussion here in the forums once, about what we as individuals would do, if we could design a game. It presented many interesting concepts; sadly, many publishers would probably reject innovative new gameplay ideas, out of fear of not knowing how to market such games. But it's nice to at least discuss the possibilities.

[Terramax]

I imagine that's the same question as asking whether people liked 'Dreamfall' as that game required little more than talking to one person and then the next.

To me, it depends on the enjoyment of the talking. I for one LOVE talking to people on AGs, it's the biggest reason why I play them. I enjoy the humorous conversations in the Discworlds, Grim Fandango and Broken Sword. Most of the time the thing I hate about AGs are the puzzles. Sure, call me shallow, but not everyone finds coming home to work and sitting to a game spending the next hour or two standing in front of a wall full of scribbles trying to figure out the code to a lock the most interesting and entertaining thing in the world.

Adventures, IMO, are about ADVENTURE, not puzzles. In this respect, talking and exploring locations and exploring character's agendas is more of an adventure than any puzzle.

I guess it depends how innovative it is and rewarding. Innovative as in, speaking to people and saying/ actioning creating a different response or even consequence to the narrative, or even changing the ending.

However, puzzles do have their uses. Showing item's you've picked up on your journey create very entertaining dialog on many games.

[omloflump]

Originally Posted by LeisureSuitedLooney

Gabriel Knight 1 had the interesting "tape splice" recorder, which made a really innovative puzzle out of dialogue, in many interesting combinations.

Now that I don't remember. Where was this? I know conversations were stored as tapes, but that's about all there was to it.

[Squinky]

Huzzah! My thread spawned a classic Lee in Limbo essay slash sermon!

Very good points, and I definitely agree. However, LeisureSuitedLooney also brought up the sad fact that no publisher in their right mind would take a chance at funding such a game, and this is precisely why I posted this thread in the Underground forum. The great thing about being an amateur game developer is being able to design the kinds of games you want to play without having to worry about whether they'll sell, innit?

Obviously, as was discussed to death in another extremely popular Underground thread sometime last year, we amateurs lack the necessary resources to make precisely the kind of game that you have described. What do we do in the meantime, then, to keep ourselves from burning out? My solution has been to bring about the innovation and experimental game concepts in smaller, less ambitious, and easier-to-implement doses.

A brief history lesson: Cubert Badbone, P.I. was my only proper, traditional adventure game; of course, that was exactly what I had set out to make at the time, and I succeeded. The Game That Takes Place on a Cruise Ship was my first foray into multiple endings, and attempted to encourage more exploratory elements than straight puzzle-based gameplay. There were puzzles, yes, but I wanted people to just have fun and play, too, at least at the beginning, and discover the story as they went along, rather than have a goal thrown at them. This brought about some mixed reactions and even a few complaints, I discovered.

The game (if you can even call it that, in the end) I'm working on right now is very small in scope - if we compare mainstream games to feature films and episodic games to TV, then what I'm aiming for is the equivalent of a short film. And yet, this game is shaping up to be even less like what's already out there than anything I've done at this point. What it will lack in length, it will make up for in breadth, meaning it should take about as long to design/develop as a full-length, linear amateur adventure game. Or so I hope. TGTTPOACS burned me out enough as it was, and it wasn't really all that big of a game.

So... yeah. I guess what I'm trying to say is, it's nice to dream and theorise about the Best Game Ever and all, but the fact is, everyone and their dog has brilliant, revolutionary ideas. Making such ideas into something tangible, through the work of us amateurs, is what will eventually lead to them becoming adopted into the mainstream (or at least a reasonably sizeable niche) as a viable art form.

[Trumgottist]

Originally Posted by omloflump

Now that I don't remember. Where was this? I know conversations were stored as tapes, but that's about all there was to it.

He may be thinking about GK2.