So, speaking of the game, I believe I want to actually write about CITIZEN. But first something in the way of an introduction.
I bought an old game called Planescape - Torment from GOG the other day. Although I liked playing fantasy games in my younger years, I've lost interest in them because the bit about magic never really sank in with me.
I wasn't very good intuiting how best to use magic. Offensive spells, like Fireball or Magic Missile were easy to understand and use. Other types, like those that give temporary boosts to your skills or attributes, although easy to grasp, gave me a strange anxiety as I didn't know when it would be best used since their effects last only a short time.
The fantasy setting is why I never bothered with this title, even though these were the same devs that created Fallout 1 and 2, titles that have had a formative impact on my brain. Even if I knew it back then, I still probably wouldn't care, since the Torment is such a different game.
Several years ago, I replayed bits of Fallout 2, though not the whole way through. In Fallout 2 and in Torment, parts of the game certainly was rooted in the kind of fun that felt fun for me. If I were to summarise, I'd say it was simply discovering the world through descriptions and talking to NPCs and then having the privilege of interacting with them.
But another aspect is the narrative writing of these two games. Torment was released in 1999, and is indeed written better than many games nowadays who tout themselves as 'great narrative experiences'. An example of one such modern disappointment is the Red Strings Club, which I will never recommend for those who value their time. Torment's writing is not what I call concise nor succint, nor is it always on-key, but even at its worse, it doesn't offend my sensitive intolerance for wordy or uselessly vernacular writing.
This is important because Torment rides on the text; it is a text-heavy game. The dialogue choices are simple and experience points can often by earned by talking to another NPC in a certain way.
There is an aspect about dialogue role-playing that I've not really explored when I played the Fallout series. Whether it was my young self that prevented more exploration or experimentation, or whether it simply the difference between the design of Torment and Fallout, I found dialogue role-playing more accessible in Torment, almost to the point where it felt that dialogue choices were as good as any other choice in the game.
There are other events that lacked feedback for their significance, if any. What happened is: you go into a house of an old couple; old man is asleep, wife is over cooking something; you talk to the old man, but he's upset that you've just barged into his house; in CRPG games, trespassing into other people's homes is usually a normal thing to do, but here, the old man reacts realistically; he tells you to skedaddle, and although you have the choice to confront his rudeness right there and then, you choose to back off (this is happening through the dialogue system), but as a parting gift he still hits you over the head with something, and you have the choice of retaliating; when you do -- I did -- the wife rushes over, and they officially start assaulting me, and combat ensues; I kill the old man, then the old woman; I've become a killer of old men and women. Of course, I didn't mean to kill them; I thought I would just reciprocate vindictively at the old man's vindictiveness, but one thing led to another, I said to the judge.
I've not experienced any repercussion from this fatal encounter. In Fallout I expected the Hand of Game Designer to rain down some kind of punitive event that will set my morals right, but in Torment, I have gained a place to rest and heal up for free. Time will tell if this comes to bite me in the ass, but you can see how interesting this is from a player's point of view. It may be genius, or not. I have avoided searching the Internet for other people's explanations.
Another good example of dialoge role-playing is when you meet the Damsel-in-Distress NPC. You talk to her; she's afeared for her life, and her friend/sister/whatever has been kidnapped by goons; she wants you to help her by following her into some alley. Whilst the dialogue choices are usually comprised of speaking lines, it sometimes indicates actions you can do, like inspect the woman's dress, of which you'll find that the bloodstains seem old, and the dialogue leads you to believe that something's not right. You can choose to believe the veracity of the Damsel's story, or you can challenge it. I chose to challenge it.
At some point, however, I get chased around by thugs (and subsequently they kill me) for some unknown reason. Has it to do with my frustrating the Damsel's ruse? I can't say. If so, the free-flowing design didn't indicate that there was a cause-and-effect.
In any case, this doesn't really detract from the good role-playing experience that the Damsel-in-Distress dialogue produced.
The question I have is whether any of these may be applied in any way to CITIZEN itself, since it fairly driven by text, too, though with deliberate emphasis on conciseness.
In the old man and wife scenario, the dialogue role-playing allowed things to transpire through the use of words and interpersonal interactions, which are different from other direct but passive actions such running, crouching, or showing your weapon, which are some of the actions that the player in CITIZEN can do.
It is important to note that I observed that the old couple's deaths gave me a free place to stay, but not that it was ever written in words in the game. I gained a practical thing, and that is tied also to the fact that resting is a mechanic in the game. More abstractly, I gained something through combat (killing the couple) but which was first instigated by a dialogue-level interaction, noting that these are two different game mechanics.
This isn't unique, though. Fallout does this too. However, my highly sensitive moral nature is often plagued by the doubt that I played the game correctly: should I, or should I've not offended this NPC? Whoops, I did, and now they want to kill me, but instead I kill them! Is the game going to close off doors because of this? What am I going to miss?
Perhaps I was more troubled as a child than I originally thought.
Yet as an adult playing Torment, killing the couple only added curiosity. Because I was wounded after combat, I needed a place to rest, so I rested there for free. I saw the reward immediately although I wasn't told there was going to be. In contrast, in Fallout, an event's repercussions might not only come back to haunt you, but there sometimes missed a short-term feedback for things you do. This gives me anxiety unjustly especially when we just want to enjoy a nice game, eh?
Thus, if I were to glean some principles from the Killing of the Old Couple: 1.) allow role-playing dialogue to instigate non-dialogue events, 2.) allow player to re-choose decisions that they might have skipped in order to disabuse them of the notion that the dialogue is engineered as a one-choice-one-result assumption, 3.) give feedback as immediately as is sensible to choices, both good or bad, or both, which will remove anxiety of what they might have possibly missed with the interaction.
The role-playing in Damsel-in-Distress is also covered by the above principles. I could add, however: 4.) remember that you can add interpersonal actions in the dialogue to add more possible avenues for role-play and get away from just a conversation, and 5.) allow NPCs to change through role-play dialogue.
Principle # 5 is rather interesting because I never considered NPCs should change. But of course they can; an NPC can start out as suspicious, or your enemy, and after the dialogue (where you can presumably do a non-combat fisticuffs by describing how you out-martial-arts him and break his legs) he becomes your friend. That latter bit actually touches on Principle # 4.
In Torment, the combat aspect is de-prioritised over role-play, which surprised me. In CITIZEN, I've tried to downplay the role that combat plays in the game because the glamourisation of guns and violence in many modern games turns me off. I still want to introduce combat-fun but I'm trying to be careful about going off the deep end.
I ended up analysing Torment because it's actually encouraged me about the validity of the vision I have for CITIZEN. I've often rethought my game over the years, scoping out the boundaries, with much difficulty, between what I'd like for it to be and what it can realistically be. Torment has given me some reminders that, at the very least, good writing can actually be enjoyable to read (for those inclined to read, that is). It encouraged me not to shy away from quirkiness of game design or writing; if there are missing bits, the player may fill it up. It's given me some ideas of how to approach role-playing dialogue.
And it tells me that combat isn't everything.
In the next or near-future blog post, I might actually start talking about CITIZEN...
No comments:
Post a Comment