I was watching The Princess Bride last night, and I realized at some point that most of the action isn't really from the hero Wesley's perspective. Actually, I think the action is pretty interchangeable. When the pirates kidnap Buttercup, we see a man in black following them persistently, and we see their reaction to it. Now I was thinking, what if this were a game? We are introduced to the characters and the story is shown in scripted dialogue sequences, much like any RPG. Then we come back to the gameplay. Much of the script sequences, though, very simply do not involve the player. They're from someone else's perspective (the pirates, for example). Fleshing the idea out, maybe some interesting ideas can come into play. [smile] Obviously, I'm not talking about making a game out of Princess Bride (though that could be fun). The idea is pretty general; you could use it in any game or genre. I dunno, what do you guys think? What effect could this have on the gameplay?

Examples of this can be seen in games where cut scenes show enemies plotting and what not (ex. Splinter Cell: PT, Halo 2). I suppose you're talking about this being used through the ENTIRE game, but only allowing the player to be focused on during playable sequences? It sounds like a good idea, putting a twist on character immersion, but it could take away from character involvement. Or at least a player feeling like hes invovled.

Another twist could be that you actually control a couple main characters, just separately. I was thinking of something like most fantasy novels. You see the perspective of multiple characters. You could control each indivdually and they could just miss running across each other, battle here, interaction there... In the end maybe you end up controlling both of them, i.e. the final battle or something like that. Obviously things would have to be very sequential, but in many games you have to complete one task to go on to the next...

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Original post by TriplexVirus Examples of this can be seen in games where cut scenes show enemies plotting and what not (ex. Splinter Cell: PT, Halo 2). I suppose you're talking about this being used through the ENTIRE game, but only allowing the player to be focused on during playable sequences? It sounds like a good idea, putting a twist on character immersion, but it could take away from character involvement. Or at least a player feeling like hes invovled.

Well obviously you wouldn't apply this in every situation; you'd measure. This could be useful particularly at the beginning of a game to let the player just play around for a bit. Whenever he has little effect on the script sequences, unless you're aiming for secrecy on the part of other characters at this point, this might be useful.

Never played it myself, but I watched my roommate play Saga-Frontier II quite a lot last year. It seems very similar to what you're describing. You saw the story through the eyes of two (were there just two? it's been a while and, like I say, I never personally played it) characters. Between bits of story you were given a choice of which part of the story you wanted to see unfold next. Events weren't necessarily chronological and you were jumping back and forth between two (?) story lines (I never saw where they met, but I was told they do), which gave it a feel I really enjoyed. Maybe something to consider.

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Original post by jswidorski Another twist could be that you actually control a couple main characters, just separately. I was thinking of something like most fantasy novels. You see the perspective of multiple characters. You could control each indivdually and they could just miss running across each other, battle here, interaction there... In the end maybe you end up controlling both of them, i.e. the final battle or something like that. Obviously things would have to be very sequential, but in many games you have to complete one task to go on to the next...

Two good examples of this would be Space Hulk and The Day of the Tentacle. In Space Hulk you could see the first person views of each space marine you had and you could choose the one you wanted to control while still retaining the ability to see the other views. Such a system can easily become too hectic as it would require much more concentration (you have to keep an eye on all the views all the time) and reflexes. The Day of the Tentacle was a lot slower-paced and great fun, as the three characters were in the same place but at different times, and what you did in the past had an effect in the future etc. Of course, they're rather old games and not rpgs, but they show that such a system can be used succesfully.

This is starting to go slightly off topic, but one interesting thing would be to have the possibility of having a few separate storylines intertwined (much like in most movies nowadays, unfortunately), but any given time you played the game you would only play one of them. In the beginning of the game you choose your character which all correspond to their own stories. During the game you would see the other characters you could have chosen from and you would see them doing things you would have been doing should you have chosen to play them. Each separate story would only show a part of the whole.

This way you could see the story from different points of view, but not all at once. Of course, phenomenal amounts of cunning might have to be applied in order to preserve the element of surprise.

I'm sure this has been used before as well, but can't think of any examples right now (well, there is a certain continuation and common elements in the Half-Life/Opposing Force/Blue Shift-world, but I was thinking of doing it on a much larger scale).

Grim: There's an RPG similar to what you're talking about reviewed on Gametunnel. I think it's called Akito or something, with a really long title. It got pretty good reviews.