Cryo - Conflicts and EndingsQuote:
I would like to see the conclusions of the different story as well as documentation of the actual moral decision the player would come into.
The design of Cryo revolves around a spectrum of conflicts. The endings of the stories correspond to the logical consequences of the judgement of the player on the presented conflicts. The properties about the player that the game will assess include:
Judgement – Assesses the degree to which the PC believes a view or situation. The PC can be classified as Gullible or Prejudiced, Skeptical, and Alert.
Action – Assesses how the PC take action in terms of finding the truth. The PC can be classified as apathetic, inactive, active, indulgent
Moral Alignment – Assesses whether the PC is in general good or evil
The Conflicts:
The global conflict:
C1) Suspicion between the races due to an unacknowledge history (Most of the people above the crust did not know that there was a war in the past between the races. In the beginning, the races decided to hide that past so they could survive peacefully, but now the history is coming back to haunt them.)
The RNPC inner personal conflicts:
C2) Shamila's struggle between her personality and her duty. (Shamila is intrinsically peaceful, but her inheritance destined her to become something contradicts her personality. Double personality induced by external forces.)
C3) Frequency's struggle between justice and forgiveness. (Her father was an exile of the Cincra. In many ways Frequency found exile unjust. But at the same time her father is forgiving the Cincra. So Frequency developed a psychology where although she seeks justice at heart, on the surface she actively rejects it. Double personality induced by internal debate.)
C4) Krystal's struggle between serving the past or saving the present. (Her conflict comes from the fact that she was your lover, but the memory of the past was agonizing, that she did not want to restore. If she decides to save the present, she would sacrifice again to lock herself with the Cryo resulting in a eternal stalemate. From her perspective it was a lose-lose situation, and the player is supposed to change that.)
The nine supplementary, political conflicts:
C5) Wryuka's struggle to protect in the expense of others' lives. (The classic 'we fight because if we don't we would be extinct.')
C6) Cherro's struggle between being precautious and overcautious. (She belongs to the secret organization that retained the records about the war. Throughout the years, the truth behind the war had became obscure. The evolved duty of the cult is to preemptively destroy the other race's strategy before they would restart the war.)
C7) Surah's struggle about trust. (She belonged to the same organization. But by that time there was no indication that a revenge would ever happen, since the races were already living peacefully and were integrating. Luth was another member who believed that the organization should not continue and instead free the energies reserved for the counter attack for the development of the new city of NaraSuh that would combine the strengths of Cincra and TaraSuh. It was not an acceptable proposal, and the organization turned against him. Surah, being his lover, was caught in the battle about trust and visions.)
C8) Luth's struggle about regret. (The result of his conflict from the organization eventually led to the Surah's death. And the development of NaraSuh uncovered the ruins of the past, evidence of vast deposite of TaraSuh military equipments, the fear of the organization.)
C9) Hoplite's struggle about defending in the face of doom. (The classic 'never give up')
C10) Templar's struggle about the cost and meaning of defense. (The templars were created for the sole purpose of defending against the wryuka, near the end of the war there was already nothing much left, for what exactly were they defending?)
C11) Demon-form's revenge of the intruders. (The classic 'you must pay for what you have done.')
C12) Angel-form's acknowledgement and forgiveness of the past.
C13) Cryo's timeout.
The corresponding conclusions led by judgement, action, and moral alignment:
C1) Whether a war will resume or be resolved. This is based on how the player make decisions about justice, forgiveness, and the player's position on suspicion and faith. The action of the player will make the RNPC think toward the bad sides or the good sides about the clues, leading them to believe either the ruins represent a war being imminent and inevitable that they must strike first to stop it, or that there was already great sacrifice and faith embedded in the cryo to prevent the war. The player will shift the perspectives of the RNPC on whether a war was being mobilized or demobilized.
For RNPCs, the conclusions include whether a relationship is successfully established. The followings are the additional meanings. All RNPC and NPC are subjected to death in certain scenarios.
C2) The endings for Shamila includes whether the player is able to dissolve the cold war between the races, so that Shamila no long need to live the double life. It can go the other way where Shamila loses faith about the good of mankind and turn completely cold blood.
C3) The endings of Frequency involves whether the player succesfully stop her from flee from her inner conflicts, resolve her relationship with her father, and the Cincra.
C4) The endings of Krystal involves whether you discover the situation on time to prevent her sacrifice. The player is supposed to confront and defeat the demon-form. The bad ending involves she turning against you because you are evil or that she had become evil.
The conclusions of the other nine conflicts can be seen as subplot.
C5) Whether the wryuka queen would be incited to launch again to protect the eggs, or that she would entrust you with the coninuation of her species.
C6) Cherro: whether she would see the heart of her daughter and feel remorse over what she had done.
C7) Surah: The conclusion will show how she actually died, whether she trusted luth or not as a foreshadow of the current situation.
C8) Luth: Involves whether his vision was correct, and whether the intention was more important than the circumstance for the situation.
C9) Hoplite: whether they will run wild and destroy the world above the crust, be destroyed as enemies, or demobilized and integrated back to peace.
C10) Templar: whether it will feel justified to continue its purpose, or to help resolve the crisis
C11) Demon-form: Whether you kill it or it kills you.
C12) Angel-form: Whether it neutralizes the demon or get killed.
C13) Cryo: Whether it breaks or not.
Quote:
I feel that the elements you have included will be hard to acculminate in nine different endings
There are more than nine different endings. The player will not go through everything in one game run. When you say 'hard to accumulate', do you mean there are too many or too little? Or that they don't fit together?
Choosing an RNPCQuote:
When and at what point does the character have enough information to make the decision on what rnpc they will choose?
The player start choosing an RNPC from the beginning. In the beginning, the player will only pick them based on preference and pick whoever the player wants to know more about. The player can switch RNPC when back at the cities.
The analogy is a tavern filled with heroes. When the player is about to begin an adventure, the player will select an RNPC to go with (or select none). In reality, the RNPCs have they own activities and shedules and do not just sit around, but the game will give the player hints where they could be found. The player can almost always contact Frequency by her cellphone. Whether she would show up is a different matter. To contact Shamila is harder because that involves magical abilities that will be based on the PC's magical skills. The idea is that magical phonecalls are minigames that takes some skills to dial. The differences in difficulty is intentional to show the differences of life styles of the races through gameplay. Krystal is a little hard to find. In fact she would become a missing child. Her whereabout is strongly linked to the mystery, and if the player exhausts the clues the player can ask Gillieon, the one who actually sits at the tavern.
Quote:
As I understand many of these decisions are made near the beginning, like when you say that if not choosen Frequency will die near the beginning....will the character have encountered enough moral decisions by that point to help lend some credence to the death of frequency, or is it by that point luck on the decisions they made?
If the player is not expected to know why Frequency would die in the beginning. Her death is more related to the overall mystery of the story than moral decisions, yet the reaction of the player upon hearing the new will be used to assess the alignment. In general, Frequency would only die in the beginning if the player doesn't do anything about the mysteries. In other words, if the player just let the RNPCs continue their suspicious behaviors without intercepting, Frequency will die as an alarm. Since this is a mystery game, there are 'gameover'.
Gameovers correspond to the game states, due to the player's inaction or indecision, the plot has progressed into a deadend. Frequency's death serves as a sign that the plot is running into a deadend because the player is inresponsive to the crisis behind the scenes. In Cryo, the player is expected to use the knowledge from another game run to prepare for the current game run. It is correct that the PC will behave like a prophet. This is the dynamic of the feedback across game runs, where the more the PC behaves like a prophet, the more likely the RNPCs suspect the PC. That is how the game balances the diffculty with the accumulation of information in replays. This is also another instance of delivering conflict through gameplay, while the player knows that he is trying to help the situations, the player also feels the suspicion being generated by the very act of helping.
