How do you transition into multiple centuries, and how do you account for those transitions? If a character's lifespan is much longer than normal, but you'd like to include her entire life into one game, how do you do it? Some possible solutions I've come up with so far: 1. Hibernation: The character sleeps for x time and awakens to find herself in a new era. This can be applied to vampires asleep in their coffin. Or a scientist asleep in cryo out in space. 2. Narration: The character's life played out like a story, with every major event being a chapter in a book. This has the benefit of the character actually experiencing her entire life and not missing out on anything. 3. Cloning: The character does die but memories live on in other beings. This can be accomplished through actual cloning, memory transfer or, as a stretch, play can be taken over by a child or close relative a generation below. Solutions 1 and 2 are essentially opposites, while the 3rd can be applied to either one. Hibernation techniques may have the advantage of a more immersive feel; the player experiences exactly what the character experiences. When you prefer that the character evolve through the medium of experience, a narrative-type design has the advantage of cognisance of the character, albeit with a disadvantage to the player in that respect. Again, cloning can fit anywhere in this spectrum, but it has even more of a detachment to the player than narration does, since the characters literally change before your eyes. What are your thoughts on these, both as design techniques and gameplay elements, and can you think of any other ways a large amount of time can be abridged into a game based on a single character?

I like the narration option... complete a large section (chapter) of the game... go to some back story, and let the game resume in a completely new era with the same character(s). I would suggest placing some emphasis on the things that are common to the periods to give a sense of continuity.

The other thing you could do is time dilation: a space-ship gets launched, travels at 99% of the speed of light to a distant star. Becuase of general relativity, less time passes on the ship than in the rest of the world. In a book called Speaker for the Dead, by orson scott card, this is exactly what happened to the protagonist. 3000 years of history pass, but only about 25 years for the hero. of course, some of that was spent on planets. no need even for cryosleep. This is what I'll be doing in my game, to make a realistic tech tree, one that spans 5k years in 5k years, not 5k years in one engagment. In my case, though, it will be the whole ship/fleet that survives,rather than a single charachter

Something along the lines of cloning that you might possibly consider is reincarnation. Being reborn can action move the time forward, since there will automatically be some blank between the time you die and the time you are reborn and grow up to a proper age. So, at least 15 - 20 years jump.

I've also wondered about something similar, but I was moving more in the direction of not someone that lives longer, but just a being that is capable of living forever through the use of a cybernetic body comprised of 99% nanomachines. So, basically, the character can go into a sleep/dormant state indefinitely until the next time he/she is awaken again. Kind of like a guardian spirit of the world that is only called upon when needed.

It makes for some interesting possibility of creating installment based RPGs with 1 main character and differing support cast every installment. Of course, along with a different story and equipment advances.

@ smitty1276: A literal book is exactly what I was thinking. Sepia-toned pages filled with stills or even a cinematic sequence. Would be very cool.

@ NIm: I hadn't thought of time dilation - nice one. That also has the advantage of the player being able to play continuously with out any breaks in gameplay. And of course you could make the trip interesting for the player by including mini-quests within the ship while they are travelling - nice idea, gears are grinding.

@ WeirdoFu: Yes, reincarnation is an interesting way to handle this as well. It also brings up a good question: How practical is reincarnation in dealing with character death? Obviously, one can only design a finite number of characters for the player to inhabit. But, given a hypothetical 40 unique character limit via modelling and texturing, would this be a viable way to handle normal character death (say, in an RPG)? Each time you die, you get reincarnated into the body of another villager (relatively quickly). At key points in the story, death is pre-determined by plot, and reincarnation allows you to inhabit the body of someone in the future history. Although this would put a very small limit on the number of "key points", and cause your 3D modellers to have heart attacks as well. What do you think?

It's nice to know I'm not the ONLY one wrestling with this challenge![smile]

I think if you want to maintain player attachment to a character, nothing beats some sort of symbolism that the player can latch onto. I don't think that the symbolism has to be the standard character avatar, which is used in most games. But whatever you use, it has to be of such a nature that personal interaction is expected and natural. The player could be, for instance, a possessing ghost or artificial intelligence, or a god, as our mythology has set us up to expect these things to span ages. If this symbolism doesn't work, you may need to create and reinforce your own (such as a magic mirror that, when gazed into, rejuvinates people).

In terms of gameplay, you could try what I'm going to try: A mix of montages with options (half story, half fancy menu gameplay) blended in with your normal game action. But I think it's important that it fit your game's overall feel.

And what about time travel?

Yes, symbolism is key; the player needs a sense of self to keep her connected to the character she happens to be playing throughout the game. In an interesting sidetrack on cloning you implied having the player embodied in a spiritual form. In the game I'm helping to develop, the main character will be a vampire-like creature, but I didn't want to include all of the cliched elements that vampires bring with them. A spirit ego would work well here I think, given that his adversary is a merciless angel from heaven.

Indeed, time travel was one of the first solutions I thought of, but I ultimately deemed it important that the main character be a world traveller and actually experience the world as it changes around him. This again will give more reason for the player to stay focused on the character, since she'll be experiencing the changing climate right along side her (which is why the narrative form intrigues me so much; it's classy, and it actually makes room for in-game cinematics, instead of me making room for them myself, ie., compromising gameplay).

It's going to be an action-oriented RPG, similar to Vagrant Story. One of the things that interested me was the idea of using different weaponry and 'armor' from their respected time periods, both in technique and material. It won't be a very faced-paced game, so interesting menuing devices relating to gameplay could work. Great idea.

Wavinator's comment about having something to hold onto reminded me of an Asimov book I read. One of the "Foundation" series, I think, but I'm not sure which one. It was a series of short stories, each one taking place at an historically critical time. The founder of the Foundation had crazy science that let him sort of predict the future, within certain tolerances, and so he had recorded messages stored in a vault. Every so often, one would activate, and everyone would watch it. The stories had all different characters, and took place generations apart, but the focussed on these crises.

It was neat to read. Sorry I can't remember what it was called.

Well, there was the game called Messiah a few years back where your character, this cute little angel, had to accomplish tasks by possession NPCs and controlling them. Of course, I don't think we have to go that far here, but its an interesting idea.

Now, with reincarnation at every death in the game that really does make things a little tricky, unless we're looking at "reincarnation" in the form of possessing another body somewhat like in Messiah or (in recent history) Agent Smith from the Matrix. Personally, I think if reincarnation is really going to be used, then you probably don't want death anywhere else except for the purpose of reincarnation. So, "defeat" would push you back a little bit in the story, delay certain events, or have a more profound effect. Hell, assuming that the story has a total of 5 - 8 chapters, which means your character reincarnates/dies 4-7 times, then "premature death" or defeat under certain conditions in previous chapters may have profound effects on the current or next chapter. So basically, if you weren't able to complete certain objectives before being killed or just being killed by accident, you are forced to move onto the next chapter, or reincarnated in the next chapter. However, since you didn't finish certain things in the previous chapter, like say kill a certain boss, that same boss may reappear in the current chapter, maybe in a different or more powerful form. This opens up some story branching possibilities.

As for symbolism, it can be done in a literal way as somewhat of a physical characteristic, scar, birthmark, etc. This is actually not uncommon in RPGs.

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A literal book is exactly what I was thinking. Sepia-toned pages filled with stills or even a cinematic sequence. Would be very cool.

Actually, this is almost exactly what Eternal Darkness (on the Gamecube) did. That was a great game... you should check it out to get some idea of how it was done there and you can probably get it used for under $10.

Like you are suggesting, it used sepia toned pages from a book, which then blended seamlessly into actual full color game play if I recall correctly. The game spanned about 20 centuries, I think... from BC to present.

Some links:
http://www.eternaldarkness.com/
http://cube.ign.com/articles/363/363071p1.html