Original post by Bladerz666 although the satisfaction or payoff only is impactful if the player has an emotional response with the world. one of the reasons having a game based soley in a personal group without the world interferring can have an even larger emotional payoff if the characters are done well
I'm not sure that I follow. Surely personalities and social interactions are benefited through the influence of environment?
So the player has to be the main character for their sotry, as the player see's this perspective but as others have said that doesn't mean he has to be the hero from the game world's perspective. I think there are 2 ways to accomplish this. The first is be a "secret hero", the second is the "other story hero".
The secret hero is one where basically someone else takes credit. Think Get Smart, Maxwell gets all the credit but its 99 who does everything. Or Inspector gadgets where its all up to Penny. The idea here is that you help out behind the scenes so from the average citizen Joe's point of view the hero is some NPC, but you played a pivotal role in making that NPC's victory possible. Hand Solo on endor's moon while Luke blows up the Deathstar. The problem here is you don't get a payoff "I did all the work and he gets the house?".
The other way to do it is to have the your character's story wound up in a completely different story that you really have no impact on and is just happening. There is an episode of Buffy where the story is about Xander getting a car while the rest of the characters are literally fighting to save the world in the background. Sounds a lot like the Justice League ep someone else mentioned. You play out your story while some carnage happens around you. The problem here is you probably don't care about the big climatic story because you have no impact on it.
Clearly the player character has to be the focus, but I defiantly think its possible to make a game where you aren't actually the hero. Its just much harder and requires more effort. And since most games are usually over budget and behind schedule anyway nobody bothers :)
(Note: Get Smart, Inspector Gadget, Buffy and Original Star Wars are my references ... I think that makes me old!)
Another way to look at it is that this reminds me of the latest War of the Worlds remake. There is plenty of action and tension, however, the main characters are simply trying to survive. They have no effect on the main story problem (the alien invasion).
Contrast this with a movie like Independence Day where the main characters are actively are on the hook for solving the main problem itself (battling aliens, flying to and destroying the mother ship, etc.).
Most games are like Independence Day, where you battle and battle until you get to the Big Boss and save the universe/close the portal/whatever. I think you could still make an interesting game of the War of the Worlds type.
No, it doesn't have to be. However, keep some things in mind. Most gamers when faced with a party that is rearrangement and has no main character will usually still pick the character they feel they most relate to and will keep them as a main anyways. This is done to reap the benefits of leveling (unless you are going to set up a system like FFXIII where all party members level up whether they fight or not) and also make the story more logical.
The main problem I see with an idea like this is that the only way I can see to accomplish this is to either have a ridiculous budget to support the writing staff for the countless number of hours put in to possible conversations that characters might have so that each character is really in depth and can be appreciated... or every character will end up too vague in an attempt to keep them all "equally attractive to the gamer" as it were.
I think a lot of what you are talking about reminds me of Baldur's Gate 2. I would recommend this as a point of reference if you haven't played it yet since this would be the closest representation to what I think you are describing.
Original post by Daaark That would make for a unique RPG.
Lol, that was great.
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Original post by Beyond_Repair One thing that's fairly popular is to let the player character start at 'the bottom' and work his way up, gaining a sense of achievement along the way. I can't recall any games that do the opposite.
