Driving the story forward in a free-roaming world

Opwiz · 2013-10-07T09:00:06

Hello, I'm thinking of ways to drive a story forward in a free-roaming world. I want the player to feel like he can freely explore the world but I also want to impose some kind of pressure/limit so the player doesn't get completely sidetracked and the pacing of the story gets killed. Another reason is to prevent the player from getting over-powered and ruining the progression-curve. Examples on how games drive the story forward: The Elder Scrolls - It's entirely up to the player to progress the game by doing the "story quests". Personally I got so sidetracked by side-quests (the infamous draugr quests) that I got bored before moving on to the main story quests. Mass Effect - Similar to The Elder Scrolls, however each story-quests opens up the amount of side-quests available. The side-quests also tend to tie into the main story and has an impact on how the story progresses. Persona 4 - This game has an interesting way of driving the story forward. You have a limit of the amount of things you can do each day and if you haven't done the story-missions before a certain date, you lose the game. You can plan ahead and be selective about what side-quests to do, before moving on to the story-mission. What kind do you prefer? Any games you think does this well? Any other ideas on how to drive the story forward in a open world-type game?

Game Design and Theory Game Design

Started by Opwiz October 01, 2013 01:18 PM

10 comments, last by herbertsworld 11 years, 3 months ago

Iron Chef Carnage

1,845

October 07, 2013 01:49 AM

One of the reasons I avoid story quests in Elder Scrolls and other such games is that I'm afraid I'm missing important stuff hidden in side quests. If I get to a main story event and my dude is underleveled or didn't meet a particular NPC or didn't get an optional item, will I be unable to access certain content? Will I be muddling around in hard mode when there's a Megaman-style "right tool" that I blundered right past? Paranoia drives me to out-of-character behavior.

herbertsworld

280

October 07, 2013 09:00 AM

One of the reasons I avoid story quests in Elder Scrolls and other such games is that I'm afraid I'm missing important stuff hidden in side quests. If I get to a main story event and my dude is underleveled or didn't meet a particular NPC or didn't get an optional item, will I be unable to access certain content? Will I be muddling around in hard mode when there's a Megaman-style "right tool" that I blundered right past? Paranoia drives me to out-of-character behavior.

I agree with Iron Chef. Although I think this comes from a lack of player feedback. If there's enough feedback from Audio, UI or narrative then the player should feel confident in their abilities, instead of being worried whether or not they have the right gear or skill level.

Driving the story forward in a free-roaming world

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Driving the story forward in a free-roaming world

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