Hello there everyone.

I want to make a game inspired by Mass Effect, but there are a few general storytelling in video games problems that I'm trying to figure out, before I really get down to making the game. I've been thinking about it a lot, so it will be a bit of a longpost, but thinking in a bubble is never a good idea, so I ask for your help in solving these problems and criticism of my solutions. Any feedback is appreciated.

I believe that these problems are interconnected, so I will present them here together and then present ideas that I have about addressing them.

Problems

Player character can't lose

This is the biggest one. And it is not as simple as it may sound.
In a lot of games, Mass Effect included, it is impossible for player character to lose an engagement with an opponent. The player can lose a gameplay section, but it doesn't result in player character losing, you just load a save and try again. Witch means that there are no stakes, not really. You can present a story in a way that creates an illusion of stakes, but after playing a couple of times, player realizes that they will defensively win eventually, so it becomes more frustrating then challenging.

If you really need player character to lose for story reasons you only have two choices: create a gameplay section that is impossible to win and show a cutscene after one attempt or just show a cutscene where player character loses. Both feel cheap and betray trust between the game and the player.

On the other hand, if you take away the ability to load a save at any time, you are presented with two other problems.
1. How do you handle player character's defeat? What exactly happens mechanically if you fail a mission? Does the character die and you have to start the game over? Do you need to write a story for every possible encounter going bad?

2. In a video game, you need to give player time to understand and practice game mechanics. You can't expect player to just be good at your game from the get go, so it feels a bit unfair to just throw them into important story missions that they can't replay and then present them with consequences.

Choices that don't matter

This is a very common problem in games. Often player is presented with a choice, that seems important, but doesn't really affect anything or affects things, but ultimately doesn't matter. Like: do you kill this person or let them go? witch of this two groups do you support? witch color do you like more red, blue or green?

In my opinion, this is very closely tied to the first problem, that player can't lose. Imagine that you are an all-powerful godlike being that can time-rewind-magic their way through any presented problem, what can possibly matter to you? What consequence can you really feel?

You could set up a system where your choices affect your relationships with other characters, but in this case you have no reason not to cater to those characters, because no other consequences matters.

Linearity of the story

This one is a result of the first two. If you can't ever lose and non of your choices matter then the story can only really unfold one way with minor deviations.
So if you want to make the story not linear you basically have to make two or more different stories and let player choose witch one do they want to see, choose you own adventure style. Witch is not necessarily bad, but is very cost inefficient and difficult to produce.

Solutions

Conflict instead of a story

All stories are based in conflict. But each story is only one example of how a conflict could unfold. When we tell a story in a video game we basically choose a way this conflict will go and take player through it one step at a time without ever showing them the whole picture.

Why not instead present player the conflict itself in its entirety and let player try to solve it themselves?

An example that I can think of is Total War games. In Total War you have a campaign map and individual battles. Telling a story is like defining everything that will happen on the campaign map in advance and only letting player win the battles. Presenting a conflict is like giving the player full control of their armies both on the campaign map and the battlefields.

Separation of practice and performance

Just giving the player full control over the conflict is not enough. We still need to address the whole time-rewind-magic thing.

My idea is to create some sort of practice mechanic for the player to learn the game. It can range from letting player play the mission itself in practice mode, to only letting player practice individual mechanics (like a fight with a set of enemies), to anything in between. I personally would introduce some randomness into the missions and let player just play through them as many times as they want.

Then, when player had enough practice, it's time to play the mission for real. Player gets one attempt and that's it.

What those two ideas would achieve (in theory)

When it comes to "Player character can't lose", together these two ideas address all underlying problems. It allows player to practice, it allows player character to lose and it sets up an overarching system of the conflict that defines what happens if player wins or loses and where the narrative goes from there.

These ideas together help to create a more complex and believable system for choices. Since player can lose, they must consider not only what they want or what other characters want, but also what can they achieve in gameplay and what gameplay consequences each choice may bring.

Finally, since you have full control over the conflict it creates more diversity in how the narrative can unfold, including player's complete defeat.

What are problems that these ideas bring

Nothing is perfect, so here are the problems that I see in these ideas.

Less control over the narrative

This is pretty obvious. If you give player full control over the conflict you can't reliably set up scenes, events or set pieces, because they may not take place in some playthroughs. You can guide the player in a particular direction, but you can't force them.

Having to design campaign level gameplay and mechanics

This is also pretty obvious. If you present player with the whole conflict you need to figure out what does the whole conflict look like, its rules and limitation. And create gameplay mechanics, that will govern it.

Difficulty in presenting the narrative

When the narrative is so diverse, it gets more difficult to figure out, how to present it to the player. I would tie missions to characters and present most of the story through character interactions before, during and after missions.

Player can lose

The opposite of the problem that I'm trying to solve is the problem of player losing. If player can lose each individual mission, it means that they can lose the conflict, the whole thing. Imaging putting 20 hours into a game only to lose it in the end. Imagine in Mass Effect 1 you lose to Sovereign in the end, reapers come through the citadel mass relay and destroy the galaxy, how would you feel?

I'm not really sure how to address this problem and weather or not this problem should be addressed.

So what do you think?

Are these problems relevant?
How would you solve them?

Do you think my ideas can work?
Do you see any flaws in my ideas?

Do you have any other comments or feedback?

I think these are interesting problems, but you are overthinking them a bit. Looks like you want to do a game with really deep and meaningful choices, which is something the industry is struggling for a while now (for an example, just check some recent reviews of Telltale games).

My first point is: why do you want to protect the players from frustration so much? Frustration is part of a gameplay experience, as any challenge in a game can be a point of frustration (and relief, when they're overcome). For example, in Dark Souls games, the frustration of loosing is almost a core mechanic (and you do feel awesome when you suceed). It makes you learn to fight more tactically and be more patient. It teaches the player that it is not a simple hack and slash.

Note that I'm not talking about deliberately making the game frustrating (though it can work in certain contexts, think Getting Over It with Bennett Foddy). But don't take away all the frustration of a game, or you end with something less than a walking simulator.

From the narrative aspect, any game with multiple relevant choices is hard to design properly. The branching could be overwhelming. Even more if you want to plan to every scenario, even the ones that are total disaster ("Normandy crashed onto a star, all of your crew died, and now you're alone in a unhospitable planet: how do you proceed, Shepard?"). It comes to a point where you try to every possible scenario, which is an almost impossible task. There's a point where you need to say: that's enough. 

Also, how many really different choices you want to give the player? Do most of your players will care? Sure, there will be ones that say "thats' cool", but how many of them?  Are they your target group, or you would like to have more players who enjoy your game, even if it has less choices? Maybe focusing on the really good ones is better. Example: it's a strategy game, after 10 hours of play, do I make alliances with Germany or with England? Each ones open new storylines (almost linear from that point, but different nonetheless) and missions.

There's GDC talks about Mass Effect. You could look at them and see how they approached this.

And for reloading the savegame when failed (or when made a bad choice), that's something I wouldn't take away from players, unless you're ready to defend this feature and it adds something to the experience (it's not just an artificial difficult feature). It's a tough design choice, and it will probably divide your players. Some will like, some will dislike.

On 31-3-2018 at 3:32 PM, Jason Ocks said:

Why not instead present player the conflict itself in its entirety and let player try to solve it themselves?

Well, you re not making a Total War game, but, it's not uncommon for a game to let the player choose which level to play first,     or, in RPG's, which (side)quest to resolve first.

On 31-3-2018 at 3:32 PM, Jason Ocks said:

Separation of practice and performance

This is terrible; it doesn't solve the problem at hand, and you 're going to have to make VERY entertaining levels if the players is going to be forced to keep practicing them.

Instead, why not just let the player make a new character whenever he loses, call it a clone or a recruit or volunteer or whatever, and actually use the character-creation-screen more then once per playthrough ? (aka change the story to explain mechanics, instead of changing mechanics to match the story)

On 31.03.2018 at 6:41 PM, TerraSkilll said:

I think these are interesting problems, but you are overthinking them a bit

I tend to do that, that's why I'm asking for feedback.

On 31.03.2018 at 6:41 PM, TerraSkilll said:

My first point is: why do you want to protect the players from frustration so much?

I don't actually want to protect the player from frustration, I probably didn't make my point clear enough, so let me explain.

Replaying a Dark Souls boss over and over again is very different from replaying a gameplay section, even a boss fight, in a story driven game like Mass Effect. In Dark Souls there are no immediate stakes, it is not a story important confrontation, in witch the fate of (whatever) is decided right here right now. It is much more about Are you strong enough to beat this boss and save (whatever) at some point.

In a story driven game stakes are much more immidiate. Like thugs are trying to kill Garrus, right now, you need to save him, right now. And if the failure in gameplay doesn't lead to failure in the story it creates a strong disconnect. Having to replay this section reveals that there actually are no stakes and fight becomes just a roadblock to the next cutscene. Witch is frustrating in a very different way then losing to a Dark Souls boss. It's not "I'm gonna beat this guy next time" frustrating where you want to play more, it's "Just let me see the story" frustrating that makes you want to play less, witch is bad design in my opinion.

On 31.03.2018 at 6:41 PM, TerraSkilll said:

Also, how many really different choices you want to give the player? Do most of your players will care?

This is a good point, I need to think on it.

On 31.03.2018 at 6:41 PM, TerraSkilll said:

And for reloading the savegame when failed (or when made a bad choice), that's something I wouldn't take away from players, unless you're ready to defend this feature and it adds something to the experience

This, together with your previous point, made me realize that what I want is to make players fight for their choice. Not that I want to create infinite possibilities or greate variety in the story. I think we cheer for hero's success in the story the most, if we believe that failure was a real possibility. I want to support this philosophy mechanicly, make failure a real possibility, make gameplay section important to the story, not just roadblocks, so that player have to fight for what they want and feel real "sense of pride and accomplishment" if they get it. As cheesy as it may sound.

6 hours ago, Dramolion said:

Well, you re not making a Total War game, but, it's not uncommon for a game to let the player choose which level to play first,     or, in RPG's, which (side)quest to resolve first.

Well, why not include a total war like campaign mechanic in an RPG?

I think giving a player more control over the overarching story will help to put the player in the character's shoes and create a feeling that it's more of the player's story. In addition it can give more context to the choices you are making as the character, like do you go and help one of your team mates or do you do a story important mission? You may not have enough time and\or resources to do both.

6 hours ago, Dramolion said:

This is terrible; it doesn't solve the problem at hand, and you 're going to have to make VERY entertaining levels if the players is going to be forced to keep practicing them.

The point is not to force the player to practice, it is to allow them to practice if they want to. Player can just go do the mission blind, if they want. My point is, that forcing the player to play the mission blind and only giving them one try is a bit unfair. And if we give the player unlimited tries, we arrive back at the "Player can't lose" problem.

6 hours ago, Dramolion said:

change the story to explain mechanics, instead of changing mechanics to match the story

The point is that I don't want to change the story to fit the mechanics. I want to tell the story that I want to tell, not the story I'm forced to tell by the mechanics. I believe that the limitations on the story that I'm trying to solve here are severe enough to actually try to solve them.

1 hour ago, Jason Ocks said:

Like thugs are trying to kill Garrus, right now, you need to save him, right now. And if the failure in gameplay doesn't lead to failure in the story it creates a strong disconnect

Why do you think it creates a strong disconnect? If Garrus dies, the options are (if supported by the game, of course):

1 - continue the story without him (yes, dialog and other events will change to reflect this);

2 - trigger a failure condition/game over (allowing him to die is not optional in this mission, so the player must save him);

For the first one, if the player wants and the game don't autosave right after the mission, he can reload the game and try to save Garrus. This is also player choice: he chooses to spend time trying again. Yes, it removes the part of challenge (the player can try again forever).

For the second one,  it's not uncommon even for story-driven games (after all, you can't plan for every scenario). Some missions might require the player to suceed to continue the story. If there's no game over scenario, then there's no challenge also.

So its a matter of you (as a designer) choose one approach. Some players will like one, some will like the other. It might break the story you were planning to tell, but if you want your story to have only one path, don't give choices. Don't branch it.

Each one has pros and cons, I don't see a perfect answer for this.

1 hour ago, Jason Ocks said:

Having to replay this section reveals that there actually are no stakes and fight becomes just a roadblock to the next cutscene

1 hour ago, Jason Ocks said:

I want to support this philosophy mechanicly, make failure a real possibility, make gameplay section important to the story, not just roadblocks, so that player have to fight for what they want and feel real "sense of pride and accomplishment" if they get it. As cheesy as it may sound.

So you seem to be more inclined to the option 1 I mentioned above (continue the history without a character, which is a stake at that mission). It's fine, as long as the player know that. Kind of like Fire Emblem or The Witcher series (see below).

2 hours ago, Jason Ocks said:

The point is not to force the player to practice, it is to allow them to practice if they want to. Player can just go do the mission blind, if they want. My point is, that forcing the player to play the mission blind and only giving them one try is a bit unfair. And if we give the player unlimited tries, we arrive back at the "Player can't lose" problem.

It's not unfair if the player knows and accepts that as a part of the game. He may be frustrated for a moment, but if he knew that some missions can have unfavourable or undesired outcomes, its not unfair. This is the part I think you're trying to protect the player too much.

Of course, you can design the campaign in a way that teaches the player what he is getting into: that some choices will be definitive, and the player should be ready for them. In initial missions, give the player choices that change future events, but not in harsh ways. Get progressively harsher. These first missions should tell him "ok, you choosed X, so you won't be able to get Y anymore", but X and Y should not have be much different. The Witcher series does something like this. Many quests and dialog choices affect future events, dialogs and NPC interactions, to the point of friendships becoming hostilities. There's is an "optimal story path", but you're not forced to follow it. (Note: in Witcher games, at least the first one, you can save at almost anytime and try again as much as you want after any choice).

And allowing the player to practice a mission before going "for real" is, in my opinion, worse than allowing him to retry after a failed mission. The outcome is the same, but now the player must go through a repetition loop (practice until perfection) that doesn't have benefits (the player character doesn't get better/stronger) and does not garantee success in the real mission. It's a waste of playtime. The player might be good enough to beat the mission in the first try, but if he wins in the practice mode ten times and fail in the "for real" scenario, loosing the stakes, wouldn't been better if the practice scenarios were for real? That's the same thing of letting the player retry the mission. Playing for real, failing and retrying is the same thing as practice.

17 minutes ago, TerraSkilll said:

It's not unfair if the player knows and accepts that as a part of the game

19 minutes ago, TerraSkilll said:

allowing the player to practice a mission before going "for real" is, in my opinion, worse than allowing him to retry after a failed mission

Ok, I see your point. Teaching the player throughout the early missions about the consequenses of their actions and slowly ramping up the severity of the consequenses does seem like a better idea then wasting their time in practice mode. As long as I clearly telegraph what the possible consequense is, it should achieve the same effect.

I still believe that not allowing the player to replay missions is necessary for the effect I'm going for, but this can be easily checked in playtesting and changed later.

Thank you for your feedback.

31 minutes ago, TerraSkilll said:

Why do you think it creates a strong disconnect? If Garrus dies, the options are

This is why a hate thinking in a bubble, I feel like I'm getting a better understanding of what I want as I'm trying to explain it.

The problem that I see in games a lot is that:

1 There is no first option, even a less severe variant of it. You either win or it's game over, try again. Even if there is some variance in the outcome it is decided in dialogue choice and not in gameplay.

2 There is no granularity to concequenses. Especially in "critical" or "story" missions. It is either a complete success, continue to the next predefined point in the story in perfect condition or it's a complete disaster, game over, try again.

What I want is to make gameplay have a much bigger impact on the story, not only short term, like outcome of the mission, but also long term, like when you win a mission, but you performed so badly in gameplay that your characters are half dead and you have to readjust your strategy. I understand that it is impossible to account for every single possibility, but there should be some middle ground between Baldur's Gate\X-Com, where anyone can die at any point, and Mass Effect, where combat doesn't really matter.

I also want to add gameplay where it doesn't exist at all, like adding more back and forth to the story campaign, so it is more of a game and less of a movie. Basically I want to put more game in my story driven game and I'm trying to figure out how to do it.

I'd suggest you play Tyranny, from Obsidian Entertainment (Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic 2, Fallout New Vegas, Pillars of Eternity, South Park The Stick of Truth, etc). I'm not even a big fan of the genre (never played Baldur's Gate and friends), but Obsidian's games always entertain me with their writing quality.

I think Tyranny is an excellent example of what you can do about choices. Roughly you have 4 main paths: Side with one general, side with the other, rebel and side with the locals, or fuck everyone up and kill everybody that stands in your path (perfectly valid path!).

The game is around 30h of gameplay, which is considered "short" given other examples of the genre (Pillars of Eternity, from the same company, is roughly 100h long). Then again, to experience it completely you **have** to play it 4 times.

I consider that style of game as a heavy contrast of say, Bethesda games. If you grab Skyrim for instance, if your character only knows how to swing a sword, you can still join the assassin's guild, the thieves guild and the mage guild, with some very low effort on your part. You can become the Dragonborn Archmage that can only do a simple ball of fire spell. 

There is a very valid reason for that: All of those guilds are content that was made for the game, which isn't cheap, and they're not going to let something silly as "character choices" prevent the player from experiencing all there is to the game. If players don't experience that content, then the money and time spent on it was wasted from the developer's perspective.

In Tyranny there are things you simply cant do depending on the choices you make. You can't save the Vellum Citadel if you side with Ashe, you cant convince Bleden Mark to join you if you sided with any general or rebel, you cant convince Ashe to join you if you didn't side with him, etc. And these are very cool characters that have lots of cool dialogue if you side with them and talk to them. That's content the player may or may not experience depending on the choices they make.

Say, to even side with the rebels you have to make some obviously stupid choices (given the in-universe circumstances) in the first act, even your companions argue with you about them because they make no sense. Many people in the forums asked how to even go the rebel path because they didnt know, and the answers were met with "huh, never tried doing that!" reactions. That is fucking cool from a story perspective.

There are a lot of "mary sue" type of games where if your character is "good enough" (ie, meets some requirements like having enough of a particular skill), you can save everyone and make everyone happy. I believe games like Mass Effect, at least the first Dragon Age and Bethesda's RPGs are guilty of this. That isn't the case in Tyranny, and that is why I think it is a good example of how far you can go with multiple branching paths.

I'd make the case that The Witcher games are like that in some aspects, not so much main story wise but per character choices are pretty varied, and they make a point of this "You cant make everyone happy" thing I've mentioned. Often making the obviously good choice leads to unexpected results, even in very minor things that dont even amount to quests. For instance, start of the game, you find a doctor that is taking care of a very sick woman, she wont make it. You can offer the doctor a Witcher concoction that might help her, but that could have seriously side effects. If you dont help her, the woman dies. If you do, later in the game you find the woman's lover, and he tells you that she recovered, but the concoction destroyed her mind, she is insane, and the woman's lover wonders whether it was the right choice to try to help her or if it would have been better to let life run its course.

I wouldn't even call that a "quest", it's more of a particular interaction you can have, and again, this is all optional content that the player might never experience. That interaction was scripted by someone, multiple voice actors were paid to voice those lines, at least one level designer had to go there and place the shack, with the doctor and the woman, and the woman's lover in the army. The player might just miss the shack when walking around and never experience that content, the player might do one path in one playthough and never experience the other one. Such is the price for having choice.

In short, I think that to have choice is to give something up. If you don't give something up by choosing to do something in your game, then it isn't a choice, it's more of a preference. 

For what it's worth, players almost never have more than an illusion of choice. They buy the game with the idea that they'll beat it, and you don't really want to talk them out of that. It's like reading a novel -- you read it to be immersed in a story, not to write a story. There's a level of non-linearity you can add (if you want) to make it feel different but the player's choice is basically, should I stop early or should I discover every side-quest/nook and cranny of the game?

I played through Undertale today so I've got that on the brain. In Undertale, there's the main story, which takes 5-6 hours to complete. But to really get everything possible out of that game, you have to play through multiple times, go down every hallway, talk to every character, etc. So in a sense the player is "choosing" what to do, by electing to skip certain parts of the story, but really, as the game designer, YOU are the story writer and they are the story reader.