BioWare released two trailers for their upcoming computer RPG Dragon Age: Origins this week.
The first trailer shows the beginnings of a rain-soaked battle between humans and an army of monsters. The second starts off the same, but includes some more combat sequences.
Neither trailer shows any gameplay or story features, and the graphics look incomplete. More information on BioWare’s new game should come from this week’s E3.
Dragon Age: Origins is scheduled for an early 2009 release on PC and is the first in a new franchise for BioWare. Billed as the spiritual successor to the Baldur’s Gate series, the game is set in an open, epic fantasy world with a strong party element, and will hopefully be more complex than the studio’s recent console games.
BioWare writers Mike Laidlaw and Drew Karpyshyn discussed dialog, working with user-created characters, and world-building in an interesting interview with CVG.
“Getting to the same level of quality as film is good,” says Laidlaw, “but just trying to make a film isn’t the right direction. Interactivity gives us something no other medium has.”
Karpyshyn agrees: “We’re finding that the technology is finally reaching the point where it’s starting to feel very realistic - we can actually have interactive conversation where you talk with people rather than them just talking at you.
“I like to use the analogy that we’re at the point where Hollywood was in the early ’30s where they’re just starting to add sound, they’re starting to get the technology locked in place. It’s all about our skill set, coming up with our own conventions, our own language of telling stories, something film has developed over the last century.”
Not surprisingly, writing an open-ended narrative is extremely tough. “Fortunately at BioWare,” said Karpyshyn, “we’ve kinda got used to it, but that’s why it requires a full team of four or five writers for one of our games.”
There’s a lot of fascinating tidbits in here. The BioWare writers reveal how they create characters, from the protagonists to the quirky barkeep, and how they develop their appearance alongside their dialog.
One of the most interesting things they reveal is that the team spent nine months planning out the details of the “Mass Effect” galaxy before deciding on characters or plot. Hopefully that means the sequel will get here sooner.
“Civilization IV,” “Rome: Total War” and “The Sims” don’t usually make the Best Video Game Story list. Single player play in these expansive sandboxes generally boils down to a massive skirmish against computer bots, and the game ends not when you slay the last boss but when you check off the last objective.
Gamasutra has an interesting feature by Neil Sorens on turning the stale check lists and computer bots of sandbox games into user-developed storylines and characters.
“When a player creates a family in ‘The Sims,’ the resulting game — based on input from the player — tells the life stories of the members of that family,” writes Sorens. “Designers can and should do more to exploit these player-generated stories.”
The problem as Sorens sees it is that players cannot see the stories they naturally create in these massive worlds. Say you declare war on the Russians in a “Civilization IV” campaign. You might do so because the Russians are there and you have a big army in need of employment. Under Sorens suggestion, the game justify this campaign for some story reason (Russians killed your dog, you hate Commies, they abused people of your national religion, etc. etc.).
Sorrens advocates that story-driving exposition replace the bar graphs, charts, and reports that generally represent player statistics, achievements and attributes in big sandbox games.
Continue reading ‘Adding Stories to Sandbox Games’
Gamasutra has a feature on 20 of the best open world games, an unquestionably popular genre with games like the Elder Scrolls and Grand Theft Auto series in its ranks and one with an important approach to story.
Too often does story have a tacked-on feel in these games. In the Metroid and Castlevania games, you fight and explore your way to the boss, be it an alien or vampire. Most fantasy-themed game pit you against some evil overlord, hellspawned or otherwise, and his army of minions. The most ridiculous example of ridiculous plot comes from Blaster Master, in which your frog escapes and you have to find it. This isn’t the rule with open games, but there are few exceptions.
Open world games truly are one of the best places to exercise storylines. Not only can a good story serve as a loose guide through an otherwise daunting world (such as in the Baldur’s Gate series), but a good non-linear story gives background and depth to an otherwise large, liberated and tragically one-dimensional world.
Finding such a title is unfortunately rare, and the games are usually riddled with cliches. Grand Theft Auto’s tales come straight out of gangster flicks. The Gamasutra article mentions terms like “darkness” and “corruption,” “lathered liberally” over games like Metroid Prime 2 and 3.
It’s possible that this is inevitable. Open world games today, especially ones with the scope of Oblivion, require large teams and larger sums of cash, and exploring an unconventional world is a risky move. It’s interesting to compare the originality of setting in Morrowind–with its mushroom towns, terraced stone cities, tribal natives, and strange gods–to the more generic Medieval-fantasy one of Oblivion.
