Combining Story with Gameplay
So I was just in bed when I started thinking about story telling in video games (man, I need to find some other interests). And I just know I won't get to sleep untill I go through some things
Something that bothers me is how so few single player, tripple A games try to tie in their gameplay with their story. I undersand It's hard to think of many meaningful ways to do so, I mean it's litteraly keeping me up at night. But I think it's very important to do so wherever possible if you take the story of your game at all seriously and I hope we see it in Cyberpunk. It's what seperates games from other forms of entertainment after all. I'm going to list as many examples/ideas as I can think of here but I'm sure other people can think of more.
This is a pretty simple one that already happens in most games. (Also, If your a fun over atmosphere kind of gamer you're probably going to disagree with a whole bunch of this): game mechanics that fit in with the world and/or playable character. This happens pretty much automaticly as you can imagine but you can always go a bit further. This would cover things like oils and potions in the Witcher. A mechanic that makes you feel like you're a monster hunter and at the same time adds an extra level of complexity to the combat. I'm not too worried about this as you already have different classes in Cyberpunk which from my (very limited) understanding have different abillities that distinguish them from each other. What I am worried about however is mechanics that are very "video gamey" and actually take away from the story. For me personally I dislike it when weapons or the pc have an arbitrary amount of damage that they deal untill they are upgraded or whatever. Or an enemy that you could slaughter in the last area all of a sudden becomes a bullet sponge because it's a higher level.
This one's still fairly common (especially in rpg's) but it's often superficial: The game world reacts to your play style. This in particular has got my excited about the new Deus Ex game. I'm not talking about your dialogue options or key desicions here, that should be standard in any rpg. I'm talking about the way you play the game. The most obvious way to do this is things like lethal/ non-lethal or Stealthy/ run n' gun/ negotiate. If you achieved your goal in the last mission by murdering everyone in a brutal fashon maybe you'll have a hard time convincing someone you're only looking for thier brother for a freindly chat but on the other hand you'll have the respect of those hardened thugs at that seedy bar. It's not just play style you can use, missions can have ways to be completed that you aren't even told about. A recent example is in Far Cry 4 when your told by the game to escape from the bad guy's house whilst he's off doing something else but if you just wait there for a while he'll comback and you get an alternative ending like 40 mins into the game. the player can be rewarded by thinking outside the box by getting better rewards.
I'm pretty sure I had other ideas but I must have forgotton them when I was writing about the others, plus it's 3:00am here so... yeah. Yup, I'm definitly missing something and it'll probably come back to me just as I'm going to sleep.
But anyway, what I'm basicly saying is interactivity is a video game's greatest srength and there's so much more it can be used for than different dialogue options. I have no doubt the guy's at CDPR are aware of all this and have a better understanding of what's currently possible than me but nevertheless I'd like to request that they keep needles gamey tropes to a minimum and try to use gameplay as a story telling tool rather than having it as a seperate thing or using it to break up all the cutscenes.
So I was just in bed when I started thinking about story telling in video games (man, I need to find some other interests). And I just know I won't get to sleep untill I go through some things
Something that bothers me is how so few single player, tripple A games try to tie in their gameplay with their story. I undersand It's hard to think of many meaningful ways to do so, I mean it's litteraly keeping me up at night. But I think it's very important to do so wherever possible if you take the story of your game at all seriously and I hope we see it in Cyberpunk. It's what seperates games from other forms of entertainment after all. I'm going to list as many examples/ideas as I can think of here but I'm sure other people can think of more.
This is a pretty simple one that already happens in most games. (Also, If your a fun over atmosphere kind of gamer you're probably going to disagree with a whole bunch of this): game mechanics that fit in with the world and/or playable character. This happens pretty much automaticly as you can imagine but you can always go a bit further. This would cover things like oils and potions in the Witcher. A mechanic that makes you feel like you're a monster hunter and at the same time adds an extra level of complexity to the combat. I'm not too worried about this as you already have different classes in Cyberpunk which from my (very limited) understanding have different abillities that distinguish them from each other. What I am worried about however is mechanics that are very "video gamey" and actually take away from the story. For me personally I dislike it when weapons or the pc have an arbitrary amount of damage that they deal untill they are upgraded or whatever. Or an enemy that you could slaughter in the last area all of a sudden becomes a bullet sponge because it's a higher level.
This one's still fairly common (especially in rpg's) but it's often superficial: The game world reacts to your play style. This in particular has got my excited about the new Deus Ex game. I'm not talking about your dialogue options or key desicions here, that should be standard in any rpg. I'm talking about the way you play the game. The most obvious way to do this is things like lethal/ non-lethal or Stealthy/ run n' gun/ negotiate. If you achieved your goal in the last mission by murdering everyone in a brutal fashon maybe you'll have a hard time convincing someone you're only looking for thier brother for a freindly chat but on the other hand you'll have the respect of those hardened thugs at that seedy bar. It's not just play style you can use, missions can have ways to be completed that you aren't even told about. A recent example is in Far Cry 4 when your told by the game to escape from the bad guy's house whilst he's off doing something else but if you just wait there for a while he'll comback and you get an alternative ending like 40 mins into the game. the player can be rewarded by thinking outside the box by getting better rewards.
I'm pretty sure I had other ideas but I must have forgotton them when I was writing about the others, plus it's 3:00am here so... yeah. Yup, I'm definitly missing something and it'll probably come back to me just as I'm going to sleep.
But anyway, what I'm basicly saying is interactivity is a video game's greatest srength and there's so much more it can be used for than different dialogue options. I have no doubt the guy's at CDPR are aware of all this and have a better understanding of what's currently possible than me but nevertheless I'd like to request that they keep needles gamey tropes to a minimum and try to use gameplay as a story telling tool rather than having it as a seperate thing or using it to break up all the cutscenes.
CP2077 is in good hands, I'm 99.9% sure they'll surpass The Witcher 3 in every way. Go to sleep lol
