Warning: Long
Intro
Note that I made this post partly from Mike Pondsmith's statement that (paraphrasing) "The world is a dangerous place and will always try to bring you to your knees". This combined with my firm belief that a predictable story is always mediocre compared to an unpredictable one, both in terms of journey and destination.
One of the major faults of many games, movies and books is that "You could easily see it coming".
Sense of danger/predictability during missions
So what they often do is make it blatantly obvious when a dangerous situation arises. For video games it becomes formulaic as in:
Introduction -> Beginning mission -> Follow up mission -> "climax" mission. Gradual increase in danger and difficulty.
See the problem here? One expects a gradual buildup in danger through the narrative of a questline. What they could have done.
Introduction -> Beginning mission (litte danger) -> Followup mission -> (High danger) -> "climax" mission (No danger) or even...
Introduction -> Beginning mission (High danger) -> Followup mission -> (No danger) -> "Climax" mission (Little danger).
Since this is an RPG we have direct control over manipulating the level of danger a story/missionline has by doing alternate stuff, diplomacy/persuasion and such. However the potential danger (level of it) and the frequency of it (amount of situations that can arise) is still something core to the missions as they are designed by the devs and written by the writers.
The cornerstone of the game philosophy that this is a treacherous and dangerous universe, loses its value if danger is always high in both frequency and potency.
Meaning that there should always be some easy and non-threathening missions here and there to bring us at ease. If danger to the player from the world is always present, and predictable, it devalues the danger of the world.
Solution
The solution to this is INFREQUENCY to the danger of missions. Like this:
Mission A: You expect a lot of danger and there is a lot of danger
Mission B: You expect a lot of danger but there is little, however you can CAUSE the situation to be dangerous by expecting it (by your character being paranoid)
Mission C: You expect no danger, and there is none
Mission D: You expect no danger, but there is high danger
This as the polarizing sides, with things in between. There should be a high variety of no danger to high danger "sense" from the player regarding missions (expections based on context) and there should be a high variety of actual danger. This will lead to quests breaking expectations and meeting them both, which makes the game unpredictable.
Why is this important? Because if the player is always on edge, the world being dangerous loses its value. If the player can easily predict when a situation is dangerous, with high accuracy, it loses its value. Note that the mission shown to journalists at E3 was a good sign.
Something many a game "fucks up"
Something many a game fucks up with here is giving the player music, visual, audio clues to the player that "shit is about to go down". Note that exceptions here is FINE! For example a big story mission where the player expects it and it is justified in context. However many times playing video games, a "surprise" is ruined by blatantly obvious lore, conversation, music, visual clues shoved down your throat.
Conclusion / TL;DR
I'm hoping CDPR does this world justice in depicting how dangerous and treacherous it is (in fact, I don't doubt they will pull it off) however one of the major pitfalls of achieving this is ironically putting in too much danger and put it in the game in predictable context.
I'm truly hoping that there will be a high variety of missions in danger potency and danger frequency (adjusted by our character's actions and RP, this is an RPG afterall)
There should be situations where we expect a huge fight and there is none, and there should be situations where we expect no danger and there is a high potential level of it. Many devs makes their game too predictable (gradual curve in danger and difficulty over the course of a quest chain). And I'm hoping CDPR will address this and keep us on edge, keeping the core philosophy that the world is dangerous, without us learning to always spot when "shit will go down".
Your thoughts? Feel free to discuss!
Intro
Note that I made this post partly from Mike Pondsmith's statement that (paraphrasing) "The world is a dangerous place and will always try to bring you to your knees". This combined with my firm belief that a predictable story is always mediocre compared to an unpredictable one, both in terms of journey and destination.
One of the major faults of many games, movies and books is that "You could easily see it coming".
Sense of danger/predictability during missions
So what they often do is make it blatantly obvious when a dangerous situation arises. For video games it becomes formulaic as in:
Introduction -> Beginning mission -> Follow up mission -> "climax" mission. Gradual increase in danger and difficulty.
See the problem here? One expects a gradual buildup in danger through the narrative of a questline. What they could have done.
Introduction -> Beginning mission (litte danger) -> Followup mission -> (High danger) -> "climax" mission (No danger) or even...
Introduction -> Beginning mission (High danger) -> Followup mission -> (No danger) -> "Climax" mission (Little danger).
Since this is an RPG we have direct control over manipulating the level of danger a story/missionline has by doing alternate stuff, diplomacy/persuasion and such. However the potential danger (level of it) and the frequency of it (amount of situations that can arise) is still something core to the missions as they are designed by the devs and written by the writers.
The cornerstone of the game philosophy that this is a treacherous and dangerous universe, loses its value if danger is always high in both frequency and potency.
Meaning that there should always be some easy and non-threathening missions here and there to bring us at ease. If danger to the player from the world is always present, and predictable, it devalues the danger of the world.
Solution
The solution to this is INFREQUENCY to the danger of missions. Like this:
Mission A: You expect a lot of danger and there is a lot of danger
Mission B: You expect a lot of danger but there is little, however you can CAUSE the situation to be dangerous by expecting it (by your character being paranoid)
Mission C: You expect no danger, and there is none
Mission D: You expect no danger, but there is high danger
This as the polarizing sides, with things in between. There should be a high variety of no danger to high danger "sense" from the player regarding missions (expections based on context) and there should be a high variety of actual danger. This will lead to quests breaking expectations and meeting them both, which makes the game unpredictable.
Why is this important? Because if the player is always on edge, the world being dangerous loses its value. If the player can easily predict when a situation is dangerous, with high accuracy, it loses its value. Note that the mission shown to journalists at E3 was a good sign.
Something many a game "fucks up"
Something many a game fucks up with here is giving the player music, visual, audio clues to the player that "shit is about to go down". Note that exceptions here is FINE! For example a big story mission where the player expects it and it is justified in context. However many times playing video games, a "surprise" is ruined by blatantly obvious lore, conversation, music, visual clues shoved down your throat.
Conclusion / TL;DR
I'm hoping CDPR does this world justice in depicting how dangerous and treacherous it is (in fact, I don't doubt they will pull it off) however one of the major pitfalls of achieving this is ironically putting in too much danger and put it in the game in predictable context.
I'm truly hoping that there will be a high variety of missions in danger potency and danger frequency (adjusted by our character's actions and RP, this is an RPG afterall)
There should be situations where we expect a huge fight and there is none, and there should be situations where we expect no danger and there is a high potential level of it. Many devs makes their game too predictable (gradual curve in danger and difficulty over the course of a quest chain). And I'm hoping CDPR will address this and keep us on edge, keeping the core philosophy that the world is dangerous, without us learning to always spot when "shit will go down".
Your thoughts? Feel free to discuss!