Some time ago I was playing The Elder Scrolls Morrowind through again. This game stole weeks of my time and got me incredibly hooked, admittedly the second time around it didn’t do so as much, but it did get me thinking about what it was that made me like it so much.

I think it comes from the fact that the NPC’s are their own characters before all else, not plot devices with infinite knowledge regarding all things, not great omnipotent beings with a habit of toying with poor adventurers, not quest helpdesk personnel when you happened to get stuck (ever notice how, in Bioware/Obsidian games if you need to find someone, everyone you ask about said person will have dialog options magically appearing, and somehow they’ll all know exactly who and where he is… making you seem like some clueless idiot who couldn’t find his ass if they shoved your head up it). The NPC’s in Morrowind have jobs, have lives. The place they live, their occupation, their faction, this determines more than just what clothing they wear, where they are located, or how hard it is to beat them up, it determines virtually all of what they know, all of your dialog options with them, every aspect of their lives and as a result, all their use to you. It also makes a disproportionately large percentage of the population lowlife drunks who spend every single evening in the same bar talking about mudcrabs, but lets not get into that.

Trainers too reflected this character driven approach. Loads and loads of NPCs in the world could teach you specific skills: mages, store owners, alchemists, fighters, all of them could teach you some of the skills their profession would require them to master. If you had the cash and didn’t feel like throwing fireballs at a tree for 30 minutes, you just went to a mages guild, odds would be someone could teach you. It just makes sense! It also makes sense that most people aren’t ridiculously good at their profession and thus can only take you so far. Every skill has a master trainer somewhere in the world, these too made sense. The master swordsman (or was it defense?) was a champion fighter in the Vivec arena. I suppose you may need sword skills there.

In the real world (to my knowledge at least, admittedly I don’t get out much) people don’t walk around with glowing text over their head saying “Master calculus teacher” or “Apprentice Game Writer”. As a result, for most people you meet, you can’t automatically know what they do and what information/goods/training they can offer you, you’ll have to ask them (and look silly doing so). Other people are like you, they too can’t telepathically know this stuff. Now, how many times have you been asked what you can tell/trade/teach people today? None? Me neither! Which means that most people don’t have a damn clue who I am. It’s funny then that in a lot of games information regarding NPC’s is given to you freely, often without interaction. In Morrowind, if you want to find the master fighter NPC, you have to ask people who know fighters, you have to follow leads, and the people that do know him will be able to give you an idea of where to look.

Visa versa this also means that NPC’s mostly have no real preconceptions of you: the player. If they’ve never seen you do anything or heard from plausible sources (their faction, their fellow villagers) who you are and what you did, they simply don’t know you, and more often than not, don’t trust you. Would you really trust some complete stranger, with blood on his sword and the look of a guy who’s been wandering around the world for weeks killing stuff, to find your lost child? I think I’d need to get to know them a bit first. There also wasn’t some generic karma system keeping track of your actions and resulting in complete strangers trusting or hating you out of the blue.

This all meant that secret societies like the Assassin’s guild were truly difficult to find. Not only was their base located in such and obscure and well hidden part of the world that it’d be virtually impossible to just stumble upon it, there were also very, very few people who knew about them and getting them to trust you enough to tell you about them was difficult. This also meant that you, the player, didn’t know about them (unless you read a guide or walkthrough I guess). This single concept kept me playing the game for ages. After I’d worked for one of the main noble families and the blades (the equivalent of the secret service) for a while and heard of the dirty things going on in the world I set out to find some of the characters involved, initially assuming this was all just lore and back story (Baldurs gate, NWN, etc having conditioned me to read all the books and listen to all the stories, but rarely if ever finding gameplay to match it). Imagine my surprise when I actually found this assassins guild and was offered a chance to join them. That got the ball rolling, I started researching more things I’d heard about: religion and vampirism for example, and every time, after a significant amount of searching and asking I’d find new content, well hidden and well written. As a result half the time spent playing the game was probably spent chasing hunches. But virtually never was a chase met with disappointment, and every time the sense of achievement was amazing, partly because of the extra layer of plausibility to all the writing, and partly because of the extra challenge that was overcome.

Sadly, I guess all this also means that probably 90% of the people playing the game never got to see most of this content, and I can see how a publisher would not want to waste valuable developer time on it. The problem to me is that the resulting policy of making everything completely accessible and simply beating you over the head with content (and where to find it) results in two great big negatives in my opinion: A: everyone has a very similar experience playing the game and choices feel more generic as their context is fixed, and B: the sense of immersion in a world is largely, if not completely removed. Even Oblivion was a big step backwards in this department.

So I guess it comes down to what you prefer: Do you like a more cinematic, linear, but also more concentrated approach to storytelling where your immersion in the world is controlled more directly by a developer. Or would you go for a more open world with more fragmented storylines leaving it up to you which (parts of a) story you choose to pursue? As a result, do you prefer NPC’s to be more direct plot drivers and information givers, tailor made to fit the story they are in, or do you prefer them to be more of their own characters, secondary elements in the gameplay, and often not useful to your endeavors.

After the previous post on Vampire I did just a little more musing on the topic of storyline and dialogue. I’d like to do a comparison between Bloodlines and Neverwinter Nights, which means essentially a comparison between the Bioware model and Bloodlines.

When it comes to quest resolutions and dialog options both games have a large degree of freedom to roleplay. However I’d argue that despite the Bioware games usually having a far larger story (perhaps not more intricate, but certainly bigger in sheer hours of play, locations, and characters) you get more real freedom and immersion in Bloodlines.

The thing that always bothers me about the D&D type games is that everything is centered around alignment. The freedom to roleplay isn’t usually a freedom to go “ok, I just won’t do things your way.” it’s a freedom to go “ok I’ll do things your way while being good, neutral or evil, lawful, neutral, or chaotic.” This makes most situations and quests repetitive to the point where, lets face it, if you played Baldur’s Gate, games like Neverwinter Nights, Neverwinter Nights 2, and probably Dragon Age don’t offer any really new experiences. All they really offer are new stories (though that, too, is debateable).

Having never played Bloodlines before I was expecting a very D&D-like experience, and to a certain point it is: You go through dialogue trees with scripted options, so naturally your freedom is limited. The options, however, are not so much focused on “what do you want your character to be”. Instead they’re more focused on “what does your character want to achieve.” This makes the dialogs always seem more relevant and natural to me, after all, it’s not like I go into every conversation in real life thinking “who do I want to be?”, usually I just want information.

This does, however, bring about a different issue. This natural nature of the dialogue means that sometimes you’re going to say things that won’t get you what you need for a quest. For quests that are dependent on that dialogue this would mean one of two things: A: quest failed, or B: repeat dialog. Troika went with the second, which makes sense from a player frustration standpoint. After all, you don’t want players failing quests ’cause they want to play their character. However it also kills the natural feeling of the dialogue when you can just talk to the same person again, get the exact same dialog (or even different dialogue text, the problem would be the same), and pick a different option until you get what you want.

Bioware opted to have dialog be an irreversible thing a lot of the time. People will not often give you second chances in important dialog trees. They don’t mind telling you about the village they live in 400 times in the exact words the mayor had them memorize, but if you tell them to shove their lost child up their ass, they’re not likely to offer you the chance to go find him until the sequel comes along.

Personally I’m on the fence regarding this choice. Having just spent ages playing and loving the dialog and acting in Vampire I’m leaning towards that being the better option, but it just doesn’t make sense telling someone, in the harshest words, you’re not going to be their slave, only to not see your quest journal update, turn around, and kiss their feet.

Thoughts?

Hello and welcome to this first post about games. There’s no general idea here. Posts in this category can vary between my general experiences of specific games, genre musings, thoughts on design and storytelling, or just disgruntled ranting, and of course an invitation for some, hopefully more in-depth, discussion of everyone’s favourite games.

Today’s game, and the topic besides this introduction: Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines. Specifically with the latest user patch version (6.0).

Well now, I had tried once, long ago, to play the original Vampire the Masquerade. It was one of those games that took me 2 or 3 hours to get to even play at all. Reinstalls, driver updates, windows bullshit, it was crazy workaround central. Inevitably then, when after the first few minutes of actual play, the game crashed on me just by being buggy my frustration reached such epic levels that the add/remove programs window was summoned and the name vampire cursed for evermore. The direct result was that I simply hadn’t bothered paying any attention whatsoever to the name until reading about it recently on one of my favourite blogs (rockpapershotgun). So, throwing caution to the wind (or rather: noting RPS comments about the user patches working), I found the old game and gave it an install. 5 days later I finished it.

First off let me say that the user patches worked. In fact, worked is an understatement, I experienced not a single bug, not one missed line of dialog, not one glitch or weird issue whatsoever. This game is now as impeccable as a game of the period allows, far as I’m concerned anyways.

Now, let me get to farcry 2. I don’t know the actual data (Blogs are journalism? pfah!), but I’m going to go out on a limb here and say Farcry 2 cost probably about 10 times the scraps Activision threw Troika to make Bloodlines. Farcry 2’s second biggest feature, according to Ubisoft, was the cast of unique mercenaries, each of whom you could play as and work with/for in the world, and the NPC inhabitants. Now, as those who played this game will attest, these characters were all the same, not one of them likeable. The double crossing nature of the factions was always completely predictable and to finish the game, you essentially still did every mission for everyone, meaning you had to double cross them yourself whether you wanted to or not. Not exactly the open world freedom the landscape (and box) promised us. Mind you, that didn’t matter, because the second any of the silly hyperventilating South African madmen opened their mouth you always wanted to shoot them in the face for their voice acting being so horribly implemented (and acted). Fast for…, uh…, reverse, 4 years, back to bloodlines in fact, where relatively small studio Troika manages to do a shitload better on all these fronts.

For those unfamiliar with the game. In this stat driven first person RPG you’re a vampire, sired (eg. turned into a vampire) at the beginning of the game and dropped into the LA vampire scene. This scene consists of 3 major vampire factions: The Camarilla: essentially a vampire maffia. The Anarchs: a kind of biker vampire hippies, and the Kuei-jin: eg. Vampire Tong. These three factions are the ones you can align yourself with, or rather, be used by. There are several more you find yourself (and your factions) fighting against.

Throughout the game you’re constantly confronted with the insane amount of paranoia, double crossing, politics and xenophobia the factions have between each other and you’re constantly given opportunities to influence these, as well as work your way up various ladders in these factions. It’s incredibly intricate, but in an ingeniously addictive way. You see, you’re the n00b. You’re naive (both as character and as player), and everyone tries to exploit that. Rather than force feeding you buckets of lore in a heavy godlike voice and then not giving you a choice on what to do with it the game assumes you know nothing and leaves you to form your own opinion of people and things based on what they say and do. If you’re lazy or prefer not to stay directly informed you’ll likely spend most of the game getting exploited by one of the factions and doing their dirty work, which is a fine way to play really, and will result in a relevant ending. If, however, you embrace the things the NPC’s try to teach you and start actively uncovering the plots and politics you can find yourself truly powerful within the factions and starting to really understand the things going on in the world.

Why does this level of depth work in bloodlines but not in farcry2? Well, farcry 2 only pretended to have it, bloodlines actually does, but ignoring this (probably quite relevant… I suppose… maybe…) fact: believable characters. Hands down Vampire: Bloodlines has some of the best voice acting I have ever seen in a game. Especially Jack, your biker Anarch mentor, was an instant top 10 ever game character for me. He looks like a nihilistic apathetic hedonistic long-haired bad-smelling biker asshole, and he is (though the smell may just have been me), but from the first moments in the “tutorial” section of the game you realize there’s just more to it than that, he’s instantly likeable because he helps you when no one else will, he’s funny in a manner you’d expect, and he’s incredibly cunning, although you’ll only find out by being as cunning as he is. He’s also obviously flawed, as every well written character (regardless of media) should be. All this makes him a real character. Not some generic mercenary who just looks unique and has a his own bio page in the options screen and art book(let). Like almost every character in the game he has his motives and his plans for himself, and for you although a lot them he won’t just tell you.

The writing is obvious enough to occasionally hint when characters are lying to you (a lack of body language requires as much), but subtle enough to leave a constant layer of distrust and paranoia for the NPC’s you meant. Distrust and paranoia that is inherent to the vampire society you’re placed in. It’s also incredibly witty and modern, which is a bit of a double edged sword really, cause it often left me with a very heavy “Buffy the vampire slayer” feeling. I can see how some would think that’s a good (and relevant) thing considering the pop culture of the time. I personally hate Buffy though. Which is actually a giant compliment to the gameplay.

You see this is an rpg. There are skills and stats ranging from unarmed combat to lock picking, from hacking to persuasion. Not only that, but the name of the game: bloodlines, refers to the 7 bloodlines vampires can have. These are essentially their “race”. Each race has completely different disciplines and largely affects how you play the game. Now naturally the game won’t be completely different based on your starting race, but significant things will be different, certain races are more dispositioned to certain factions for example, to the point where you may not be able to enter factions at all. The way humans react to you can also be very different. One of the races can’t even be seen by humans without serious repercussions.

I played the game as a very human-like character, heavy on the manipulation, lockpicking, hacking skills and not all that combat orientated. Now there were times where the sneaking, infiltrating, conniving nature of the game had me sitting on the edge of my seat more than splinter cell ever did. You’re usually not finding information because you have to to get on in a linear fashion, but because you can and/or want to know more about people. From a story progression standpoint this makes the information less valuable, but for immersion it makes every useless email, every meaningless factoid you find about a character invaluable to the experience. You see, there was always that level of social paranoia and that idea that you’re missing a crucial piece of information, as well as the sensation of getting closer to it, that had me subconsciously ignoring the (subjective) annoyance of the “buffy” moments.

Mind you, the world was not strictly a buffy world, it certainly takes itself less seriously. Almost every computer you hack into has emails waiting, a lot of genuine comedy gold. Dialogs with NPC’s, especially with a little persuasion or dominating (clan Ventrue specialty) can be amazingly funny. The world, which is essentially just a taboo-less parody of ours, much like the last 2 GTA games, is simply consistent.

Which leads me to conclude that this games rocks. Simply put. It really is a pity there’s not more games like this. I secretly hope Alpha protocol, the upcoming spy RPG by obsidian will have a similarly intricate world of paranoia and manipulating factions instead of just being a “24″ game with stats. I can understand how difficult it must have been to make a world like that, especially with the insane amount of work the writing and characters will likely have been. However, after playing through it, and looking back on my own reactions in this post, I can’t understand how publishers would forego this level of depth, critical acclaim, and customer satisfaction for the watered down experience of Gears of War 2, Prince of Persia 3 or Tomb Raider 6. All of which can be finished in half the time it takes to play through bloodlines, none of which leave you with the feeling of having really experienced something, let alone accomplished something.

Just like film seems to fluctuate in priority from generation to generation between technical prowess (be it size of the screen, 2d/3d, visual effects, sound) and storytelling I can only hope that the decline it feels like we’re in regarding games’ depth and writing is an indication of the medium taking a similar wave-like pattern and that it’s only a matter of time before we get back to immersive worlds and characters that keep us addicted for days, rather than immersive graphics that keep up staring for a few minutes.