Linear story lines in non-linear open world games

Discussions about everything else
Post Reply
User avatar
Phorce
Experienced
Posts: 107
Joined: Tue Apr 14, 2009 8:24 pm
Personal rank: Sgt. Nutz
Location: UK
Contact:

Linear story lines in non-linear open world games

Post by Phorce »

This is something that keeps bugging me and I thought some here might be receptive to this.

With the exception of possibly Deus Ex (I have only played a small part of it) open world "sand box" games like GTA IV right up to Far Cry 3 all have this linear story line in them. In a few you can depart from it a little and some even give the amazing sum of a total of two (2!) alternate endings. This I just find extraordinary. Our open world video game engines give an enormours amount of freedom but the story lines are still linear ?

What we need is procedurally generated story lines. I think it's possible to use mathematics to work out all the possible connections between story line elements and have them fit together like interconnecting bricks. It's a bit like the mathematics that is used to design chips so the minimum of logic gates are laid down in silicon. This can also be applied to coding a base of large story line elements so that the minimum of coding is needed.

So in my open world I should be able to randomly wander around and pick up on some kind of cue to engage with a mission or some kind of story element. These might all add up to make a unique story of some kind. Maybe other players might not want a story and just want to live day to day in the open world environment.

It might be something like http://www.starforge.com/ but with procedural story line elements (if that has not got that as well already).

I also wrote a blog post about this here - http://djbarney.wordpress.com/2013/02/2 ... rld-games/
"Weapons! ... for all occasions." Bill Hicks
User avatar
Feralidragon
Godlike
Posts: 5489
Joined: Wed Feb 27, 2008 6:24 pm
Personal rank: Work In Progress
Location: Liandri

Re: Linear story lines in non-linear open world games

Post by Feralidragon »

The best and easiest non-linear open world games are the online ones. By building something that solely depends on each player actions will somewhat build the procedural story for you, since from there you can reduce each story element complexity considerably since you're not considering human behavior anymore.

However, that's an interesting subject, and is actually thesis worthy material, and it's certainly possible to do those, but then you have to add the human psyche complexity into the whole equation to make it procedural enough (it's easy to apply physics and end points to affect the environment, but now human behavior? that's hard).

PS.: The chips use boolean arithmetic and demorgan laws to reduce gates count. I actually did it myself, and it's something very easy to do. However this is not, this is in a whole different level of complexity, you can't really compare both.
Higor
Godlike
Posts: 1866
Joined: Sun Mar 04, 2012 6:47 pm

Re: Linear story lines in non-linear open world games

Post by Higor »

Play the whole Gothic (except 4) games series.
That will greatly improve your non-linear game thinking.
User avatar
Carbon
Inhuman
Posts: 855
Joined: Thu Jan 17, 2013 1:52 pm
Personal rank: Hoarder.

Re: Linear story lines in non-linear open world games

Post by Carbon »

While I think I see what the OP is talking about, does not each story have an and and is not each story - be it from a game or from our lives- not terminate in a manner that is resultant from our choices and/or behavior along the way? Our lives are complex, but if we dissect them to the narratives that go to make up the dense fabric of our entirety, then they are very finite stories with a limited number of potential outcomes. In Far Cry 3 for example, we are asked to live a segment - a significant one with clear life-or-death choices and really only one acceptable outcome - of Jason Brody's life. Not the entire life, but just the week or whatever amount of time - in game or out - that is measured before the resolution of that particular conflict. I am not trying to be inflammatory in saying this either; while I think that the number of stories - or perhaps the divergence from a single story - is something to shoot for, I am not sure that even with the supporting math (which is actually easy), this kind of thing is logistically possible.

Take Skyrim and the Radiant Story as moving towards this; that choices affect not only outcomes, but potentialities of missions occurring. Even this has clear limitations in that it all does end, but each element in the overall life of a player ends differently. They have been trying to overcome this with the DLCs that extend this, but only to a finite end. I think Skyrim was one of the best games in terms of the player "living" as it were. Stuff happened all around; you were drawn into things, taken out of things and given things all based on who you talked to, when and how you behaved within that strand of your 'life'. Valve thought that episodic gaming was a way to extend a story or create diversity, but from a company that scripts as much as they tend to, this clearly was doomed (not only this, but they found that they couldn't deliver products in a timely enough fashion).

Then the issue of space: until we accept games that may occupy hundreds of gigabytes of space onto our drives and a realistic method of delivering that amount of data to users. This is a reality in a never-ending, non-linear type of game. That, and development would need to be an ongoing activity indefinitely.

This is a great topic, and i am sure I will have more to add, but for now, I would have to say that it is something to shoot for, but the hurdles and limitations are pretty clear logistically.
Post Reply