Renaissance: Story Immersion
There are currently three main schools of thought to designing an immersive story for a game.
The first follows the Half Life approach, last seen in Modern Warfare 2 and Uncharted 2. Place the player into a specific individual within the game, give him a clear cut goal, and rail him through a rollercoaster plot. Surround him with sound and fury, leaving him little time to ponder anything else. Immersion arises from the cinematic presentation of action and gameplay, but the story unfolds in a linear progression. Done well, the player seeks to finish the story, to see how the plot unfolds, to experience the game as they might normally experience a movie, just with more interactivity. Great stories can be told through this method, but they’re rarely suitable for a more multi-player experience.
Battle Stations is thus incapable of this, just yet.*
The second is the Choice and Consequence approach, as evidenced by Dragon Age, Mass Effect, and The Witcher. The player becomes an active agent in the story’s progression, rather than the guy who’s ordered to shoot things. The player is presented with a choice that will affect the outcome of the story. Players become invested in their choices, and the characters they play. Play the power-hungry mage and sacrifice all who come into your path, or play the paragon of virtue, spreading compassionate ass-kicking to all corners of the galaxy. It’s the player’s choice to make. The outcome of the story is thus determined by the player’s actions, not a linear progression of plot, sandwiched between stretches of gameplay.
Several players have remarked that they would like to see this in Battle Stations Quest system, yet these are incredibly complex to design, and often overwhelming to more casual players.
The third is the emergent narrative, Civilization, Warhammer, Fallout 3 etc. Design the world, litter it with details of a living, breathing ecosystem, like audiotapes, lost logs, pedestrians you can mug, cars to steal. It’s the backbone of a well-designed sandbox game such as Grand Theft Auto, (before they railroad you down the linear plot). The writers and designers create a world and all its ancillary information so players can make up their own stories, and go on their own adventures, discover the worlds little secrets.
This is what we’re trying to do, more or less.
Some of the real story that derives from Battle Stations comes from the players themselves, who their captains are, what sort of feud is going on between the clans, which famous captain is flying high in the skies of Sios this week. We want to build on that. Obviously, a static quest system will not be the best way to involve players in the game world. That’s why we have a Renaissance.
We’ll be launching Battle Stations: Renaissance sometime alongside Chapter 1 of the quest updates. Renaissance is essentially a wiki format for all things Battle Stations, including Siosian history, Prominent player characters, personal character stories, etc. One of the main features is for fan contribution, whether in terms of fan fiction, or creating a short story we can fold into our flexible quest system. The idea is that if there’s a particular bit of story there, something we can spin several quests out of, we’ll look at being to produce it with what resources we have in-house, and you’ll see it in the quests sooner or later.
We’re trying to build a world for you guys to play in here, but where others can visit.
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