Hello readership,
as many of you might be, I'm an avid table top role playing games fan. For me, shake up some dices and throw a little chaos in a custom made adventure is as close as it gets to being happy. I'm barely exagerating! My dungeons n' dragons frenzy hasn't really transposed well to the world of video games. Why? I think there's a simple, but elaborate answer to this.
One of the big perks of playing a table top RPG is side quests. When your party takes a momentary break from the main quests, you split with your partners and you get in a solitary quest which usually confronts your character to his inner demons (or whatever you put on the background sheet). Upon the completion of a side quest in a table top RPG, everything else seems more meaningful, it makes you invest your character in the main quest more than ever. As a game master myself, I usually made side quests for two purposes. First of all at the beginning of the game, as a prologue, to hook the player up, so things wouldn't take forever to start with the main course and secondly, when players started to lose focus, chit chat at the table and waste time. Usually, by the next game, I had side quests to suck them back into the game.
Video games and RPG fans have cried for video games side quests for a long while. They thought it would break the linear storytelling path and allow the player to design his own adventure. I think otherwise. I completely agree on the fact that a linear single player mode with a made quest can be enhanced in many ways, but I think that side quests is not the way to go to get the most out of a storyline, or better out of a franchise.
Follow my thoughts. How can you design a sufficient number of side quests and keep in interesting enough for the large audience of your game? There's none. They will end up sucking one way or another. You don't tell a story in a video game the way you tell it on a table top RPG. There is no game master to adjust the aim and correct the path. Side quests in a video game have, by logic to be irrelevant to the main quest and not have any impact on the character. If it would, the aim would have to be corrected with the main quest and the possible storyline pathways would be multiplying. On a decent sized game, this is a game design nightmare. Guys would have to work in shifts to make it less of an imbroglio.
That's why...well...side quests in video games generally suck. It's extra experience or extra-money for your character. There is no substance to it, no entertainment, therefore I ask myself: DUDE, WHERE'S MY GAME??? Honestly guys, anyone of you that have played Grand Theft Auto 4; have you completed the Little Jacob delivery missions? They are stressful and tideous, like a day job. The dialogue script in that kind of mission is usually minimal and repetitive. In my humble opinion, it enhances nothing at all in terms of gaming experience. You'll just spend hours in front of your TV, numbing up, trying to buff up that character or to get enough money to get that item you like? Where's the fun in that? Working?
Fallout 3 proposed a solution to this. The side quests can help you with the morality meter of your character. They can help you to get the kind of ending you want as your character will have a certain alignment. They also help in leveling up, which can give you perks that give your character more personality. The dialogue will change if you get the lady killer or any of the smooth talking talents that are offered to you. In that sense, yes, the gaming experience is heightened a little bit (and changes with the playthroughs), but I think it's putting a band-aid on a severed limb. Hell, I finished that game on Level 12...I was like: ¨That's it? That's all there is to that game?¨ There is no real incentive to buff up and finish strong. Smart point distribution will do the trick. By level 8, my character would mow through anyone when using big guns.
So, that leaves up with a question. How do we get the most out of a franchise? How is the gaming experience made richer and more complex? The answer is under our nose, but misused as of now. Episodic content. While playing Ratchet n' Clank Future: Quest For Booty a few weeks ago, I was struck by the storytelling mechanics. See, that franchise always had been about the gameplay. Ratchet is one of the most terrible main characters, he feels like a hollow, blood-thirsty, genocidal critter who wipes intergalactic races for no valid reasons.
An episode, in all fairness, has to be skippable (as a side quest is), but it should be story-centered and focused on giving a more intimate relationship with the characters of the franchise. Many people are waving angry fists at the idea of episodic content because they feel they're getting screwed out of their money. In the Fallout 3 case, it's true. The episodes are used to sell you a more satisfying ending...which...blows! But, there is a way to make an episode skippable and successful. You just have to pinpoint the right idea, the way the gamer will benefit from a richer experience with the franchise while playing it. Take Assassins Creed franchise for example? Why not putting a five hours episode in modern days where you can play Desmond...or a fellow Assassin. You give the player what he dosen't have, you introduce other variables in the game that are not necessary, but will make the third chapter better. Let's say you make the episode on a fellow assassin. Well the players who bought and played the episode will find it more rewarding to see him in the third chapter alongside Desmond, than the ones who didn't played and would discover him.
That's what Ratchet n' Clank Future: Quest For Booty does. A whole five hours of adventures of Ratchet really busting his balls to find Clank without succeeding makes the gamer think : ¨Geeze, he's really trying hard, I hope he finds him in the next game¨. It's skippable as Clank disappears at the end of Tools Of Destruction and dosen`t re-appear in Quest For Booty. The gamers won't miss any part of the storyline not playing the episode, so you don't screw them out of their money. But...I want to play Crack In Time a lot more now that I've played Quest For Booty and worked alongside Ratchet to find the disappearing Clank.
I feel there's endless possibilities with online downloadable episodes. Narratively speaking, I think they can put video games to the next level. To a level where they will challenge some of television and cinema narratives. I think gamers will end up throwing themselves on these episodes, because they will make the full titles much richer, enjoyable and intimate. Because a great narrative as well as a great game is recognized by the community it creates. Haven't you guys once started passionately discussing Dexter or Lost with friends? Well, I think now is the time to put video games to this level. Episodes in between game as a way to enhance gaming narrativity.
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