cronicler
Lurksalot
Most of us have been there, thinking and/or saying "If it was me who built/designed/crafted this..." to our selves.
This thread will contain my takes on that well trodden path, somewhat rambling, in a bit of a mixed order and so on and so forth where I'll try to take individual aspects and design decisions from the game, analyze them and try reworking them to be better.
I'll begin this (hopefully will be) series with a small but fundamental design choice;
Pre-established player characters
[IMO] It seems counter-intuitive but as long as you can present it well and sell it to your audience, any such story element departure from the norms, no matter how cliche or out of place, can be a strength for the overall narrative.
----You decide to use pre-gen characters? so be it, but do it well. Don't just "oh, he is a veteran and she is a lawyer and humdum..." and leave it at that. GO THE WHOLE WAY, PEDAL TO THE METAL!.
He isn't just a veteran, he is Cpt. (ret.) John Doe; DSC, SS and so on.
He is a veteran of the Alaskan invasion where he, as a sergeant was left in command of the headquarters company of Consolidated General Support and Engineering battalion XX of Alaskan national guard, after the HC company leadership were wiped out by a Chinese decapitation attack and the unit itself was stranded behind enemy lines. Under is command, the HC company ran a guerrilla campaign against the Chinese, interdicting supply lines, annihilating patrols and tying up the limited resources of Chinese flank.
At the culmination of their efforts his unit, along with the ad-hoc reinforced platoon of Airforce personnel and the robots they had gathered, obliterated the Chinese rear flank and wiped out a large chunk of Chinese leadership on ground, opening the path for main US force to repel the invasion."
Remember that ad-hoc reinforced platoon of AF personnel a few lines above?
Yeah, meet Maj. (ret.) Jane Doe; MoH, SS and so on.
(Then) Captain Doe was a AF JAG weenie who was there to tend to the bookkeeping side of a very small scale field trial when she ended up in command of a small AF contingent consisting of a handful of security and a sizable number of techs (EOD, Robotics, Commo, Sensors). Working in conjunction with the Alaskan NG combat engineers, the forces under Captain Doe's command requisitioned and rewired every civilian robot (of various mining outfits in the AO) and many Chinese equipment stolen from their supply lines while keeping up an unprecedented electronic warfare op. for the whole duration and tied up an unprecedented amount of enemy forces while engineering a decapitation attack themselves, which wiped out most of the Chinese high command in the AO.
[paraphrased from the citation]
----A decent start with the backgrounds but words are cheap. Let's look at introduction and presentation next.
Scene 1: Meet the Doe s
The game opens up with the bathroom mirror scene, with small lovey-dovey banter but we also see (hear?) snippets where Jane is bitching about someones trying to conscript them to the "Army of North Virginia" and John making quips about Pinkertons in a similar/parallel manner.
After character customization, we discover that the pair is in a cheap hotel at the moment and they are waiting for someone. The general banter conveys a sense of trust and normalcy which is used to heighten the spy/noir disturbance when the partner informs that "the escape route" is still clean and the pair check their arms as their visitors arrive.
The visitors turn out to be a pair of US Marshals (witness protection), an armed forces spook and a civilian spook. The whole thing positively reeks of noir spy thriller kind of vibe.
The player is given a short highlight reel of the MCs' past by one of the spooks (with interruption options, not as outre as mass effect style but enough to establish character traits) and the Marshals walk the MCs thorough their new cover identities (choose your name etc.).
The other spook tries another recruitment attempt but gets firmly rejected by MCs' decleration that they have done their part and have been left out in the cold enough already.
Then we learn that the cover identities are slated to be a part of a Vault-Tech installation and other details.
The meeting comes to a close, hands are shaken and the MCs depart. Scene ends.
Basically, he is Sgt. Rock by the way of John McClane (Original Die Hard); soft spoken, leads from the front, deadly while she is Grace Hopper by the way of Cpt. Winters (Band of Brothers); has both a gravitas and an aura of command and is death on a wholesale scale.
During these scenes, we see that they are a well functioning command team and seamlessly use tactics like good cop/bad cop, officer and nco and so on; picking up each other's clues without any difficulty yet when they are alone we also see that they are an equal pair and pass the leadership without any issues, (like an actually well suited couple. yeah shocking but I had to write it down specifically because actual depictions of such are so rare in modern media)
Scene 2; the fast forward meeting
The next scene opens up with a short helicopter (not a vertibird, a weird looking but helicopter craft. Something like a Sikorsky X-Wing or a Huskie) ride as the MCs arrive at the construction site, what will be the ViP entrance (the lift area in the current game) in the future and proceed to an onsite conference.
We discover various relatively important background facts about the vault (like why it is shaped as it is), the roles of MCs (as expected, Jane is the Sys-Op and John is a security team lead.) and then the foreman starts walking the team through the timetable; the whole scene becomes transparent and gets superimposed on a excavation/construction montage on fast forward. At various moments, certain team members speak up, pointing possible alternatives and/or problems; the montage stops and then rewinds and then proceeds as the consensus. The player also gets several moments where s/he can choose various options (use a small amount of free space to cram an additional emergency capabilities to the infirmary or use that space to enlarge the maintenance workshop on the ViP wing etc.)
This scene proceeds about 2 thirds into the estimated timeline (Oct. "22" 2077, night);
All three side wings (ViP, Cargo and Engineering) have been constructed and operational; the main plug is at about one third done and the cryo-pod levels have been finished recently. The tech team are in the mid point of their installation.
The PC is at the ViP wing, checking out something when things go sideways.
Scene 3; Tutorial
A large explosion that shakes the whole place, catching the PC off guard and hitting his/her head; red lights, electronic warfare, hissing static etc.
The installation is under attack by unknown assailants;; based on the readings someone tried to insert a HUPNUM (human portable nuclear munition) via the cargo canal and it got caught by the automated systems, reprogrammed by someone paranoid. It still managed to deal serious amouns of damage to the outer staging area as well as taking out a chunk of the outer canal along with the landline due to caved ins. The main entrance is under attack and there is no way these guys won't try sneaking in a strike team via the back door (ViP entrance)
You take control of a pre-made lvl 25 character and proceed to kick ass in a manner suitable to your chosen avatar; (John has a "demilitarized" T-42 constructor, Jane can turn on turrets and other systems.). Fight a bunch of familiar drones and a 6 man suicide team.
Thanks to your efforts, bad guys only manage to cause seriously bad sabotage instead of terminally critical. You jam everything to a stop and power the wing down; then fall back to the infirmary and jump in the autodoc to wait for rescue...
Scene 4: The beginning
Which takes a wee bit to arrive. The experimental autodoc disgorges you X years later due to "insert convoluted but plausible reason that results in reduction of environmental hazards that drove you there in the first place". You deal with the wildlife that have entered through the "reason" (i.e. large, recent cave-in that broke the hermetic seal of the wing.) and minimally power up the systems to discover what happened. [You find out that your partner, along with the skeleton staff fell back to the citadel (Engineering) but this is the extent of your knowledge. ]
The game progresses in escalation stages; each major goal opens up more and more of the game world and furthers to story but to get there, the PC needs to accomplish various sub-objectives.
For example, to actually get out of the remains of the ViP wing, the PC needs to accomplish a total of 16 objectives; 10 of them are information or skills; 6 of them are hardware.
The problem is, thanks to the lengthy and unprepared cold sleep, the PC is basically a wreck; Jane starts with 3 of the required line items that are computer related, John starts with 3 that are handyman related.
You practice (level up) a bit and are able to unlock 2 additional skills.
Meanwhile, you hunt around for some tools (3 or 4 of the hardware requirements) and use them to get back into your room in order to get your hands on your partner's notes and reference books which open up the his/her 5 skills, then you use all you gathered to fix the 2 last objectives (the T42 Lifter) and get access to the surface.
Such an approach, supported by map layout and objective placement allows for an organic and gradual increase to both the playable area and options available to the player, for ex.;
-You start building a temp camp on the ViP pad (with power supplied from the Vault) but that attracts Deathclaws that have nested in the nearby quarry,
-You clean out the small nest at the quarry
-a few escalations pass by, you finally go overland, clear a bunch of locations and excavate and finally reach the carbonite slabs of your partner and other members of the skeleton staff and what is this? Surface alarms are going off! Your topside camp is under attack by... Molerats? who have nested at the abandoned and cleared quarry and have been gorging on the... Basalt? Huh?
HORDE MODE!
This thread will contain my takes on that well trodden path, somewhat rambling, in a bit of a mixed order and so on and so forth where I'll try to take individual aspects and design decisions from the game, analyze them and try reworking them to be better.
I'll begin this (hopefully will be) series with a small but fundamental design choice;
Pre-established player characters
[IMO] It seems counter-intuitive but as long as you can present it well and sell it to your audience, any such story element departure from the norms, no matter how cliche or out of place, can be a strength for the overall narrative.
----You decide to use pre-gen characters? so be it, but do it well. Don't just "oh, he is a veteran and she is a lawyer and humdum..." and leave it at that. GO THE WHOLE WAY, PEDAL TO THE METAL!.
He isn't just a veteran, he is Cpt. (ret.) John Doe; DSC, SS and so on.
He is a veteran of the Alaskan invasion where he, as a sergeant was left in command of the headquarters company of Consolidated General Support and Engineering battalion XX of Alaskan national guard, after the HC company leadership were wiped out by a Chinese decapitation attack and the unit itself was stranded behind enemy lines. Under is command, the HC company ran a guerrilla campaign against the Chinese, interdicting supply lines, annihilating patrols and tying up the limited resources of Chinese flank.
At the culmination of their efforts his unit, along with the ad-hoc reinforced platoon of Airforce personnel and the robots they had gathered, obliterated the Chinese rear flank and wiped out a large chunk of Chinese leadership on ground, opening the path for main US force to repel the invasion."
Remember that ad-hoc reinforced platoon of AF personnel a few lines above?
Yeah, meet Maj. (ret.) Jane Doe; MoH, SS and so on.
(Then) Captain Doe was a AF JAG weenie who was there to tend to the bookkeeping side of a very small scale field trial when she ended up in command of a small AF contingent consisting of a handful of security and a sizable number of techs (EOD, Robotics, Commo, Sensors). Working in conjunction with the Alaskan NG combat engineers, the forces under Captain Doe's command requisitioned and rewired every civilian robot (of various mining outfits in the AO) and many Chinese equipment stolen from their supply lines while keeping up an unprecedented electronic warfare op. for the whole duration and tied up an unprecedented amount of enemy forces while engineering a decapitation attack themselves, which wiped out most of the Chinese high command in the AO.
[paraphrased from the citation]
----A decent start with the backgrounds but words are cheap. Let's look at introduction and presentation next.
Scene 1: Meet the Doe s
The game opens up with the bathroom mirror scene, with small lovey-dovey banter but we also see (hear?) snippets where Jane is bitching about someones trying to conscript them to the "Army of North Virginia" and John making quips about Pinkertons in a similar/parallel manner.
After character customization, we discover that the pair is in a cheap hotel at the moment and they are waiting for someone. The general banter conveys a sense of trust and normalcy which is used to heighten the spy/noir disturbance when the partner informs that "the escape route" is still clean and the pair check their arms as their visitors arrive.
The visitors turn out to be a pair of US Marshals (witness protection), an armed forces spook and a civilian spook. The whole thing positively reeks of noir spy thriller kind of vibe.
The player is given a short highlight reel of the MCs' past by one of the spooks (with interruption options, not as outre as mass effect style but enough to establish character traits) and the Marshals walk the MCs thorough their new cover identities (choose your name etc.).
The other spook tries another recruitment attempt but gets firmly rejected by MCs' decleration that they have done their part and have been left out in the cold enough already.
Then we learn that the cover identities are slated to be a part of a Vault-Tech installation and other details.
The meeting comes to a close, hands are shaken and the MCs depart. Scene ends.
Basically, he is Sgt. Rock by the way of John McClane (Original Die Hard); soft spoken, leads from the front, deadly while she is Grace Hopper by the way of Cpt. Winters (Band of Brothers); has both a gravitas and an aura of command and is death on a wholesale scale.
During these scenes, we see that they are a well functioning command team and seamlessly use tactics like good cop/bad cop, officer and nco and so on; picking up each other's clues without any difficulty yet when they are alone we also see that they are an equal pair and pass the leadership without any issues, (like an actually well suited couple. yeah shocking but I had to write it down specifically because actual depictions of such are so rare in modern media)
Scene 2; the fast forward meeting
The next scene opens up with a short helicopter (not a vertibird, a weird looking but helicopter craft. Something like a Sikorsky X-Wing or a Huskie) ride as the MCs arrive at the construction site, what will be the ViP entrance (the lift area in the current game) in the future and proceed to an onsite conference.
We discover various relatively important background facts about the vault (like why it is shaped as it is), the roles of MCs (as expected, Jane is the Sys-Op and John is a security team lead.) and then the foreman starts walking the team through the timetable; the whole scene becomes transparent and gets superimposed on a excavation/construction montage on fast forward. At various moments, certain team members speak up, pointing possible alternatives and/or problems; the montage stops and then rewinds and then proceeds as the consensus. The player also gets several moments where s/he can choose various options (use a small amount of free space to cram an additional emergency capabilities to the infirmary or use that space to enlarge the maintenance workshop on the ViP wing etc.)
This scene proceeds about 2 thirds into the estimated timeline (Oct. "22" 2077, night);
All three side wings (ViP, Cargo and Engineering) have been constructed and operational; the main plug is at about one third done and the cryo-pod levels have been finished recently. The tech team are in the mid point of their installation.
The PC is at the ViP wing, checking out something when things go sideways.
Scene 3; Tutorial
A large explosion that shakes the whole place, catching the PC off guard and hitting his/her head; red lights, electronic warfare, hissing static etc.
The installation is under attack by unknown assailants;; based on the readings someone tried to insert a HUPNUM (human portable nuclear munition) via the cargo canal and it got caught by the automated systems, reprogrammed by someone paranoid. It still managed to deal serious amouns of damage to the outer staging area as well as taking out a chunk of the outer canal along with the landline due to caved ins. The main entrance is under attack and there is no way these guys won't try sneaking in a strike team via the back door (ViP entrance)
You take control of a pre-made lvl 25 character and proceed to kick ass in a manner suitable to your chosen avatar; (John has a "demilitarized" T-42 constructor, Jane can turn on turrets and other systems.). Fight a bunch of familiar drones and a 6 man suicide team.
Thanks to your efforts, bad guys only manage to cause seriously bad sabotage instead of terminally critical. You jam everything to a stop and power the wing down; then fall back to the infirmary and jump in the autodoc to wait for rescue...
Scene 4: The beginning
Which takes a wee bit to arrive. The experimental autodoc disgorges you X years later due to "insert convoluted but plausible reason that results in reduction of environmental hazards that drove you there in the first place". You deal with the wildlife that have entered through the "reason" (i.e. large, recent cave-in that broke the hermetic seal of the wing.) and minimally power up the systems to discover what happened. [You find out that your partner, along with the skeleton staff fell back to the citadel (Engineering) but this is the extent of your knowledge. ]
The game progresses in escalation stages; each major goal opens up more and more of the game world and furthers to story but to get there, the PC needs to accomplish various sub-objectives.
For example, to actually get out of the remains of the ViP wing, the PC needs to accomplish a total of 16 objectives; 10 of them are information or skills; 6 of them are hardware.
The problem is, thanks to the lengthy and unprepared cold sleep, the PC is basically a wreck; Jane starts with 3 of the required line items that are computer related, John starts with 3 that are handyman related.
You practice (level up) a bit and are able to unlock 2 additional skills.
Meanwhile, you hunt around for some tools (3 or 4 of the hardware requirements) and use them to get back into your room in order to get your hands on your partner's notes and reference books which open up the his/her 5 skills, then you use all you gathered to fix the 2 last objectives (the T42 Lifter) and get access to the surface.
Such an approach, supported by map layout and objective placement allows for an organic and gradual increase to both the playable area and options available to the player, for ex.;
-You start building a temp camp on the ViP pad (with power supplied from the Vault) but that attracts Deathclaws that have nested in the nearby quarry,
-You clean out the small nest at the quarry
-a few escalations pass by, you finally go overland, clear a bunch of locations and excavate and finally reach the carbonite slabs of your partner and other members of the skeleton staff and what is this? Surface alarms are going off! Your topside camp is under attack by... Molerats? who have nested at the abandoned and cleared quarry and have been gorging on the... Basalt? Huh?
HORDE MODE!
