Development Info Josh Sawyer on developing games with Universal Character Death

[Roguey]

As for his non-violent game, aside from the silly idea he's finally got his high school RPG, maybe it's not in the "real" world or set in an abstracted layer? Uplink isn't exactly violent, but it's hardly a peaceful thing.

The high school RPG was a Chris plan, Josh is about historical fiction.

That would be kind of close to a Darklands-inspired game I guess. He didn't say that it will be an RPG, though I cannot imagine Mr. Balance working without stats or at least skills. Unless it is some Microsoft-funded non-RPG for their consoles if Sawyer really wants a break from RPG's for now.

https://rpgcodex.net/forums/index.p...ign-director-role.108261/page-15#post-4502433

 

[Lady_Error]

That St. George is one weird game, if he is really working on that.

 

[Diggfinger]

Sawyer got the Codex excited with his secret game...
kicking back drinking herbal tea like a boss!

For fucks sake I hope it's not Fable though

 

[Neerasrc]

(I send the same message in two places. I hope that's not a problem.)

The answer to all your questions is here.
Just type in the name of the game and check.

Josh is probably developing game accordingly.

https://pegi.info/

Sample:
What Remains of Edith Finch = +16 [Violence appears icon]
Fable Fortune = +7 [There's only fear. No violence.]
Fable Legends = +12 [sex,violence and bad language]
..etc

 

[Carrion]

The point of universal character death isn't being able to kill everyone, it's about being able to kill anyone — having a clear set of rules that apply everywhere in the game. While it is difficult to implement and can, in practice, only be done in specific types of games, I think that every RPG should strive to make its rules and mechanics as universal and consistent as is feasible for that game. This does not just apply to (N)PCs but everything else as well, like doors, containers and items you can interact with. If the game allows you to pick locks or break down doors, you'd better have a good reason for introducing an indestructible door with an unpickable lock. Similarly, if you include a character that the player cannot kill for some reason, you'd better make damn sure you don't give the player* a reason to murder that character.

* Murderhobos excluded, I guess.

And then you have best example of all: skyrim. Do you allow dragons to randomly kill half of important npcs before player got a chance to speak with them or do you make city guards able to handle dragon on their own?

Didn't Skyrim have a system where certain characters (your companions, at least) could only be killed by the PC and not other NPCs? Or am I thinking of another game?

 

[KeighnMcDeath]

Shit games make the king unkillable, good games make killing the king unsurvivable in the long run.

Is that a shot at Lord Br... er ... Richard Garriott?

I've only played the original remastered or w/e version of Fable. It gets old being mr McDemon killing random hobos. Seemed like you could become good again though. I have no idea about the later fables. Wth would a non-violent fable be?

Didn't care for FALLOUT 3 ethics either. It was definitely steered to be a paragon of good rather than evil and being flat out neutral seemed the most frustrating to maintain. And that god damn "Golly Gee Doncha Know chick!" I kept thinking she survived Bobby's World.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

The game was still entirely beatable after that though.

 

[DraQ]

The point of universal character death isn't being able to kill everyone, it's about being able to kill anyone — having a clear set of rules that apply everywhere in the game.

QFT.

Similarly, if you include a character that the player cannot kill for some reason, you'd better make damn sure you don't give the player* a reason to murder that character.

* Murderhobos excluded, I guess.

If you need a character player cannot kill make it so they cannot kill this character and stay alive afterwards.

If you just straight out waltz in and kill someone like king or emperor, your life expectancy is likely to drop considerably.

 

[Quillon]

For fucks sake I hope it's not Fable though

How is Fable non-violent?

If there is combat, it is violent, no?

 

[KeighnMcDeath]

Dunno, I murdered a lot of innocents and guards.

 

[vortex]

Along Poe3, he needs to make new IP like wild west Pathfinder, Darklands with something unique about it.
He shouldn't make a nonviolent game.

 

[Desolate Dancer]

Josh Sawyer enjoys flying to Europe each year to attend Game Dev Days, a small game development conference in Graz, Austria. This year his keynote was broadcast live on their Twitch channel. It's about developing games that support "universal character death" - the ability to kill any character - a feature that recent Obsidian RPGs have been known for. Over the course of the 45 minute talk, Josh discusses the challenges of designing main quests that can tolerate the death of critical characters, citing examples from Fallout: New Vegas and Pillars of Eternity II. He notes that this sort of design often results in its own cliches, such as the note with critical information on a dead character's body and characters that are protected by impenetrable glass windows, describes alternative design paradigms including games with no killing at all, and even links the topic to the broader controversy about violence in video games.

I don't really see the point of this, in fact I feel like that people who came up with this utterly wasteful idea are those who doesn't understand the fact that games are supposed to be abstract and NOT realistic simulations (except ofc when they are exactly want to simulate something like FlightSim). Realism therefore is a totally moot point, including the mortality of all NPCs. It would also take an enormous amount of time and money to implement a game that can handle the death of any critical character, and then we'd also have the problem of players getting pissed of by failing to complete a quest properly. So to prevent the latter we'd also need to make a very detailed and proper auto-saving mechanism in addition to the intricate journal-dialogue-quest contents. Technically, it is possible to make all quests 'death-proof' so that upon the death of an NPC a death_variable triggers something in your Journal closing the quest with a funny line :"Since I couldn't control my murderous impulses the party will never learn of the secrets of Soy Glemfath".

But if someone accepts the fact that games are abstract and does not require autistic microdetails like the killability of all NPCs then... they can deal with indestructible NPCs or a simple message upon the death of the NPC that the player just fucked up and need to reload (possibly even disabling quick save as well to prevent an unwanted overwrite).

 

[Alex]

The point of universal character death isn't being able to kill everyone, it's about being able to kill anyone — having a clear set of rules that apply everywhere in the game. While it is difficult to implement and can, in practice, only be done in specific types of games, I think that every RPG should strive to make its rules and mechanics as universal and consistent as is feasible for that game. This does not just apply to (N)PCs but everything else as well, like doors, containers and items you can interact with. If the game allows you to pick locks or break down doors, you'd better have a good reason for introducing an indestructible door with an unpickable lock. (snip...)

While you are at it, make stuff destructible if possible. In some games, you might bring down a dragon with a fireball. A dragon whose scales would be unscathed by the shot of a catapult or a trebuchet. But the very same fireball won't even singe thin wooden walls or hay roofs of the homes you might find in the game. It is rather disheartening.