Game News CD Projekt - Making A Complex Story More Accessible

[Jaesun]

Tags: CD Projekt; Cyberpunk 2020

Speaking to Gamasutra in a recent interview, key members of CD Projekt RED explained that the studio learned some very important lessons after the release of latest blockbuster title, The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings. Most notably, it has realized that you can't expect players to readily embrace a complex game world -- you have to ease them into it.

"We spent days discussing a general postmortem after we finished The Witcher 2," CD Projekt member of the board Adam Badowski explained. "What we learned from The Witcher series is that we need to attract people with a smoother learning curve when it comes to the storyline."

Of course, CD Projekt still wants to ensure that Cyberpunk's world remains satisfyingly complex for the game's diehard fans. Unlike in The Witcher games, however, the studio doesn't want to jam this complexity onto the game's critical path. Instead, it'll be readily available to players who choose to seek it out on their own.

By reorganizing the game's optional story elements and creating a more focused main plot, the team hopes that Cyberpunk will be able to attract and hold the attention of a much wider audience, while still upholding the studio's dedication to rich, well-realized stories and worlds.

"Just to make sure we're understood correctly by our fans, this does not mean that we are going to simplify our games. That's definitely not the case," Iwinski said. "But for some audiences, the learning curve should be improved, and particularly the introduction to the world needs to be better."​

You can read the full article here.

 

[Infinitron]

!!!

Seriously though, with this talk about cyberpunk and subquests fleshing out the world, I wonder if he's been playing DX:HR.

 

[hiver]

 

[Infinitron]

Holy bilbo baggins. Even the stowy is too complicated now?

It's a recurring pattern. Any game developer that says "We'll simplify the gameplay, because what our customers really care about is the story" will eventually simplify the story too. Classic slippery slope.

 

[Shannow]

Well, their stories and the easing into the game world were pretty bad.
Geralt has amnesia, yet, half of the time he'll know stuff and people that I, the player, do not know. I often had the option of saying stuff that I didn't really know. In the first Witcher eg. he'll ask about witchers and then suddenly know the process of turning a kid into a witcher. There's quite a lot of other stuff that he knew, but I didn't, although I read two of the books. On the other hand I don't remember a single instance where an (old) enemy tries to fool Geralt into believing he was an old friend.

It would definately have been better if the player had started as a young witcher with the intro recounting the player's backstory and describing the world in broad strokes. It would then also make sense for the player to ask a lot of questions about regions and people and stuff, instead of Geralt's sporadic curiosity.
Of course, I don't know if that's the sort of simplification that they're talking about.

 

[hiver]

they are pushing the story to the sidelines ffs... and making ACTION the main theme...


straight down the shitter

 

[Mozgoëbstvo]

Decline is coming! ABORT! ABORT the rpgcodex and dig a hole underground...!

Or, y'know, keep living, not giving a shit about such "games", and keep sipping yer ice cold beer.

 

[Darth Roxor]

"Just to make sure we're understood correctly by our fans, this does not mean that we are going to simplify our games. That's definitely not the case," Iwinski said. "But for some audiences, the learning curve should be improved, and particularly the introduction to the world needs to be better."

Uh-huh. Risen 2 also sought an 'improved learning curve' and we know how that ended

 

[hiver]

some audiences .... we all know what they mean by that dont we.

 

[Morkar Left]

lol

Well, their stories and the easing into the game world were pretty bad.
Geralt has amnesia, yet, half of the time he'll know stuff and people that I, the player, do not know. I often had the option of saying stuff that I didn't really know. In the first Witcher eg. he'll ask about witchers and then suddenly know the process of turning a kid into a witcher. There's quite a lot of other stuff that he knew, but I didn't, although I read two of the books. On the other hand I don't remember a single instance where an (old) enemy tries to fool Geralt into believing he was an old friend.

It would definately have been better if the player had started as a young witcher with the intro recounting the player's backstory and describing the world in broad strokes. It would then also make sense for the player to ask a lot of questions about regions and people and stuff, instead of Geralt's sporadic curiosity.
Of course, I don't know if that's the sort of simplification that they're talking about.

Exactly. Their problem with the story wasn't the complexity. It was the simple fact that you have to play the famous mainhero with its own background in an established world. If you don't know about the Witcher and the world he is living you can't obviously feel familiar with him. To change this Shannows proposal is the way to go when you insist on having Geralt as the playerchar.

But Cyberpunk is a tabletop roleplaying system. It allows you a completely different approach right from the start. You don't have to introduce a mainhero and his whole backgroundstory. Sounds like they got it all wrong.

Or of course it's just imitating nonsense bioware marketing and the will to please more of the casual and console crowd. Either way I don't had high hopes in this project anyway already expecting a linear actionadventure.

 

[Hepler's Vagina]

Hmm, I'm in the camp that believes stories should have an introduction. They shouldn't dump a player into a point where a previous game that you quit after 10 hours was the introduction, with no recap.

What we got in the Witcher 2 was 'you didn't play Witcher 1?, OK. What about Sapkowski's books, did you read them? No? Well fuck you then.' On a side note I can't believe it took them a year to release a tutorial for a game they designed to be as punishing as Dark Souls (in their own words) and with Alchemy requiring a "two week correspondence course" for some (Yahtzee).

 

[Infinitron]

What's weird about the streamlining/simplification trend is that it doesn't seem to apply to MMOs. Things that would be par for the course in an MMO (such as a fairly intricate crafting system) are considered by gaming journotards to be unbelievably complex when in a single player game.

 

[Rivmusique]

"Just to make sure we're understood correctly by our fans, this does not mean that we are going to simplify our games. That's definitely not the case," Iwinski said.

Oh thank god. The amazing complexity and depth of Twitcher 2 was what kept me playing!

 

[Mozgoëbstvo]

What's weird about the streamlining/simplification trend is that it doesn't seem to apply to MMOs. Things that would be par for the course in an MMO (such as a fairly intricate crafting system) are considered by gaming journotards to be unbelievably complex when in a single player game.

Because a single player game has to be over in 5 hours max while an MMO has to distract you with as much shit as possible to keep you hooked!

AH-DUUUUH!

:D

 

[Captain Shrek]

Words to be wary of:

1) Cinematic
2) Streamlined
3) Wider fan-base
4) Easing in for new players

 

[mindx2]

... and the Queen song "Another one bites the dust" hauntingly echoes through the corridors of Codex...

 

[Stinger]

Please, that was echoing back when Witcher 2 first came out.

 

[WhiskeyWolf]

:noooooooooo:

 

[Ulminati]

...and the Potato broke codexias heart again.

 

[DarkUnderlord]

Speaking to Gamasutra in a recent interview, key members of CD Projekt RED explained that the studio learned some very important lessons after the release of latest blockbuster title, The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings. Most notably, it has realized that you can't expect players to readily embrace a complex game world -- you have to ease them into it.

You mean, as opposed to the game being shit and no-one was interested in it?

 

[sgc_meltdown]

Well, you do what you have to do to grow your audience. I guess not even dice gambling, cutscene intercourse and naked dwarf references were enough.

Oh CDP, these 'some audiences' don't really care about 'getting' the story. All they worry about is that their character looks heterosexual and if they're going to be killing something in the next five minutes or be rewarded for killing something in the past five minutes.

You know what I think they're working on silently? Multiplayer. The P&P dude is going to help them balance multiplayer.

 

[el Supremo]

I'd be more excited about this Cyberpunk thingy, it is was anounced right after The Witcher 1.
While I liked TW2 very much, it made painfully obvious in what direction CD Project is heading, how it is going to evolve.
Still, they made only two games so far, two points is not enough to create a flowchart. So there is still the possibility for a supprise.
For one thing, I am looking forward to see what characters, world, and storyline, they are able to create, without copy-pasting entire swaths of the text from the books.

 

[Outlander]

Words to be wary of:

1) Cinematic
2) Streamlined
3) Wider fan-base
4) Easing in for new players

Pretty much all there is to know...

 

[Untermensch]

CD Projekt hasn't made a good game yet, so this is not surprising.

 

[Johannes]

they are pushing the story to the sidelines ffs... and making ACTION the main theme...


straight down the shitter

Dunno about their stories, but focusing on action instead of insisting on half-assed RPG elements in an action game is the way to go.