(Non-)Linearity in CRPG Stories again (RE: DG interview)

[MrBrown]

Hello.

The recent interview with David Gaider made me think a bit more of a topic very familiar to everyone here. :wink:

10. Multiple plot choices. Almost 3 years ago you spoke against them, stating that complexity would increase exponentially, thus causing other problems like more bugs and spending "more time to do less". Does this mean you think multiple plot choices is less? Can you elaborate on what you meant?

Added complexity doesn't necessarily mean it't not worth doing. When you have limited resources to work with, however (and that will always be the case), you're going to have to pick and choose what you're going to focus on.

As to what I meant originally, I was simply pointing out that plot choices (as in actual branches in the story) add more complexity than simply the time it takes to write them. You also end up using more resources for a story that, to the player going through the first time, seems no longer.

As an example: let's say you have a 10-hour long story that branches into two completely separate paths halfway through after 5 hours. No matter which path someone takes, the story is still only 10 hours long, but even so there's still 15 hours worth of work required to accommodate both paths, and added complexity because now you must account for both states in the last half of the game.

Not to mention that, from a developer perspective, no matter what you do, there痴 now 5 hours worth of work that many players are never going to see. How many resources can you justify putting towards options that not every player encounters? A balance needs to be struck between having depth and having breadth ・and considering that the overall length of games is being pushed lower and lower as it is due to the rising cost of art, it痴 really hard not to try and squeeze as much length as you can out of the resources you have available. Leaning too much either way is going to ultimately dissatisfying.

There are things you can do to try and minimize the cost of branching plots ・you can re-use art resources, have bottlenecks for dialogue and plot that prevent them from becoming too scattered, include lower-cost options which are more aesthetic as opposed to gameplay-oriented, etc. ・and like I said sometimes it痴 very much worth it. The original comment was in response to a poster who suggested that not having more plot choices was simply a sign of designer laziness, as they cost nothing.

I think the interviewer and Mr. Gaider here are talking about different things, while using the same words to describe them. What follows is my attempt to seperate between these two different ideas, while defining a number of terms to see how this affects "linearity" and "non-linearity". I think this is all somewhat obvious, but people always seem to mistake one thing for the another.

Event: An Event is any kind of instance in the game.

Linearity: Linearity simply means how static the Events in the game are. There are two kinds of Linearity: one regarding the order of Events (are both 1,2,3,4 and 1,3,2,4 possible?) and one regarding the existance of Events (are both 1,3,4 and 1,2,4 possible?). Naturally, some extremes of Linearity are often not very relevant (though not necessarily impossible). For instance, having no Events at all, or having Events in opposite orders, ie. 1,2,3,4 vs. 4,3,2,1. For this context, I'm taking Linearity into account only in regards to PC choices, not for instance completely randomized non-Linearity.

Plot: The Plot is a collection of all the Events in the game world that happen outside the immediate influence of the PC. It is assumed that a Plot must plausible. The Plot can be linear or non-linear.

Story: The Story is a collection of all the Events in the game world that happen inside the immediate influence of the PC. The Story can be linear or non-linear.

(NOTE: Plot and Story come from literary definitions... See the wikipedia for instance. I'm simply trying to define this stuff in reference to CRPGs.)

Contact Point: A Contact Point is a special kind of Event where the Plot and Story meet. A Contact Point is a Plot or Story Event that future Events of the other kind must take into account or they will lose plausability. In other words, an Event that limits the otherwise infinite amount of possible future Events of the other kind to those that are plausible with the CP. For an example, if the PC shoots Joe the Baker and he dies, then the Plot must take into account that Joe has been shot to death, or the Plot will lose plausability.


By the above definitions, there are 6 kinds of Events:
A) Plot Events that are not Contact Points, are not preceeded by any or are not relevant to any ("Joe gets married").
B) Story Events that are not Contact Points, are not preceeded by any or are not relevant to any ("PC buys bread from Joe").
C) Plot Events that are Contact Points ("Joe has a brother who's a Hell's Angel").
D) Story Events that are Contact Points ("PC shoots Joe to death").
E) Plot Events that follow one or more Story Contact Point that they are relevant to ("Joe's brother comes back to town").
F) Story Events that follow one or more Plot Contact Point that they are relevant to ("Joe's brother attacks the PC"... though this also requires D).


The problem is this: The developers must give plausability to A, C, E and F, but the player gives plausability to B and D. And the player never questions his own plausability; "just because" is enough for him. However, Joe's Brother can't just ignore his brother's death, there must be some kind of plausability, even if only "he hasn't heard about it yet".

My two main points are this:

1) To make the Plot non-Linear(=to have the PC's choices affect the Plot), the game must have Story Contact Points. However, this not only means the developers must give plausability to E and F types, but also that the developers must either make several such Events to match all possible PCs choices, or make a single Event that is plausible regardless of what the PC chose, AND that any such event must take into account all relevant Story Contact Points that preceeded it. This is the "non-Linearity takes too much work" -argument. Or, the developers can simply take control from the player in D-type Events, thus needing much less work for E. This is called railroading.

2) A non-Linear Plot is not the same thing as a non-Linear Story. Games like Fallout, Arcanum and Baldur's Gate feature non-Linear Stories (some more than others), but all have mostly Linear Plots (BG's is completely Linear, while the two others are not fully). This is in direct relation to the number of Story Contact Points they have and in how many of those the game takes control from the player; BG has several where control is taken, FO doesn't have many Story CPs in the first place.


And the relevancy to the interview... Despite the terms he's using, Mr. Gaider is talking about a non-Linear Plot. This is because he prefers a game that is heavy with Story Contact Points, which is no wonder since he seems to focus on writing. However, given that this is the codex ( ), I can't help but assume that when the interviewer asked that question, he was actually thinking of games like Fallout that have a very non-Linear Story (but a mostly Linear Plot).



Two points that I'll have to think about more...
- Event types A and C are probably the same thing (and maybe B and F too, and thus there'd only be one type of Contact Points).
- In a game of a given length, it seems you cannot both have a non-Linear Story and lots of Story Contact points (regardless what you do with the Plot), but only one or the other (or neither).



Comments, please.

 

[Zomg]

Wow, excellent, excellent post. I am enthusiastic on the idea of separating terms for player and extra-player driven/witnessed narratives, although using the terms plot and story makes my head spin a bit (although I see in Wikipedia the distinction is precedented). I'll write something up after I've processed this angle of description a little more.

 

[obediah]

Good analysis. One suggestion - rename "contact point" to "contact event", or "joint event", or something "event". But perhaps this term has already been cemented as well and we're stuck with some dead's schmuck inability to make up good terminology.

One immediate observation:

A non-linear story in a linear plot does get around the exponential complexity problem for the overall game. But the developer still has to deal with complexity within each non-linear story event. Hopefully there are fewer variables, and fewer steps to take, but it is still a significant increase in development effort.

I remember the big exponential debate when it happened here - I almost delurked for it because the majority of the codexers were simply wrong. There are all sorts of tricks and strategies that developers use to limit the effects of exponential growth, but it's there and I encourage anyone that disagrees to write a 20 exchange long dialogue tree with three meaningful choices at each node and get back to me.

 

[kingcomrade]

That's pretty much the way I've always thought about Fallout.

The easy way to define the difference in your mind, Zomg, is that the plot is basically the world and it's various systems (setting, though it includes a bit more than time/place but also NPCs and institutions), while the story is the narrative of the protagonist (the stuff you see on your monitor as you play the game).
Like, in Fallout, there is a guy named Gizmo who is a criminal runs a casino in Junktown. That's part of the plot. The story would be the area inside your monitor as it follows Patrick_Stew the Vault Dweller into town and watches him kill Gizmo. This would affect the plot. Since Gizmo's dead, it wouldn't make sense for him to be running a casiino or anything, so the game world (the plot, as he defined it) changes. Gizmo is dead and the casino is empty.

One stumbling block Fallout runs into is that a lot of people (Tycho, for instance, if you kill Gizmo before recruiting him) don't change some of their dialogue to reflect the fact that Gizmo's dead. That's where the game world loses its credibility for the player, even for just that small excusable temporary moment.

Excellent post.

 

[MrBrown]

Good analysis. One suggestion - rename "contact point" to "contact event", or "joint event", or something "event". But perhaps this term has already been cemented as well and we're stuck with some dead's schmuck inability to make up good terminology.

The terminology isn't fixed, I just used what came to my mind when I first wrote it.

For Contact Point, I was thinking of using "Limiting Event". I need to come up with something for the Events that need to take the CPs into account too...

One immediate observation:

A non-linear story in a linear plot does get around the exponential complexity problem for the overall game. But the developer still has to deal with complexity within each non-linear story event. Hopefully there are fewer variables, and fewer steps to take, but it is still a significant increase in development effort.

I remember the big exponential debate when it happened here - I almost delurked for it because the majority of the codexers were simply wrong. There are all sorts of tricks and strategies that developers use to limit the effects of exponential growth, but it's there and I encourage anyone that disagrees to write a 20 exchange long dialogue tree with three meaningful choices at each node and get back to me.

This is true. When I made my post, I was thinking only of the kind of non-Linearity that carries over from Event to Event. Whether a choice that only has effect there and now can even be considered "meaningful" is a wholly different topic as well.

 

[Section8]

A great analysis, I'll give it another read and comment more when my brain is a little more wakeful, but it's all clear and concise, with everything well defined. There's certain not much to criticise at first galnce, but let's see what discussions arise.

 

[Mefi]

Interesting post. Need more time to go through it but I can't see much which doesn't ring true.

 

[Vault Dweller]

What the other guys said: a great analysis, need more time to process.

 

[Sycandre]

I'll try to use your definitions to describe what is, to me, the best compromise between player freedom/replayability (non-linearity), and GM/dev lazyness(linearity):

A globaly linear plot, that is a linear serie a contact points. Each of them being an important event during which the player choice may result in a few different stories (that's small suites of events)... also linears.

The structure is globally linear, because the plot is linear, and also because each sub story follow a linear model.... which save some neurones and time for the one who build the stories.

But, from a player point of view, each contact point possibly opening a few different stories, from one game to the other, the player may face a whole new serie of events, structured in a coherent manner, around a few repetitive contact points (but which are interesting because the player may feel he can make a critical choice).

Globally, this may make each new game a globally new story, and trick the player into thinking the whole is not linear.

If you insert one or two alternate plotlines, I doubt your player may experience twice the same story, and therefore, he'll really believe that his choices have affected the whole story.

I think non-linearity is quite important in CRPG, because, unlike in PnP RPG, you often try to play the same "story" twice or even more. If it's completely linear, there is absoluteley no replayability. Moreover, a GM can manipulate his players, and subtely turn their decisions to result in what he is waiting for to proceed with the next story event... the players feel they choose their path freelly, while in fact, they are kept along a completely linear track made by the GM.
The system I like, while not needing to build a coherent infinite set of possible stories (a nightmare!), at least provide the player with a decent set of possible ones.

 

[Imbecile]

Hello.

The recent interview with David Gaider made me think a bit more of a topic very familiar to everyone here. :wink:

[<snip>

Comments, please.

Nice post. Regarding linearity, its true that events can take place in a number of orders. So for example you could visit the planets in KOTOR in pretty much any order, they were entirely seperate, and as far as I was aware had, little bearing on any future events.

This never felt entirely satisfying to me. The events (if Im understanding your terminology right) were so well compartmentalised that while you could do them ina non linear way it didnt really matter whether you did or didnt. You could make a choice, but it felt like a pretty inconsequential one - because you knew it didnt really matter

Deus ex, on the other hand, allowed you to do pretty much the same thing. Getting Captured at a certain point, as opposed to fighting your way through or choosing to kill your sidekick rather than complete the mission effectively meant that you tackled the story in a slightly different order. But because you werent aware of the alternate outcome (what would have happened, if I had killed her?) it seemed far less stilted, and restrictive - even though, in reality it wasnt. It was the same old ABDCE malarkey.
At the time though I didnt care, the illusion of non linearity was enough.
Until I replayed it.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that where developers have limited resources and dont want to conceal any of the games content, then in lieu of making a huge game with multiple real choices, faking it and mixing up the events is probably not a bad idea. Just make sure I'm not aware of it.

Ignorance is invincible.

 

[MrBrown]

I'll try to use your definitions to describe what is, to me, the best compromise between player freedom/replayability (non-linearity), and GM/dev lazyness(linearity):

A globaly linear plot, that is a linear serie a contact points. Each of them being an important event during which the player choice may result in a few different stories (that's small suites of events)... also linears.

The structure is globally linear, because the plot is linear, and also because each sub story follow a linear model.... which save some neurones and time for the one who build the stories.

I assume you mean something like this:

   |
   |
A--B--A
   |
   |
   B--A--A--A
   |
   |
A--B
   |

Where both A and B would be Story Events, but the As wouldn't be Contact Points/Limiting Events to any Plot Events between the Bs, and Bs would have PC choice that would lead to different As who might (without PC choice) lead to new As.

This is certaintly a viable design. One thing to remember though, that for the As not to be Limiting Events to the Plot Events between the Bs, the As must be designed so that the guy who designs the Plot Events doesn't even have to think about the As. Otherwise, the As will become Limiting Events.

But, this made me realize some contradictions in my original post, I'll have to revise...

 

[Drain]

Great reading.

Why do you limit non-linearity of plot only to story contact points? Say Joe Baker is murdered by Sam Butcher. John Smith, who is a brother of Joe Baker, seeks revenge. You can have a branch in plot events at this point and assign some probability to each branch. For example, when PC comes to town he may find out that John Smith has killed Sam Butcher and now he is hiding from justice. Alternatively, if plot follows another branch, he may find out that that John Smith was arrested in an attempt and now sits in jail. This would make the plot non linear although a player may find it out only when he replays the game(Yes, this would require more work for programmers).
This type of plot non-linearity is encountered in Space Rangers where other rangers complete quests, free systems, etc independently from player. And perhaps Radiant AI will also provide some non-linearity on a very limited scale.

 

[obediah]

I would really like to play a game that hits the complexity of a non-linear plot head on. Even better, rather than one plot that the story interacts with, have a dozen minor plots, some related, some conflicting - but the player isn't pushed into any of them. Something I can sit down and play to an end in an evening, but can play the next night and have a completely different experience.

 

[spacemoose]

I still want exponential branching, and I would pay more money accordinglly if I knew that it was present in a game.


suppose there is a linear RPG with 4 'segments'

$50:
---A---B---C---D
at $12.5 per segment


with the same costs, this would be the holy grail:
~$190:

               -------G
               |
         ------C
         |     |
         |     -------H
   ------B
   |     |     -------I
   |     |     |
   |     ------D
   |           |
   |           -------J
---A
   |           -------K
   |           |
   |     ------E
   |     |     |
   |     |     -------L
   ------C
         |     -------M
         |     |
         ------F
               |
               -------N

 

[spacemoose]

I would really like to play a game that hits the complexity of a non-linear plot head on. Even better, rather than one plot that the story interacts with, have a dozen minor plots, some related, some conflicting - but the player isn't pushed into any of them. Something I can sit down and play to an end in an evening, but can play the next night and have a completely different experience.

May I recommend: Brad the Game

 

[bryce777]

Well, the problem is as follows:

As more and more voice acting and other useless crap becomes standard, you now have to voice act every stupid line of dialog. his being the case, it's certaint here will be far less dialog, and since nonlinearity generally leads to more dialog, it is not likely to be supported.

The same goes for cutscenes, which is what I think gaider was getting at, indirectly.

If you offer 20 different solutions for a problem, then if it affects a cutscene for continuity's sake you would need 20 different cutscenes.

Which is obviously expensive.

You also need more writing, of course, but honestly, I think this is not a huge issue because it's not like most of these games have all that much in them in the first place.

On the practical side, another reason i think studios shy away from it is due to balance. It is very hard to balance a game and make it so you can oam anywhere you want at the same time. Companies like bethesda can't even manage the most simple balance, let alone deal with complex issues.

 

[MrBrown]

Why do you limit non-linearity of plot only to story contact points? Say Joe Baker is murdered by Sam Butcher. John Smith, who is a brother of Joe Baker, seeks revenge.

Like I said in the first post, I was only thinking of non-Linearity in regards to PC choice. Other types of non-Linearity is certainly possible, for instance complete randomization (as you described) or player choice (that is not a PC choice).

 

[vazquez595654]

Tetris?

 

[GhanBuriGhan]

I can't entirely follow. You seem to use plot as something thats similar to "setting" as far as I can tell, the world and a set of things that happen in it. A non linear story as in Fallout has to affect the world - so how can the plot remain linear?

 

[MrBrown]

I can't entirely follow. You seem to use plot as something thats similar to "setting" as far as I can tell, the world and a set of things that happen in it. A non linear story as in Fallout has to affect the world - so how can the plot remain linear?

The Plot is something that happens or happened "somewhere else", but is eventually told to the player (and possibly the PC). The premise of the setting is certainly a part of it. The Story is what happens in the immediate vicinity of the PC, but is not as such dependant on whether there's a PC choice or not. If it seems plausible that the PC might have affected it directly in any way, then it's a Story Event... If not, then it's a Plot Event. This is an abstract definition, because this plausability is ultimately defined by what kind of "view" the game itself provides of the game world to the player.

I defined non-Linearity as either the possibility of different order of Events or the exclusion or inclusion of Events.

The non-Linearity of the Story in FO consist mostly of two things: The variable order in which you visit different locations and do the quests within, and the different outcomes different locations have depending on what you did there as narrated in the ending. The former is only Story non-Linearity of the differing order-type, while the latter is both Story and Plot non-Linearity of the exclusion/inclusion type. The scenes at the end are the Plot Events, while the actions you took that caused them to appear are the Story Events _and_ Contact Points.

Linear Plot in FO is for instance just about everything that has to deal with the super mutants.

The ending narrations in FO are a very neat way to introduce a Plot non-linearity without lots of extra work. All they need is one boolean or int counter and independence from any other Story or Plot Events.

Also, Plot Events that are not eventually told to the player (possibly also the PC) are not Plot Events. They are practically nothing.


(BTW, it's been a long time since I played FO, so I might remember details incorrectly... Correct me if I'm wrong.)

EDIT: Oh, and last, how you determine whether a game is very non-Linear or not very non-Linear as a whole is up to opinion, I think. Any measurement of it would have to take into account the "importance" of different Events, and that's something that's really up to one's own experience, IMO.

 

[Levski 1912]

Isn't this whole concept the focal point of the new Bioware game (Mass Effect)? By their description, sounds like they're trying to implement a Fallout-caliber hybrid story.

 

[Vault Dweller]

Finally had time to digest, so let's have a discussion:

I think the interviewer and Mr. Gaider here are talking about different things, while using the same words to describe them.

Disagree.

A linear story within a non-linear plot is like a charted route in sea. Once it's been charted (a story is set and defined), who cares if the sea can support many different routes - we are following one at the moment. If story events are linear, I don't see how they can affect plot events. For example, let's say you've reached story event A, the story is linear, so B will follow A. That means that any changes of plot events are insignificant, and no matter what flexibility of plot events the game may offer, story event B will still follow story event A.

A non-linear story within a linear plot doesn't make much sense, as all outcomes and min-decisions would lead to the same plot events. For example, in BG2 both decisions to join the Thieves or the Vampires, or to have Yoshimo with you or not, lead to being captured when you reach the island.

So, true non-linearity is a flexible non-linear plot, within which a number of stories could be created.

 

[kingcomrade]

That's true. I was having trouble understanding what a non-linear plot was, so if anyone could give me a pair of examples I would appreciate it.

Anyways, I do agree on the sandbox style of non-linear RPGs. The same setting (area, time, and everything) of the original Fallout could easily support a second, unrelated "campaign." The new character could interact with all of the old characters and cause most of the plot events. After all, you don't have to be looking for a water chip to take down Gizmo. Probably even more true of Fallout 2, since it was less defined than than FO1.

I just re-read what I wrote and I'm actually not sure I've got the concept right, so a little more illumination would be nice.

 

[Mefi]

Quick examples of very basic non-linear plot:

An earthquake can be coded to wipe out a major city in the game. Sometimes it happens, sometimes it doesn't.

or

The king is ill. If he recovers, the realm prospers, if he dies, the heir is a bastard and triggers all kinds of ills.

You could hook up a story contact if the earthquake was going to be caused by an evil mage's spell and the PC had a chance to stop it, or if the PC could find a remedy for the king. Or you could just do it by random chance without any chance for the PC to impact on what happens, and say that's what happened.

 

[kingcomrade]

Well I was looking for a Fallout example but that works. It would be the same to talk about Gizmo. He only dies if you pursue the quest against him (you don't have to kill him yourself, just get incriminating evidence and then say "no I don't want to risk it or something like that.)