Storydriven

Author:  Flosha
Written: 04.09.2024
Last update: 20.09.2024

Phoenix is promoted by us as a “story-driven rpg” and so was Gothic. But what does this even mean?

Interactivity vs. Player-Dependency

A game driven by story is not a film with passages of interactivity, but a game with a simulated story in a simulated world with simulated A-life that the player can constantly interact and interfere with.

This interactivity should be consistent in the game logic, which we may call “interaction consistency”: What NPCs can do, the player character in theory must also be able to do and vice versa.

In this sense, a game like Hellblade, as much value it may have for what it is, is simply less of a game than Gothic. It may be a work of art with much focus on the story and with some degree of interactivity, but if something could work just as well as a film, it is not much of a game. And even if the interactivity adds something to the experience, it remains a very restricted and linear form of interactivity and broken up by constant cutscenes and it would thus be better described as an interactive movie than as a game.

What is not interactive is not played. The more a game is playable the more game it is, the more it utilises the potential of a videogame as a medium.

This understanding of what a game should be forms the basis to several design decisions regarding our gameplay. But what makes this gameplay story-driven?

In consequence of a believable simulated stage of this gothic drama we want to make, the story and the world as the stage of the story should evolve on their own, if the player interferes with it or not. Making everything player-dependent, so that he has full control about everything, is not what we mean by interactivity. On the contrary, he should not have control about the story, but he should be able to interact with everything that happens in a believable way according to his chosen role.

In that it is story driven, it is of course pre-narrated to a high degree, but not in a linear way, but in what we may call a multi-dynamic-simultaneous narrative. It is…

(1) “multi” because the player can choose several pre-narrated paths with a few different branchings during gameplay.

(2) “dynamic” because the world and the other characters do not wait for the player. The story progresses (in parts) independent from the player’s actions. In the most extreme case a playthrough may end and the player is too late.

(3) “simultaneous” in that NPCs play a role in the story too. And in some cases they play a role that the player may have played under other circumstances (had he joined another camp and guild); since the world and story are simulated in real time he cannot be at two locations at once, he will necessarily be at point X while something happens at point Y; other NPCs will interfere with the story simultaneous to the player.

NPCs will receive the very missions that the player would otherwise receive if playing for that faction or guild; the player may then be confronted with this character and his endeavours from another perspective.

Story-driven vs. Player-driven

In telling a story in or through a game, there are two diametrically opposed approaches in what drives the story forward:

It is one approach, as used most often, including in Gothic itself, that the game world and story are waiting for the player to trigger specific conditions and thereby initiate story events.

And then there is the possibility of a completely opposite approach: Events unfold on their own. They are also, but not only driven by the actions of the player, which serves as only one small factor among the actions of all the other (non-player) main characters in the game. Thus there are events that occur completely disconnected from the player’s presence and influence. He can react to it, but he cannot (in many cases) force an event to occur earlier or later nor prevent it from occuring.

In one case the game scenario, the game world, the game’s story can only progress as much as the player. In the other case the player can only progress as much as the game world and story.

Everything depends on conditions still, but conditions in which the player is only one of multiple factors among the other characters in the game which are driven by their own motives. Thus NPCs, time, even weather or simple chance may be possible factors at play.

It is only in this sense that “story-driven”, as which we describe Phoenix, receives its true meaning. It does not simply mean that the game is focused on the story, but it is a design approach to offer an experience that is opposed to a “player-driven” experience. “Story-driven” describes a game that is driven by the story and not by the player.

In Gothic, which was promoted as being story-driven, we can see this description in retrospection as nothing but marketing speech. In Phoenix we have to fulfill this promise by actually letting the story be the driving force of the play.

A story-driven game is like a game in which the story is the underlying engine that drives the play. This is very rarely done.

Pathologic and This War of Mine may be examples for games with a similar approach to story-telling.

In a storydriven game, the player may influence events, react to events, initiate some events, but he cannot stop the drama. It is unfolding in front of the eyes of the player and he is a part of it, thrown into it, but he is not in control. He is in control of his character only, just of the little role that he plays.

The Immersive Sim RPG

It is also in regard to the Immersive Sim that orienting ourselves at the early Vision of Gothic requires such bold decisions in design. The Immersive Sims it was inspired by were not story-driven either in the sense described above.
They were mostly driven by exploration, we may say, such as System Shock 2 or Thief, and this is an absolutely crucial aspect for Gothic too. But they were not much of “RPGs”.

Yes, most of them had skills, attributes and stuff, they had an inventory and so on. But all of these are just superficial aspects of roleplaying, mechanical aspects, comparable to the underlying rules of a table top RPG.

They are not the essence of the RPG; the essence is the story told by the narrator and the role played within this frame and in reaction to or in dialogue with the events of the narration.
In table top rpgs it is this what is underlying and driving the experience. It is the narrator that is leading the game, not the players. In CRPGs there is of course an underlying story too, but so far they have put the players agency over consequent narration.

CRPGs have just not been able yet to transfer this story-driven approach from the tables unto the screen. Instead of the story being given the highest priority the player is given priority and thereby “roleplaying” is destroyed.

In that Gothic according to the early vision wants to be a real RPG and an Immersive Sim at the same time, it requires a different approach, it requires gameplay driven by story.

I think that this is a necessary aspect of immersive sim-rpg design if we want to follow it consequently and develop it further. Because when playing in an immersively simulated game world, the “simulation” is as non-immersive as it gets, when the story of the roleplay does not move forward in any way independent from the player.

Speaking of concrete examples: It was only in form of the collapse of the old mine and the attack on the free mine (which were supposed to be two different events originally, besides diverse other similar story twists) that in the release version something at least seemed to happen behind the back of the player - at every other point in the story we could say that the world of the release version of Gothic was completely static, not dynamic. And so it was not even close to the “living” world that was promised in the Phoenix Pitch.

They even said so themselves when describing how the “story chapters” work in a design document (Attributes, Talents, Actions) from 21.07.1999 (translated by us):

While the Player Character wanders through the Gameworld, explores the dungeons and comes ever closer to the escape from the prison, the gameworld changes. This is realised via different chapters of the story line. Within one chapters the gameworld is always static [“stets statisch”]. That means the same NPCs, the same dialogues, the same missions and the same structure of levels.

By this particular story twist at least the illusion was conveyed that something has happened independently from the players actions (while actually it was triggered by nothing else than the player having a specific dialogue). In Phoenix, these kinds of events happening “behind the back” of the player have to apply to almost everything and most often not in an illusionary way that are still player dependent, but actually triggered by factors independent from the players influence, such as time.

Realtime RPG

Being “story-driven” in this sense of the term is also a necessary consequence of the idea of a “realtime” rpg, as which Gothic has always been promoted.
In a game where everything happens “in real time”, but only if the player is ready for it to happen, realtime is a mere illusion; it is realtime only in a mechanical, gameplay related sense as opposed to “round-based”. But the story is not realtime, because instead of the story unfolding in “real” (play) time, it unfolds by the player “unlocking” every bit of story one single bit at a time at will.

Why should any of the other characters in the story wait for the player before doing what he wants to do?
Whether or not he is witnessing the events depends on whether or not he is at the right place at the right time. A factor which is heavily influenced by which guild he belongs to and so on.

Neither the story nor we as the story-authors, nor the other characters nor the demonic threat lurking deep below do care nor should care for the will and convenience of the player. We neither do ask the question, if it is convenient for him right now that an assassin is send against him nor that the camp is being attacked. Gomez doesn’t ask the player for permission. Nor does any other guild wait with the search for the ancient temple, while the player may be wasting time looting and farming the forests.

It is only by actually letting the game being story-driven, that we can bring the player to experience the urgency of action and force him to do what is believable to do for his character in a given moment in time.

Story first

Now, when designing the story, the release version and almost every CRPG out there approaches it as such, that the developer is constantly asking: “Which action of the player will now trigger the next bit of story and the next change in the world?” The player comes first. The player is the driving force.

But how does that fit to the story? The story of an average guy thrown into the colony in which a lot of opposing forces and ancient, demonic powers are actually pulling the strings? It does not fit.

So our approach is very different. What we ask is: “What happens next in the story? What happens at day 1 and under which conditions? What is the character X doing on day Y and under which conditions?” And always: “In which ways will we let the player react to it? How (if at all) can he influence or stop it and if so, what happens then? What happens if the player is not involved at all?” All of this has to be considered.

It means: Writing a story first, considering the player who should be able to play different roles. Then put the player into it and see what he should be able to do within this story and write accordingly.

Dynamic Storytelling

Now, the reader may ask, if the story is implemented by such a radical approach, how do we take care that the player is not missing most of it?

The answer is the News System, which is like a dynamic system of informing the player of relevant story or world events and it was actually planned in the Alpha.

The News system was supposed to spread news around the game world via contact of NPCs in friends circles. NPC X witnesses an event. He is part of a friend circle. Soon, his whole friend circle knows the news. They in return have contacts to their own friend circles and this way the news is spreading all around the colony.

The player is part of a group (guild) and of friend circles too (such as the four friends). Whenever an important event has happened or whenever there are rumours of something that is supposed or planned to happen, there are various NPCs in the game who want to tell him about it. This way the player is meant to receive all the relevant information on time and can then decide to react accordingly. Obviously depending on his guild he will sometimes not be informed of some events and will not be able to be involved in them, as they are exclusive to a chosen path (guild, faction or camp); in some cases he may only be informed about them when they are over, while in a different playthrough he may witness them first-hand.

Examples: He is a Shadow and is told that there has been a dispute between Corristo and Gomez. He can now go to investigate and get involved. Or: He is an Orga and receives the information that the Sect has send out men to find a focus stone. Or he is in the Free Camp and is told that Y’Berion has announced that all necessary preparation has been finished and that they will hold another Mass Meditation at dusk, which is meant to be more powerful than ever before; now the player has reason to go there to witness the event. If he doesn’t, the Meditation will still happen at dusk, the earth will still shake, the Mine will still collapse; the player is not needed.

ToDo: Are there more aspects to it?