Jim didn't want to be an adventurer. He was perfectly content to live out the rest of his days in the sleepy village he called home with his beautiful wife and daughter, Shayna. That was before the foreigners came. When the villagers refused to pay them tribute, they turned to violence. Peaceful farmers and millers were struck down with curved blades and malice. Jim was forced to watch as his house was razed and his wife and child were taken to God knows where. Now, after swearing revenge and setting off to find his family, Jim finds a town. It's the first civilization he's seen in the month since he left the village. He makes his way to the building marked Joe's Bar, and enters. He has so many questions. Where did the foreigners come from? Where had they taken his family? He was so lost in thought that he almost stumbled over a stool as he approached the bar. The man at the bar peers up at him and says, "How about a drink, stranger?"

Yes
No
>I was just leaving.

Sometimes, it doesn't matter how much depth and backstory you try and put into your character. The computer will always find a way to make you an automaton. It's like trying to build the Louvre with legos.

After reading Alice and Kev (and BrianKeljore's Dtoid Sims), I'll admit that a great deal of depth can be read into generally shallow mechanics. It remains to be seen, however, how much depth we're actually seeing and how much we just want to see. Will every Sim with the insanity trait kick over people's trash cans and be ZOMG SO RANDOM XD? That gets real old real quick. Just because Alice possesses the good trait doesn't mean it's realistic to think that she would give every paycheck she earns to charity. Some people try too hard to get more context out of their customized characters. It doesn't matter that you're the slick, dynamite-packing, wise-acre with a soft spot for kids when everyone around you is a doe-eyed sap and your dialog is limited to "Yes", "No", and "Tell me more about the wolves".

I think that as far as story is concerned, the less input a player gets the better. Character customization, while delivering that awesomely vain feeling that only creating yourself with a top hat and an Uzi can deliver, can seriously detract from the task at hand or the message you're trying to send. I still haven't beaten Saint's Row 2, because by the time I got my character just right I was sick of the game.



It seems like when I play open world games, I have to cut it some slack because of its size and scope. A lot of computer reaction in games like SR2 and Fallout 3 is knee-jerk. You steal, people scream and yell, you leave, come back, and people are greeting you with a friendly hello. I think it could help to make the world smaller. On a smaller scale, you could make the world more genuine. You could make every NPC important in some way.

I think that a linear storyline can get you a lot more mileage than a so-called open one if done right. Most open worlds are just vehicles for linear storylines anyway. At what point do you stop calling it an open world and start calling it a hub world or a lobby?

Games should take less from movies and more from books. Not choose-your-own-adventure books, mind you. I don't want to flip to page 46 to give the puppies a treat or flip to page 103 to throw them into a lava pit. These black and white morality systems have got to go. The Harold quest from Fallout 3 was a good moral choice. On my first play through (as a good character) I was legitimately torn over choosing what was best for the world or what Harold would want me to do. Rev has talked about feeling powerless in games. I believe he was speaking from a physical standpoint, but what about feeling emotionally powerless? Being put into a situation where you genuinely care about the outcome of your decision, and you don't have a clue what you should do. For example, your dad needs chemo. The cancer is already pretty bad and the doctors say he probably won't make it, but your dad wants to fight it. Do you pay for the chemo or not? It'll only make him sicker. Do you suggest that he take pain killers and ease his last days, instead? In this situation, there really is no good or evil. It's what you think is best, and it's not leading to an obvious reward. There may be no reward. Real plot is its own reward. I can get a new laser gun from somewhere else. You don't need to tempt my decision with spoils. Give us moral choices that actually affect something. You saved a town full of people? Great! The next time you're in town, hold it over their heads a bit. You did save them after all. Extort them a bit, maybe.

In the end, it seems like game developers are determined to get this right, and open world games are (slowly but surely) getting better. Milo is an attempt to improve NPC relations with the player, even if he did seem wooden and disingenuous. Façade was a fair attempt at eliminating the multiple choice dialog tree that is suffocating actual player interaction. Who knows? Maybe one day, I'll be able to accurately represent my own personality in a video game. Until then, I'll just have to settle for the bitchin' top hat and the Uzi.