Earlier today Wirey Xbox He published a lengthy interview with Obsidian in which the studio outlined its philosophy on storytelling, narrative design, and player choice in Avowed. Considering this is a Microsoft-published story about a Microsoft game, it’s a bit mind-blowing, but worth reading to see Obsydian explain how it works to make player decisions both satisfying and believable. And, as it turns out, doing this is a lot easier when you’re not working with an open world.
According to narrative designer Kate Dollarhyde, Obsidian is not content with telling a story that ends with decision points where players either choose a good choice that makes everyone ecstatic or a bad choice that makes everyone unhappy. sorrowful. Avowed is less interested in throwing in fantasy character archetypes to make things work than in how it affects contextual outcomes, even in settings with lizards and magical plagues.
“The material reality of the people living in the environment informs the real stories. What does it look like when a colonial empire comes to your hinterland and says, ‘Hi, we’re here and this is ours?’ ”Dollarhyde said. “When we design characters, quests, and content, we don’t look at them and say, ‘What type of character are they?’ ” or “What is this person’s lead?” It’s more about what they believe in.”
As a result, Obsidian wasn’t just invested in how the player’s decisions affected major plot beats. “For us, choice and consequence are not about every single thing you do that affects the heat death of the universe; it’s about everything that’s possible,” said game director Carrie Patel. “It’s such a diversity in terms of the magnitude of your consequences and the time horizon over which you see those consequences.”
Obsidian argues that giving players the ability to make interesting decisions with equally interesting outcomes is a simpler problem to solve without all the complications that an open world produces. Think of all the times in open-world RPGs when the introduction of an NPC feels a little strange because you’ve chosen the right quest after interacting with them a dozen times, or when your heroics in one town don’t go completely unnoticed in the next village because it’s completed The designers couldn’t guarantee what adventures you had already completed before you arrived.
“Caming is really hard in open-world games,” Dollarhyde said. “You never know where a player is or what they are doing at any given time. So having these zones happen in sequence, we always know what content you were coming from on the critical path.”
By moving away from a fully open world in favor of self-contained, unique regions where you’ll progress in order, obsidian is betting on the ability to provide the best of both worlds: the studio can better design tasks based on what you’ve already seen and accomplished in the game, while also providing spaces and stories to explore as you choose – and ideally see results that feel unique to your experience.
“As a designer, I love doing things that I know people won’t see a handful of players coming together,” Dollarhyde said. “I know there will be a handful of players there, there will be one or two who really love it and are surprised.”
Notorious It moves in on February 18.
