Author Topic: A Game Idea - Exploring Choice/Consequence/Linearity  (Read 1390 times)

AndrewRogue

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A Game Idea - Exploring Choice/Consequence/Linearity
« on: March 09, 2012, 04:07:48 PM »
Dumb idea? I dunno. I came up with it while half asleep and driving home from work. But I'm curious about some feedback.

The game takes place in a theocratic nation, where the whole deal is ruled by a Divine Ruler who keeps the Book of Fates. The Book of Fates is a relic that contains that Fate of all things within it. Everyone has a predetermined end, and this book contains it.

A group of rebels is seeking to overthrow this status quo (led by Main Character 1 and Main Character 2) and manage to successfully challenge the Divine Ruler. However, they are thrown down and mortally wounded. MC1 manages to touch the Book of Fates, however, and erase his own fate, becoming the only thing in the world without a predetermined end.

Intrigued by this change, the Divine Ruler offers MC1 the chance to try again from the start and save their beloved MC2 and bring about the success of the revolution. And thus begins our story, with MC1 possessing the ability to read the Fates of those around him.

Conceptually, the idea would be a very short experience with rather divergent plot points depending on your choices. The "gimmick," as it were, would be that in the world Fate, as it stands, does prove immutable. No matter what choices you have MC1 make, the Fates that are foretold happen and MC1 arrives back in front of the Divine Ruler, given the option to go back and try again.

I do think there will be an actual solution (slaying the Divine Ruler and destroying the Book of Fate) seeded throughout the loops for a possible "True End."

Artsy? Yeah. Incredibly easy to make completely irritating and enraging? Oh hell yeah. But I'm curious what people think about the actual idea.

Bobbin Cranbud

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Re: A Game Idea - Exploring Choice/Consequence/Linearity
« Reply #1 on: March 17, 2012, 08:57:39 AM »
I think it would be more interesting if the Book of Fates was written in a somewhat more vague manner rather than explicitly laying out how everyone dies Death Note style.

Every scenario would then be a puzzle to achieve what the characters want while still technically fulfilling the relevant prophecies. The prophecies WILL be fulfilled and if you try to circumvent their obvious meanings and fail, either you get a Doomed Timeline or they just revert to the prophesied outcome in the most brutally efficient way possible. Either way it would be a bad end. On the other hand, just accepting your fate also leads to a Bad End (because obviously if you're fighting fate it's because yours doesn't sound too hot).

The Book would emphasize the most important, famous events a person participated in, their critical moments if you will. So those would be the ones you'd play out. Let's say someone was fated to "fall in battle against his most hated foe." Fall in battle is poetic language, but you can rules lawyer it to literal language - the character slips and falls, prophecy fulfilled and he gets to live! :D ... except he's dueling his most hated foe, who's just going to kill him anyway unless you carefully engineer the situation so that doesn't happen.

If you succeed in slipping someone free of the Book's prophecy, then their fate is no longer predetermined (except insofar as it intersects with someone else's fate), which allows you to recruit them to help you in later scenarios. But later prophecies would get more complex/harder to lawyer.

Eventually, you'd have enough people freed of known fate that you could challenge it directly (somehow). The final scenario would be finding away around the seeming invincibility granted the Divine Ruler by HIS fate, whatever that might be.

I'm not sure how the actual gameplay should work - some mix of point and click adventure game and visual novel leaps to mind.
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AndrewRogue

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Re: A Game Idea - Exploring Choice/Consequence/Linearity
« Reply #2 on: March 19, 2012, 03:29:37 AM »
Bobbin: Yeah. I suppose I should have specified that one more clearly. The Book of Fates would state, generally, what occurs. Ala "Their end shall be met defending one that they love," "A sickness shall take them from this world," etc, etc (more clever, obviously, but I'm kinda just pulling examples out of the air).

Construct wise, it sounds like maybe you're suggesting something akin to Ephemeral Fantasia? Set up a scenario that plays out repeatedly and work to try and free individuals from it?

Bobbin Cranbud

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Re: A Game Idea - Exploring Choice/Consequence/Linearity
« Reply #3 on: March 19, 2012, 01:09:27 PM »
I never played Ephemeral Fantasia, but yes, that sounds similar to my idea.

I gravitated toward the idea of the main character having a time power from reading too much Homestuck because that's my favorite explanation for prophecy. The book was literally written in the future and brought back to the past, and the future isn't changeable. All you can do is work around what's known about it.

This gives you a hard limit on time travel (you can't change anything that's certain), which is necessary to make it playable, and an in-setting explanation for the save mechanic (always fun, ala Xenogears and Chrono Cross).

An addendum to my example of "falling in battle with one's hated enemy" earlier - you couldn't just have another character kill the rival after the first character slipped and fell, because the rival ALSO has a specific destiny, and it isn't one that can be fulfilled that day. Or is it? Maybe the solution there would be to contrive the situation such that it can be.
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