Adventure, or Storyline?

[jpaugh]

Do we want our game to be focused by an over-arching plot line — driven by quests, unlocks or discoveries — (as per your typical RPG), or do we want it to be a rambling, open-ended adventure-style game?

I think Skyrim has a good mix of the two, because you are never forced to advance the story, and there are oodles of non-story quests that you can pursue.

What do you think?

[jpaugh]

My own intuition is that if we ignore the storyline for now, we'll have built a really nice adventure game — with quests, feature unlocks, item discoveries, NPC-dialog, or other discoveries all made haphazardly by the player as they ramble along.

However, then if we need a storyline at that point, we can add "main" quests, which guide the player toward a particular outcome, and specific NPCs, items, etc to advance the plot.

[jamesandrews23]

I like where you're going with this. I used to love playing a game called King's Quest. It was an adventure game with a main over arching story, but also had a lot of side things you could do and there was more than one way to complete a task. Depending on how you completed the tasks determined what you were able to do later in the story. We could have something similar. We can have an over arching story, but it does not hinder a player from completing side quests. The side quests might had to your story later.

[jamesandrews23]

So I had an idea for the opening of the game. We begin with a street level view of the main character's neighborhood and every so often a character or a car will pass by the screen, then when you press the play button the screen fades out and when it fades back in the main character is asleep in his front yard. We won't tell the user why, but it will be insinuated that the character sleep walks. Later the big reveal will be that the main character actually transforms into some kind of monster and goes around terrorizing the neighborhood. We can drop hints throughout the game, like the tv will be on and they'll be a report of another monster attack or some newspaper headline shows the monster. I think this will give us a good starting off point and allow the game and adventure type story to start.

[cbouwkamp]

I really like this idea. We could split the game in days. Each day is a chapter and when you start a new day, new events have happened

[jpaugh]

This is getting sinister and creepy. I suppose one of the player's main goals might be to stop the monster. (But would that be how you win the game, or how you lose?)