Prototyping Story

I'm curious, from my amateur position, how exactly some of these professional game developers make decisions on story. Fallout 3 spoilers will happen beyond this point.

I've had two major incidents with conflicting story, in Fallout 3.

The first one occurred during my attempt to complete Blood Ties. While hunting for Lucy West's brother, I eventually found The Family's lair and bribed the guard to let me in. He soon went to sleep, and I started to take everything I could before killing the guy. Not only did he not have the bribe I gave him, but this also made The Family hostile towards me. Which didn't make a whole lot of sense, because there was no way for them to have known he was dead.

To make a long story short, I one-man-armied The Family and found Ian West. I woke him up and showed him his sister's letter, and he went back to sleep, promising to leave The Family shortly. On the way out, I killed one last member of The Family, and I had a little window pop up saying that "The Family and the residence of Arefu are now hostile towards you." Which didn't make any sense at the time, because Arefu hated The Family.

Then, Ian tried to kill me - despite being outrageously out-gunned. I let him run away twice, but despite his near-fatal wounds he attempted to gnaw at me one last time.

So I vaporized him.

Much later, I would find Reilly (leader of Reilly's Rangers) in a coma at the Underworld infirmary. Being told that waking her up could be dangerous, I decided to go looking for her Rangers, instead. I went to their headquarters, eventually hacked in, and found them to be gone. So I took a look around (as well as some loot that was just laying out) and left. Coming across their emergency radio broadcast, I would ultimately attempt to rescue them from being trapped on top of the Statesman Hotel by Supermutants.

When I met Butcher for the first time, he asked me about Reilly. Even though I knew her location, and had read her diary, the only responses I had for him were those of ignorance. I was forced to say I had no idea who Reilly was, despite knowing exactly where she is. As well as who she was recently sleeping with.

I was also rather shocked to find her back at Ranger HQ, after we escaped the Hotel. I was looking forward to bringing the Rangers to Underworld for a dramatic "she's waking up!" moment.

The point of all of this is that there seemed to be a lack of important story routes between certain nodes. Perhaps they weren't exactly obvious but still not hard to realize.

I wonder if these could have been remedied, had Bethesda made an in-house Interactive Fiction of Fallout 3 to prototype these kinds of situations. I've been watching the Alabaster project with interest. Emily Short and co. used Inform to solicit more branches of dialog for the story, where a player's conversation attempt would be recorded and then implemented in a future version.

Apparently, this whole 'attempt recording' feature is going to be packed into a future release of Inform. Is something like that crucial for the development of sandbox worlds? To me, it seems as though the QA phase of Fallout 3 was focused on getting rid of technical bugs, instead of some equally important ones in the storyline.

So I wonder if it would have been easier and more efficient for Bethesda to rip out all the combat and simply make a textual version of the game. I can't imagine that they actually did do such a thing, because of my previous examples.

Or is it simply OK for the developer to release it, then patch away those inconsistencies when the millions of players find them?

Mid-September Misc

Gaia Online's getting ever closer to the release of zOMG.   An essential part of that experience, though, was finally unchained - Gaia Instant Messenger.  If you're logged onto Gaia, this spiffy piece of JavaScript can let you instantly talk to anyone on you Friendslist who's currently on GIM, in real time.

 
This is a really important step for Gaia, I believe, as it now offers something crucial that will really help when Guilds get revamped.  Browser-based chatting is very helpful when you're not able or don't have time to download and install an instant messenger.  I wonder how that thing works on smartphones?  Now if people would actually use the damn thing.

The other thing they released is Aquariums.  People have been asking for pets for a long time now, and this seems to be an extremely clever (if not passive) way of starting that code library.  Being able to take care of your fish, make them happy, and get items for it sounds like a ton of fun, personally.  I can only hope they add Terrariums later, so we can have reptiles, too.

These kind of releases make me confident about Gaia's future.  They make some really stupid mistakes sometimes, but they learn from them.  That, and they're doing their best, and you can tell.  Lanzer's latest journal entry goes into a bit of detail that's nice to see from the head honcho, and apparently it's the first of three entries like that.  It's interesting to note how much loyalty that the administration's transparency brings.  

Just a passing thought, but could this be the seed for future professionals to demand that they see what their superiors are up to?  Considering how many young people are using Gaia (at least a couple million), it very well could be.  So, that earns Gaia even more of my respect.

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Giant Bomb posted a link to Bethesda's new Fallout 3 site.  It is epic, to say the least.  A collection of short animations and videos that really drive home the world of Fallout.  Not only that, but current fans are going to love it.   I'm glad they're really making use of the internet with this game's marketing.  They're not the first ones to do it, don't get me wrong; but between Penny-Arcade's comic series and all the other media that's available, they certainly know how to get people excited for a game.

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I finally got to play Peggle last night.  I finally understand what all the hubbub was about, when it was released.   Now if only there was loot involved, people would probably never see me again.

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Michael Abbott, who writes the Brainy Gamer Blog, also does the Brainy Gamer Podcast.  I'm still rather new to everything the Gamerati Blogosphere has to offer, but I know for a fact that this Blog and Podcast is one of The Essentials.  Especially now that he's doing the Gamers Confab, and inviting different bloggers to chat with him about things.  I'm finding more people to listen to, who are smarter than I am, because of this one single Blog, and it's amazing.  

Here's my takes on a few of the subjects they talk about.  You might be a little lost unless you give the 'cast a listen, which I highly recommend.

On Singstar, and Karaoke in general:

Personally, I'd enjoy it a lot more if I had more practice. At one point in time I was able to harmonize with Brandon Boyd's (from Incubus). Now, not so much - but I feel that I'd really enjoy singing again if I could just sound better. Not that it prevents me from singing along with Paramore's Crushcrushcrush, in the car.

On Team Fortress 2: 

I've been hearing so much about this game ever since it came out, but now it seems like I absolutely must get this game as soon as possible. Everywhere I turn it seems that people are saying, "this is how you make PvP".

  
On LittleBigPlanet: 

I still don't get the excitement for it. It's probably because the creator tools didn't sell me, they seemed too clunky and they took far too long to deal with. Maybe once I get my hands on it, I'll change my mind. I'm sure some players are going to make some pretty incredible things, but I think they'll also have much more patience than I do for that kind of stuff.

On Pokemon-shame:  

It's really interesting how many older gamers still love Pokemon, but don't really want to admit it. There's a huge undertow that Nintendo has yet to tap into, I believe, of fans wanting something more. Especially a Pokemon MMOG that's beyond what the gameplay currently is. Something similar to the drama that the Anime brings to Pokemon. Being able to make crazy fighting conditions and combos and level destruction. Heck, being able to have an Onyx as a mount would make my day. I'm very curious to know what Nintendo's up to - are they just milking this craze for everything its worth?

On Sporn:

Awhile ago I was thinking about all the news that the Spore Creature Creator was getting, due to people making phallic objects and creatures having sex. I was considering the similarities between some of the creatures being made, and ancient fertility idols.

(Interesting aside, Wikipedia's "Fertility Idol" redirects to Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark)

Is it just a part of human nature to express our sexuality? Given something like Spore, that makes this kind of thing so easy to do - can we blame people for doing it? Is it actually a bad thing? As a culture, I mean.  

On an individual level, I certainly don't want to have my Spore experience plagued by every race I meet having sex all the time. Can you imagine, getting into space, then jetting off to meet your first neighbor - only to find that they're always getting it on whenever you hail them, and they don't even stop? They just keep on going at it, while you talk to one of them. How rude.

Or, having an Epic Penis terrorize my creature phase. In fact, I just don't want to have to deal with an Epic Penis at all.