Emptieness, DA:I, and DA4

Well now, I can't object to having my own curiosity turned on me now can I? Let me preface with a couple of caveats. First and most simply, I am a hack. Not that my ideas are ill-considered, but I have no specific training/experience in game design. I program mainframes for a living which maybe should disqualify me by default. I throw out ideas because I love getting feedback, but even more to hear better ideas from other Gamers. It is infinitely preferable to me to talk about this than minutely dissecting every little piece of concept art or reading tea leaves of rumors, leavings, timeline, etc. Second, I reject the binary notion that seems to be prevalent that 'open world' (what I would call open environment) is necessarily opposite of story-based. I will argue that, while environment makes certain types of story-telling easier or more difficult, there is nothing determinative about having an open environment any more than there was about having a highly restricted environment. (That I DO know. I played back in the day of games like Bard's Tale where you went to each dungeon in order and you LIKED IT! ).

First way that an open environment can be leveraged for story-telling I can see is in variety of tactical situations. We don't often see combat mentioned as a story-telling element, but we spend a large chunk of time in most RPGs in some form of content so this can be a crucial part of the story telling experience. One way open environments can be used to enhance story-telling is by giving Players organic opportunities to select approaches to combat situations. We saw this constantly around Rifts in DA:I. A smart Player looked for ways to approach the Rift to take best advantage of the terrain. The party's strengths, and possibly how many of the second spawns she/he could stifle with Dispel Magic or Spell Purge. The developers also brought some good design work by spawning those dang Wraiths in hard-to-reach areas or behind covering features. each Rift was its own little tactical puzzle like some of the better set piece combats from DA:O. If closing the small Rifts would have been punched up in story importance, then these tiny terrors would have been true terrors. Something happened to me in DA:I recently that I'm sure was totally random but illustrates another way an open environment can enhance storytelling through combat. I was focusing this playthrough on shard gathering and I was after some shards up around Calenhad's Foothold. I had cleared the Rogue Mages/Templars and Bandit Fort so there weren't many combat spawns. As my Party rushed a little overconfidently to the shard, some Venatori spawned. I knew this was just an algorithm since I had played through several times but I had just complained a couple weeks earlier how the Venatori didn't seem to care about the shards after they setup these Occulara. If Bioware had fewer shards and triggered Venatori only on some of them, it would go a long way to simulating something the Venatori are actually searching for and add additional combat difficulty since several shards are in hard to reach places. Both of these would be doable, but rarer in a more standard limited environment because, typically, retracing over the same ground is discouraged in those designs.

Another way to leverage open environments in story-telling is to move away, at least in some areas, from strictly linear story-telling, letting the Player choices 'tell' the story as well. This isn't really new. As I pointed out BG2, did some non-linear storytelling letting you choose which adventures (and how many) you wanted to engage in in order to gather the 20,000 gold to move the Main Plot forward. Granted, obviously that was a much more limited environment in some ways (2D sprites were not myths!), but even the 'dungeons' allowed the Player to wander different paths to the same goals in several places. Instead of a quest line being A-B-C-D it goes A1-A2-A3-B with 1, 2, and 3 capable of being done in any order. How do open environments fit into this? Let me throw out an example I first used in another topic about side quests. Imagine an alternate Hinterlands from DA:I where the situation is a bit more complex and the side quests feed into that. Imagine your Chosen of Andraste is presented with two more organized and official factions of Templars and Mages fighting over the Hinterlands. Imagine also that the Chantry has enough together to request that the Inquisition bring BOTH sides to heel under the Chantry banner. Imagine that most, if not all, the side quests are tied into these three factions so that how you complete them adds a certain number of "points" to each faction in the background (like the game keeps track of certain choices by adding up points for each candidate for the Divine). Since you can do any side quest you want in pretty much any order, the Player can then examine all sides or play a zealot for one group or the other. Developers can leverage the ability to change the environment that the Player repasses to reflect changes in the group's strength. When the counter reaches a certain level, the Herald is invited into one of the 'hideouts' which are otherwise inaccessible until certain conditions are passed. The Herald then is invited to be an Ally and finish off the other group or perform some other task. The point of the exercise is to demonstrate that you can still drive good, coherent story-telling with more flexibility and Player responsiveness in an open environment.

A third point I would like to mention are the possible 'rewards' of exploration in an open environment outside of pretty vistas. I am in complete agreement that there should always be stronger reasons for exploration outside of pretty views (though I DO like some of the views in Inquisition. You should climb up the basalt columns to the Fisherman's Shack on the little peninsula with the dragonlings on the Storm Coast). This isn't really very hard as long as the developers apply a few elements of Player rewards (when you want some sleep, read my unfortunately long-winded treatise on Rewards. I think it's still on the top page...). One thing that already existed in Inquisition but could probably use some bolstering in DA4 are Companion specific items that trigger longer interactions with the Companion. Bioware could also take a page out of the DA2 book and make crafting resources more of a rare permanent source instead of collecting flowers/skins/ nuggets scattered all over. Searching out a resource for a special use potion/item/gizmo is an oldie but goodie story when done right. In my first point, I mentioned that certainly combat situations in an open environment reward some work approaching a combat area. Means to bypass particularly difficult and unrewarding combat could be added to that. The list could go on but I think I have illustrated the point. I believe part of the disappointment with exploration in Inquisition traces back to loot progression and how easily much better crafted items (without level limits) could be obtained. If the loot was made worth it, Astrariums and the like might be more interesting to Players as well.

Once again, I have cast a Wall of Text. I must rest and restore my mana. Thanks for the questions.