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Lately, I've been brainstorming some ideas about different directions you can take VNs, and games in general (Extra Credits has helped a lot in that regard ).

Anyways, the thing that currently has me perplexed is how to integrate western style interactivity, where you are shaping the world around you, into an eastern style story, where the biggest changes you can make to the story is how you perceive it. How do you allow the player to shape their own character without compromising the more personal, character-oriented moments of traditional VNs?

Lots and lots of branches for the plot, dependent on the actions that the player takes. Have the characters change in response to the player's interactions with them, so it feels like the player's actions are changing things. Make them feel like their choices matter. For example, say there's someone in my character's RPG party who hates thieves (let's call him Bart), and I decide to steal something during our quest. There can still be a character-oriented moment there, where I could decide to lie to him that I didn't take anything from the King's treasure chest (and risk that Bart finds out later and hates me for it), or I could choose to tell him the truth and hope that he likes my honesty.

Let's say that up until that point, I made choices that Bart would generally agree with, and set myself up as an honorable character. Whenever honorable dialogue choices or actions came up, I always took them. Except, in this instance, I decided to change myself up and steal the King's gold. Bart finds out, and is so disappointed that he leaves my party (whatta drama queen). There's a character-oriented moment there, amongst all of the interactivity. It's all possible. And let's say I had been the opposite way the entire game, then I don't steal the gold - in that instance, Bart would be surprised, but probably feel like I have a hidden agenda anyway.

And, stealing the gold means that the King doesn't have enough money to pay off the ransom for his kidnapped son. The prince will be killed. My relationship with Bart may be ruined. My one action changes the world around me.

You can still have character-oriented moments with a player-shaped character. It just requires more work on the developer's part, because they'll have to keep track of everything to make sure all of the writing lines up, but, like I've already said, it's all very doable.

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I guess the problem that I'm having is integrating western interaction into an eastern story, instead of the other way around.

For example, take Final Fantasy 13 and Dragon Age: Origins. One is very eastern and the other is very western, but both have fairly similar themes: having to work alongside rivals for a common goal. It seems very easy to apply Final Fantasy 13's conflict and teamwork moments to Dragon Age (Alistair and Morrigan having a clash, and having to deal with it by themselves), but I can't see how you would integrate Dragon Age's problem solving into Final Fantasy without cheapening the moments (Lightning having to tell Hope and Snow how to solve their problems).

I'm sorry if you haven't played those games, but they are the best examples of each type of storytelling I could think of.

Edit: I suppose another way of saying it is: How do you create a story where the world doesn't revolve around the main character, but the main character can still affect the world around them.

I've heard a lot of things about current video games, but there are few which I've played, especially for more than a few minutes. So I don't think I have much information for discerning differences between eastern and western media. But I don't wanna get off-topic...



Interesting question. Are you writing slice of life, plot driven, or somewhere in between? If your story emphasizes plot, then consider the following ideas:

* Your main character can fight evil. But he/she is not able to save the world, the nation, or even the town.
* The person may be a leader, as well as strong, motivated, or intelligent. But the person is part of a team.
* Finally, the main character is not chosen by fate, prophecies, or the like.

I"ve played both those games. I nearly commit video game disc homicide playing ff13, it was the worst thing ever to come on my screen. I was so disappointed because it wasn't like FF12, which was the best final fantasy ever, in my opinion.
Well, a very good mix of east and western style video gaming would be Deus Ex: Human Revolution. It is mostly set storyline but you can still pick lines of questioning and "convince" people to do things.
I especially like Dragon age 2 which is my all time favorite video game because Sarcastic M!Hawke is my favorite character.

I think the best way to merge successfully is to create a character only customizable to a point, or not at all, in the case of Human Revolution. It allows the character to have more personality built into him/her because there is full voice acting of the main character, and the characters will call you by your name instead of Champion/Warden

I agree that Bioware has some of the best examples of story and gameplay in the industry. They haven't perfected it yet, but they are getting there. They have plenty of interactivity and yet the story telling moment can remain quite powerful. It does require a massive amount of effort to creat that many paths and scenerios but what results is something that has a very good chance of making the player feel important in the world while telling a very good story. FallOut works on similar principles, but it's not quite the same. The main character is never well defined, and so I have always felt my impact on the story was weakened because of that. Though their strength has always been exploration, not story telling.

Apply this to VNs is simple... in theory. The workload however would be staggering. It would require keeping track of not only a lot of choices, but a lot of variables and there would have to be paths and dialouge that related to each one of those. Everything would have to be tailored to the choices the player made. These type of games are most fulfillinf when you can see the effect your choices make and when the game comments on them.

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dude i can't imagine how hard that would be to do for a vn, the game would be huge. You'd need a tree that takes into account all of your choices instead of one leading out down this path and then this path, ABB would be different the BBB but you would only find out that the first B made a difference after you chose the 3rd B and then you game over and you have to go back and figure out where you went wrong.

It would work the same way any other game would. Each choice made would be recorded and everything after that which would be affected would need to refer back that point. It is possible to keep track of all the variables. Creating the content for all the variables and undertsanding all the possibilities would be another matter. That is why those games have whole teams of writers. I would think anyone trying out this method would start small. Every small. But that almost nulls the point of having immersive interaction to begin with so ho hum.

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Well, I've played both of those (at least partially, still haven't finished Human Revolution), so it seems that we have a fairly large sample of games we can use as examples

I have to agree that Human revolution is one of the best examples of mixing east and west that I've played, not to mention having an awesome way of integrating choice and story. For example, the first mission I chose lethal weapons, but wasn't able to find the hostages. After that, most characters regarded me as dangerous. Even though that wasn't what I was going for, I still liked the fact that it took into account the things that I did, not just the things that I said.

Which brings me to the main thing I don't like about western games, Bioware in particular. With western games, it always feels like you are always completely in control or completely out of it.
I think the best example of this is Anders in Dragon age 2. I didn't like him at all, and yet because of the path I was taking (Mage path) I was constantly doing stuff that he agreed with, and therefore the game decided that he was my bestest friend ever. It got particularly bad at the end when After I made the choice to kill him, my character kept apologizing, saying what good friends we were, and how one day we'd meet in heaven, blah blah blah. The entire time I was thinking "Die. Die. Just Die! I don't like you, now die!" Even though the game had allowed me to make the choice, because my character wasn't consistent enough, it felt like it was barely a choice at all. I would have liked the story much better if the game had enforced that Hawke and Anders were friends. Even though it would have taken out some of the interactivity, I would have actually cared about Ander's death by proxy of Hawke.

While eastern games aren't perfect, either, it feels like there is always the same amount of control. You can always control when the story proceeds, and when the characters are just hanging around. And because the characters are always consistent, I'm never taken out of the immersion of the game.

TL;DR: The thing I'm looking for is keeping a consistent amount of control in the story, while still allowing the player to form their own character.

Sorry for dividing this between posts, but I read the replies just before work, so I've had a lot of time to think about what they've said. Anyways:



I think that this hits the point on the head. One thing I realized, though, is that for the story to be truly effective, you would have to allow the player to choose without realizing they were choosing. That's what I think Human Revolution excels at. I had no idea that saving or not saving the hostages would have so much impact on the story, nor what impact choosing weapons would have.

This is just kind of brainstorming, so bear with me. I think the best way of blending Eastern stories with western games, is to have very little or no visible choices. Instead, the game would track combat behavior, what missions you go on first, etc. It would probably allow you to choose how to solve problems (x doesn't like y), but only in a very broad context. How you phrase yourself, whether you are blunt or more tactical, and whether you try to get something out of the problem for yourself would all be decided by how you play the game.

The problem is how you would apply this to VNs, when their entire game play focuses around making choices.

You put more effort in and write more. The character will be different dependent on the path taken. Dialogue as such should also be different. You can still have very personal, touching moments with this character regardless, it's just highly likely that the script would not hold constant between the various paths.