So I didn't want to give further palpitations to anyone whose heart skips a beat each time the Zelda Wii U gameplay demo thread is bumped, but from discussion on there I got to thinking a bit about how Nintendo could create an open world that feels alive in the way that Majoras Mask does (but without the time travel) and figured I'd knock some ideas into a new thread. I'd be interested to know if others would be happy if the game went in this direction, or if in general they think it's a good idea for a 'curated' open world.
The basic idea is that this open world is like a jigsaw, in that there is a defined end point (a final state of this world, changed in particular ways) and by your actions throughout the game you piece it together. The pieces of this jigsaw are the dungeons and other story-progressing scenarios, and a group of NPCs-with-depth a la Majoras Mask with an accompanying Bombers Notebook to keep track of names, locations and desires.
Your actions in the game transform the world either in terms of geography (again, Majoras Mask style such as
, but permanent) or by altering where NPCs are, or what they do, or what they will give/sell to you.
The crucial thing about the NPCs is that they have a daily cycle so you have that 'living world' feeling, but it's something that they will repeat until you 'solve' their current cycle, at which point they'd move on to the next cycle and stay there until you intervene again. Each NPC would have multiple cycles and move from one to the next as you progressed through their arc in the game. It would be rather like a good old Lucasarts point and click, a character doing the same thing until you get the magic combination of items/words/actions to move them on to doing something new or change the state of the world or what locations you can access. Also, there's nothing quite like that moment where you induce a character - whose repeated lines and animations you've got thoroughly sick of - to do something new. I'd love a game full of this stuff.
As an example, taken and modified from the other thread. You have a farmer who goes about his daily chores, but each day (because he's desperate, you see, the farm is on the verge of bankruptcy) he tries to navigate a dangerous bandit region to get his wares to market to sell. Alas there are too many of them and he has to retreat. This cycle repeats daily - like MM it happens whether you're there or not - and nothing changes unless you intervene and kill the bandits. Now, each day the farmer can go to market and sell his stuff (as well as the daily chores) for a certain portion of the day. He keeps doing that each day from now on. One day in town you realise that someone comes to talk to him each day at the same time, and eavesdropping you see it's about opening a permanent shop in town. Problem is, the farmer can't afford it. You help out by investing some rupees, and now the farmer moves on to his third cycle. He will never now be found at the farm, but lives permanently in town. Maybe his daughter starts taking care of the farm, and now she has some problems that needs solving.
And so on - each cycle except the last one has some kind of failure state in which you intervene to move the NPC on to the next cycle, else it keeps repeating. And some NPC cycles could intertwine, you could have the farmer know how to create some fantastic weapon, but he's missing a key resource. On your travels you happen across a miner who ekes a living in a depleted area and wishes he could move in to the gem-rich mines in the mountains, except there's a huge monster living there (and it's a dungeon, ta-da!). Once you've completed that, the miner starts mining in this new spot and (perhaps via a few more interventions by your good self) these resources find their way to town, where the farmer can now knock together this weapon as repayment for your original investment.
At any point during the game, you still have an open world in which you can go anywhere (that you have the ability/tools to reach), but with each geographical or NPC change, the world has slightly transformed with some inhabitants running on a new rail. I really don't think it would take too many of these NPCs to really make the world come alive, and of course some could be more simple than others. And there is a defined end point, a stage at which you stand in a transformed world, having solved all the issues of all the clockwork NPCs, and earned every reward. At which point, with enough clever design, the post-game content could be a dungeon or area unlocked by item(s) earned by completing everything else. The jigsaw is then complete, and some degree of the illusion of life is maintained by everyone's final cycles.
As an aside, although it sounds formidable from a design and technical point of view, I think the most challenging thing would actually be a creative one, concocting cycles that would be believably repeated over multiple days so the illusion of an ongoing world doesn't buckle under the weight of 'why are they doing the same thing?'. Crucial to that would be that each cycle encompasses a bunch of different mundane behaviours, with one key stage as a window during which you can unlock the next cycle. In fact, each cycle could repeat a lot of the mundane behaviour, changing only in the key instances at which you can change things. After all, I catch the bus to work most days at the same time and eat my lunch in the same tea room - repetition is realistic. Dialogue could be drawn from a pool of small talk as well as the crucial comments during the intervention window, working like the villagers do in Animal Crossing to avoid too many repeated lines.
So, thoughts? Sounds good? Could it even work? I have zero experience in game creation so it's easy for me to go full Molyneux and bandy around impossible ideas. Hell, has this been done already and I've reinvented something that people have been doing for years?
Incidentally, while obviously I've made this up out of whole cloth, it would fit with Miyamoto's comments on the way the game is shaping up:
EDIT: I think a nod is due to ReyVGM back at the old thread, who posted much the same thoughts before me.
The basic idea is that this open world is like a jigsaw, in that there is a defined end point (a final state of this world, changed in particular ways) and by your actions throughout the game you piece it together. The pieces of this jigsaw are the dungeons and other story-progressing scenarios, and a group of NPCs-with-depth a la Majoras Mask with an accompanying Bombers Notebook to keep track of names, locations and desires.
Your actions in the game transform the world either in terms of geography (again, Majoras Mask style such as
the thaw after Snowhead
The crucial thing about the NPCs is that they have a daily cycle so you have that 'living world' feeling, but it's something that they will repeat until you 'solve' their current cycle, at which point they'd move on to the next cycle and stay there until you intervene again. Each NPC would have multiple cycles and move from one to the next as you progressed through their arc in the game. It would be rather like a good old Lucasarts point and click, a character doing the same thing until you get the magic combination of items/words/actions to move them on to doing something new or change the state of the world or what locations you can access. Also, there's nothing quite like that moment where you induce a character - whose repeated lines and animations you've got thoroughly sick of - to do something new. I'd love a game full of this stuff.
As an example, taken and modified from the other thread. You have a farmer who goes about his daily chores, but each day (because he's desperate, you see, the farm is on the verge of bankruptcy) he tries to navigate a dangerous bandit region to get his wares to market to sell. Alas there are too many of them and he has to retreat. This cycle repeats daily - like MM it happens whether you're there or not - and nothing changes unless you intervene and kill the bandits. Now, each day the farmer can go to market and sell his stuff (as well as the daily chores) for a certain portion of the day. He keeps doing that each day from now on. One day in town you realise that someone comes to talk to him each day at the same time, and eavesdropping you see it's about opening a permanent shop in town. Problem is, the farmer can't afford it. You help out by investing some rupees, and now the farmer moves on to his third cycle. He will never now be found at the farm, but lives permanently in town. Maybe his daughter starts taking care of the farm, and now she has some problems that needs solving.
And so on - each cycle except the last one has some kind of failure state in which you intervene to move the NPC on to the next cycle, else it keeps repeating. And some NPC cycles could intertwine, you could have the farmer know how to create some fantastic weapon, but he's missing a key resource. On your travels you happen across a miner who ekes a living in a depleted area and wishes he could move in to the gem-rich mines in the mountains, except there's a huge monster living there (and it's a dungeon, ta-da!). Once you've completed that, the miner starts mining in this new spot and (perhaps via a few more interventions by your good self) these resources find their way to town, where the farmer can now knock together this weapon as repayment for your original investment.
At any point during the game, you still have an open world in which you can go anywhere (that you have the ability/tools to reach), but with each geographical or NPC change, the world has slightly transformed with some inhabitants running on a new rail. I really don't think it would take too many of these NPCs to really make the world come alive, and of course some could be more simple than others. And there is a defined end point, a stage at which you stand in a transformed world, having solved all the issues of all the clockwork NPCs, and earned every reward. At which point, with enough clever design, the post-game content could be a dungeon or area unlocked by item(s) earned by completing everything else. The jigsaw is then complete, and some degree of the illusion of life is maintained by everyone's final cycles.
As an aside, although it sounds formidable from a design and technical point of view, I think the most challenging thing would actually be a creative one, concocting cycles that would be believably repeated over multiple days so the illusion of an ongoing world doesn't buckle under the weight of 'why are they doing the same thing?'. Crucial to that would be that each cycle encompasses a bunch of different mundane behaviours, with one key stage as a window during which you can unlock the next cycle. In fact, each cycle could repeat a lot of the mundane behaviour, changing only in the key instances at which you can change things. After all, I catch the bus to work most days at the same time and eat my lunch in the same tea room - repetition is realistic. Dialogue could be drawn from a pool of small talk as well as the crucial comments during the intervention window, working like the villagers do in Animal Crossing to avoid too many repeated lines.
So, thoughts? Sounds good? Could it even work? I have zero experience in game creation so it's easy for me to go full Molyneux and bandy around impossible ideas. Hell, has this been done already and I've reinvented something that people have been doing for years?
Incidentally, while obviously I've made this up out of whole cloth, it would fit with Miyamoto's comments on the way the game is shaping up:
EDIT: I think a nod is due to ReyVGM back at the old thread, who posted much the same thoughts before me.
