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[CecilRousso]

In the latest dev blog for his new adventure game Thimbleweed Park, he asks for input on how the multiple endings in the game should be handled, to avoid asking the user to replay too much of the game for them.

Here's your chance to make a difference in the game.

[quote="Ron Gilbert]The main criticism I heard about The Cave was the repetition of playing multiple times to get all the endings. Each character had their own story and to see all 7 stories, you needed to play the game 3 times. Each character had their own section of The Cave, so there was new stuff, but there were also 5 sections that had to be repeated.

While designing the game, I didn't think twice about this for two reasons:

1) That's the way Maniac Mansion worked and I was trying lift the spirit of that game. Despite what conspiracy theorists will say, the reason there are 7 characters in The Cave is that Maniac Mansion had 7 characters. It wasn't to make people play an entire extra playthrough to see everything. Occam's Razor and all that.

2) I really didn't expect players to finish The Cave and then immediately start it up again and do another playthrough. I figured that people would take a break. Enjoy the story and the deep meaning behind it all, examine themselves and their own desires, then maybe a week or two later, they would play it again. It's why the repetition wasn't a huge concern for me.

2a) The Goldmine level was just poorly laid out. I will 100% cop to that, and I think that one level contributes a lot to the feeling of monotony on subsequent playthroughs.

Now, this post isn't some cathartic postmortem on the design of The Cave, so let's get on to Thimbleweed Park, which is what you (quite literally) paid your money to see.

Thimbleweed Park has 5 playable characters: Detective A, Detective B, Ransome, Delores, and Franklin. Each of those characters has their own story and ending. The design decision Gary and I face is how to avoid the repetition of having to play the entire game multiple times to see all the endings.

One option is you get all five endings in one playthrough, but that would mean the endings couldn't be mutually exclusive and they can't really change the outcome of the story. As storytellers, we want the endings to have meaning and finality.

We could do some artsy-fartsy flashback storytelling where the different endings are just possibilities, kind of like how it worked in Monkey Island 2 with Guybrush dying in the acid pit. Artsy!

We could just let players skip through sections they have already played, but this feels lame, kind of like fast forwarding your VCR to get to the good parts (this is 1987, VCRs were all the rage). It's too meta for me and feels like your not really playing the game, your just outside the game.

One of our biggest jobs over the next few weeks is to figure out how to do this and not force players to replay sections of the game just to see a different ending.

Although... you had to do that in Maniac Mansion. You had to reply a lot of the game just to see Wendy's ending over Bernard's ending. I don't remember a single person complaining about that, yet, players complained non-stop about (what I perceived as) the same thing in The Cave.

How were they different? Or are they not, and it's the players that are different? What does it mean for Thimbleweed Park? Will our heroes escape? Tune in next week! Same adventure time, same adventure blog[/quote]

http://blog.thimbleweedpark.com/

 

[Gambit 1138]

Interesting read. I think the big issue is that we live in a time when consumers aren't going to be happy no matter what.

 

[efyu_lemonardo]

Honestly, why think of them as five different endings?

Why not five different paths that diverge pretty much immediately after you choose which character to play?

From a content creation point of view, this would mean completing the game on any one of the chosen paths would be a much shorter and more focused experience, but that would also motivate the player to do it all over again with a different choice.

That's how I believe video games as a whole should handle the multiple plot thing, anyway.


edit: To clarify, I would be much more excited about playing a game that can be completed in an hour or two, but can be replayed with five different characters that each allow to follow a very different path, than to play a single path for 6-8 hours and only have the final hour differ.

 

[Wildean]

I'd usually prefer a well-crafted story with a single-thread than a multithreaded one. Or like Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis, with different threads that merge at the end. Getting one ending to work and satisfyingly wrap thing up is tough enough for story tellers, without trying to accommodate a bunch of possible outcomes.

 

[Sloane]

I'd usually prefer a well-crafted story with a single-thread than a multithreaded one. Or like Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis, with different threads that merge at the end. Getting one ending to work and satisfyingly wrap thing up is tough enough for story tellers, without trying to accommodate a bunch of possible outcomes.

Same here. Different endings often feel indecisive, if they are not to a hundred percent the result of the player's choices. As this probably won't be the case here, I'd rather have one satisfying ending that wraps it all up than five lame endings.

 

[Alienous]

In this age of YouTube simply having multiple endings doesn't do much to increase the re-playability of a game.

It's probably better to have the game branch at moments during the story, and all reach the same ending. I think a game like Black Ops 2 is a good example of doing this kind of mild 'shandification'; whilst it has multiple endings it also has moments in between that can vary and ultimately change the ending. A game like Heavy Rain does it well also. You want to see how the individual moments can branch, and that could lead to replaying the game instead of certain elements.

 

[TimmiT]

I think that another problem with The Cave was that it's humor was very hit or miss. At times it felt like commentary from America's Funniest Home Videos or something. I don't know if this is because of Ron Gilbert having lost his touch (after Deathspank I wouldn't be surprised) or because of Chris Remo's contributions. (which would surprise me) Also I don't remember the puzzles actually being that fun to solve. I don't think they consisted of much more than "bring thing to thing", and when there's only one way to use a thing it becomes less fun to experiment than in old point and click adventure games.

 

[Stumpokapow]

I think multiple endings and paths are good, but I don't think the Cave was an ideal execution because there weren't a lot of possible skips in a replay and particularly some of the mandatory sections were a little on the slower side. I actually did like the Cave a lot, but if he's asking about future development, that's a criticism I'd give.

 

[Ocaso]

I'd usually prefer a well-crafted story with a single-thread than a multithreaded one. Or like Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis, with different threads that merge at the end. Getting one ending to work and satisfyingly wrap thing up is tough enough for story tellers, without trying to accommodate a bunch of possible outcomes.

Agree wholeheartedly. That said, if you're going to go for the multiple endings, then the key point is to make the repeated portions as entertaining as possible on subsequent playthroughs. If you detect that the gamer is replaying (and something that detects this should be in place) then perhaps vary item placement, dialogue, puzzle solutions, enemy placement, or whatever applies to your genre to the extent feasible. Otherwise the skip option seems most logical, but forced repetition can never entirely avoid tedium.

 

[Lagamorph]

Don't make the player have to re-play the entire game if they want to see other endings.

 

[ArjanN]

Although... you had to do that in Maniac Mansion. You had to reply a lot of the game just to see Wendy's ending over Bernard's ending. I don't remember a single person complaining about that, yet, players complained non-stop about (what I perceived as) the same thing in The Cave.

Maniac Mansion was a million years ago and no-one knew any better. Also, the only way he would have even heard people's complaints is if they'd actually written them down with their feather quill pens and sent them to him by carrier pigeon.

Different times.

I really liked the different story threads in The Cave, and I think it would have worked perfectly fine if there had been 6 or 9 characters so it lined up with the number of playthroughs.

Agree wholeheartedly. That said, if you're going to go for the multiple endings, then the key point is to make the repeated portions as entertaining as possible on subsequent playthroughs. If you detect that the gamer is replaying (and something that detects this should be in place) then perhaps vary item placement, dialogue, puzzle solutions, enemy placement, or whatever applies to your genre to the extent feasible. Otherwise the skip option seems most logical, but forced repetition can never entirely avoid tedium.

Don't make the player have to re-play the entire game if they want to see other endings.

Pretty much this.

Either make the repeated playthrough change up enough that it actually feels different or make it skippable.

I know a skip option is a bit immersion breaking, but it's better than forcing yourself to go through the motions for several hours. Especially in an adventure game where there's not much of a gameplay hook any more when replaying.

Personally I really appreciate level/chapter select options in games. It's one of the reasons I used to make tons of unique saves in everything just so I could skip to a cool bit any time I wanted.