{"id":484,"date":"2011-01-31T01:07:36","date_gmt":"2011-01-31T09:07:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shadowdawngenesis.com\/devblog\/?p=484"},"modified":"2015-12-17T16:58:16","modified_gmt":"2015-12-18T00:58:16","slug":"a-fluid-relationship","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shadowdawngenesis.com\/devblog\/?p=484","title":{"rendered":"A Fluid Relationship"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’m halfway through writing the main gameplay script of Shadowdawn Genesis<\/em> at this point.\u00a0 The current page count is at 170\u00a0mostly including\u00a0optional dialog between the major characters, so there’s definitely going to be lot of character development\u00a0for people who like that sort of thing in RPGs.\u00a0 Even if it’s not your thing, the script supports the player having Arashi staying entirely focused on the main story, so enjoy the game how you see fit. \ud83d\ude42\u00a0 Expect a lot of humor, drama, and mystery involved in either case!<\/p>\n

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As far as optional content, I’m taking a bit different approach to how conversations work; because I’m trying to make these characters actual believable personalities, but never\u00a0take too much control from the player.\u00a0 Sure, Arashi has her own outlook, just like any other character in the game, but the player ultimately decides her character’s personality growth with obvious choices on questions she asks, who to ally with,\u00a0and who to get closer to, but\u00a0there are also more subtle choices\u00a0like\u00a0merely talking to a\u00a0particular NPC more often than\u00a0not, when<\/em> in the story she talks to them, and others (I don’t want to spoil everything!).\u00a0\u00a0All\u00a0the player’s actions regarding a particular NPC\u00a0will encourage their friendship to grow, and sometimes NPCs will seek out\u00a0Arashi for the same purpose based on reputation.<\/p>\n

Dragon Age <\/em>and Persona 3 + 4<\/em> have numerical ratings of your relationships to party members and major NPCs, which I personally find adds an unnecessary and exploitable\u00a0layer of artificiality.\u00a0 Though Persona<\/em>‘s characters are much deeper and have their own evolving stories, being basically told that you are about to reach the end of a particular side-story or max out a relationship with someone just… bothers me.\u00a0 I’d like the characters of Shadowdawn Genesis<\/em> to take inspiration from games such as these as far as how well the characters develop, come alive, and build a complex relationship with the player character, but I don’t think the player should be looking at them as checkboxes to complete to really appreciate them.\u00a0 I know there’s a trend to gauge just about every aspect of a character’s progress, but this is one element I can’t get on board with.\u00a0 When I used to play Dungeons & Dragons <\/em>back in the before days, the\u00a0RPG heaviest on numbers, the actual role-playing done was volatile by design.<\/p>\n

One other experiment in the dialog process is that I don’t believe it’s possible to max out every character’s relationship in a single playthrough.\u00a0 This is probably the most controversial element, as I know for a fact console RPG players have become determined that\u00a0they have\u00a0to see absolutely everything in a single playthrough to master the game.\u00a0 Because I want the character development to be more natural, I don’t see how to reconcile these two ideals.\u00a0 Maybe as the Shadowdawn <\/em>series progresses, the answer will come, I’ll just have to wait to see how people respond to the first game here and work from there.<\/p>\n

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I’m halfway through writing the main gameplay script of Shadowdawn Genesis at this point.\u00a0 The current page count is at 170\u00a0mostly including\u00a0optional dialog between the […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[78,25,141,7,64,116,6,18,80,110,13,142,140,17,309,139,143,4,84,15,33,90,67],"class_list":["post-484","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-game-development","tag-action-rpg","tag-arashi","tag-conversations","tag-development","tag-dialog","tag-dialog-tree","tag-game","tag-independent","tag-indie-game","tag-indie-rpg","tag-jrpg","tag-npc","tag-npc-conversations","tag-pc","tag-rpg","tag-script","tag-script-writing","tag-shadowdawn","tag-shadowdawn-genesis","tag-xbox-360","tag-xbox-live","tag-xbox-live-indie-games","tag-xna"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shadowdawngenesis.com\/devblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/484","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shadowdawngenesis.com\/devblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shadowdawngenesis.com\/devblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shadowdawngenesis.com\/devblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shadowdawngenesis.com\/devblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=484"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.shadowdawngenesis.com\/devblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/484\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shadowdawngenesis.com\/devblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=484"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shadowdawngenesis.com\/devblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=484"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shadowdawngenesis.com\/devblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=484"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}