Alternate Life Games: "Real" Relationships

[Wavelength]

One of my favorite types of RPG is the "Alternate Life" subgenre (arguably popularized by Harvest Moon), where two of the main focuses of the gameplay are managing your time and building relationships with a wide array of characters.

I love playing games like this; I've got nothing but fond memories of games like Azure Dreams, Rune Factory and The Sims, and even RPG Maker versions like Homework Salesman and Ursus Quest: Tree of Life.  But in these Alternate Life games, there's always one thing holding me back from fully immersing myself in the experience: I feel more like I'm "grinding" for relationship points rather than exploring dynamic relationships.

In most of these games the idea of building relationships with people comes down to finding them around town, talking to them (read as: listening to the same two lines of dialogue you heard from them yesterday and the day before), and giving them the same gift once a day if you want to speed things up.  The characters around you feel like very likable set pieces to predictably manipulate, rather than living, breathing people.  My actions affect them, but their actions rarely affect me (or anyone else around them).

The better Alternate Life games do reward you with really interesting character developments at certain points, occasional events, and general feel-good moments.  These games are still a nice experience to play, no doubt.  But I feel like there's so much missed potential as far as making game relationships feel more like real relationships.  The hope, the dynamism, the elements of push-and-pull, the unpredictability, the way you influence how things develop around you... a game that could capture even part of these would be a special experience.

A few games have taken steps toward doing it better.  The recent Persona games are probably the high-water mark, deftly creating characters and situations that feel believable - but the player's relationship with them still feels narrow and gamelike outside of the main narrative.  Moving outside the genre, the "Radiant AI" system in The Elder Scrolls is a well-intentioned attempt to make the world around you feel like it's living and unpredictable, but most interactions with NPCs still feel shallow and directed.  And if what I've read about The Novelist is true, it nicely captures the essence of choice and consequence in relationships, but it does so in a relatively linear and narrative-driven fashion.  It seems like there's always a tradeoff.

So the question I pose to everyone: If you were to create the "ideal" Alternate Life game, how would you design it so that characters/relationships feel real and dynamic?  How would you avoid the repetition and immersion-breaking pitfalls that tend to come with a game's predictability, while still capturing the positive concepts (such as control and reward) that are inherent to games?

 

[Hudell]

Good question, as I'm also interested in this.

I'll be following this thread for ideas too.

Currently on Orange Season you can only talk and give gifts to the NPCs, the same way it works on Harvest Moon games, but I want to make it better.

The sad part is that anything good I could do always require tremendous work. It seems that building good NPCs is the most time consuming task of creating a game.

One thing that I have planned for a future version is the ability to invite an NPC for dinner and then you have to make something that that NPC likes, without getting repetitive.

I guess if I change the Gift system to let the NPC react differently if they get gifts too often or if they get the same thing two or three times, I can make them complain or something.

 

[Sato1999]

I'm also interested in this, however, in my game, the characters, are from the same party, so im doing, something like:

After, some side-quest,(or story-quests too) they get relationship points, after you win a battle they have a small chance of increasing relationship points.

So when you get enough RP a new side-quest becomes avaible.

Though, i think this is quite, bad, that's why im following this.

 

[Dragnfly]

I'm a sucker for jRPGs with relationship elements, be they marriage and children in Agarest or the bromances of Growlanser. But they do mainly boil down to a points system and you can usually cover up any conversational mishaps by buying them a ruby the rise of your torso.

<long post warning. Also for this post RP = Relationship Points>

Repetition can be avoided simply by having them refuse a gift that they already got or by changing up what they feel like wanting. I'm sure we all know how sad it looks when a dude hears his crush likes My Little Pony so he buys her pony things every time he sees her until she just never wants to see him again because he's Superficial Pony Guy. What people want changes. Work that into the game.

Another thing that can likely help improve it (though it's a lot of work. I strongly suggest a flow chart for this) is people's relationship points changing depending on your relationships with others. Maybe gifting the cute shopkeeper a diamond will give RP once, but gifting her dad a new wheel for the shop wagon will boost RP with her too, since you made her dad less surly. Also yet more work, but closely tie to and limit RP events based on story events. This avoids those "oops we totally forgot we just kissed yesterday." story segments that seem out of sync with the RP events.

The moral of the story here I think is that the dynamics can be improved by improving how dynamic it is. It sounds stupid and redundant but people usually don't do it. It all starts with writing more cutscenes and varying more gifts. Intertwine the characters so the whole town is interacting. And if you're marrying one character, allow some of the others to find happiness too. I was overjoyed in Agarest War 2 when the best friend character scored a cute wife. That hardly ever happens in games with relationships.

Hero and Daughter does a thing where having a girl in your party for a while, talking to them each time you're back in Hubtown or buying them gifts will eventually cue 15 progressively-more-touching cutscenes. That's a nice simple way to do it and gives the player lots to look forward to, especially with their favourites. There's no repetition and how the relations progress is well done. The developer is still updating though so not all the events are done.

My current project has all set relationships. Anyone who's hooking up will hook up as the story progresses. The player has no say in the matter. But one of my other projects which I hope to get to some day sees the female and male lead hooking up automatically while the player's choices (party setup and what missions they take) control who else in the cast can hook up. So the party mage could hook up with the healer or the thief, but the male lead and the female lead can only hook up with each other. And who hooks up with who can effect skills learned as stat growth so it's like the mage learns to be a bit more tanky from hanging out with the tank and the tank gets a bit more magic resistance from hanging with the mage.

My main project does however use Ar Tonelico-style talk topics (bonus conversations you unlock by checking certain things, like a lone flower in a wasteland or something) and some of the conversations, especially between love interests, have to be vary carefully monitored for consistency with how the relationship is in the main story.

 

[Another Ned]

I'm not really familiar with the genre, but I've already played a few games with "relationship mechanics" inside them. While I also can't really relate to romance/relationships myself, I find them actually quite interesting in a game. You get to find out more about certain characters, and sometimes, they even add more conflict to certain plot points (looking at you, Dragon Age 2).

When it comes to NPCs/party members being their own people no matter how nice you are to them, Dragon Age 2, despite its many flaws, is actually pretty good. While you, the player, is the hero of the story, you actually only "clean up" your party members' messes, to simplify some things. And instead of having one linear value of "0 = Hate" and "100 = Love", they have a Friendship/Rivalry scale which affects their behaviours (and the romances). Still, it's now "-100 = Rival" and "100 = Friend", but feels a lot more dynamic. You may even lose party members at certain points in the plot if they don't care enough about you (neither friend nor rival), which is actually quite an interesting thing.

As a fun little coincidence, today I saw that Gamasutra posted a GDC Vault video I watched sometime last year about the subject of in-game romances (I was about to search for it).
Here is the link: Improving romance in games with rivalry and respect
The video is about using not one, but two variables to track the relationship the player character has to another character, to make it more dynamic and allow for more than "be nice to NPC and say and do what they like so you end up together" of more "linear" progressions.

It does sound interesting, but I can imagine it to be a pain to implement if it's used for a whole cast of characters.

And I'll end with a "don't!" example: Dragon's Dogma.
I didn't notice it had some kind of affection system in place/slapped on until one NPC I just did an escort quest for suddenly disappeared. So every time you talk to an NPC, their affection for your player character is raised. No wonder shopkeepers suddenly blushed when I bought stuff from them on my New Game+.

Please don't do it like this, ever. No matter the genre.

 

[Scott_C]

Rune Factory 4 introduced random friendship and romantic events. Every week or two a handful of characters would break out of their normal routine and do something unique. Sometimes they needed your help to resolve a problem. Sometimes they just wanted to talk to you. And sometimes you were just a bystander who happened to show up just in time to see something funny going on between a bunch of NPCs.

This did a lot to make the characters feel like they had their own lives that didn't revolve 100% around interacting with the player. Their daily actions were genuinely unpredictable and outside of your control. Grinding up relationship levels was still a part of the game but it could no longer be used to predictably force certain events to happen.

Unfortunately marriage and end-game content was also based on having participated in certain random events. This was much less fun. Characters with their own free will are a lot less charming when you've been waiting for multiple in-game years for someone to randomly start the event that will let you finally unlock the bonus dungeon.

 

[Hudell]

Rune Factory 4 introduced random friendship and romantic events. Every week or two a handful of characters would break out of their normal routine and do something unique. Sometimes they needed your help to resolve a problem. Sometimes they just wanted to talk to you. And sometimes you were just a bystander who happened to show up just in time to see something funny going on between a bunch of NPCs.

This did a lot to make the characters feel like they had their own lives that didn't revolve 100% around interacting with the player. Their daily actions were genuinely unpredictable and outside of your control. Grinding up relationship levels was still a part of the game but it could no longer be used to predictably force certain events to happen.

Unfortunately marriage and end-game content was also based on having participated in certain random events. This was much less fun. Characters with their own free will are a lot less charming when you've been waiting for multiple in-game years for someone to randomly start the event that will let you finally unlock the bonus dungeon.

I was really amazed by Rune Factory 4. Not only the events you mentioned, but the amount of different dialogues on the game made me want to talk to everyone every single day.

When I tried to do the same thing on my game and learned how hard it is to write so many conversations, my respect for that game grew even bigger.

 

[Dragnfly]

I sat with Word open, Pita Pit gyro open untouched on my desk as my lunch break ticked away, staring at the blank page where I'd planned to write some optional character conversations. They all had titles like "party sees half a capsized ocean liner in desert" or "really bad food at the tavern" and yet I couldn't write anything that felt entertaining enough to warrant the player spending time to read it, that didn't rely on info from further into the plot that the player wouldn't have seen yet. I feel your pain, Hudell.

I think The Rune Factory 4 thing could have been solved by keeping tighter ropes on what was optional for a character path and what was mandatory for it.

 

[Dalamar]

I always find it odd when the npcs react favorably to their favorite gift two minutes after meeting them for the first time.  Maybe you could have a negative reaction to liked gifts if the npc's relationship points aren't high enough with different tiers.  So 50 points and I can give someone a barely liked item, 200 points a liked item...etc.

 

[literarygoth]

The key words to having complex NPC's and relationships in any game: variables, and common events. These will be your best friends. As mentioned above, a flow chart of every single NPC in-game is necessary as well. It'll be complex, it'll be tough, but once done it would be truly awesome to behold.

Random events again could be handled by a variable and a switch or two, simply gifting the same flower over and over ad nauseum shouldn't work, it sure doesn't in real life, so why should that fly in a game? That's the easy and frankly, the lazy way out imo. I love the Harvest Moon games, but I was certainly bothered that they didn't spend more time on the NPC's themselves, considering they're a huge portion of your interactivity.

Too often NPC's come across as 2D and hollow, with no real personality (think Pokemon NPC's in the earlier series). I personally dislike the same conversation repeating over and over every time I interact with an NPC, so I prefer to put each NPC on an individualized conversation variable. This way, every time you talk to them, they'll say something else. This works for those NPC's that just say random things. If they need to say something specific, I like the conversation to go on and have a bit of banter back and forth, rather than the NPC just talking to you the entire time, like you're all ears. Once the pertinent things they're talking about are done and dealt with, then I'll have them switch back to the variable chatter.

 

[Dragnfly]

If they need to say something specific, I like the conversation to go on and have a bit of banter back and forth, rather than the NPC just talking to you the entire time, like you're all ears.

Unless your hero is a silent protag I see no reason not to do this. I've done this in every project I've ever worked on which had NPCs to chat with and it's a win/win situation. Your NPCs bloom and your PCs grow.

 

[literarygoth]

Exactly Dragnfly! That no talking main character always caused me to eye twitch. They're the main character, WHY DONT THEY EVER RESPOND BACK?

Argh!

 

[Dragnfly]

I've got no problem with a silent protag. I'm just saying that if your guy talks you might as well have him chat with NPCs instead of just listening to them.

That said, don't feel the need to have the PC start by asking a question. Septerra Core did that and it ultimately lead to the first line always being skipped because I saw it as "useless dialogue"

 

[literarygoth]

Another fine point. NPC's should be more than background clutter imo. If you're going to be able to talk to them, at least give them some interesting background. Especially games that are rolling on the Alternative Life play style.

As mentioned before, you can use a relationship variable for each NPC that would track how well they know your character. Script basic introductions so you're not just simply walking up to an NPC you've never met before and immediately delving into their darkest secrets in the first two sentences. Each NPC should have a different personality, which means they'll respond differently to your responses, which means the player needs to 'get to know' each NPC, their likes, dislikes, hobbies etc, in order to further their relationship. I realize this is all very complex, but the end result would be pretty interesting I'm sure.

 

[Dragnfly]

Wild Arms 3 blew me away just because every NPC had a unique character portrait and different ways of speaking.

 

[Wavelength]

It was awesome to see this topic surge and resurge over the past few weeks!  Some very cool discussion and ideas have come out of it, and it's also comforting, in a way, to know how many others see it as a daunting task like I do.

I really like the mention of Rune Factory's NPCs "breaking out of their schedule" (and the "waiting on a specific random event" could have been fixed with forcing the "necessary" events after a certain period of time), as well as literarygoth's mention of a "chat hierarchy" which might, for example, have an NPC mention something urgent and timely the first time you talk to them, some ongoing quest if you talk to them again within a short period, and the appropriate "variable chatter" if you talk to them a third and fourth time.  You guys have also mentioned several features in your own games that sound like positive additions.

As I've let the idea simmer in my mind the last few weeks, I've come up with a few more things I think I can add to the topic.  As time-consuming as they'd be to implement well, I feel like the following concepts would really immerse the player into the relationship-building aspect of a game:

• Memory: Characters retain a memory of the things the player says and does.  If you give a character a gift that they like, they might thank you for it again (and mention what it was, or at least what type of item it was) the first time they run into you the next day.  If they asked you a long time ago if you like their favorite hobby and you said you don't, but they want to bring it up, they'll start off the conversation with "I know you said you're not really into (X), but...".  If you survived a scary or embarrassing situation with them the day before, they'll laugh about it with you the next time you talk with them.
• Reputation: Through the player's actions, they can develop different reputations that might flavor what a character thinks (or at least knows) about you even if you haven't done something specific with that character.  Giving out gifts like there's no tomorrow in a Harvest Moon-like game might make some NPCs (even those that didn't receive gifts) get word that you're generous... although one NPC's opinion that you're "generous" might be another NPC's opinion that you're "foolish".  In a game with combat (like Persona) you might earn a reputation as being protective or brave or bloodthirsty from your actions in combat.  These reputations inform the way that other characters treat you and the topics they bring up.
• Reciprocality: Anything that you can do to build relationships with characters, those characters can also do with you.  If you can invite NPCs to a gathering or adventure or date, they should be able to do the same for you (and vice versa!).  If the player is expected to give NPCs gifts to garner their affections, the NPCs should be giving the player gifts occasionally as well.  Ideally, the relationship wouldn't just be a question of "How much does Character X like the player", but also "How much does the player seem to like Character X" (which the player would inform via their dialogue choices, their actions, their habits, and so on).  Perhaps you pick a dialogue choice that reveals you're angry at a certain character.  That character's affection for you might drop as a result, but if it was high to being with (meaning they want you to like them), maybe they'll give you a gift to apologize for making you angry.
• Interrelationship: The actions the player takes with a character don't stop at that character.  Building a character's confidence up with encouraging words might encourage them to make friends with other characters (thus unlocking or changing events that wouldn't happen otherwise).  Marrying a character would create expectations, obligations, and closer relationships with his/her entire family.  Giving a character an unwanted gift might cause that character to give it to somoene they think would appreciate it more, in which case the final recipient might mention it to you.
• Nonlinearity of Relationships: Relationships can grow in a number of ways based on how the player acts in each situation, and have more nuance than a simple "Dislike to Love" scale.  A character that "likes" the player might view him as a good friend, or a crush/love interest, or a "big brother" figure, or a worthy (if intense) rival, or might even just pity him.  These dimensions could be tracked with a multitude of variables, or perhaps a more holistic system that ties into the character's "memories" with the player.  The more opportunities the player has to direct the course of their relationship with characters, the better.

In the far, far future, maybe we'll even have good ways to implement voice recognition, and parse the phrases the player speaks to create characters that can respond naturally to any game-relevant topic the player wants to talk about!

 

[Dragnfly]

• Memory: Characters retain a memory of the things the player says and does.  If you give a character a gift that they like, they might thank you for it again (and mention what it was, or at least what type of item it was) the first time they run into you the next day.  If they asked you a long time ago if you like their favorite hobby and you said you don't, but they want to bring it up, they'll start off the conversation with "I know you said you're not really into (X), but...".  If you survived a scary or embarrassing situation with them the day before, they'll laugh about it with you the next time you talk with them.

Gigantic flowchart and a crazy number of switches. Wow. Seriously, I just got out of my chair, threw the cushion on the floor, got down on my knees and bowed to the screen. This is such a tough one because anyone would go mad trying to do it themselves but adding even one more person to the mix would easily muddle the consistency. Still though, this is a crapload of work but it is 100% doable in RM. So they had better make a special award for the person who succeeds at it. Visual Novels have been trying to get it right for 35 years.

• Reputation: Through the player's actions, they can develop different reputations that might flavor what a character thinks (or at least knows) about you even if you haven't done something specific with that character.  Giving out gifts like there's no tomorrow in a Harvest Moon-like game might make some NPCs (even those that didn't receive gifts) get word that you're generous... although one NPC's opinion that you're "generous" might be another NPC's opinion that you're "foolish".  In a game with combat (like Persona) you might earn a reputation as being protective or brave or bloodthirsty from your actions in combat.  These reputations inform the way that other characters treat you and the topics they bring up.

IMO, this would work best if it was... gradiented (is that even a word? spellchecker says no.). What I mean by that is that if you're generous at 10 gifts and at 9 gifts you're not, it feels... mechanical. But if your reputation changes in stages it'd feel very real.

Reciprocality: Anything that you can do to build relationships with characters, those characters can also do with you.  If you can invite NPCs to a gathering or adventure or date, they should be able to do the same for you (and vice versa!).  If the player is expected to give NPCs gifts to garner their affections, the NPCs should be giving the player gifts occasionally as well.  Ideally, the relationship wouldn't just be a question of "How much does Character X like the player", but also "How much does the player seem to like Character X" (which the player would inform via their dialogue choices, their actions, their habits, and so on).  Perhaps you pick a dialogue choice that reveals you're angry at a certain character.  That character's affection for you might drop as a result, but if it was high to being with (meaning they want you to like them), maybe they'll give you a gift to apologize for making you angry.

Some game did this. I'm thinking PSX era and I'm fairly sure it was in English when I played it. I remember using a guide because it this gifting system was the only way to get certain items. That said, I'm all for getting angry at a character when they do something offensive to have them give me stuff to make up for it later. LOL.

• Interrelationship: The actions the player takes with a character don't stop at that character.  Building a character's confidence up with encouraging words might encourage them to make friends with other characters (thus unlocking or changing events that wouldn't happen otherwise).  Marrying a character would create expectations, obligations, and closer relationships with his/her entire family.  Giving a character an unwanted gift might cause that character to give it to somoene they think would appreciate it more, in which case the final recipient might mention it to you.

I worked on the extremely short-lived Touhou dating sim Immeasurable Abundance of Moonstruck Yearning and was writing in something like this. As the series goes, characters are naturally divided into "families." Now like epic political families but just who the characters live with. Even if you don't know the series just roll with it. The explination will make sense in the end. The game started with a story-based quiz which decided your starting stats and where on the map you began (and thus what character routes would be possible) So where a usual dating sim would have a Remilia route, Flandre route, Meiling route, Patchy route, Koakuma route and Sakuya route for the denizens of the Scarlet Devil Mansion you'd start by going onto the "Scarlet family" route and many of your choices would be effecting all 6 characters in + and - ways. The Sakura Taisen games did this on a much smaller scale. But having this system unlock new characters/events entirely is really cool.

 

[Paladin-Cleric of Awesome]

I love relationships in games. But I think it is very hard to implement something like that. For my big game (which I have yet to fully unveil even to myself) I intend to have a relationship system where the closer you get to NPC's the more you learn about them. eg, you might talk to that old man and woman at fabric stall and they mention their daughter is having a baby, so the next time you talk to them you ask about their daughter, find out she's had the baby and it's a boy. If your feeling really nice you'll maybe offer your congradulations, you might get invited to dinner at their house, you bring a little present for the baby and suddenly you find yourself with a nice little family that would be happy to have you turn up for dinner, and maybe they have a son who is a merchant and can get you that thing you really need for your most recent quest. etc.

I feel relationships in games are normally all about romantic relationships, which bores me, because there's only so much romance I can stomach, but an interesting dynaic relationship game that gets you interesting rewards, that's something different. I want to learn about the life of an NPC and everything the world has to offer. I want to hear about that one palace guard who's having problems with his wayward son who keeps getting into trouble with the law, because knowing that, and building that rapport with that character might just get me something I need later (like an audience with the King, or something). Maybe it's a trowback to playing Dungeons and Dragons, when you could do that sort of thing if you had the right DM.

I don't know that I made any sense, but hey, I tried!

 

[Julien Brightside]

Extra Credits had an episode about Romance.

And I'll end with a "don't!" example: Dragon's Dogma.
I didn't notice it had some kind of affection system in place/slapped on until one NPC I just did an escort quest for suddenly disappeared. So every time you talk to an NPC, their affection for your player character is raised. No wonder shopkeepers suddenly blushed when I bought stuff from them on my New Game+.

Please don't do it like this, ever. No matter the genre.

What about an aquaintance system?

If you buy enough stuff from a shopkeeper, they'll treat you as a loyal customer, be more welcoming towards you when you show up, even giving you discounts and so on.

Note: this is not the same as romancing them.

 

[Dragnfly]

Extra Credits had an episode about Romance.

>

What about an aquaintance system?

If you buy enough stuff from a shopkeeper, they'll treat you as a loyal customer, be more welcoming towards you when you show up, even giving you discounts and so on.

Note: this is not the same as romancing them.

I love that video. I try really hard to dynamic up the romances in my main project so I'm in full agreement with them. It's easier to do in a jRPG style because your characters are pre-defined. No snotnosed brat is going to be offended that you "made him" not choose the girl he wanted or took away his power.

For shopkeeper acquaintances games by Gust (Ar series and Atelier series) have shopkeepers with cutscenes and backstories and problems they're trying to solve etc. Usually the further you progress with it the more stuff you can make. There's even romance dashed in sometimes (Ar Tonelico 2 had

Spoiler

a beautiful one that even ended in a rejection)