Story vs Battle

[DTracy3]

Hi,


I'm starting with a new game and am currently in the planning phase. My story is mostly done with still some breathing room in it to add stuff.


I tend to focus on the story, but my problem is that I tend to forget about the actual game^^  When only going with my main story, the adventure would be over really fast without that many


battles, so I want to add adventures, temples, quests and whatever will improve my gameplay, but I don't wanna lose sight of my main plot.


I wondered if anyone got some advice on how they adjust their stories so they'll fit a video game, so that you basically have a nice mixture of adventuring and story.

 

[HexMozart88]

Hmm. Well, I'd say don't have too many, first of all, and make most of them side quests. For the temples, you can use the story to your advantage. You can have them go in to it and find something story related in there. 

 

[LaFlibuste]

What I did for my project was cut up my story in "blocks". Each block is a quest/mission/dungeon (or more if you'd like) and each would have you forward the plot some. At the end of block 1 you meet x character and witness x problem, so you decide to do x to learn more, which leads to block 2, at the end of which you get x plot development, which may be either incomplete or mislead you or whatever. It allowed me to format my story to fit a video game.



Not only this, but it has allowed me to pace the game. Let's say you have plot revelation I and II and you want them to build up towards plot revelation III which the player should feel like he searched for/worked towards quite some time. In a standard scenario, it might feel quite quick: Something happens (plot point I), you help the people to a safer place, more shenanigans happen (plot point II), you travel some to learn more about the source of the problem (plot point III) (for a quick and cheap example). But by subdivising in blocs, I could say, for instance: Plot point I happens in block 1; You have block 2 where you help people across the woods; Then your camp is attacked in block 3; Now I want the player to feel like he had quite a quest before reaching plot point 3, so I'll place it in block 7, this means I have to come up with 3 quests/dungeons/roadblocks/plot devices in between. This method has helped me greatly structure my game and develop all the plot points I wanted to make, in any event, especially since in my game there are multiple factions with diverging objectives you encounter and you have to untangle all the threads to really understand the main plot.
 


This approach also allowed me to locate various characters I know I wanted in the game but wasn't sure how/where/when to introduce and what their exact role would be. It also helped me structure the game world/map, where stuff is and how various elements are linked/interact with each others. So maybe I had planned some big armoury would be in the industrial district at first for whatever story reason, but doing this I realized it would make more sense and flow better if it was farther east in the residential district, etc.

 

[Arithmetician]

I have the opposite problem.  I come up with a gameplay idea that I want to see, and then throw together a suitable story later.  In many ways, the story is just an excuse for the gameplay.  But as long as the gameplay is engaging enough, even a basic plot should suffice, as games like FFV show.

 

[DTracy3]

Thanks for the tips^^


@LaFlibuste This is really helpful, I already have my story in Blocks to help me control  the timeline of my plot, adding more to build up to my main story points sounds like a good idea^^ I like to plan out everything important to the game before actually building it and this seems like a great way to do so^^

 

[Lymmet]

Depends on what game your making. Is it an open world with many characters with different backgrounds? Or perhaps a dungeon crawler esque game with more focus on the gameplay? If the first, introducing a questline/sidestory to each and every character might be an idea (like in Breath of Fire II). For the latter, maybe have a prologue cutscene of each level/dungeon area before being pushed into it. Just some thoughts.

 

[rue669]

Link story to the gameplay. 


The two shouldn't be separate. You can find originality in your gameplay through your story. 


If you want to have a more story-heavy game, there's nothing wrong with that at all. You can mix in the gameplay here and there. Maybe make the battles story-based battles. 

 

[Kes]

To develop @rue669's point a little further, the skills that your characters have (and that, of course, influences game play) should grow out of the type of person each character is, what their backstory is, what their personality is like, perhaps what 'job' they had before the game started.  For example, if you have someone who was a doctor/medic before the story, it would not make sense to give that character an insta-death skill.  Someone with a flamboyant personality can have show-off type skills, and so on.