Free Will vs. Determinism

Honestly, I should have had my next release up by now, but the regularity of my working habit has been interrupted by recent changes in my life, as well as the changing seasons. But also, I'm having a little difficulty with a portion of the game I'm currently working on. And one of the problems I've come across is the issue of free will vs. determinism, in terms of player control.

Allow me to clarify. There is a portion in the game, for example, where the entering of a town starts off a series of plot-related events. Now, these events are not stringed one right after another - I actually want the player to have some freedom to explore the town and encounter these events at his own pace. However, they all (or mostly all) must be triggered before a final event can occur, finishing the string of events in that town, and enabling the player to move on to the next portion of the game. That one of these events involves spending the night at an inn (or in this case, the equivalent of an inn), but there's a certain point in the chronology of the stringed events where the inn event can and cannot occur, makes it that much more difficult for me to script out all these events, given that the player may encounter them in a number of different orders, and because I have to add in some kind of artificial obstacles to prevent the player from triggering certain events before they're ready to be triggered.

Actually, this is a lot like the situation I had in the Harbor Town you might remember from my last game release. There was the introduction of a new character in the pub, a kidnapping at the Elders Council, and a meeting in the Guild Hall, the latter of which triggered a night at the inn, which opened up the further continuation of the game. It was tricky getting it all worked out, but I managed. And I think the current situation I'm dealing with is slightly more thorny, as more of the events are mandatory, and have more of an impact on the other events that may be triggered.

Which brings up a number of questions about how I want to design my game. I don't want to force the player to do things in a certain order, to the point that it feels artificial. At the same time, there are some definite limitations I have to place, because the plot elements simply wouldn't make sense otherwise. I suppose it's ultimately a matter of fitting the puzzle pieces together, but I'll admit, as smart as I am, I have a hard time juggling a bunch of different parallel alternatives in my head at the same time. The complexity, especially keeping track of all the different switches, can get to be very intimidating.

To turn my mind to other issues for the time being, let's talk about characters. One thing that appeals to me about the first Final Fantasy is its relative simplicity, compared to how much more complex RPGs got as the genre evolved over time. Especially as a first time developer, I feel like I ought to be taking more cues from the simplistic nature of that first Final Fantasy, so as not to bog myself down, considering how little experience I have (and how many different people they probably had working together on those professional games).

At the same time, sitting down and beginning to work on my RPG, I simply couldn't resist the temptation to imitate the better plot and deeper characters of the later Final Fantasy games. Think about some of your favorite moments from the SNES-era Final Fantasies. How many of those moments were great plot-based scenes? How many of those characters were memorable? Remember Cecil's transformation from Dark Knight to Paladin? Kain's repeated betrayals? When Golbez appeared and kidnapped Rosa? Tellah's failed attempt at revenge? Rydia's timely reappearance just as you're about to be annihilated? And that's all from FFIV. FFVI had a cast of something like 20 characters, all with their different personalities, back stories, and unique abilities.

In contrast, the characters you chose at the beginning of the first Final Fantasy had zero effect on the actual plot of the game. The only difference was in the gameplay, as the characters had different fighting abilities. My original idea for my own RPG worked in a similar fashion. Apart from the main character, the plot-crucial elf character, and maybe some vague ideas here or there (including the assassin character you met at the Sea Shrine in my last release), I didn't have much in mind as far as personalities and character-based plot elements go. My original idea was for you to build a party from generic archetype hunters - kind of like mercenaries - that you could swap at any Guild Hall. The main difference between the hunters would be their fighting styles - mostly what kind of weapon they used.

But, as I said, when I started working on my RPG, the temptation to create deeper characters that have more of an emotional impact on the player was strong. I'm just a little concerned about the added difficulty in writing story it's going to cause me. But I guess having more user choices for party formations that involve different types of fighters could have created more difficulty in balancing the combat, anyway. And that's probably a more frustrating (and less creative) aspect of development, so maybe it's for the best. I'll tell you one thing, it's gotta be impossible to wrap your mind around just how complicated creating a game of this type is until you actually sit down and start working on it...

Coming Attractions

As you could probably have guessed, the rate of progress in the development of my game has dropped considerably since that first month or so, when the novelty of the experience had me so excited that I spent pretty much every waking moment working on my game. And you're probably not going to want to hear this, but with Spring in bloom, I'm probably going to want to be spending even less time sitting in front of the computer, and more time outside in the sunshine. But rest assured, I'm committed to seeing this game project to completion, and I am very much aware that the longer I draw the experience out (in terms of being lazy and procrastinating, and not simply spending the time required actually working on the game), the less likely it is to ever reach that point.

So I wanted to let you in on some of what you'll be able to look forward to in my next release, which I am steadily working my way toward. If you've played my last release, you'll no doubt be aware of its somewhat splintered nature, and the fact that a previously playable portion of the game (the Grassland area) was off limits. Well, in my next release, I plan to have that portion of the game running again (with some modifications since the last time you played it), including some new stuff for when you later revisit the town (which I am currently still working on).

There will also be another all new town for you to visit, and - what I'm most excited to show off this time around - a white water rafting challenge. The gameplay for this portion of the game is a little bit different than what you're used to, but that's not entirely unheard of in the sort of classic RPGs I've been inspired by (for example, the river and underwater portions in Final Fantasy VI), so hopefully it's not too jarring. I don't plan to make a habit of switching up the gameplay, although it was fun doing something a little bit different for once, and I think it'll fit into the flow of the game nicely enough.

So, look forward to that! I've still got some work to do before I can put out that release, though. Stay tuned!