Player Based Stories

There are a lot of differences between games and movies, which I feel most of the public would know through an analogy about Mass Effect. Through this, you make certain choices and hold separate actions which make sure that the freedom is large enough for this to be “your story” which only fits the design of the developers by them deciding what happens when you make those choices.

Essentially, although you are only choosing one of several stories they have created, you feel as if it is your story, and you enjoy it more for that.

This is a typical D&D style of design where you have an idea of what sort of game you’d like to play and what aspects of the world interest you, and the DM is left to let you fly away from his story, however well crafted, to make something truly unique with the players in mind.

I myself played Fallout 3 with no intention of finding my father. Instead, I decided to lead my player on a trail of redemption for killing his first love’s father, finding some peace of mind for his crimes and starting a new relationship with someone who doesn’t hate him now. And given some of the random events that can occur, and the moral choices I picked as a result, being the good guy was a lot harder to me than to the game world.

This leads me to my suggestion. Pure player based stories. Let’s use my last suggestion in tandem with this one, so your character and quests are chosen based on your initial dialogue options.

When you’re finally released into the world, you are given no initial endgame goal. Instead, you have a vague, hand drawn map to a local town and maybe a note from a friend.

Around the world are several little plot pointers, such as wanted posters depicting powerful monsters or a town crier discussing the new and despised king’s newest policies or even just a peasant dressing up her daughter.

You are then given the ability to investigate the world however you wish to.

If you want to ask this young woman what her mother’s problem is, she can tell you about a boy a town over that she’s arranged to meet with, and the main storyline will follow this girl’s relationship with the boy and what their arrangement will mean to the world as large.

If you wish to ask about this king, you will be given hints towards either helping or sabotaging a resistance movement against him.

If you wish to ask about the monsters, you will be trained for a slowly strengthening monster threat in the world, which may lead to one powerful beastie who wishes to destroy everything.

You could head to a small town and run as an advisor to make the town more successful and fatten your own pockets. You could head to a temple and start a holy crusade to help the land and atone for your own sins. You could find a small town, and investigate mysterious goings on around there. You could meet someone writing an explorers guide and asking you for your help to learn as many of the little nooks and crannies undiscovered as of yet.

And whenever you beat that storyline, you are given an ending. A small resolution to your little journey that doesn’t restrict you, but brings you closure. A small bit of credits plays that shows you everyone who worked on that section, so the people who worked on the regions you have no business in don’t fill up your gameplay time.

After that, you can continue with your character to follow another storyline. Obviously, your previous exploits in destroying the godslayer abomination would be mentioned by the resistance as a neat little upper hand, or your internal relations with the nobleman wedding would be noted by your travel writer.

When you beat that storyline, another set of credits pops up and you can repeat this cycle all you want. 

And nothing against starting one storyline, but finding the threads of another story and investigating from another starting point.

This probably won’t exist for a while due to sheer scale of the intention, but every person will feel like the story they’re playing through is seriously their own. And every story the player ends up following originally will be one they're genuinely interested in finding out about, without the player having to get caught up in a boring section, giving up and feeling the game is unfinished.