Author Topic: Storytelling in a sandbox: Harder than you think  (Read 4069 times)

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Offline Luis Dias

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Re: Storytelling in a sandbox: Harder than you think
Well, it may only mean that such games aren't to your taste. I'm not saying that every single game will be an exact replica of each other.

 

Offline NGTM-1R

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Re: Storytelling in a sandbox: Harder than you think
It's a simple rule of game design. Cutting off content is bad and annoys players; you have to give them something big or not do it. FS2 was praised at the time for letting you see both endings without much fuss. The rule still holds.
"Load sabot. Target Zaku, direct front!"

A Feddie Story

 

Offline Mongoose

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Re: Storytelling in a sandbox: Harder than you think
That's the main reason I'm not huge on crazy-branching-storyline sorts of games myself (and why I'm a bit apprehensive about playing through Mass Effect for the first time).  I like being able to experience the majority of a game's content on a single play-through, in the same way that I can experience an entire novel by reading it for the first time.  I'm not a fan of having to play a game twenty or thirty times over in order to track down every little event.

 

Offline Luis Dias

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Re: Storytelling in a sandbox: Harder than you think
But that's the fun in ME: You don't lose too much of the main storyline if you only play it once, but if you replay it differently, you will be rewarded for it with new content. Furthermore, if you are obsessed in getting "all the material" in ME or any other RPG like ME, you still have youtube. I've seen surprising dialogues in ME that I never caught in my reruns, and it's very enjoyable to watch.

But as I said, if that's not your thing, you will still have id games or any other linear story-telling games.