TITANS OF ETHER

JustMe · Ultima Fan Joined: 07 Oct 2021 Posts: 9

Don't know if this has been discussed before but wouln't it be
cool if you could give NPC's quests to do instead of the normal other way
around ?

Wouldn't it be nice if I can give Iolo the quest of delivering some
stuff to Lord British ? Along the way he can do whatever he must to
survive to acomplish this task. He could fight of monsters along
the way. In determining the shortest way he can even decide to use the
moongates, but if he walks past some very dangerous beasts and monsters he could die and a messenger brings you the unfortunate news.
So as leader of the group its your responsibility to give quests that
those NPC's can actually acomplish.

This way you will cause NPC's to interact dynamically with the game
world thats not bound by routine but by the actions you do. Iolo
could walk by a thief that steals the stuff you gave him to deliver
to lord british. A new quest is now outomatically generated as he comes
back to report the news and you as a group goes in hunt to retreive the
stolen items.

Another example you purposely send a NPC to its death you are
actually doing something evil but it isn't recognized in the game itself
as such. But you could lower his leadership skill if you can have such
a skill Wink

Corv · Posted: Wed Oct 13, 2021 12:16 pm Post subject:

This is a really good idea! We will definitely consider this when creating new quests.... Cant say more for now becasue I have to look first how we could accomplish something like that best...
_________________
Corv Dragon
-=(UDIC)=-
Leader of Titans of Ether
Lead Designer, Scripter and Worldbuilder of Redemption

Antagonist · Titans of Ether Fan Joined: 22 Sep 2021 Posts: 34

Correct me if I am wrong, but wouldn't this bring an enormous overhead in AI and world calculations ? As far as I understand Morrowinds engine it divids huge maps into smaller chunks which are loaded as soon as you reach the border of each unit. So in order to accomplish this the game had to simulate Iolo, monsters and world interaction. Forgive me, but this sounds like total lunacy. Fable planned such features (dynamic world etc) and after years of development and a huge design team they had to cut most of the features because the technical problems where too big.

Kudos to the Titans if they can pull it off, but to me it sounds like the best way to delay Redemption and The New King indefinitely. In my rather conservative views the TOE should strive to release an Redemption that has at least the features of U5 to U7 to satisfy the masses and then try to build new complex features for an expansion pack, the new king or an 2.0 version of the mechanics.

I care for a good story and believable characters. Everything else is just a bonus in my book (see, my favourite game of all times is Torment so this should explain my stance hopefully).

Corv · Posted: Wed Oct 13, 2021 2:38 pm Post subject:

As I said before, we will add the planned features (and more) not only as additional features but also as part of the main story, so just simply adding them later is not an option. This could be made with other features that we may want to make later that are "only" there for better interaction with the world etc...

We have a quite set plan of how it will be so dont worry that we do things that we wont be able to accomplish which will lead to delay. But also know that we wont cut the game in terms of design and features just get it out faster - thats a job that EA does well.

When we implement this suggestion then more in a way that the things that happen are scripted and dont happen randomly. So the npc goes through a completely scripted small adventure, maybe parts of it even in a way that the player cant see it but only hears the parts of the story afterwards which also already builds up atmosphere. Making that happen randomly would definitely be something that takes too much time when it can be accomplished at all, there i 100% agree with you. But if we implement it then you can be sure that we do it in a way that wont stretch the development time seriously. As I said I will think about it and then we'll see if we make something like that...

The main idea of it is good
_________________
Corv Dragon
-=(UDIC)=-
Leader of Titans of Ether
Lead Designer, Scripter and Worldbuilder of Redemption

Antagonist · Titans of Ether Fan Joined: 22 Sep 2021 Posts: 34

Oh, I'm cool.

And I always liked the idea of rumors spreading around Britannia, changing according to the deeds you did. I think that means another night-shift for the dialogue writers...

Van Hailm · Ultima Fan Joined: 20 Sep 2021 Posts: 17

Maybe you can simply make the questing NPC leaving the party, then appearing as you main character enter one of the POI the Questing NPC has to visit as a scripted event.

Later as a new dialogue option as the NPC has finished the quest and is again available you can ask him about his solo adventure.

Maybe this would be workable without adding to much complexity. It would also allow the team to introduce new places/items/npcs that would be triggered only if the NPC has finished the quest.

You could even branch it with a main character side quest such as rescuing the NPC from a jail or finding his corpse so he can continue the quest. The main point here is keeping it scripted and uncomplicated.