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Author Topic: Story Line Suggestion  (Read 5994 times)

Hardlyjoking67

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Story Line Suggestion
« on: August 30, 2012, 08:13:13 PM »

Hey Alex, or anyone, I don't think there are too many guys like me that are in the place I'm at right now. After months of not playing Starfarer, I have returned and I have thought about and determined the main reason that I lost interest in Starfarer. It's not the community , the game-play, the music, or the graphics. I think all of these things are super-awesome. I think that where Starfarer falls so short is in its story. Yeah sure you've got some scattered ideas about the Domain of Man and the Collapse, but it's all so impersonal. Why should I care? How does this affect my character, my embodiment in this game (who I have never seen)? Not only have I never seen my character, but I don't think that he has interacted with anyone on any sort of emotional level. I tried to give my contribution to the story when I worked with the Caelus Project, but I don't think a real story can be portrayed only through words, nor will everyone to ever play the game download the mod, let alone read about/care about the origins of the Starfarers faction. Maybe it means making some scripted cut-scenes, or maybe it means that you need to draw out a story, but I just couldn't relate to the game at all.

Yeah I get it, this is an open-world/universe experience, but some degree of streamlining is needed. I think that any good piece of art: music, movies, paintings, and yes, video games, should be emotionally compelling so that people aren't drawn in because something is crafted well, but because it also connects to them on a deeper level. Any house can be well-made and serve its purpose, but Frank Lloyd Wright strove to create something that was beautiful and connected to people on an emotional level. This game is so freakishly well made and yet its just another well made house without its soul, its spirit, the story.

I think that the best games feature a synthesis of music and graphics as well as a great story line and characters. I'm not sure who has and hasn't played it, but Final Fantasy X is probably still my favorite game. The game-play and whatnot were amazing, but the characters and story line were even better. I got emotionally tied to my characters. I cared when the ending came out the way it did. I don't care when hundreds of my crew members die when one of my ships explodes. I don't give a damn when one of the other factions loses to another. And I certainly don't give a damn about my character. As far as I'm concerned he/she is basically whatever ship I decide to put them in. So yeah. That's my little rant/critique on the game. Hope it helps. I like, maybe liked this game, and I think that all of these amazing ideas would be put to waste without the story-line to back it up. I think that this needs to take first priority above pretty much everything else, but that's only an opinion.
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CrashToDesktop

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Re: Story Line Suggestion
« Reply #1 on: August 30, 2012, 08:17:34 PM »

Yea, storyline and lore make up a huge part of a game.  It can change how someone feels about a character, for me that's pretty much almost all the time.  A storyline for SF will come eventually, but it's just not there yet.  Maybe when character customization comes along, the lore will be fleshed out and you can thoughly enjoy the game in all it's glory. :)
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xenoargh

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Re: Story Line Suggestion
« Reply #2 on: August 30, 2012, 09:15:03 PM »

<gets on soapbox>

The thing about an open-world sandbox game is that the main story has to be told by the player; therefore, it's important that they have the ability to make a major impact on this.

This is my take on this subject, more or less.  I'm a little tired and it got fairly long; I doubt if Alex has time to read this kind of stuff but here's my take on this non-trivial problem of game design, which is something I have had a fair amount of experience dealing with in the past.  Really, am warning you now:  don't like TL:DNR, stop now, do not touch the spoiler ;)
Spoiler
Probably the best example of the problems inherent in this genre of game in terms "what's enough" that I've ever played was Freelancer.  

It had, in my opinion at least, a very satisfying, tightly-scripted main campaign, with a level of sheer resources (everything from top-quality voice acting from Hollywood stars to complex animated scenes) that an Indie game simply cannot touch.  It had fabulous writing and an incredibly-detailed universe and a pretty big art budget.

However, it really fell short in the open-ended game that followed the main quest, because there just wasn't much to do, other than discover random things that had been hidden all over the huge universe the art staff created, read the random nuggets of lore the writers wrote, and play out missions that, other than having a difficulty ramp and an eventual optimax point where the player was as well-equipped as possible and could defeat practically anything in the game, really didn't feel like progress.  

You were still Edison Trent, the universe was still static and untouchable, you couldn't grow past the optimax point or create real change.  Heck, you couldn't even get a date with Juni.  Talk about a letdown :)

Eventually, most players got really tired of doing the same boring missions and that was the end of their experience.  Mods helped a bit by adding new content, but due to the static nature of the mission engine and the total lack of documentation, let alone help, from the developers of the engine, most mods were increasingly-fancy dressup games, where content and minor rebalance changes gave players one last thing to mess with.

The X Series of games explored this issue very deeply and broadly, by making it possible for players to create and maintain whole economies, build vast automated fleets and eventually dominate whomever they chose to.  However, along the way, I felt that the designers lost the core components that really mattered; instead of being a hotshot pilot and living at the edge of your skills, you became a green-eyeshades banker / accountant, and the game basically became a resource quest driven by your willingness to grind at the mathematics of their fake economy.

Mount and Blade, and more importantly the semi-sequel, Warband, have found a fairly good middle ground; while you can own territory and take over the game world, they made leading your personal party the core experience and let individual player skill remain pretty important.  I felt that they erred far too much on the side of realism in some ways and too much on fantasy elements in others, but overall it was a good try at solving these difficult issues of how to build a sandbox with a purpose and to some extent a larger structure.  

However, it still fell short of finding the right magic, and the game designers introduced a lot of factors that were clearly intended to keep players from arriving at a final resolution via a tipping-point without going through a lot of clearly-artificial hassles, like the way they structured the economic system and more importantly the costs of having a big empire, where instead of becoming more efficient they became almost unsustainable.  This was gradually addressed by the developers and I think that if I played it as-is today I'd be a lot less dissatisfied with the core game design than I was when I bought it.

Personally, I think that the right course for Starlancer is the following:

1.  Use the lore as the backdrop of the conflicts that will be going on and the missions players can get, but don't tie players hand-and-foot to the lore.  The last thing I want is to be Edison Trent again, or be forced to choose a faction at the start and then be stuck with it until I get bored.

2.  Open up the code for building missions, both the tactical and "where-what-who" of actually doing them as much as possible, so that modders can extend what's possible as much as possible as soon as possible.  

Instead of Alex and the rest of the team beating themselves up trying to make a compelling Thing, I honestly think that it would be better to aim for an adequate thing that is very extendable and flexible... and letting modders gradually fill in the blanks for them.

3.  Make sure that players can eventually build large meta-structures, i.e. have fleets operating on their own, trade empires, etc., but don't make that the key to victory.  

Make players' direct participation the key component.  The easiest way to do that is to simply make it nearly impossible to gain strategic victories via automated conquest, by making the penalties for certain types of auto-battle scenarios so prohibitive that, sure, if you spend a few hours, you can build a huge fleet and go attack a station and win the battle to control a planet without having to actually play it out, but you'd get much better results by going and doing it yourself with your personal uber-fleet.

4.  Keep it simple in all the areas you can.  Really.  

Don't bother with realistic economics, because they're just a quick trip away from highly-artificial gaming and mean that people will be sitting and reading the latest opti-max guide written by people with unlimited free time to simply get moving.  If people want complex economics, make it possible, code-wise, but don't put it into Vanilla.

This is an area where I feel that the X series really fell short; instead of having a universe like Freelancer's where there were trade routes to discover and once you figured it out, you were good, they made it possible to manipulate the macroeconomics, build factories, build fleets... and then punished players who didn't want to get that deep into the numbers, which made the game less-accessible than it should have been.  

Make it possible for brave players, willing to drag their fleet of Mules defended by their lone Hyperion, to make more money with a single super-dangerous trade run than they'll make via safe, non-hands-on activity in hours of play.  Keep the risk/reward curve firmly on the side of skill and actually playing the game, not automation and numbers play.

5.  Never forget that a lot of us can't do more than episodic gameplay, and yes, we'll want dumb fedex questing and boss fights and even <shudders> the occasional escort mission (I really hate those, always have since Wing Commander).

I think that going to a station should be an opportunity to find "instant action" for various levels of play, so that whether you're flying solo or are flying a huge fleet of battleships, you will feel like there's always another mountain to climb besides gradually conquering the universe or helping one of the factions do so.

6.  Resist the urge to make the factions too large for the players to have decisive interactions with, outside of a main thread of story if that's desirable.  I'd like to make the case that it's not even necessary; Mount and Blade: Warband doesn't really have a "main story" and is, in my opinion at least, superior to the other game that was made with the engine, With Fire and Sword, which kept players on a much tighter leash.  You just can't get away with that in a game offering a lot of freedom of action unless you have the resources to go all-out like Freelancer did.  

Unless Alex and co. line up that kind of backing, which seems incredibly unlikely given the genre, I think they'd get a lot better bang for the buck by having a main storyline that basically has only three parts that matter:

A.  An early bit where players are taught the basics of how to play and a little bit about the background.
B.  Various faction-related missions that are static and offer increasing levels of challenge, but also offer the player concrete choices about how the factions feel about him or her.  Not taking them at all would give the player much more freedom, but would also deny them access to certain things, like some weapon and ship systems that would be very worth having later.  I.E., make when to play this part of the game out and to what extent a choice that early players make fairly casually, but then they'll go back and start over and make their choices more carefully depending on what they really want.  Perhaps they fall in love with an uber-armored Hegemony behemoth they can only get by doing their core series, or a super-awesome weapon that's only available if you can make Tri-Tachyon love you.

I'd even like to suggest that, like the Fallout series, it should be possible, should players wish to invest in enough time and effort, to see most of these choices, but not all of them.  I'd really like to see a Karma-like system, where you can get the factions to like you if you help them, but there should be choices that stay with you forever and taint your game.  Like, for example, if you turn to piracy occasionally, you should have moral choices that matter; if you ruthlessly kill people you get a lot more loot, if you merely rob them and offer them quarter, you get less loot but you aren't going down the path of pure Evil and may be able to make amends later.

C.  A final end-game sequence that everything else is just practice for.  Some sort of ridiculously-overpowered end boss stuff that you need that uber-fleet and a heck of a lot of skill to beat, and you will feel like you did something useful at the end, and then give different endings depending on what you did up to that point- everything from becoming the Sector Governor to being the new Messiah of the Cult of Lud.


Anyhow, that's what I think should be done.  Develop it with an eye on making it easy to develop a lot more Stuff in the future, keep a very sharp eye on complexity creep and kitchen-sink issues (i.e., it's much better to simply have artificial difficulty points than to make everybody have to immerse themselves in Farmville-level economics, let alone something really messy) and keep an eye on the true Fun, which is, let's be real, the act of piloting your own personal vehicle of death and destruction, assembling a fleet of helpers, and bringing electronic death to the foe.  Anything that takes the player way, way far away from that core is probably not a good thing, and it should get thought about quite a lot before putting it into the engine.  

I'd honestly suggest that, since this stuff is almost 100% non-proprietary tech and is straightforward gamecode that practically all of it should be shipped open and ready to mod from the start, because it's easier now rather than later.
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« Last Edit: August 30, 2012, 09:17:07 PM by xenoargh »
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Ivaylo

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Re: Story Line Suggestion
« Reply #3 on: August 31, 2012, 12:04:25 AM »

Thanks for your feed back, it is appreciated.


We have purposefully stayed away from the typical storytelling tools that are employed by most games nowadays. Quests, long character dialog trees and such.

This is actually a really deep topic. I think at the heart of how how we perceive a game's story is something I am going to call player affinity. This is something that indicates how well you will identify with the game and the story within the game as you play, on an emotional level.

Obviously, different people will have different emotional responses because of the difference of personalities, backgrounds and so on, but it goes deeper than that.

Sometimes, a person may be in a particular mood, which will cause him to have better player affinity to a certain game, or even a certain game type.


This is something that can easily be noticed if you have ever done any sort of pen and paper role playing, for example. Certain players will just be better at GMing (story affinity, realistic world) or playing (character affinity, better motivations for their player's actions, better emotional connection with in-world NPCs).


This RPG backdrop is actually how we are designing the storyline aspects of Starfarer. We provide the building blocks for a story, but you build the story yourself, and therefore, by owning it, you are much more emotionally connected to it.


All that being said, you don't have all the bricks to build at your disposal just yet... don't forget Alex JUST wrapped up combat, and is now working on the campaign layer in earnest. This is the layer that has most of those story line bricks, so I, being the loremaster and all, am very excited right now.


Once again, thanks for the great feedback, see you around the forums.
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Tarkets

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Re: Story Line Suggestion
« Reply #4 on: August 31, 2012, 03:47:54 PM »

I don't understand criticizing the story, when it hasn't even been implemented to criticize. Also let me guess, you were 12-15 when you played FFX
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Rowanas

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Re: Story Line Suggestion
« Reply #5 on: August 31, 2012, 04:01:41 PM »

I have to admit, I don't get emotionally attached to my character, or feel anything for them except as my tool for manipulating the CRPG world presented to me. The limitations placed upon you by CRPGs prevent the kind of character depth required for me to really get into character. That's why nothing fills the void of face-to-face roleplaying or LARPing. Trying to graft story onto someone who, in theory, should be entirely governed by my capricious whims and is, unfortunately, incapable of performing emotionally as I have dictated due to limitations placed upon him by the game (whatever the cause) is basically a lost cause, and it distracts me from what I play games for: excellent mechanics. When the plot is getting in the way of playing the game by forcing me to take actions, it lessens my enjoyment of the game.

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Hardlyjoking67

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Re: Story Line Suggestion
« Reply #6 on: September 02, 2012, 02:01:00 PM »

When the plot is getting in the way of playing the game by forcing me to take actions, it lessens my enjoyment of the game.

I don't know, I think that the plot should take priority over just game play, even if it means forcing you to take actions. I'm not really sure of a good way to compare this to other mediums, but I think its kind of like reading a book. Yeah, you have to read the book in order, you can't just jump from page to page, you have to read them in order for them to make sense. Maybe you don't like a certain part of the book, but you still have to read it. I know that video games a books aren't exactly comparable, but I do think that being forced to take actions, or read a book the right way, is validated by an effort to emotionally connect to the audience. I'll agree it does suck when the plot is overly streamlined and also of low quality, but I think from what we have seen so far, Starfarer can and will have an amazing quality of story line. I believe that if we want video games to be called an art, they have to connect to people on an emotional level. If all we focus on is game play, then its just a really well crafted program, and it can never ascend to the rank of art. Just like a ceramic pot can be either well-crafted or artistically beautiful, I think that video games share that same potential. So yeah, I'd really like to see Starfarer become more than just some amazingly well written scripts and programmings and evolve into something greater, even if it means forcing people to make choices and possibly even change the nature of the game.
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Alex

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Re: Story Line Suggestion
« Reply #7 on: September 02, 2012, 02:36:10 PM »

Looking at your ceramic pot example, does it have a storyline? Clearly, that's not a requirement for something to be art.
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Rowanas

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Re: Story Line Suggestion
« Reply #8 on: September 02, 2012, 02:46:16 PM »

I cannot disagree with you more fully, sadly. (EDIT: @hardlyjoking)

Emotional engagement is not all that art is, nor should everything strive to be art. I won't skip to the end of the book, but sometimes I'm not feeling like reading a book. When I don't feel like reading a book, I'll play computer games. One of the reasons why sandbox gaming has become so popular is that it allows players out of the story, to wander about and loot things beyond the scope of emotional engagement. A good mechanism is a rare and beautiful thing, enjoyable by everyone, including people with no desire to emotionally connect with a game-world tool. By all means, give us something new to head towards. That's what makes games like Skyrim, Baldur's Gate and Elite so popular; they provide destinations, and allow you to do whatever the hell you like with the journey. Games with significant plot thickness are a different genre, and while they do their thing well (Resident Evil, Silent Hill 2, I'm looking at you), they're functioning as a replacement for traditional media, not an evolution of it. Starfarer shouldn't be content with putting the player in the story when it has such an opportunity to let the player create the story.

P.S. It looks like the guys designing the game are firmly on my side.
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Aleskander

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Re: Story Line Suggestion
« Reply #9 on: September 02, 2012, 02:49:05 PM »

I agree with what xenoargh wrote. A plot is important, but when it gets in the way of the player making decisions it needs to be stopped(This is a very opinionated area, I know). I'd rather me build the storyline than have it set up for me, if I wanted that I would read a book. The way I see it starfarer is pretty much a sandbox game. It gives you a backdrop, and then let's you do what you want(I'm fine with this, but I don't know where Alex wants to go with this).

I get very attached to my characters in most games I play. I remember being distraught when one of my super-generals died in RTW. Same with Dwarf Fortress and Mount and Blade(no death there, but I'm sure you get the picture). You don't have to get the plot told to you to be able to like a game, you can always make your own plot in the case of sandbox games, or make up a story for the character.


Off topic bit, Are you the xenoargh that make the blood and steel mod for warband?
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Hardlyjoking67

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Re: Story Line Suggestion
« Reply #10 on: September 02, 2012, 03:22:35 PM »

I guess you guys are right. I guess I forgot that there are different ways to make different games and that Starfarer isn't as traditional as other games in regard to plot. In addition, I guess that there is a pretty big grey area when it comes to what is and isn't art. I dunno, I guess I can't expect the game to change. I think I was like "hey I want more story line" and I went to one extreme of the spectrum. Truly, I would like to see maybe not scripted plot, but more personality from characters. I just don't feel for them or feel myself in the protagonist. I dunno. What the hell. Arguing sucks anyways.
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Alex

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Re: Story Line Suggestion
« Reply #11 on: September 02, 2012, 03:25:23 PM »

Truly, I would like to see maybe not scripted plot, but more personality from characters. I just don't feel for them or feel myself in the protagonist. I dunno.

Fair enough, but, you know, that part isn't ... done isn't the right word - it's more like not started, implementation-wise. There's nothing to connect to, really. So while I agree with what you're saying, I don't think it's a concern because it's fully expected at this stage :)
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Chancellor Meatsteak

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Re: Story Line Suggestion
« Reply #12 on: September 02, 2012, 04:53:27 PM »

I agree that having a linear plot is not going to work for the sort of game Starfarer is. Now, being forced to take an action is not annoying when there is a good reason you can't do anything else, for example, being forced to unlock a door because that is the only way out of the room. It only becomes annoying when you are unable to perform an actions you logically should be able to, for example, being thrown into prison by guards you could easily kill if it wasn't a cutscene. The thing about sandbox games, which Starfarer is going to be, is that they are defined by giving the player a large amount of freedom. If you want to tell a story about the player going to Mount Cliche to free the world from the clutches of the evil Dr. Evil, and then you make it a sandbox game, you run the risk of the player running to a shack a hundred miles in the opposite direction because he/she heard a rumor that there is special sword there. In Fallout 3 for instance the game proper starts with you escaping from the vault you grew up, being chased out by the guards, and running off in search of your father. So what did I when I finally escaped, having been hunted down by the people that protected me, looking out into an unfamiliar world for the first time? Why, I ran to an abandoned museum to get a powdered wig, killed Tenpenny for his suit, made a gun that shoots railroad spikes out of scrap parts, and spent the rest of the game pretending to be an 18th century British inventor who was stranded in the future when his time machine broke, instantly making a mockery of the main plot. Games with linear stories can avoid this issue by setting up the environment so that only reasonable decision is the one that also advances the plot, and while this can definitely produce games with fantastic stories (my personal favorite being Bastion), it is not the only way to make the player have an emotional connection to the world.

Emotional connection can also be brought about by the mechanics of the game. To use the same example as Extra Credits*, here is a short flash game:

http://www.necessarygames.com/my-games/loneliness/flash

Now, you may care for it or you may not, but it does serve as a good example. It is pretty clear that there is a story, but more to the point, the story is derived entirely from the interactions of the entities present rather than from any script.

An example on the other of end the spectrum in terms of complication, one that more closely resembles a normal story, there is the Dwarf Fortress story of the elf Cacame Awemedinade. The civilization he was born to was at war with a dwarven one, and when he was five his home town was conquered and a new governor was put in charge. He became a citizen of the dwarves and when he grew to be an adult he married another elf and joined the guards. Two years later there was a battle in which he fought against the elven nation he originally hailed from, and in the fight he was wounded and his wife was killed and eaten, but he survived and the defenses held. In another two years the king of the dwarves died with no heirs, and, presumably for his valor against his former kind, Cacame was appointed as the successor, from which point he was known as 'Cacame Awemedinade, The Immortal Onslaught, Elven King of Dwarves'. Now, nowhere in dwarf fortress is it scripted that an elf named Cacame would become the dwarves' king; its just everyone is given a random name, two civilizations are able to go to war together, individuals can become citizens of their conquerer's nation, citizens can join the guards, guards can go in battle, individuals can gain reputation in battle, when the king dies his role assumed by his heirs, and if there are none another citizen can assume the position.

This organic interaction between entities present in the above two games is exactly the sort of storytelling that Starfarer should have. For instance there could be outposts be reliant on supplies, pirates that raid convoys, factions that give protection to worlds that join, and for factions to request help from the player. Just these rules could allow for a starving outpost that would rather stay independent beg the player for aid, and hope against all odds that the player can transport a shipment of food through pirate infested territory in time so that they will not be forced to join the Hegemony. It's this sort of emergent storytelling, not a linear scripted plot, that I would absolutely love to see in Starfarer.


*The Extra Credits episodes:
http://penny-arcade.com/patv/episode/mechanics-as-metaphor-part-1
http://penny-arcade.com/patv/episode/mechanics-as-metaphor-part-2

EDIT: Aaaaaand in the time it took for me to write that, the person I was writing it for has already gotten the point I was trying to make. :P
« Last Edit: September 02, 2012, 06:24:03 PM by Chancellor Meatsteak »
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CrashToDesktop

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Re: Story Line Suggestion
« Reply #13 on: September 02, 2012, 05:03:08 PM »

What if you make the storyline Skyrim-like?  A few main storylines (Hegemony, TT, Exar, etc. the main factions in the game).  Skyrim retains the massive flexability in gameplay while having an excellent storyline.  You can still stray far off the main storyline you choose, but still complete missions outside of it.
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Hardlyjoking67

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Re: Story Line Suggestion
« Reply #14 on: September 02, 2012, 05:31:11 PM »

That was what I was trying to get at. I wasn't calling for a linearized plot like FFX or other traditional games, but I was just asking for something you know? Maybe not even as extreme as Skyrim.
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