11th November 2004, 2:32 PM
And anyway, MP isn't a book, it's more like what a game should be: taking influences from older formats and changing them to fit the differences of a game. Games' unique factor is their interactivity. So in MP's case, that is expressed with making you look for and seek out the backstory elements to know what is going on and about the world around you. In a good PC RPG it's done through dialogue trees and some degree of open-ended design that doesn't make you spend all of your time on the main quest. Strategy games often seem to have less... that is, more linear stories. Once in a while you will find branching missions or multiple goals that lead to different results, but not often... adventure games? For them it is a mix. They've got a high degree of linearity, but also optional aspects (looking at things, etc) in most of them that give you more information about the world if you want it...
What MP really does differently is that it doesn't have much of a story for what is happening DURING the game and only has a story that explains what happened before the game started and why the events that are happening are happening. This is a design decision that I don't mind too much because that backstory is interesting enough that I don't miss that aspect really...
What MP really does differently is that it doesn't have much of a story for what is happening DURING the game and only has a story that explains what happened before the game started and why the events that are happening are happening. This is a design decision that I don't mind too much because that backstory is interesting enough that I don't miss that aspect really...