Quest & Mission Design
Unique Mechanics – Project Texas
Sometimes when you design a mission, you're lucky enough to have it be something with unique gameplay - which can be much more trouble than blessing at times.
In Project Texas (unreleased), the team had created a mind control power for the player: it allowed them to inhabit any character's body that they could see, but there was a limited range to the skill, hostile enemies could not be possessed, and the power would break when the enemy took damage. Lore-wise, this power was supposed to be very dangerous, and not only had use of it vanished into semi-legend, but even when it was practiced, knowledge of it was kept restricted to those who had proven themselves worthy.
Right away, I knew I had a series of responsibilities to tackle in making a quest for them:
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It couldn't rely on combat. A final boss encounter was ideal, but making something combat-based wasn't really the point for a mind control power.
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Brute force or guesswork had to be possible. There was an internal dislike from the producer on forcing the player through puzzles, so every one of them had to either be incredibly easy, possibly guessable, or able to be bashed through - with the sole exception of the puzzle involving the mind control.
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The player couldn't screw things up. Nothing the player did was allowed to permanently mess up progression - which meant puzzles needed to be reset (or just break and cause blockers to disappear), and critical NPCs couldn't be killed... which was additionally difficult because the game's core design required that the player be allowed to kill any NPC and still progress.
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Lore dumps were necessary. There had to be a way to get the story of the power across to the player - but only if they were interested enough to find it out, and have additional reason to seek it.
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Teaching had to happen... but design kind of stood in the way. The mind control power had multiple facets to it, but since a lot of the elements of said mind control were in flux, but the quest needed to be in an alpha state before the system was fully designed. Thus a core use-case for the power needed to be established, and in a way that required the player to master it (or at least do it correctly once!) before they could complete the quest.
Fortunately, I had two things helping me out a great deal: one, a couple powers that I could count on the player having before they encountered the quest, giving me a better sense of what was functionally possible; and two, the assistance of a brilliant gameplay engineer who had created a number of very nifty new features that had yet to be widely utilized in the game as a whole. That way I had elements that could connect, and be both new and exciting as well as building on existing and tested skills.
In the end, I had a riddle-based puzzle that relied on the order the player hit items (which had a secret hint hidden on the wall, and could be guessed within a reasonable amount of random bashing ); move safely through a trap-riddled area (with hints showing a safe path, plus the player just being able to soak damage); a boss fight; and a bug (who could respawn) whose mind the player needed to possess in order to step onto a floor panel and open the exit door. All lore existed in side rooms, delivered by visions of the past (so the player couldn’t unceremoniously kill them and it didn’t break belief of a live being existing in a sanctuary hidden for centuries). It was somewhat still at the mercy of some trickier game mechanics, but within an alpha pass, it was about as airtight as possible for both careful lorehounds and fiendish puzzle-haters to get through and – hopefully – enjoy themselves.
Environmental Storytelling – Dead State
In the world of Dead State, quests aren't things that live out in the world, but are given by the people you choose to save and bring back to the Shelter. With extremely few non-recruitable NPCs in the world and a huge amount of places to visit, the onus was put on design to make areas that told their own stories rather than having someone explain what happened. Thus the Noisy Mausoleum came about: after looking at a pre-built apartment building model, I came up with the concept of finding a survivor holdout that had failed (emphasizing the "humans are the real threat" theme of the game). In this team, I did triple duty as level, game, and narrative designer, so all the visual storytelling was on me to make clear as well.
I initially built out the level in a state that was meant to be previous to the events of the game: thinking of who lived in what apartment, what they were like, and if they'd stayed or evacuated before society fully broke down. I took that information and shaped the space as if I were a player setting up my own shelter, accounting for things like an infirmary space, food storage, and so on. And then I switched into "forensic level design" mode and walked myself through how everything fell apart, step by step:
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An SUV crashes through the fence. Survivors quickly assemble as the enemies roll out of the vehicle.
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A resident is shot on the stairs. An invader is killed just outside the car. The noises start to draw zombies.
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Another invader kills a defender beneath the stairs on the non-barricaded right side, but is taken down shortly after reaching the second floor.
I went on like this until the tragic story was complete: all looters dead, all residents dead or fled, and courtyard peppered with the roaming zombies who remained, broadcasting the threat to the player as they approached. I wanted to bring an especially strong bent of realism to the place to make the player feel a unique sense of unease: that this complex seemed like a shelter that was functional and working - but one single attack by desperate and greedy humans was enough to destroy everything. It was an unfortunate reality of scope for Dead State that we couldn't actually have enemies attack the player Shelter in any significant way, but I definitely wanted to bring in the sense of that threat, and the consequences of their failure as a leader to prepare.
Lore Embellishment - Guild Wars 2
On the Personal Story team of Guild Wars 2, the path that each of the five races took through the first three chapters was different - but the game kept splitting paths all the way to the endgame. This led to a huge number of quests that were effectively occurring at the same point: an asura character at Chapter 1 of their story would be at the same level range as a charr character, for example, meaning the challenge facing each of them would have to be equivalent. Now imagine that fifteen times and you'll get a sense of how much the metaphorical wheel had to be reinvented to introduce players to mechanics for potentially the dozenth time, but having to keep each time as unique and interesting as the first.
For one quest, the mechanics were very simple: protect two NPCs in a single area for a certain amount of time. However, NPCs in question, Isola and Braugit, were two charr looking for treasure, and one of them was afraid of cows - a comedic element all on its own - and of course the object they wanted was in a place full of them... except they were ghost cows.
Knowing I was lucky to have such a set-up behind the quest, I knew I had two main responsibilities: one, to find a good spot on the world map for a hold-out that allowed all the player classes to succeed (and ideally learn more about dodging if they hadn't picked up the skill already!); and two, to crank up the humor and characterization of the treasure hunters to funny but not setting-breaking levels. The result was Salvaging Scrap, a quest made memorable by the enemies you fought - some surprisingly but not unfairly challenging ghost cows - and the goofy protests made by the huge doofus charr and his quick-witted smaller buddy.
Braugit: Isola! Here come more cows! Help!
Isola: Think about something nice, Braugit. Like bunnies or something. You like bunnies, right?
Braugit: I do! Bunnies don't moo!
Story Support - The Lonesome Guild
The heart of this game lies in the player’s companions and their relationships – making the core quests not only central to their character, but a chance to reemphasize the nature of the world they live in, and what made them who they are. Such was the case with Davinci, a Bumblebun, and the first companion the player gains in The Lonesome Guild. A shy inventor who was born without functional wings (a major disability in his culture), he suffered the shock of finding out that his mother was the one who actually crashed Altostratus - the flying city that had been his people’s home - in an effort to force the Bumblebuns to rebuild and make a place more livable for those who couldn’t fly.
By the time Davinci’s quest – A New Legacy – becomes available, the player has encountered only a few Bumblebuns in other cities before finding the majority of the refugees in the town of Tallyoh. Davinci initially asks the player to go with him to break the bad news of Altostratus’ fall to the few expatriates, and eventually, he and they begin to form a plan to collect the power core from the fallen city’s main engine in an attempt to restore Altostratus to its former glory.
Though the recovery element is a logic puzzle of assigning tasks to the right Bumblebun in order to get the power core, the main activity of the quest is a simple “Go Place Talk To X” progression (which serves an additional bonus of having the player travel through areas where they have new quests available to pick up and old ones to complete), and should show how far both Davinci and his people have come. The player should have a clear idea of the Bumblebuns being a largely isolated group whose citizens seldom visit anywhere on the surface, and whose own city is not only impossible for ground-dwellers to visit, but – as Davinci’s past showed – largely inaccessible for those who cannot fly. Davinci starts the game as being naïve and nervous, but finally stands up for himself at the climax of his character quest, giving a passionate plea for making the new Altostratus on the ground, allowing both the other cultures of the world to experience it as well as letting the Bumblebuns learn about the cultures of others. At the close of the quest, Davinci visits his dying mother and lets her know that her dream for him being accepted and Altostratus being a city for everyone is coming true. She corrects him that his dream is even greater than hers, and promises him she’s proud of him before she passes away.
With loss and rebuilding being major themes of the story of The Lonesome Guild as a whole, it was critical that Davinci’s arc led towards a positive future even as his mother dies. More than one character seeks to redefine themselves through their loss, often galvanizing themselves into being a positive force in their communities. Without giving too many more spoilers, Ghost (the player character/perspective) isn’t able to continue their travels with their friends, but having key character quests with them not only brings personal arcs to a satisfying close, but is a way to hint at a brighter possible future even as the immediate one seems dangerous and bleak.
Simple But Complex - Destiny
For the world of Destiny, Bungie designers were challenged to come up with Public Events that were a match to the fast-paced, frenetic gameplay - something that, by necessity, had to be understandable at little more than a glance and possibly a chirp from your Ghost.
Fortunately, the team was skilled at rapid prototyping, so we could quickly throw ideas into the game and see if they were worth building on. More than once, I was given a concept that functioned well as it applied to gameplay - but when it came to placing that concept in the world, certain elements had to be accounted for that changed the event significantly.
Oddly enough, even though its small footprint made the WARSAT the easiest event to place, it was one of the most difficult to balance. Something stripped down to the basics - "stay in this circle until time is up" - required a lot of attention to the area around where the event would take place, as the difficulty could be wildly variable depending on the cover (or lack thereof) that the player had at their disposal. In a similar way, what enemies spawned and where would make a huge difference, requiring me to be incredibly familiar with the enemy types: a single Fallen Vandal was often not much of a threat when a player was mobile, but when restricted to a small radius around a just-above-player-height object, Vandals - especially when cloaked - could become a lot more dangerous.
Knowing that audio communication was often just as import as visuals (especially when the player is doing something like avoiding being shot at), I made certain to strike a balance between too much information and too little, keeping the Ghost’s updates to key points that accounted both for the players who were in the event radius when it began, as well as those who arrived after it started. Playtesting helped me get a feel for if and when players were losing a sense of their progress while the event was going on, and if it felt like it lasted too long. The initial thoughts of the team were that events would take about 10 minutes in general to complete, and thankfully I was quickly able to winnow that down to numbers that were best suited to each encounter!
