Challenge

[pacguy191]

[QUOTE=DaHeckIzDat]I know this will never happen, as it would take a ridiculous amount of data and memory, but hey- its a cool idea, right?[/QUOTE]
I'm actually convinced that it's not too out there. Using something like RAGE to power the one huge world that you'd wander around, the rest of it would just be changing entity, NPC and sound data.

If it's not possible now, someone's gonna make it possible.

I remember seeing something about how it doesn't matter if the player can actually change the world with their actions as long as they feel like they did. So I guess there's that too.

[ptdebate1]

[QUOTE=DaHeckIzDat]I've been thinking a lot lately if it would be possible for a game to actually craft a story completely around the player's actions. I mean, take it even further than Mass Effect did. You start off with a completely clean slate, dropped off in the middle of a big open world, and the story starts forming itself the moment you begin to interact with what's going on . For example, you're just walking through the woods and you see somebody being attacked by bandits. You could run up and save the man, who would then run off and tell people he'd just been waved by a hero. A few minutes later, a bunch of the King's knights come riding up to you, saying that the king has heard of what you've done and would like you go join his army. You join as a high ranking officer, and are thrust into the war he's in with another kingdom. At the last moment, though, you betray the king and put a knife in his back, so you just created your own twist to the story, and suddenly everyone is hunting you down for high treason. On the other hand, could NOT save the man in the woods. You could let the bandits rob and murder him, and then stealthily go and kill the bandits for all their loot, thereby beginning a completely different story about you becoming a master thief. Well, that was certainly a long winded explanation, but i finally got my point across. I know this will never happen, as it would take a ridiculous amount of data and memory, but hey- its a cool idea, right?[/QUOTE]

One of my college professors called this concept a "narrative ecology" rather than an "interactive narrative." It's a great idea and I hope one day the gaming industry will reach that point. Dishonored and Elder Scrolls are good first steps in that direction, although Dishonored is compromised by its binaries (like Mass Effect) and the Elder Scrolls by its quest structure.

[DaHeckIzDat1]

I think the biggest issue would have to be making the entire world work in real time. Majora's Mask did this, and I think Final Fantasy XIII did as well, but this would be taking it to a whole different level. The reason MM was able to do that was because you had a time limit. After a set amount of "days," you would either have to restart the cycle or the game would end. In a game like om describing, there would have to be no time limit so that you can truly play the game the way you want. That would also mean that whatever actions you take would have to affect the entire world in real time as well, so that every NPC's programming would change to accommodate your actions, while still holding true to their original design. Can you imagine a world as big as Skyrim doing that? That would take so much intricate programming to make it work without the game falling apart that it's mind boggling... it might be possible someday, but not for a long time, I think.

[pacguy191]

You could probably handwave the time part by making it so the main character could stop time whenever he wanted (when the game was off or the player became largely inactive)