http://tinyplanetblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/08/tickets.jpg

Nah just kidding. Congratulations on the lines though

I don’t think that’s likely to change soon. Milton, you hit the nail right on the head when you called it “a million dollar idea” - that’s exactly what it is, and that makes it worth keeping in mind and mulling over when I have nothing better to direct my thoughts at. I’m not Will Wright, so I doubt I’ll ever actually figure it out, but maybe one day somebody else will have part of the idea and cause something to click into place in my head, or maybe I will have part of the idea and somebody else will grab hold of it and add the missing pieces.

Until then, this blog is the best place to discuss it, because nobody here will roll their eyes at the uselessness of such a vague and unfinished idea.

How you handle one mission in Oblivion doesn’t really affect how other missions can play out, and when missions are strung together, the strings are pretty much entirely linear. That allows you to make each mission as complex as you want because each mission is self-contained rather than part of a huge plot system that can get out of hand very very quickly.

I don’t like that solution though. It makes your achievements feel worthless and your choices seem inconsequential (because, well, they ARE inconsequential). I prefer the complexity and the codependence because it makes for deeper and more satisfying experiences.

Again, for an actual “automated” system (sort of), look at Fable and keep a really close eye on Fable 2. Since all the character interaction was iconic a’la The Sims, every choice you made could have a consequence because the consequences were so simple: If you’re evil, you get Evil points and people fear you - if you’re good, you get Good points and people love you. It’s an uncompromising generalization of character interaction, but it has a similar significant drawback to Oblivion’s approach: You’ve simplified it so much, it becomes shallow and predictable. The consequences of your choices in Fable will never surprise you. Maybe they’ve improved that in Fable 2. We’ll see some time around Christmas, probably

While every year graphics get better, the same cannot be said about characters reactions and freedom of choice in the storyline. Fallout multiple ways of solving problems and karma system are pretty much the limit and even games like KOTOR and Mass effect failed to make any significant advance (the games are great anyway) the problem is that this type of game requires a enormous team and thus the percentage of games with these features is much lower than what I would like.

Some kind of automated system would be nice, these types of games would be easier to make and consequently improve the quality. The good/bad/neutral guy system is kind of becoming uninteresting, but to find a more multifaceted viable alternative… hmm… well I guess that would be a million dollar idea

I think so

I think not!

Anyway, I’m not saying it’s possible to allow everything the player can come up with right now, but steps have already been taken to generalize certain parts of games. I’ve already described what Havok did for object interaction above, but the same can be said for open world design and player movement - instead of designing particular paths through each level as they did in DX, with an open world you can just design a whole city and let the player pick any path he wants.

Doubtlessly, the final bastion for this generalization will be realistic character interaction. It’s already possible to generalize it by simplifying it immensely - Fable and The Sims, for example, both employ iconic character interaction towards this end. Currently you just have to simplify it quite a bit more than I’d like.

Of course another approach is to simply eliminate character interaction completely, like in the Shock games.