It's My Party, Whom I'll Defy If I Want To: Intra-Party Conflict and Drama in CRPGs
Back in the golden age of computer games in the early 80s, there was frequently an option in party-based RPGs to attack your own party members. I tried to figure out why in the world that option even existed. Was it simply something to trip you up if you fell asleep at the keyboard on the seventh level of the dungeon? My assumption at the time was that they were desperately trying to simulate the tabletop Dungeons & Dragons experience, and that intra-party fighting was simply part of D&D. Maybe if you were actually playing Wizardry with a friend, divied up the characters between the two of you, and he suddenly decided to start whacking on your characters in the middle of combat...?

Thus was the beginning of the potential for intra-party soap opera and conflict born in CRPGs.

(A better explanation might be that there were certain rare instances where a generally offensive spell or ability MIGHT be of benefit if cast on a party member. A character under the influence of a charm or mind-control spell is an example that has been brought to mind recently after having a charmed party member heal a final boss back to full health. But I'll ignore that simple explanation because it interferes with the point of this diatribe.)

The jRPGs were among the first RPGs that I'm aware of to have story take place among the party members in a party-based game, rather than simply happening to the party as a whole. I think Final Fantasy IV is credited with this particular innovation, but it was not without standing on the shoulders of giants itself. Ultima IV started with the party members as NPCs whom you had to recruit to join your party. Up until the moment you typed "join" in the dialog, they were independent characters. Unfortunately, after that, they became purely player-driven automatons.

Ultima VII finally upped the ante for Western RPGs and not only had specific party members play an integral role in the plot, carry on conversations with the player's "main" character (and amongst each other), but would also respond to the player's actions in a major way - they would leave the group if the player failed to behave in an Avatar-like fashion. This was different from the typical jRPG approach, where the intra-party drama was tightly scripted in advance, though only a minor dynamic point.

Baldur's Gate took the idea even further in Western CRPGs, going so far as to include intra-party romances in the sequel. Party members would get annoyed at you and leave for various reasons, including romantic rivalries in BG2. BG1 also introduced party members who came in pairs. This added an entirely new dimension to intra-party conflict --- players could deliberately try and get one particular party member killed to free up a slot without losing the paired NPC. This brought new meaning to the term "party management." Plus, it could get even seedier (and more like a soap-opera) if you arrange for Khalid's death in the first game (mainly because he was an annoying, cowardly whiner), and then became romantically involved with his widow, Jahiera, in the sequel. (Although canonically, Khalid is slain by Jon Irenicus at the beginning of the Baldur's Gate 2, which is a great way to cover up your murderous past... )

Based on anecdotal evidence, players generally LOVE this kind of stuff. Scripted party soap-opera-ness is certainly plenty awesome, but truly dynamic intra-party stories really adds what many players consider "role-playing." But this leads to some serious problems - key is the never-ending give-and-take between interactivity and storytelling. The needs of the one are too often directly opposite the needs of the other.

Computers remain notoriously uncreative and have yet to pull off a clear success in the Turing Test. Which means they remain poor storytellers and crappy at improv, and really horrible at just winging a portrayal of a believable NPC. This means that a good story is necessarily going to have to be human-generated with limited variations. A good story that actually involves the core characters that form the player's party is going to require both a foreknowledge of who they are, and an assumption of their presence and mindset at particular plot points.

This makes it more difficult to feed Khalid to the wood-chipper when nobody's looking. It messes up the story, dang it, so you can't just take him out!

In Persona 3, which is nice and fresh on my mind, the solution was something of a jarring multiple-personality between "social link" party members at the dorm (and in the dungeon) and elsewhere. This was sometimes explained by the characters expressing a desire to keep their relationships with you a secret from the others.

At one point in my play-through, Mitsuru broke off her arranged marriage with a really horrible little snob, expressing her desire to spend the rest of her life with my character instead. This little point was something she'd never actually gotten around to mentioning to my character - only showing vague hints of affection before then. She turned around, feeling exultant in her victory and standing up to the pressures of family and responsibility - and noticed my character was still there, and had heard the whole thing. Her newfound courage and resolve faltered, and she immediately turned and fled the scene.

A few minutes later, she was lounging in the lobby of the dorm as usual, all business, as if nothing had happened. Hey, her persona is a master of ice, a reflection of her own personality, so she had managed to regain her cool in a hurry. Good for her. Good for me, too, as it would have been irritating if she'd been unavailable for grinding (I mean LEVELING UP, of course! What were you thinking?) until I'd resolved the next stage of her story sequence. Or something.

But of course, this was simply the limitations of the program - the Mitsuru scripting in the dorm and in Tartarus has no references to the "social link" scripting. Those might as well be separate games, linked only by your ability to create personas for your character. The main storyline remains completely aloof from your relationships with Yukari, Fuuka, Mitsuru, and Aigis, and the expansion assumes that the (now un-named) main character had formed a close relationship with Yukari. Aigis's love for the main character remains largely unrequited regardless of whether or not the player completes her social link sequence in the updated version of the game.

While it made the game and story easier to resolve, it also robbed the interactive choices of some of their meaning.

Your party members form the "main cast," so naturally any story directly touching their lives (and their relationships with each other) is going to be far more compelling than one involving those NPCs you happen upon briefly in your journeys. But how do you do that when the player bases his party on the Marx Brothers, or if Aeris dies early and the player just decides not to use the ol' Phoenix Down on her?

That's an issue that game designers are going to continue to face as they push forward on the goal to improving story in games, particularly party-based RPGs.

Labels: Game Design, Roleplaying Games

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 7:10 AM (Permalink)