Dhruin
SasqWatch
RPG Codex has scored an interview with the developers of the Polish post-apoc project, Afterfall. Here's the opening question to set the scene:
More information.
Thanks, Elwro.What will be the focus of the game? A strong story with an interesting main quest, or a more free-roaming game with lots of different side quests?
The top priority is of course the plot, however, its structure is unlike the established standards. On the one hand, we have a rich story put in a repeatedly branching main quest with multiple endings. On the other hand, there are dozens of side-quests scattered throughout the game world, the most important of which are career quest chains in various organizations and extensive major quests regarding the most important events and processes happening in the game. An innovation in this area are bypasses, thanks to which while traveling, exploring and performing tasks, you may find new approaches to major quests, careers, or even the main plot.
Let me give an example which has been already used to illustrate this idea: you have a quest requiring you to infiltrate the structures of one of Warsaw's gangs. The employer will usually suggest 2 or 3 methods of achieving that. However, if at some point the hero becomes the champion of the Warsaw combat arena, the boss of that gang will come to him on his own, with a proposition of membership and high status. That is going to create a shortcut, bypassing a dozen or so tasks that you would otherwise have to perform for the group before you got close enough to the boss. Discovering all of them will be very difficult even with several passings of the game. Thanks to this method, the more important a quest, the more ways there will be to complete it, both obvious ones and ones scattered across the world as bypasses.
I think a relevant, though still a bit distant analogy is a certain moment in the plot of Baldur's Gate 2, when you had to get money for a sea voyage, but at the same time no one imposed a method to reaching that goal. The player had to explore the world and perform quests in order to collect the necessary funds. In Afterfall, many such moments are intertwined with periods of almost unbounded freedom, and short times when the player is swept away by the unfolding events.
The second priority is our system, which we intend to develop with time and employ not only with add-ons and a sequel to the game, but also with some of our later productions.
More information.