BioWare - Improved Sidequests for Mass Effect 2

MTV Multiplayer has another short Q & A up from the recent GDC with Greg Zeschuk of Bioware on how sidequesting in their future games, including their sequel to Mass Effect, will be addressed:

Multiplayer: I played through the end of “Mass Effect.” I had a good time with it. I actually liked exploring a lot of the planets. But what do you make of the people who have said they really enjoy the critical path much more than the side quests? Have you learned any aspects about how to improve upon that aspect of game development, which seems to me to be necessarily always going to be secondary — because they are the side quests? How do you improve that area of game development?
Greg Zeschuk, General Manager, BioWare: “Mass Effect” was specifically designed so there was kind of a straight shot of really intense story down the middle. And then, on the sides, we almost had supporting casts — and those were the planets you could explore. And that was really purposeful. That was to give the player a lot of variety in what you could do and give the player a user-driven, sort of personally customized choice as to how you could play the game.
One of the things we’re looking at for sequels and some of our other games is better technical ways, smarter ways to auto-generate content, to create stuff that seems richer to the player. Another thing we’re looking at — again not specific to one game, but just generally — is a way of tying those additional moments back into the story: whether it’s having to gather certain things for those other planets, kind of making them more central to the story but making sure that they’re still the supporting cast. [We want to be sure] that there’s something really purposeful about them.
I think with “Mass” we just wanted to say, “Let’s make a whole bunch of planets for people to explore.” They all encapsulated, amongst themselves, some fun stories to do. Some kind of spanned among each other. But [next] we’re taking it to that next level of tying them into the central story as well.

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On Mass Effect 2 goals:

Zeschuk: Side quests can sometimes be left on the side, so to speak. Pardon the pun. But a lot of times it’s even just getting that whole game done, that first shot [that is important]. We look at “Mass Effect 2” as incredibly exciting. Just the amount of effort and knowledge and know-how that went into building the technology for the first one is huge, and [we now have] the chance to actually make things a little bit richer.
We look into BioWare’s history and we’re really aiming for what happened with “Baldur’s Gate II” compared to what happened with “Baldur’s Gate” one. “Baldur’s Gate” one — extremely solid game, huge impact on the industry. But with “Baldur’s Gate II” we just took it to a whole new level. And I think that’s what we’re excited about with “Mass.”

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More information.

The phrase "auto-generate" content is the problem I have with that interview. I'd like to see a return to the good ole days when RPG's were designed, not generated by algorithms.

I believe that "auto-generate" in that context doesn't mean "a computer writes the script" as much as "we make uncharted worlds maps that don't suck".

I'm sure that developers have always used tools that could automatically create content. That doesn't mean it can't be touched up by hand afterwards; it just means that they can do more in less time. I don't think auto-generated content here necessarily means procedural content.

They should actually go further with auto-generating of content since they can spend more time on making that content good rather then wasting time on doing the basic creation of the content.

Example: Say you need to make a city full of npcs with certain default topics. You can quickly draw a design and npc locations by gender for the city. You could then run that through a generator with options for the architecture, races, terrain, ect. Then it would create the city and after that you can modify it to give the city it's own feel. Without that you would have had to construct the buildings one by one and created the npcs individualy and would have had to rush so you can get dome by the deadline.

Which city would be better; the auto-generated city that was carefully modified to make it feel unique or the handbuilt city that had to be rushed to get done on time?

PatrickWeekes said:

I believe that "auto-generate" in that context doesn't mean "a computer writes the script" as much as "we make uncharted worlds maps that don't suck".

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That was how I read it - and it is a constant challenge. You can still so often easily see the difference between games with 'random dungeons' compared to 'hand-made' ones.

I prefer hand-made in pretty much all cases, because I've never seen convincing auto-generated dungeons or quests.

Which reminds me, about hand-made dungeons.

Am I alone in thinking this, or did Oblivion have the worst hand-made dungeons in the history of hand-made dungeons? 99% of them felt totally auto-generated. I remember hearing they had a week to design each of them with very powerful tools. I have no idea what kind of level designers they have working for them, but I can pretty much guarentee my dungeons would be infinitely more interesting given some time to learn the editor. I'd drown you all in lore-based puzzles!

Just a little observation

DArtagnan said:

Am I alone in thinking this, or did Oblivion have the worst hand-made dungeons in the history of hand-made dungeons?

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No. The dungeons in Dungeon Lords are each about 100x better.

txa1265 said:

No. The dungeons in Dungeon Lords are each about 100x better.

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I'm assuming that's either intense sarcasm or a typo.


Also, no argument will ever convince me that auto-generated content is superior to "hand-built".

JDR13 said:

I'm assuming that's either intense sarcasm or a typo.

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Hyperbole, perhaps. But I really meant it - while there are many flaws in Dungeon Lords, the quality of the dungeon design isn't one of them. Cool puzzles, nice traps and overall distinct feel. Oblivion's dungeons were pure crap after that.

txa1265 said:

Hyperbole, perhaps. But I really meant it - while there are many flaws in Dungeon Lords, the quality of the dungeon design isn't one of them. Cool puzzles, nice traps and overall distinct feel. Oblivion's dungeons were pure crap after that.

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Ok I get it, I misunderstood your first reply. I thought you were disagreeing with DArtagnan's opinion on Oblivion.

I don't think Oblivion's dungeons are really that terrible as far as the layouts are concerned. It's that same overused color palette that kills it for me.

JDR13 said:

Ok I get it, I misunderstood your first reply. I thought you were disagreeing with DArtagnan's opinion on Oblivion.

I don't think Oblivion's dungeons are really that terrible as far as the layouts are concerned. It's that same overused color palette that kills it for me.

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To me, it was neither the layouts or the color palette.

It was the fact that almost none of them had puzzles or significant story elements of any kind. Sure, some had a book or something with a paragraph related to some NPC you just killed, but even that was rare. Some even had a button that exposed something somewhere.

I grew up with games like Dungeon Master, Eye of the Beholder, Black Crypt, and similar. They really knew how to make interesting dungeons back then, especially considering the technology difference.

I'd MUCH rather have had a tenth of the dungeons in Oblivion, with ten times the detail and care. That would still make for a good 30-40 dungeons, which would be plenty if they were bigger.

Of course, Morrowind was even worse and though they didn't auto generate dungeons there either, they did re-use layouts all the time.

I find this particularly strange, because anyone with a handful of braincells must see that these games have exploration as one of the primary appeals. In fact, to me, it's exactly what draws me to them in the first place. They have this utterly beautiful engine, and yet they fail horribly to inspire exploration. What exactly is the point in going off the beaten path if you know exactly what to expect? It's contradictory design to the point of madness.

It's that, coupled with the desperately dull character system that really kills those games for me.

Don't get me wrong, I love skill-based systems as much as the next guy, and I like the idea of being able to customize my class to a large extent. However, it's also totally without flavor and getting 1% every now and then is about as exciting as watching hair grow. I know they tried with their addition of "powers" every 25% - but it was far too little.

Again, why would I want to develop my character if there's nothing to look forward to? Ok, so I get a little better at this or that - but it never really enters your mind and you never get the sense that you're powerful.

Look at Fallout for how to do a skill-based system correctly.

The level scaling didn't exactly help there either, but now I'm starting a full-scale Oblivion bashing so I'll just stop now.