Lords of Xulima - Update #14 Narrative & Quests

Narrative and Quests

Many of you have asked us about the quest system in Lords of Xulima. Today we’d like to give you a little information about our thoughts on this subject and how it’s being approached in Lords of Xulima.

Personally, I don’t like it at all when the story of a game is simplified into a list of tasks that the player must complete. When I played Oblivion, I started to feel overwhelmed and stressed by all of the different quests I had waiting for completion in my queue. Sometimes, completing one quest just led to two or three additional quests being added. It left me with the impression that instead of playing a game, I was really working.

Are quests necessary in RPGs?

It would seem that the answer to this question is obviously yes. It’s well established that an RPG has to have the typical quest system, a main quest line to advance the story and a number of optional side quests. Must every RPG follow this pattern? In JRPGs like Final Fantasy, epic storylines were fluidly told without having to resort to a quest system, though they had the advantage of being very linear. Games like the first few entries in the Might & Magic series and Wizardry VII didn't have a list of missions either, you simply advanced through the games learning about the story bit by bit, the drawback was that at times these games were a little too opaque and you had to guess what it was you were supposed to do.

The Main Story In Lords of Xulima

The main story is told through 4 themes that are developed in parallel and sometimes cross over. The four main themes are: The Divine Temples, The Impious Princes, The Divine Artifacts, and The Titans.

These plot lines advance according to what you chose to do in the game. Each time you advance in one of them, a note is added to the journal for that particular story arc. There are no missions associated with these; you decide how to proceed based on what you know of the story.

If you are not sure what to do, you can always consult your journal to go over the events again. Our intention is that the player immerses themselves in the story and enjoys it at their own pace and rhythm, exploring and learning about the story as they play. We want the player to do as they choose, not give them a list of tasks that they need to complete.

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About the secondary quests:
I think you believe that you are going to spend 95% of the game doing hundred of boring tasks (fetch quests) like in some other games, but in LoX it just the opposite.

As the story is so epic, and the protagonist is trying to accomplish a divine mission because the world where he lives is collapsing, it does not make sense that he spends most of the time doing tasks for secondary NPCs. The plot lines are the important part and you are going to spend the time exploring and advancing through those plot lines. That is Lords of Xulima, exploration & story.

Said that. I don't know why you suggest the fetch quests are not interesting.
There are about 3-5 quests for every one of the five villages. Many of them are not related to do something for an NPC, they are for helping in global problems that affect the village. For example, the Ogre in the road to Sorrentia is a very powerful boss who has a lair near with a mountain of corpses of the people who has tried to pass through his domain to reach Sorrentia. The spiders are a singular and unique combat in which you have to use special "spells" or tricks. The spores of Vermolio force you to explore one of the dangerous forest of Febret, the Goddess of Nature...

The side quest are optional, you can ignore them if you like, but they are few, interesting and fun to do, although they are not do epic as the main story.

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