consequential
Picking up the slightly older King of Dragon Pass the other day, I’ve been just delighted by the intricate relationship of all its moving parts. If you’re not the link-clicking type, the game is one of managing a clan of fantasy barbarians, guiding their larger governance decisions as they navigate a world of god magicks, tribal relations, and tradition. I’ve been drawn in deeply in part by its rich setting, but much more so by its patterns of delayed and often obscured consequence.
The game is very explicit in its presenting the player with choices to be made, but keeps its hand hidden as to where each choice will lead you. Many of the game’s internal calculations are concealed completely and I’ve found the best way to succeed is to understand the beliefs of my people and act intuitively based upon them. Does that not sound brilliant? This system forces the player to invest in the lore of the game and honestly think through each decision, not knowing if it’s a trivial one or if it will come back to haunt you several years down the road. This leads you, as a player, to justifiably feel as if each decision is a critical one.
Playing too Michael Brough’s (excellent) prototype 86856527, I’m reminded of how a well-made roguelike will force a similar gravity on a player. You must keep the rules of the world in the forefront of your mind as you make each move, else you’ll fail swiftly and irreversibly. What distinguishes the structure of King of Dragon Pass is how these rules are tucked away within the legends and the history of the world setting. Only by buying into your tribe’s religion and dogma can you hope to act in their best interests.
It makes me think about how educational games might improve upon their frequent block-of-text/minigame alternations. It’s not enough to force a player to regurgitate learned trivia; where meaningful engagement comes in is when a deeper understanding is required to progress. It’s a real art, though, to wed this with compelling and rewarding game mechanics. But King of Dragon Pass does this and I now know more about their fantasy barbarians than I ever learned about those of the real world. Perhaps it’s the roleplaying aspect of the game which provides the backbone for this investment: by requiring the player to get into the head of their avatar, the learnings are based less on the system of the game and far more on the content. A victory, perhaps, for games as storytelling devices?
What would this system of consequence look like applied to other genres? What if Mega Man’s every shot could be tied to some potential future consequence? Would they come back four levels later to haunt him? Would the player start to think about their actions? How could a designer obscure the system enough for a player to look beyond the obvious patterns and deeper into the world setting? Ha! Perhaps Mega Man isn’t the right vessel to support this. But for games with a rich setting and tomes worth of lore, forcing the player to act in accordance with the rules of the world — as opposed to the rules of the game — could do a lot for their buy-in as well as the lasting intellectual impact of the game.
bervquest 