Complex and Ingenious Story, Good or Bad?

[badgesareus]

Well, someone has to start this off. First let me say I really enjoyed this game and plan to play it again after I spend a few days catching up on everything I put aside to play it for a month, so my criticism is meant to be constructive. I found the story to be both complex and ingenious. It certainly helps to have played Nehrim first to understand where this tale has its roots. It is also rather ... Germanic ... dark & philosophical; I could almost hear Wagner in the background. I really applaud the translators, I think they did an excellent job with what must have been some challenging concepts to translate fluidly from German to English.

For RPG players who are looking for a meaty story, this certainly provides that. For a free mod, you can get away with that. But I think if it were a commercial enterprise where the casual gamer client is needed for financial success, it might be a more difficult road, for a couple of reasons. First, some of the books are quite lengthy, and it takes a lot of patience to read all the way through all of them. Second, some of the scripted dialogs are very long, and some players could be tempted to just click through them to get to the end of the dialog and get on with playing the game, perhaps missing something important in the process.

It must be remembered that this is an RPG; for some, the "R" - role - is important and they really want to get into it, so the story is vital for that. However, for some the "P" - playing - is more important, and they want to focus on exploring, combat, magic, loot, etc., and for them a more slender story would suffice.

The bottom line is - who is the target audience? For a free mod, less important than for a commercial enterprise.

There is also a question of balance, and I don't mean in terms of combat, magic, armor, weapons, etc., but of the overall design of the game. Quite clearly, sureAI put much effort towards designing a beautiful and interesting world setting, and they also put much effort into the complex story. But I feel the effort on story overbalanced the "playing." I understand the problems, that they had one arm tied behind their backs because they had to work with what Bethesda gave them to start with (so I can't criticize the crashes and all the Ark loading screens), and that as some of their team departed, they just couldn't go down to the local employment office to find a quick replacement for such talent. So I lament that the" playing" (meaning the unfinished quests) didn't seem to receive quite the same emphasis as the story and setting did. I'm sure they wanted it to, and I suspect if they have the time to finish the remaining multiple quest lines, those will serve to enrich the story even further, as well as the "playing."

I also just want to complement the music and voice acting, both of which were very superb.

[sorry for the lecture, but I'm a retired professor, it's what I do!]

[Metanoeite]

Thanks for your feedback!
The thing is that we knew that the target audience of this story would be small (and we said this several times long before release). But between you and me, if you made a mod in your spare time, the question about your target audience doesn't really matter because at first you make a mod for yourself, not for others. We're not selling anything and so it is completely irrelevant whether 100 or 100.000 people will play your work.

One could say that modders want to maximize the reach of their mods and so they should increase their target audience. Of course making a famous mod is fine, but make something that you want in your spare time is more important.
Some core members of our team are working in the video game business, which is fine but in the most cases (not all) you write stories for others, for the target audience of the game you're working on and often you have to made a story that is ways simpler than you want to do. For us Enderal was a way to develop what we want. Freedom. We wanted it and we wanted it as it is, which is a great luxury.

On the other hand, there is a target audience of complex stories. Maybe it is too small to produce a AAA game for that small audience, but it is great to know that we gave those people a game that they wanted. Usually, games are made for fun and if you prefer a complex and dark story, things become complicated because there are almost none of such games on the market. We gave them such a game for free and people are very thankful for that. We received tons of positive feedback via email or social media, ten times more than negative feedback and I can say... receiving so much more positive feedback in the internet (where are so many haters everywhere) is a completely unknown phenomenon for almost all video game developers.

The other thing is... the question of balance. There are tons of well written side quest and two very complex guild quest lines, they are already written and voiced but not implemented in the game. There were plans of complex crafting, alternative main quest and gameplay features but nobody could implement them. We started Enderal with a large team and seven scripters for quests and gameplay. Almost all of them leaved our project because quest scripting in Skyrim is a pain in the ass. We made the game with two scripters. Which are also writers, level designers and project leaders. These scripters are Nicolas and I and we never found new scripters in the modding community. We started those projects 2003. For 13 years ago. At this time it was ways easier to find people with scripting skills, it was even easier with Nehrim. But in Skyrim's community, there are almost none quest scripters, especially not in Germany. At the point we realized that we would never find enough scripters to complete our vision (I remember, it took 5 years to build the game as it is, it would take 10 years or more to made RPG content like AAA games with only two members), Enderal's game world and story were already written and we had to decide whether cancel the project or cut it down to release it, with tremendous consequences for side content, side features and balancing.

At the end of the day I don't think that it is possible to make a full RPG (with non-linear site content like Skyrim did) in a modern and complex AAA Engine as modders anymore.

[badgesareus]

Thank you for your explanation, I understand all of what you say. It is an outstanding mod, especially considering all the limitations. I wonder if there will ever be another complete game mod by sureAI. You all must need some time off from modding -- or maybe not, as it is your passion.

Did you decide to mod Skyrim just because of the TES construction kit? Would it be possible to do such a mod on another game such as Witcher 3?

Well, wherever your paths take you, good luck (and I hope someday the Golden Sickle quests and Rhiata (sp?).

[simtam]

Quest scripting in Skyrim is pita? You don't say!

Seriously though - I am under impression that the scope of story/playing/world of Enderal is roughly similar to that of Divinity: Original Sin, so I wouldn't worry about target audiences that much. D:OS also had that single big city surrounded with fixed-leveled wilderness, above all other superficial similarities that come to my mind.

[Nicolas Samuel]

Hey Badgesareus,

Thanks for your feedback! I can pretty much only repeat what Johannes said. I'm also very glad the translation turned out good.

The linearity of the main quest is something we are completely aware of. There were some things we would have done differently (and, for example, we initially planned for two more Black Stone quests, which should have also been highly non-linear), but all in all, the story Enderal tells isn't all about player agency. As a quest writer, we intended to "loosen up" the linearity of the main-quest by adding non-linear side-quests and guild questlines - the Golden Sickle quest-line (which has five different endings, and not a single lengthy cut-scene) and the Rhalâta were meant to provide such. While the Sickle will be patched in soon, the Rhalâta didn't make it into the game due to the reason's Johannes (Metanoeite) mentioned in his post.

However, I don't know yet what I personally will do after finishing my book project (which I'm currently doing). Given that the feedback to Enderal is so good, it might be an option to create an addon which implements some of the stories that didn't make it into the game, and maybe even create some new quest-lines (A treasure-hunter/archeologist guild would be awesome, with a quest-line that centers on Thalgard) which allow for greater player freedom (while at the same time staying true to our story-heavy roots).

The Witcher 3 engine would have been amazing, of course, but it released a little too late. My, I wish we would have had CD ProjektReds resources (particularly their amazing team). But, as Johannes said, in the end we were only two scripters for every single quest (and game-play element!) in Enderal. #HumbleBrag

Best,

Nic

[badgesareus]

A book project? That sound interesting, what's that all about? In German or English? It would be great if some day the Rhalâta could be done, it would be nice to see the undercity put to more use, so much effort was already invested to create it.

Yeah,CD ProjektRed did have just a wee bit more resources!

[Xagul]

There is one thing I have my problems with in your summary: " the casual gamer client"

To say it with Futurama's Nixon: "Computers may be twice as fast as in 1973, but your average voter is as drunk and stupid as ever." If I was a game designer, I'd gather a crowd of good marketing experts and give a shit about "the casual gamer client". We have to advance, so fulfilling the simple dreams of the average consumer is just a capitalist dead end.

Sorry for being so direct, but I don't like beat around the bush.

[badgesareus]

So are you saying the role of the "good marketing experts" would be to raise the awareness of the "casual gaming client" so they will be receptive to something a bit deeper, so that an excellent game wouldn't have to be "dumbed down" quite so much to reach them?

I think something like that could be done in a game like Enderal by having options in the dialogs so that a casual gamer (or casual reviewer?) could get on with the quest/fight/whatever, and those who enjoy a deep story could also get that. For example, in the finale with the machine, the dialog is rather long. There might be an option like [I've kept a journal of all that I've seen, do you want to read it?] as an alternative to the long history. That's already been done in the game in some dialog sequences where there is an option [More].

[Nicolas Samuel]

A book project? That sound interesting, what's that all about? In German or English? It would be great if some day the Rhalâta could be done, it would be nice to see the undercity put to more use, so much effort was already invested to create it.

Yeah,CD ProjektRed did have just a wee bit more resources!

So far, the book is in German, but if I don't find a German publisher, I'm thinking about translating it into English. My book as a similar feel to Enderal, but it's an entirely different setting, hard to put into words. In a nutshell, it's about a rather small group of rich people on a luxury cruise ship, who, by seemingly supernatural means, find themselves trapped on the ocean - i.E., no matter of what the crew does, they don't find land anymore, as if it has all mysteriously disappeared. Essentially, it's about what happens to people in such a situation, and it very heavily focuses on the individual characters. Have you ever heard the Christian term Psychomachia before? It's basically that idea translated to a modern setting with a (as I hope) tengaging story, relatable characters, and some Enderal-esque horror feeling.

As for the Rhalâta, yeah, I would really like to see that questline make it's way into the game, too. We'll see how things are once I get back. Maybe that would be good time to ask people for donations, because I doubt my book is going to make me (or the team) rich anytime soon.

[UngodlyGod]

How you implement "a complex and ingenious story" decides whether it's good or bad.
The Soulsborne series executed this very well, where the meat of the story is told mostly using environmental storytelling. The action-packed gameplay attracts those who don't care about the story, while the complex and ingenious story draws in those who appreciate well-written stories.