Choice and Consequence

May 31, 2019

Design and development on Act 4 of Sleuthhounds: Cruise has been going on for a couple of weeks now. Each Act has brought its own challenges and number 4 is no different. From revisiting characters and locations, to exploring new sections of the ship, to wrapping up the story, Act 4 has a little bit of everything. Over top of all of this are the choices and actions that players will have made to this point.

Throughout the game players are given choices, both big and small, with how they approach different situations and how they talk to different characters. Behind the scenes, these series of choices affect the reputation that both Ampson and Homes have with those characters. This being the final act, the cumulative weight of all those decisions can now be brought to bear on how the player interacts with characters. Depending on what the player has done this may make some situations easier, such as simply talking to a certain character to get a new lead. However, if the reputation is no good then a different route to that lead may be needed.

[Going to any lengths for a lead.]
Going to any lengths for a lead.

Most games that provide choices tend to either provide ones that don’t matter or else ones that very clearly delineate between the “right” choice and the “wrong” choice. Choices that don’t matter aren’t really choices after all and so aren’t particularly interesting in the grand scheme of things. As for right/wrong choices I have tried my best to avoid those. My goal has been to create a story that is satisfying regardless of what choice is made. For instance, a number of the more interesting and fun scenarios in the game can only be accessed if the player’s reputation with a given character is considered poor. Traditionally, speaking that would amount to the “wrong” choices in the game and would usually give a less satisfactory story, which is really odd. In no other medium do storytellers shy away quite so much from bad or wrong choices made by the characters as in games. Any good storyteller will tell you that the protagonist’s journey is always stronger (or at least more interesting) if they’re dealt setbacks and have to overcome obstacles as opposed to just succeeding at everything first try.

The ramifications of player choices throughout the game don’t just impact the challenges and puzzles the player encounters. The nature of those choices also has an effect on the relationships and state of well-being of various characters. This all ties into the epilogue of the game, wherein the final destination of the characters is explored. While I’m not to the point of implementing those endings yet, I have started giving thought to several of them. The key thing will be showing how the choices the player made will result in the outcomes that are given.

Aside from the weighty stuff of dealing with reputations and choices, one of the fun aspects of Act 4 is that it allows me to bring back a number of characters for a last hurrah, so to speak. For various reasons, in Act 3 certain characters have highly diminished roles. That’s simply a nature of the investigation and the events happening aboard the ship. Act 4 lets me revisit those characters to give players a few last interactions with them before the end.

I’m quite pleased with how Act 4 is coming together at this point. Although it has some unique challenges, of all the acts it’s the one that, design-wise, is coming together the most quickly. After some loose-end tidying up early on Act 4 gets to the tipping point in the story. That’s the moment when side plots need to fall away to allow the story to run unimpeded towards its climax. I’m really looking forward to pulling these last design elements together.