<snip: inplanting feelings in the hero>
the topic I started with..) So, in conclusion, I think the best way
to create thoughts/emotions in the player is not to tell them, but
to show them. If they go east in the cornfield, don't say "The
cornfield is endless, and you eventually decide to stop." Let them
walk for a dozen rooms in that direction, and they'll get a much
better impression of an endless cornfield. Similarly, the best way
to have the player think of the NPC as a friend is not to have the
game print out "Gee, Igor is sure a nice guy," but to put the
player and NPC in a situation that naturally leads to friendship
(say, have Igor help the player out in something), and the player
will feel it better, all by themselves.
This is a good point, 'forcing' the player to feel the emotions by
making him/her act it out.
However, I wasn't really thinking about explicit descriptions of
emotions, like "You are happy", but more along the lines of
Reading the scribbled hand-writing in the diary suddenly makes
You realize what it was your old Aunt Clara had been talking
about all those years...
This is a way to present facts that the player doesn't have, but the
hero does. To make the player re-live the complete live of the hero up
to the point where the story begins is of course impossible, but I
think that placing the player as a 'new-born' into the world, without
history, memory or feelings is not quite right either. I would like to
be able to place the player in the role of the hero without him having
to discover everything from scratch.
For playing of most of the works of IF today, the history of the hero
is unimportant, the game is mostly a game of discovery and exploration
into a previously completely unknown universe. It hero might not even
have existed before the game begins (an inter-stellar visitor?).
To some limited degree this also applies to the relation between the
hero and other actors in the story. Your example shows how the feeling
of friendship grows (and the relationship evolves), but what about if
the hero already has a very good friend and it is essential to the
story that this relationship is already established? Somehow we need
to make the player realise this and act out his part as a friend to
this person (if he so chooses, we can't make him of course, and this
is the difference between printed books and IF!).
/Thomas
-- "Little languages go a long way..." (ThoNi of ThoNi&GorFo Adventure Factories in 1985) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Thomas Nilsson Phone Int.: (+46) 13 12 11 67 Stenbrötsgatan 57 Phone Nat.: 013 - 12 11 67 S-582 47 LINKÖPING Email: thoni@softlab.se SWEDEN ----------------------------------------------------------------------