Narrative Design

The following text below is a transcript of a video created by White Collar and posted on YouTube. This video details several game systems and best practices for Narrative Design in modern Bethesda RPG's with specific emphasis on Fallout 4. Please note, the text below is not meant to be a guide or a tutorial but instead to serve as an introduction to those various systems. Links may be introduced within these sections that you can follow to learn more. I sincerely hope you find this useful, and please feel free to reach out to me if you have any questions or feedback regarding the video. -White Collar

Introduction

    Hello again everybody my name is White Collar, today I am excited to present a video that came about as an attempt to enhance the relationship and understanding between Fallout 4's game mechanics and narrative writing for quests. Myself and my good friend Systoliker, who is the author of Nuka World Plus and lead programmer for fallout miami, will be walking through the mechanics and tools available within Fallout 4 to help enhance and carry out the narrative you are writing for a quest. Additionally we will also examine how to handle the player character and their unpredictable actions, through the use of accounting for often overlooked scenarios that could occur during a given quest.  The goal of this video is not to be a tutorial for how to implement a quest or how to construct a quest narrative, but rather to provide you, the writer, with information to keep in the back of your mind as you craft these stories to help carry out the plot you are trying to sell to the player. This video is broken up into two main parts, the first examines the tools available to help construct your story within the game, and the second focuses on potential scenarios that are commonly overlooked in quest writing which can be addressed with the tools we discuss in the first section. The description of this video also contains timestamps for your convenience in navigating the various portions of the presentation.

Toolbox

Introduction

    Before we examine scenarios that arise from the player's unpredictable actions, we first want to discuss what tools are available for handling these situations as well as being available to help your narrative interact and engage the player, simply put, these tools help the player to feel as though they are a part of the story rather than observing it. 

Logs Vs Objectives Vs Stages

    There are three core building blocks to almost every quest in the Creation Engine, quest stages, quest logs, and quest objectives. The important thing to realize is that these items are almost completely independent from each other despite all being connected to the quest. Quest stages are incredibly powerful, they are the driving force for nearly everything that takes place behind the scenes for the game, they can execute layers of code and are used as gates to nearly everything including dialogue, perks, new locations, factions, crafting recipes, and much more. But from a narrative perspective, they are used to display the quest log to the player. Each quest stage can only have one quest log associated with it. These logs are frequently overlooked in quest summary sheets, mostly because they are not very obvious in game, but nonetheless they are a crucial piece of world building. To clarify, the quest log in fallout 4 is shown when hovering over a particular quest in the pipboy and pressing the button labeled “Show Summary”. The log describes the events that just transpired and usually serves as an explanation for the stated objective, which is the simplified and much more obvious direction to the player for what to do to advance the quest. Every Bethesda Game Studios title, uses the first person singular to write the quest log which explains the recent events of that quest from the in-game player's perspective. 
    Quest objectives, as I just briefly mentioned, are totally separate from stages and from logs, there can be multiple objectives for any section of a quest, objectives can be conditional, meaning different objectives can appear based on nearly any set of criteria imaginable, they can persist through multiple stages and logs of a quest and can be displayed, completed, and redisplayed at will. Furthermore, objectives could be labeled as “OPTIONAL” meaning that they are not entirely necessary to complete the quest per se but could be used to gain more experience, obtain an alternate ending to the quest, connect to another quest arch, or simply provide more roleplaying opportunities. The objective markers are almost equally as versatile, they can point to any object, person, location, or even an item within a container, within a location. Multiple objective markers can be active at any time, similarly objective markers are totally optional. It is completely possible to have objectives displayed without markers that point to an exact location. Or, markers can be used to point the player to a general location to search for something specific within an area. Lastly, objective markers can “move” meaning that the player can follow a series of markers to eventually reach a particular goal. 

Conditions

    We mentioned that objectives can be conditional, condition statements can gate access to more than just quest objectives, their use extends to dialogue, crafting recipes, and even entire quests. Nearly anything that occurs in the game world can be used as a condition statement to determine how the narrative proceeds. Perhaps the most important usage of conditions lies within dialogue, nearly any set of criteria imaginable can be used to specify which dialogue options the player has to choose from, or decide which response an NPC returns for those options, or even determine if multiple NPCs should be speaking during a scene or be using the same dialogue lines. Examples include changing the NPC's greeting to the player based on which quests they have completed or how far along they are in a particular quest, providing more or less information based on whether or not that NPC has met the player before, being friendly or standoffish based on whether or not the player is wearing a particular piece of clothing or is a member of a friendly or enemy faction, being scared or nervous depending on if the player has their weapon drawn, whispering or speaking loudly depending on whether or not the player is currently sneaking, and of course any number of outcomes depending on the player's level of a particular skill, possession of a dialogue perk, or level of charisma. 
    There are near infinite possibilities for determining dialogue lines using these and many other condition statements which are listed in detail on the Creation Kit wiki, a link to them is provided in the description of this video. Furthermore, these condition statements can be compounded with each other to produce a complex set of criteria leading to a particular option. For example, one line of response could be gated behind the player's membership in a faction AND the completion of a particular quest, AND that they have visited a certain location. Simply put, condition statements allow dialogue to react to the player's interactions with the world and truly enable NPC's to deliver a convincing role of living in that environment.

Activators

    Another extremely powerful tool in your kit, activators, can be used to do literally anything you can imagine occurring in the world space. Not only can they do anything, they can also be anything, a dead body, a liquor bottle, a TV screen, a door, a box of cigars, a statue, or even an entire building. From a narrative standpoint, activators can be used to start a scene of dialogue, to trigger an ambush of enemies, to unlock a new location, to play a sound, to move objects around, to teleport the player and their companions, and so much more. Essentially, activators are the most versatile tool available to you for interacting with the player.

Talking Activators

    One particular branch of activators, known as “talking activators”, can be used to deliver dialogue. The most popular usage of these manifests in the form of intercoms, in Fallout 4 these appear  outside the Cabot House, Diamond City, and many more locations. However, these are also very diverse in their appearance and can be anything you like, including the Mr House monitors from new vegas, a drain or well to give the illusion of talking to somebody down in inside a pipe or hole, a window or keyhole to indicate speaking to someone through a door, and of course any other scenario you might imagine. Talking activators are a great way to deliver dialogue in an unconventional manner to break up the typical structure of face to face interaction and can be used to confer metaphorical and physical distance between the player and whomever they might be interacting with.

Holotapes

    Another method for delivering dialogue, which I am sure you are all familiar with, are holotapes. These are excellent for delivering audio information that would logically be kept as a recording, things like personal journals, research logs, interrogation recordings, etc. can all be stored as audio holotapes that the player can listen to in their pipboy. However, holotapes can also deliver text based information.  The same examples provided above can be contained in miniature “programs” on a holotape, a lot of text can be stored in menus, sub menus, and pages all organized into a single holotape for the player to read through in their pip boy. However, holotapes can also be “smart” for example, reading a particular menu entry can advance a quest, complete an objective, or cause a particular event in the game world to occur. Examples include completing an objective to learn about what happened at a particular location by reading a holotape and then returning to the quest giver, or using an entry in a holotape to “send out a signal” to unlock a door, activate/deactivate an alarm, or detonate a placed explosive. As you might have suspected combining holotapes with conditions can create interesting dialogue scenarios where a player's response options change depending on information they “learned” by reading holotapes. These items are simple yet effective pieces of world building that provide an opportunity to reward the player with more content for seeking them out and learning more about this virtual world they have come to inhabit.

Terminals and Notes

    Along the same vein as holotapes, terminals are also excellent methods for delivering text based information to players. The only difference between terminals and holotapes is that terminals are stuck in one location whereas holotapes are portable. In addition to adding bits of lore for the player to find, terminals are used to control turrets, doors, alarm systems, etc. Again, terminals can be combined with conditions to unlock dialogue options and responses, advance quests, and initiate events in the game world. Another key difference is that terminals can be locked, much like doors, they can either be hacked based on skill level or can be opened with “passwords”. Passwords can be used from a narrative standpoint to be rewards for dialogue skill checks or exploration, or even completing optional quest objectives to make a path forward a bit easier. 
    A much more simplistic alternative to terminals, notes are also often used to deliver lore or information to the player. These offer a bit of interaction in the sense that simply reading a note can advance a quest or start one, complete an objective, or initiate an event. Notes are more ideal for scenarios where high tech communication does not make sense, but written text is still viable. Additionally, both notes and terminals are capable of displaying images, one of the most memorable examples occurs when the player kills Mr House in Fallout New Vegas and an obituary appears in the player's pip boy with an image of House. Notes and terminals are great bits of world building that can offer insight to what the world was like before the apocalypse and can add mystery to a location based on the information left by previous visitors or inhabitants.

Containers

    Perhaps the most subtle and most often overlooked tool available to you, are containers. Once again containers can take many forms, a box, a chest, a pot, a vehicle, a character, a dead body, or anything else you can think of can all be made to hold items. However, from a narrative standpoint, it is important to remember that removing an item from a container, or placing one in it, can trigger events to fire in the game. We can advance a quest once the player pulls an item from a corpse, initiate a scene to happen once the player reverse pickpockets something into another character, and much more. While the use cases for container based quest events are a bit rare, they are nonetheless helpful should those occasions arise.

Puzzles and Traps

    In addition to high loot containers being rewards for quests, they can also serve as rewards for puzzles. Puzzles can take on many different shapes and sizes, they can be as simple as searching for a key somewhere in a dungeon, all the way up to more complex puzzles that are frequent in Skyrim dungeons or the code wheel that the Railroad uses to guard their hideout in Fallout 4. Puzzles require collaboration with both level designers and implementers to ensure the intended effect of the puzzle is delivered as accurately as possible. From a narrative perspective, puzzles can be a part of an NPC's character and their role in the story, for example Malcolm Holmes in Fallout New Vegas and the Star Bottle Cap quest, or George who would sell a map to get past the Boomer's artillery fire and help the player get into their compound. As a writer, you may need to consider adding information specific to a puzzle either for dialogue or for notes providing hints or for the actual puzzle itself. Furthermore, they are an excellent way to establish the identity of a new faction, for example the Railroad puzzle conveyed the secrecy of the organization, and the artillery from the Boomers emphasized their commitment to isolation, by forcing the player to spend time interacting and thinking through a challenge it conveyed the faction's commitment to that ideal. Naturally puzzles don't always work in every scenario but are certainly fun and unique game mechanics when done appropriately.
    A frequent complement to the more complex puzzle scenarios are traps. In Skyrim, traps took the form of shooting poison darts at the player when they failed the combination to a puzzle door, or stepped on a pressure plate and triggered a swinging log. While perhaps more high tech in nature, Fallout traps can be used to the same effect. Tripwires, landmines, cymbal monkeys, tesla arcs, and more can be scattered around a dungeon to force the player to slow down and take their time when moving through the area. With regard to narrative, traps can again be indicative of a particular NPC's character, such as a crazy hermit who barricades himself in a cage guarded by traps, or a location guarded with improvised traps by a small raider group. When writing for a quest, if you think traps would work for the location or character in question, you may need to consider dialogue concerning them. For example, having a companion comment about the presence of traps whenever the player disarms or accidentally activates a trap in a location, or an NPC taunting the player after a trap is triggered. While the implementation of such traps typically falls more into the level design department, they can also carry weight for the narrative and dialogue of a quest arc.

Magic Effects

    A common side effect of traps are what are known as magic effects. The name is a holdover from the Elder Scrolls series when Bethesda made their transition to the Fallout IP. These magic effects can be applied to any actor, the player, an NPC, or an animal. Magic effects are responsible for things such as effects that are applied from drinking alcohol or taking a chem, effects from using a legendary weapon, they can even be used for water breathing, fire resistance, radiation resistance, walking slower or sprinting faster, and of course much more. Essentially, these are modifiers for any attribute that an actor can have. They can tie into the narrative of a quest in many ways, perhaps an NPC whispers tale of a creature with strange mutant like powers, or the player needs a special new piece of RobCo tech to travel underwater or navigate through a lot of fire. Maybe the reward for a particular quest should be a unique weapon with special legendary enhancements that relate to the character of the quest giver. These effects are subtle enhancements of a quest narrative, but like many of these other tools, when used effectively they are great at drawing the player into the story you are crafting.

Image Space Modifiers

    After consuming a chem or beverage and receiving a magic effect, the player may also experience altered vision through the use of Image Space Modifiers, or IMODs for short. This fancy term essentially translates to a filter applied over the player's “eyes”, these can do things such as blur or distort the image, change the color, saturation, hues, etc. Additionally, IMODs aren't limited to just after consuming items but rather can be used for wearing a particular piece of clothing, when entering a specific room or location, or after some particular event. For example, if the narrative of your quest calls for a location to be especially dusty or colorful or filled with some sort of gas, IMODs can help visually portray this area by altering the player's vision. If a particular piece of armor applies a lens of glass over the player's eyes, such as sunglasses or welding goggles, IMODs can be use to shade their vision. These filters can be applied and removed at will, so if a player detonates some large explosive an IMOD can be used to brighten the environment or to remove blurriness after venting gas from a location. When constructing your quest narrative, IMODs can be useful to enhance a visual experience you are attempting to convey to the player.

Scenario Examination

Introduction

   Now that we have covered nearly all of the tools available for constructing and framing your narrative in game, let's transition to examining specific scenarios that often fly under the radar when writing a quest. Although these events are often forgotten, they are crucial to consider in your writing as they may have long lasting and dramatic impacts on the current quest, future quests, or related characters. As people who reside more on the implementation side of the coin for quest creation, Systoliker and myself have frequently seen these events forgotten in quest write ups on various projects we engage with, the goal here is to make you aware of these often missed scenarios so that you can address them through a variety of ways, potentially with one or more of the tools we talked about previously.

How to Handle Characters Dying

    The first potential scenario we need to consider is what happens if a character involved in the quest unexpectedly dies. Crafting a narrative for video games, especially open world ones, can be particularly challenging in the sense that the main character of your story, is completely unpredictable. Similarly, the events that happen in that open world can also be unexpected and have consequences for your narrative. In this specific example, let's look at how Bethesda handles the death of Travis “Lonely” Miles, the DJ for Diamond City Radio in fallout 4. Travis plays a crucial role in the quest, “Confidence Man” which sees the player attempting to stage a bar fight to build Travis' confidence but which ultimately goes awry and causes the bartender to be kidnapped forcing Travis and the player to undertake a very real rescue mission. However, Bethesda changes how they handle Travis' death both during and before or after the quest. Let's take a look at what happens if Travis is killed before the player starts “Confidence Man”. Sheng, the little boy that sells water in Diamond City, takes over the radio station and does the announcements. This same change also occurs if Travis is killed after the quest is completed. However, during “Confidence Man” Bethesda approaches Travis's death a bit differently. 
    Once the quest starts, both Travis and Vadim are marked as “essential” which means that nothing, not even a mininuke MIRV shot from the player can kill them. Marking an NPC as essential is slightly different than marking them as protected, where essential means they can never die, protected means only the player can kill them. However, in the case of “Confidence Man”, once the quest starts it can never fail because both Travis and Vadim are essential. The point here is that Bethesda chose for their narrative to be that this quest can never fail, these actors can never during the events of the quest. However, the argument can be made that this is bad practice for a true RPG, the point is, Bethesda took measures to account for the potential deaths of their characters during various points of the quest narrative, and you should too. Instead of marking the actors as essential you may elect to pursue alternate dialogue or alternate paths forward for the quest to complete or to fail and change the dialogue for Yefim in this case. After the quest is complete, Travis and Vadim are no longer marked as essential, and the scenario plays out as above where Sheng takes over if Travis dies. As the holder of the pen, the decision is ultimately yours to determine how to handle deaths of your characters, the tools we discussed before simply provide you with different colors of ink.

Player Exiting and Returning In the Middle of Dialogue

    Another scenario which occurs very often but is frequently left out of dialogue sheets, occurs when the player first greets an NPC and then meets them again for the second, third, or more times. Often, the first time the player greets an NPC the character will have a unique introduction, but afterwards will never repeat that same line since now they “know” the player and will greet them as such. This is very easy to do from an implementation standpoint but writing needs to specifically mention these lines so they can have proper voice acting and can be implemented appropriately. In this example, the player meets Vadim for the first time in the dugout inn and then upon returning Vadim changes his line to specifically mention the fact that the player is a returning customer. These returning greetings can be as numerous and as specific as you could imagine. You could even write a specific greeting if the player buys some item from the vendor or so on.
    Along the same vein of this example is dialogue to handle the occasion when the player walks away from an actor mid conversation. A new mechanic to Fallout 4, the player can actually just walk away from a character during dialogue, a prime example of unpredictability in the main actor to your narrative. You have the ability to write dialogue for the character speaking to say should the player just decide to walk away. To demonstrate, let's look at one of the first dialogue interactions the player has in the game. When talking to Codsworth, if you walk away as he is speaking or while waiting to select an option he will actually call out to the player. This scenario specific dialogue is powerful for depicting NPCs as actual people rather than robots whose sole purpose is to deliver information through dialogue. It is definitely a strong tool in your belt for crafting a living narrative. However, if push comes to shove and you want to prevent the player from walking away from a conversation, locking the player in place is an option that implementation can provide.

Reactive Dialogue

    If characters saying something whenever the player walks away is like dipping your toe into the reactive dialogue pool, you can consider this next section a full swan dive into that lake. Reactive dialogue, as we are calling it, encompasses quite a lot of things. Essentially, we are referencing dialogue that occurs whenever events that are unplanned take place. There are numerous examples, but the most notable include companions reacting to whenever you switch them out for another companion. Whenever two NPCs just happen to meet each other, such as companions reacting to other characters you talk with, or conversations between characters that just occur in a location organically. Although a bit crude in execution, Oblivion is actually a good example of these interactions. World events and locations can also be catalysts for new dialogue, for example arriving at a location with a companion and they comment on how spooky it is, or NPC's commenting on big changes in the world caused by the player, for example the entrance of the Prydwen in fallout 4. 
    On a much more minor note, there's also the potential for a character saying something whenever the player picks up an object, knocks stuff off a table or shelf, or walks into a restricted area. Similarly, companions frequently react to the player murdering people, stealing, pickpocketing, etc. Perhaps the most obvious and notable examples of reactive dialogue from Fallout 4 are Diamond City radio commenting on the player's adventures, and Deacon from the railroad listing the player's achievements to Desdemona. Of course, it is hard to mention fallout radio without thinking of three dog from the capital wasteland and his take on the player's actions. The point being, reactive dialogue has the potential to be the most impactful tool in your belt for creating a lived in world that responds to the player's choice and truly delivers that RPG experience that Bethesda fans have come to know and love.

Arriving at a Location or Event Before Planned

     The last scenario we want to cover in this video is how to handle the player arriving at a location before you want them to. The majority of this video focuses on dialogue, however this particular scenario could be addressed with dialogue but more often relies on level design. The best way to explain this concept is using Fort Hagen as an example from Fallout 4. If the player attempts to go to the bottom of Fort Hagen to confront Kellogg straight away, the elevator and door to enter the area is actually completely blocked off, only after the player makes it through the last checkpoint following dogmeat to track kellogg does the blockage actually get removed to allow the player into the basement of the fort. This event and other related issues definitely need consideration for your quest, there are a variety of ways to approach this. You could take Bethesda's stance and keep the area blocked off until you are ready, or leave it open but then only the necessary characters or items show up when the quest becomes active. Additionally, there's the possibility that the player interacts with a quest object or an NPC, or wanders into an area that isn't supposed to be accessed until later in a particular quest. A good practice here is to have a contingency plan for that quest in place so that even if the player arrives at the quest in the “middle” they are still able to complete and enjoy the narrative of it. The quest can actually start at this point and have a totally different set of objectives and routes to complete so that the narrative for the quest still flows well. By this point in the video, you should be well aware of all the many tools available to handle this particular scenario and many others so once again, when you control the pen, the sky is the limit for what you want to do in this world.

Conclusion

    After discussing nearly all of the tools available in the Creation engine for crafting a narrative and highlighting many of the common issues that can occur in game with such an unpredictable main character, we have finally reached the conclusion of this video. A huge thank you to Systoliker for assisting with this presentation, we both realize that this is a lot of information to take in but we sincerely hope you found this video useful. If you are so inclined please leave any feedback in the comment section below, we would love to know your thoughts and if this was useful for your creative process. We know this video was tailored to a very specific audience, mainly those who are writing for mods but even if you are outside this scope we hope you found this insight at least somewhat interesting and entertaining. Thank you all again for watching and we hope to see you again soon!