Idea:

What if when the villain takes over, you are forced to switch sides? Corrupted, or something like that.
Or perhaps you can try and join sides with the villain from the start.

It might even be possible that you are on that side to begin with, and it is your goal to prepare the way for Bahimlaj as long as possible without arousing suspicion. It might be interesting playing as the bad guy.

Anyways, the perspective and intermediate plot are still up for grabs here. It's only the ending that I would like fixed.

A little more on the story:

- This all takes place on sort of an outpost world called 'Outbound'. The main point of attraction in this wasteland of a world is a huge mining operation. Many countries/groups are present in the Outbound Excavation, and are hard at work trying to earn money and uncover secrets in the depths.
- The key to bringing Bahimlaj into the world is one or more artifacts buried deep in the Excavation. Perhaps even a precise timing, like an eclipse or something.
- (possible) The main organization behind the evil believes they are opening a gate to a new world, when really they are bringing Bahimlaj into this one.

Quote:

(By the way, Bahimlaj is not the Ultimate villain, but just a part of a larger plan). - If you do nothing the whole game but explore, you can still enjoy a really deep storyline and still witness it all. - If you want to do everything there is to do, you can prolong the game indefinitely.

I'm slightly confused now. Does this mean Bahimlaj is not defeatable? Say the player learns that if they prevent the various organizations from excavating the artifact, then Bahimlaj can't be summoned. They spend all their effort and playing hours to prevent this because they don't want the world to be in darkness, but nothing is achieved until they give up.

I think I would be irate if I played 12 hours, preventing the summon at every step, only to find out that I would have made the same impact on the world had I done nothing at all. I think if you push towards something it should effect the world in that direction. I've always disliked the bosses in games that made you fight them like they were possible to defeat. I'd waste all my inventory items I've collected trying to stay alive and fight back; only to find had I let them kill me(knock unconscience) the plot would continue. Now if the boss kocked me out in one or two hits, then I knew I was supposed to lose and that was fine.

I think in order for me to feel like I had an effect on the world, I would like to be able to either:
1. prevent the different organizations from summoning Bahimlaj and be blind sided by an unforseen party (such as the organization the player works for) or
2. Let me know that I wont have enough time to stop all the organizations from summoning Bahimlaj and let me chose whether to do nothing at all or fight one or more organizations and at least prevent them from summoning Bahimlaj (thus I would indirectly be choosing who rises to power with Bahimlaj).

Please correct me if I misunderstood something in how you described the event.

Thank you Rasm.

You see my problem with wanting a fixed ending where evil wins.

Those last two solutions of yours were exactly the kind of thing I was looking for... justification for the enemy winning, while still feeling like you accomplished something.

I think the best way of doing this is having some sort of nice, long cinematic where one the following happens:

1) The artifact A that you brought to place B in order to stop Bahimlaj, turns out to be just the thing needed for summoning Bahimlaj.
2) One of the options that Rasm suggested.

The trick is to make you feel like you won, even though your character 'lost'

Is all this going somewhere, or is this getting needlessly confusing?
Perhaps I shouldn't be so adamant on the enemy winning, because it's really difficult to pull that plot off with the players.

Im not sure if this helps at all but I know that in the game Crisis Core, even though Zack dies in the end I felt like I as a player "won" even though Zack is killed in the end.

I guess what im trying to say if you want that feeling of winning the game even though your character doesn't, killing them off, our having some major sacrifice at the end, for the greater good, would give your players this feeling.

Perhaps you could focus more on the Journey than the Destination. For example, throughout the game the player could try and save various companions/people who would be there with him at the end (when the demon is summoned), as opposed to being all alone. Now even though the player may not be able to stop the demon from arriving, at least he could have companions there with him to help carry on the struggle, as opposed to just himself. Afterall, even though you can't stop the end of the world, at least you could try and save as many people as you can and prepare for the coming tide.

Here's another idea. The player character could realize how futile his fight is against the overall grand evil scheme, and with his last breath, store his own knowledge/spirit/self into an item/an artifact/the demon so that it can be used to later stop the larger evil.

Or in very simple terms, the player's persona and effort within the game are stored for later use in the grand plot. The exact arrangement would have a large impact on how interesting it is.

This thread is generating some really good solutions.

I agree about focusing on the journey, seeing as that is basically how the game is set up: The end is always the same, but how you get there is up to you.

I hope that this design will provide a rich experience for all types of players.

Thanks everyone, that pretty much solves my main conceptual problems. It's the implementation that's going to be difficult. If you'd like to discuss the details on the procedural content system, I'd be happy to give a more complex description.

-Humble Hobo

Quote:

Original post by Humble Hobo The trick is to make you feel like you won, even though your character 'lost'

Nicely put.

Maybe consider the hero succeeding in at least creating the opportunity for some sort of respite once your badboy demon arrives. So maybe his actions allow people to fight to survive after the aftermath, rather than 100% of the population being enslaved.

For example thanks to the hero some sort of pocket of resistance is formed, or he exposes the evil coorporations' plans and people are therefore able to prepare/hide in bunkers or whatever. Without this action from the hero, the world would truly be doomed (but thanks to his actions we now have a chance to fight / have a sequal).

Fallout did that. You'd be wandering around looking for ways to pay for your surgical augmentations, and the cut scene would start showing the supermutants destroying Vault 13. First time it happened, I hadn't even seen mutants before, and had no damn clue what was going on.

Don't do that.

Sorry, I'm not familiar with Fallout. What is it I shouldn't do?

The evil winning, or the procedural content?