MISSION & QUEST DESIGN
Too often, our games’ most exciting gameplay moments have nothing to do with the story. Conversely, our most scintillating story elements are hidden in dialogue and don’t show off our best gameplay.
Instead, gameplay and story should lift each other up. When I create missions and quests, I always think, “How can I map this story onto our most exciting gameplay? How can I turn our best gameplay into exciting story?”
Designing this way isn’t easy. But when we do, that’s when we create missions and quests players will remember.
Quickbend’s Freedom
Game: Weird West
Quest Design Diagram
Your husband’s been abducted, and only the Stillwaters know where he’s been taken. Now, they’ve taken over the town of Quickbend and made the bank their headquarters. The information you need is inside.
Use any and all methods at your disposal as an infamous bounty hunter to gain entry into their headquarters, turn the screws on their captain, and extract the information you need.
Key Gameplay Routes
Stealth - You’ve made a name for yourself as a quiet operator. Scale the bank and enter from a skylight, or pickpocket a guard to find the bank key, and enter undetected.
Investigation - Asking questions around Quickbend reveals townspeople sympathetic to your cause. This will lead to two hidden methods of gaining entry to the bank.
Guns Blazing - You’re a feared bounty hunter. The Stillwaters don’t stand a chance if you go at ‘em quick and thorough.
Mayor Weeks’s Secret
Game: Weird West
Branching Conversation Tree
One of the hallmarks of a reactive RPG like Weird West was its branching narrative. To pull this off, we needed two things: 1) A strong quest design that encouraged multiple ways of solving the quest, and 2) Equally flexible conversations that were responsive to all the possible player scenarios.
In the conversation below, the player needs information on her missing husband from a kingpin named Galen Weeks. The player can get this information by stealing a farm deed for Weeks, by finding a hidden captive and using that information for blackmail, or by taking Weeks’s compound by force.
What resulted was a reactive, flexible conversation that responded to any of the dozen or so possible player scenarios.
