Replayability: Does It Matter?

Games TM managed to bring together several notable game designers and writers for a roundtable discussion about replayability and the challenges of striking the right balance between having a video game be replayable and yet also have an intricate and satisfying narrative experience. Two of the contributors to the article are Irrational Games lead designer Ken Levine and BioWare writer Drew Karpyshyn, so it’s certainly a relevant discussion for those of us who are interested in the games these two have brought us and will continues to bring us:

However, that is precisely what Ken Levine, former creative director at Irrational Games, is trying to do. In his talk (Narrative Legos) at GDC, he outlined his basic idea for .ndlessly replayable narrative’. He wants to move away from the intricately detailed plots of his past games like BioShock, and move onto something more open ended. He spoke about creating characters that react with the player and each other to create stories that haven’t actually been written, they are simply acting on their desires.

What’s more is that he wants characters to have randomisable traits that change on each playthrough. It all sounds incredibly ambitious from a technical perspective. From a storytelling perspective however, it sounds fairly odd. Do you want your favourite character to be totally different from how you remember them the second time through? It opens the door for a lot of variety, but can computer generated storylines ever be as emotionally driven as one written by a human?

Drew Karpyshyn is a giant in the game writing world. Baldur’s Gate II, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic and Mass Effect are just some of the stories he’s helped create. (Narrative replayability is something we worked very hard to include. I think one of the great things in Bioware-style games like Mass Effect is that players can play through multiple times and get very different experiences. Choosing Renegade or Paragon options in Mass Effect gives a very different feel to the action, and there are several major decisions that impact the story in significant ways, such as who lives or dies. Customisation is a key element to both story design and gameplay at Bioware. Fortunately, we have enough options that virtually no two players will ever have exactly the same experience even if they play through the game multiple times.)