Welcome to Dragon Ascent Online!
This newsblog will introduce NPCs and some of their key features. Let's get to it!
NPCs
The ambition:
One of the first things we decided we’d focus a lot on in our game would be the NPCs. Since a large part of our game is point-and-click, and we’ve always seen Monkey Island as a source of inspiration, it was clear that we had to invest a lot in giving our NPCs life, and making them interesting to interact with, especially since we wanted our game to differ from the usual one-dimensional characters most online games have resorted to.
The how:
We have always had at least one designer solely responsible for scripting NPC dialogues, behaviors, and quests, where the goal always has been to primarily make interesting and engaging characters instead of simply telling the player where to go and what to kill. We have had a strict rule since day one: No pointless quests. No “I hate bears, go kill ten bears.” There will be a purpose to every quest, and there will be no quests that lead to nowhere. With a dedication to storyboard writing, our designers have made sure that every quest-chain will tell an interesting story, instead of merely being a more effective way to level up than grinding. Our players can expect to find ways to escape from a kraken’s belly or impress a manly knight, steal mushrooms for a stoned alchemist, or find the best way to make an ogre angry.
Dialogues:
To be able to make interesting NPCs and quests, you need a good dialogue system. In Dragon Ascent Online, there will be no exclamation marks above NPC heads to tell the player there’s a quest to take. Instead, there will be characters that the player can converse with, and some dialogue choices might lead to quest opportunities being revealed, some characters will require a lot of smooth
talking to open up, while others will insist that you drop everything you’re doing to save their pet rock.
That concludes NPCs for today. Next time, I’m thinking we can talk about classes and the combat system. Yeah!
/Buttergoose,
Project Leader of Dragon Ascent Online.
