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Beyond Divinity pryings at RPGDot

Saint_Proverbius

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Tags: Beyond Divinity; Larian Studios

<A href="http://www.rpgdot.com/">RPGDot</a> has posted <A href="http://www.rpgdot.com/index.php?hsaction=10053&ID=870">an interview</a> with one of the boys at <A href="http://www.larian.com">Larian Studios</a> about <A href="http://www.beyond-divinity.com">Beyond Divinity</a>. Here's one of the more annoying bits:
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<blockquote><b>RPGDot: How will you make sure that vital NPC can't be killed by the gamer thus busting a main or sub quest?
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Bronthion:</b> This might look like a difficult task at first, but the game engine provides me with some useful functionalities. Every NPC can be flagged „story npc“. Story NPC’s cannot be killed, neither by the player, nor by any monster in the game. There is only one little problem: story NPC’s can’t be attacked, and therefore they cannot participate in any combat action. If this should become necessary for some reason (in an automated scene, for example), you have to flag the NPC „immortal“ instead of „story npc“. Immortal NPC’s can be attacked, but they won’t die, even when their hit points reach zero. This might look a little weird in the game at times.</blockquote>
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<i>How can you take a short cut to break immersion just to make sure the player is locked tight in the death grip of the story you've forced on him?</i>
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Here's a thought, don't make NPCs so damned vital in the first place. Have them keep records, like a journal or a letter, for the player to refer to if they kill that NPC or have other NPCs that can also direct you along the desired goal. You could even do something slightly cheesy like have the NPC say something in a last breath utterance that gives the player a hint. There are lots of ways to do this as opposed to making certain vital NPCs "immortal", which is a cop out.
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Thanks for the heads up, <b>Myrthos</b>!
 

Psilon

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Feb 15, 2003
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I'm kind of amazed they needed to explain that system, given how many games since Baldur's Gate have featured immortal plot-critical characters.
 

ecliptic

Liturgist
Joined
Feb 11, 2003
Messages
915
Divine Divinity did a pretty good job though, as there were only a small handful (6-10 if I remember correctly) of untargetables, and they were pretty important to the end game. (can't really assemble the council of seven if you killed three of them) It didn't bug me in the least. Everyone else was fair game (and there were hundreds of other npcs).
 

Flarnet

Liturgist
Joined
Jan 6, 2003
Messages
106
This is the standard uninspired way of dealing with this problem, I can't believe he's answering as if this is in any way innovative. Had they had a solution that required some amount of effort on their behalf then maybe I wouldn't have felt like I wasted those seconds it took to read that reply.
 

Nightjed

Liturgist
Joined
Jan 27, 2004
Messages
675
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Wasteland
yeah!, if the player kills an important npc just make a god bitchslap the player and revive him :twisted: saying "thou shall not screw up the scripts!"
 

Anonymous

Guest
Baldur's Gate also had Biff the Understudy and NWN had this option of making NPC's special in their modules.

Yay for trends in horrible games.
 

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