I'm not sure I've seen a thread like this in the Suggestions sub-forum yet. Then again, I don't come here often. Therefore, I may not be the first to suggest this, and I probably won't be the last. Nevertheless, I'd like to share my opinion on something. It's not about the Forge, or item drop rates, or difficulty, or... gameplay at all, really. It's about one of the core parts of an MMO; the story.
I've always been a stickler for story in a game. Hell, I'd willingly slog through a mediocre-at-best game if the writing was decent and the characters were likeable. That's not to say Spiral Knights is mediocre, mind you. I enjoy the game immensely. I just think it suffers a bit in the world-building department (no pun intended).
Back before the Mission Update, you didn't really know a whole lot about Cradle. It was more-or-less "it's mechanical, the Core's super important for some reason, there's weird stuff going on, and you're stranded. Go get 'em, tiger!" And while we've been sprinkled with light bits of info on various things like, say, the Recon Rangers and their high-mortality rate, or Almire and how it crumbled, and allusions to a hierarchy and civilisation of Gremlins, we don't have a lot of concrete knowledge on much of Cradle's goings-on. A lot of it is, to my knowledge, speculation. I will readily admit it does have the benefit of lending itself to the Treasure Vault sub-forum, where you can make stuff up and it works simply because there's just no wrong answer. Hell, I even make stuff up myself when I write stories. Still, it just irks me to just have certain gaps in story and life on Cradle. Like, what do Knights eat, for example? Granted, their intentional ambiguity as a race or even lifeform might somewhat lessen the impact of this question, but even that lends itself to some explanation. Also, what are the Morai, exactly? The Knights are supposedly at war with them, and no-one ingame seems to know or care.
Post-Mission Update, and we have a lot more info, yes, but still just light touches here and there to get the player wondering. You visit an Owlite library and Kora tells you that they were a race of scholars that died out in a war, but you don't know what they were like. You can't just pick up a book and read about their society, despite being in a library. At most, you get a little speech/thought bubble that says "This is a book. It is about Owlite stuff." And the Kats sure won't tell you. Granted, the books are probably untranslated, but then how do the Knights understand Devilites and Gremlins?
Kora herself is a bit of a sore spot for me. While she's supposed to be "Mission Control", an exposition fairy of sorts, that's pretty much all she is. What does she do when not on the clock? What soap operas does she like, if any? We never get an in-depth look at her character, and she's probably the most featured NPC in the game. Then again, there's not much leeway to probe her personality. We can't simply toss a few quips her way, or snark at any overtly obvious info-dumps she gives us, and expect her to roll her eyes or act impatient, and that's because we, the player, aren't technically a character.
I mean, the player participates in conversation now and then, but it's really just a game of tennis with an NPC, and you only have one racket, so to speak. You might as well be an NPC yourself. Better yet, you might as well still be in the time when all Kora did was send you mail when you wandered into a boss stratum. I'm a big fan of games like Fallout, or Mass Effect, where you can play as a typical ideal hero, yes, but you have the option of being a big jerk to people. Or an anti-hero with the optional heart of gold, or even a fast-talking trickster who uses guile instead of gunplay. Now, while the latter wouldn't translate well to an MMO (because being able to bypass boss fights thanks to a dialogue prompt would be the most broken thing ever), it does provide an opportunity to flesh out the 'you' of the game.
An example would be talking to Morlin during the Battle Sprite 'arc' of the story missions. I forget how the conversation in question goes, but the player eventually tosses a quip his way, and he replies "your sarcasm has been noted". Ordinarily, this wouldn't bother me, except you have no choice but to toss some sass at him. If there were, say, four possible responses, you could play the idiot who doesn't get what he's saying, the nice guy who commends Morlin's credentials, just snub him like a big jerk, or, indeed, sass him, then that would have made the exchange much more fleshed out. It would also have explored Morlin's personality a bit better. Does he not like idiots? Have him sigh in exasperation as you plod cluelessly through the encounter. Snub him like a jerk and he could verbally hand you your own posterior, showing a sharp wit and possible experience in dealing with jerks.
It doesn't even have to be a 'branching paths' sort of thing. If the game were like The Walking Dead, where each thing you say could divert an entire subplot, then that would not only cost a bunch of money to keep track of all the possible branches, but it would also be a coding nightmare. Shadowrun Returns, for example, does the whole thing wonderfully. You have a few ways to go about the conversation, but it usually leads to the same place. The only real times you'll affect the outcome are with special "skill-check" prompts that are dependent on your character stats, which Spiral Knights notably lacks due to its genre. Most of the time in Shadowrun Returns, you'll prompt an additional line from the NPC before they resume the conversation normally. A conversation could go like this:
NPC: Non-specific statement.
Player: Response.
NPC: Exposition.
Or, if you pick a certain prompt:
NPC: Non-specific statement.
Player: Response (Sarcastic).
NPC: Response. Exposition.
The conversation is almost exactly the same, except for the player input, and an additional line from the NPC. A simultaneously miniscule and gargantuan difference that does nothing statistically noteworthy, but could help the player feel like they're a part of the world, and what they say has an impact, no matter how small.
My suggestions are these:
- A small increase in text-based lore found around the Clockworks, or even Haven, that fleshes out something or other, and doesn't appear in thought bubble form. It could be something as simple as an item description a-la Dark Souls (and yes, I am aware that many item descriptions do contain lore, but there are just as much that don't, if not more), or a simple page or paragraph of exposition/character info. Notes left by NPC's, letter scraps, book excerpts, that kind of thing.
- A few additional prompts in dialogue-based cutscenes. Not half a dozen every time you're expected to respond to something, as in some situations there are really only one or two ways to do so. Just a couple of extra options where reasonable.
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So that's my generally unneeded wall of text. Feel free to comment and/or (dis)agree with anything I've just said.
See you around the block.
Scamall out~
I've spent 5 mins of my life read the whole thing and I think this is a good idea, certainly will brings even more liveliness to spiralknights if it will ever to be implemented. However, when i saw this post, I kinda expected a suggestion about implementing an system of options that allows spiralknights to decide the outcome of their own story, yea, that kind of coding nightmare. But making conversation a little bit more flexible and letting players decide the character of their characters is awsome though.