In a project designed to have no spoken dialogue, I was challenged to help make a system that could track the decisions of players that were not based on dialogue choices, but rather the choices the player makes in the “physical” world of the game. This could be as broad as the player choosing to go left instead of right at a crossroads, or as specific as the player choosing, without prompting and with the already button-mapped ability to do so, to physically comfort a distressed NPC.

We also wanted to make sure that after tracking all of those decisions, the narrative feedback would be both telegraphed to the player during gameplay, as well as with multiple endings based on their overall behaviour during the game (while paying respect to the production’s budget for programming, technical art, and game design.)

The nuance of the non-verbal NPC’s physical/body language, in addition to plot and mission-based setpieces, was important to communicate the player’s narrative progress during gameplay - that same system used to track the NPC’s mood would be used to track which ending the player would experience. It was important to evolve this kind of non-linear storytelling ststem to afford more than 2 outcomes.