Mage Knight: Apocalypse - Interview @ Hooked Gamers

Namco's Dave Georgeson joins Hooked Gamers for a <a href="http://www.hookedgamers.com/forwarder.html?http://www.hookedgamers.com/features/2006/mage_knight_apocalypse/" target="_blank">Q&A on Mage Knight: Apocalypse</a>:<blockquote><em><b>HG: Mage Knight: Apocalypse has a strong focus on its storyline which develops as you play the game. Can you give us some examples of how new developments in the storyline present itself to you?</b><br><br>Dave: Sure. We use an approach that I call "distributed storytelling". We definitely still use cutscenes to tell really critical elements of the story (stuff that we absolutely want the players to notice and remember), but we also use a lot of other mechanisms.<br><br>Players can click on NPCs to enter into voluntary dialogs. NPCs with dialogs will supplement the critical info with additional information, bringing elements of the Land to light for the players and otherwise fleshing out the feeling that the world is alive.<br><br>But perhaps my favorite storytelling comes from the NPC sidekicks that accompany you on your quest. They talk to each other frequently, commenting on elements of the world as you walk by them, warning each other of dire situations, and more. By using a S
sound balloonsa ? (word balloons with sound files that play at the same time that they appear), we can keep tossing additional color and flavor into the game as you progress without stopping the action.<br><br>And lastly, the NPCs of the world often have things that they say whether the player interacts with them or not. All of these mechanisms are used to continuously feed information to the player with a minimum disruption to the action, keeping the pace and drama of the epic moving and told in such a way that players naturally understand the storyline without having to sit through hours of achingly boring cutscenes.