Wild Life - Quest Design Manifesto #1 (Patreon)

Hello dear patrons,

This time we have something special for you. One of our game designers has put together something like a manifesto about our game - and quest design processes and the philosophy behind it. This post is the first of a few that we will be sharing over the coming months, probably once per build cycle (roughly every 2 months). Now without further ado, here are his words:

“Hey everyone!

Nice to meet you all! I am Brudi from the Wild Life design team. You may have seen me around in the Discord. I have been on the project for quite some time now. Today I want to give you some insights on the current state of development in regard to the upcoming Patreon release and talk about our quest design.

Over the last months, the design department worked hard on the game’s setting, main story and side quests. As of now, we have defined a character’s job, relations, background and motivations for most of the ~130 NPCs planned for the game. Working this out, in combination with Kerpals history and its conflicting factions, was crucial to enable us to do the next step. Designing and implementing the meat on the bones of every open-world RPG: the side quests. And this is what’s happening right now! We are implementing the game logic and dialogues for ~50 designed side quests, with more to come. The implementation state is far from finished though. We aren’t aiming to reach polished release quality yet. Dialogues are text only, animations are missing, fights and items are placeholders. Our goal here is to test if things pan out the way we imagined them to, if the content is properly spread over the game world and if certain goals are technically achievable. In short: it is still very much work in progress and some things will look straight up broken. Nevertheless, you can already deduce a lot of the content, which could lead to heavy spoilers. Since we are a bit unsure whether most of you would like to have this early sneak peek or rather wait for a more finished version, there will be a poll in a follow up post. Should we publish most implemented WIP quests with the upcoming builds in the game world or wait until they reach a certain degree of polishing?

So much for the ‘What are you guys up to?’ part. But I don’t want to leave you without some juicy bits to look forward to, so let’s get into quest design. Wild Life is meant to be an open-world RPG, and from our understanding, meaningful decisions and the players’ freedom to play as they want are what make this genre so great! If you wonder how the quests will play, think of the Elder Scrolls, Kingdom Come: Deliverance or, since we are a Germany based studio, the Gothic series. The above mentioned setting also plays a big role, since it gives us the fodder to tell entertaining, yet in the game world believable stories. Here are two examples of recurring topics and how they are used in quests:

The clash of two cultures of completely different technological advancement.

Quest example - Max

An inventive boat builder observes the arrival of space shuttles and is fascinated by their rocket engines. His inspiration is to assimilate the technology and apply it to one of his boats, enabling him to leave the island and explore the whole archipelago. You are tasked with making contact with the tribals and studying their ways of living, so this would make a formidable opportunity to get in touch. But is it wise to supply a more than amateurish tribal boat builder with rocket fuel and electronics? You decide and have to live with the consequences.

The duties of a warrior tribe member

Quest example - Maya

It is the warrior tribe’s obligation to protect the other tribes from lizards and other threats. To do so, they established permanent mercenary outposts in other villages and demand supplies in return for their services. The line between protection money and treaty of protection blurs. The lake village is late with the last payment and Maya is sent to investigate. Lizards raided the lake village, stealing vital supplies, while the local warrior mercenaries were ‘busy having their spears polished’. Should you retrieve the stolen supplies or remind the local warriors of their duties and send them after the lizards? Will this solve the problem in the long run?

But there will also be quests of a totally different structure. Expect Dark Souls-esque quest lines with NPCs pursuing their own goals, changing their location in the world multiple times. But don’t worry, you won’t need a wiki to solve these ;). This type of quest will also be used for some prolonged romantic affairs! Generally speaking, we seek to make quests which either let the player notably change the game world, force them to decide on a moral or wealth dilemma, or tell engaging stories of any kind.

To wrap it up, this was just the first devlog of more to come. We are well aware that Wild Life is an adult game and there will be dedicated posts toward sex and romances, as well as combat and other topics (feel free to leave suggestions :) in the future.

That’s it from me. Thank you for taking the time and reading my very first dev diary! I would appreciate feedback in the comments and don’t forget to vote on the poll. See you around.

Brudi”

As a little extra we have some images of the quest/dialogue editor us devs use and the current ingame quest journal work in progress.