I just picked up Fallout: New Vegas, which despite some annoying bugs (the most vicious of which is a problem where my quicksave files disappear when I relaunch the app) is a lot of fun and a good continuation of the Fallout saga. But this post isn't really about that; it's about how CRPGs structure narrative.

F:NV got me thinking about this because it's fairly natural to want to contrast it with Fallout 3, let alone Fallout 1 & 2. But Fallout 3 is an odd game, heritage-wise, because on the one hand, it draws deeply from the narrative structure pioneered by the Elder Scrolls games, like Daggerfall or Oblivion. On the other hand, it's tonally a pitch perfect successor to the original Fallout franchise. And yet, at least in terms of narrative influence, Fallout 1 can pretty directly trace through all the way to games like Mass Effect. (Fallout 1 was the impetus for the Black Isle studios, the Interplay division that revitalized CRPGs in the 90s, and led to a little game called Baldur's Gate.)

So what am I talking about when I talk about narrative structure? Really, I'm talking about the gameplay devices that are used to get you through a finite plot while still providing the illusion of free will for your game avatar. After all, CRPGs are limited in scope based on art, voice, and text all put together before you even start playing the game -- but the social activity they are meant to emulate is much more flexible. So it's important to CRPGs to make it feel like there's always more beneath the surface, even if there isn't.

So here are some thoughts on common approaches to this problem. The labels are for convenience and for reference points -- I'm not claiming all JRPGs behave like I describe, or that only Bioware has a lock on the "Bioware style" I describe.

Once could alternately call this the "Final Fantasy" style, although it's held true for many of the JRPGs that I've played. These games are characterized by colorful characters, vast sweeping panoramas, and bizarrely impassable hedges. Like more first person shooters, this style of CRPG relies on spectacle to distract you from the inability to explore. Exploration, if it exists, is usually in the context of narrow spurs off of dungeons that contain some collectable item, rather than new story paths. Subplots are almost non-existent.

The Bioware style -- which is also really the Fallout 1 style -- is characterized by major quest hubs. There is sometimes gating between hubs; for example, a major quest in the intro area you must complete before you can essentially leave the tutorial. Gating may or may not exist for the interior nodes (games from Bioware itself are almost clichéd for having a starting hub, three interchangeable hubs in the mid-game, and then an end sequence) and then there is usually a conclusion area that locks off previous areas.

In each of these hubs, there are usually multiple quests and storylines. Only one storyline tends to exist pre- and post-hub though, which is typically the "main quest." This quest will usually also provide the breadcrumbs that get you into this area, and then conversation with NPCs will tend to drive the discovery of smaller, self-contained stories that illuminate aspects of the hub, or introduce you to new companion NPCs.

This style of game is less likely to keep you on a specific path (Fallout 1 had a very large explorable area, for example), but it's still not always the case that if you see something you can travel to it and explore it. (Jade Empire, for example, had forests where you could not venture off the path.)

The Bethesda style is arguably the most daunting. In Daggerfall (I can't speak to Arena, although I gather it was a simpler variant on Daggerfall), story was almost nonexistent -- or at least largely left to the player's imagination. There were several stories, which mostly consisted of breadcrumbs to get you into dungeons, but they are almost never directly connected.

Oblivion and Fallout 3 continue this tradition. In Oblivion, you are directly set on the main quest, but it only brings you near the other questlines -- it never connects directly. Finding most of the Oblivion side quests requires actively poking around. Fallout 3 borrows somewhat more from the tradition of bringing you to an area filled with NPCs that will direct you, but again it's more often than not that what takes you to a new story area is seeing something on the horizon, and going to check it out.

Interestingly, New Vegas harkens more back to the Bioware/Fallout 1 style. It takes place more in open desert rather than destroyed urban area, which tends to emphasize the quest hub/NPC style. However, it's still true that if you see it, you can generally get to it. It's making for a nice synthesis that in a lot of ways is really bringing the two major western CRPG approaches together for the first time.