When designing a quest there are several options to consider, but perhaps one of the most basic and crucial is choosing whether it will be branching or linear. While branching has become more and more popular these days, linear is still the type of quest you'll find in most games. A linear quest basically brakes down as one or more segments of go here and do this. A branching quest on the other hand give a player choices about how the story is going to play out.
Both types have their pros and cons:
Linear --------
Pros:
Allows the writer to tell a more focused story
Is faster and easier to design and implement
Won't cause the player to constantly second guess themselves
Cons:
Takes choice out of the players hand creating a less personal experience
Can lead to a lack of variety creating stale gameplay
Branching --------
Pros:
Allows the writer to tell a story which meets the player's preference
Gives players a degree of control over their experience
Can create a greater variety of gameplay
Cons:
Can take a long time to craft
Players who make middle of the road choices will often have less interesting experiences
Players may experience fewer twists and turns if they partially control the story
To better illustrate the above points I've taken the dialogue scene, "The Treasure" and created a quest flowchart for it.
Linear:
Quinn Finds the Journal
Quinn meets Sid
Quinn and Sid find the Treasure
Quinn saves Sid's life and the two bond
Quinn and Sid are confronted by a sinister businessman named Armand
Quinn and Sid manage to overcome him and get the treasure
This version of the quest could serve as a skeleton underlying a gripping and intense, if a little cliché, story which would be easy to form gameplay around.
Branching:
This is a little more complicated
As you can see, even a relatively simply series of event can branch out into a complex web of conditions and outcomes(open the diagram in a new page to see a larger version).
When creating a branching storyline it can be tempting to create a huge number of possible routes all leading in different directions, however it is important to keep it relatively tight for the sake of practicality; if it branches too much it can become impractical to create. The challenge is in balancing player choice with production time. A standard "cheat" is to have multiple paths that weave in and out of each other, at one point in the above diagram there are two columns, three if you count failures, each with three rows which can be mixed and matched to create a diverse range of experiences with a limited number of events.
Now depending on whether or not the quest is going to feed into anything else in the game you have two choices, having a large number of endings or having a small number of endings. A smaller number of endings makes the quest easier to integrate into a larger game, whereas a greater number of endings gives the player more input on the outcome based on their choices. Of course it isn't all or nothing, some parts of an outcome could be integrated while others are not. For example, in two of the above endings the player was working with Armand and was rewarded. Now since Sid isn't around and you haven't crossed Armand the out come could simply be that the player earned a reward and no integration into a larger game, if there is one, is necessary. However there is also the option to include that integration and have the player continue working for Armand; maybe that play then gets a reputation as a criminal, or a lowlife, or as a "respectable businessman".
In all of this the thing which is most crucial to avoid is having either endings which are not diverse, or tailoring the endings to make the player choose the one you as a writer wants the most. Both of these scenarios cheats the player out of the feeling that they had the freedom to choose their own path and can reflect poorly on the writer (looking at you Casey Hudson, with all due respect of course).
So those are just a few of my thoughts on writing a quest, if you found this information interesting, helpful, informative, or even if you felt it was completely wrong feel free to leave a comment and let me know. Until next time!
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