#32 Quest Objectives

 Today I'm gonna think and write about quest objectives. Indeed, making them distinct from quest goals will help understanding that matter more clearly, I feel.

Events, Goals and Quest Objectives

In my quest definitions so far one prevailing element is the existence and juxtaposition of events and goals. Since for me at least it never wasn't really clear how their relationships is, I'll try clarifying that in this episode.

Events and goals have in common that they are mental constructions, part of mechanisms in the mind. Events can be defined as abstractions and summations of movements perceived:

An event is thus fundamentally about the change from a previously perceived state. 

Goals on the other hand do not refer to the trueness/falseness of something in the world we perceive. Rather they make a statement about something one wants to be true/false therein:

A goal is about a future state that is wished to become true.

Note that unlike events, goals are bound to an actor of sorts. Events on the other hand are not necessarily originating from an actor only.

We see, that the production of fitting events is the means to fulfill a goal. We also see that the audience always needs to have at least one goal: That of wishing to continue to experience the story. This applies for all media, but mind how this plays out different in e.g. books and computer games: Usually the effort to continue the "book-experience" is trivial: You merely have to turn pages (those are the events needed). In games however the player's ability to participate in event triggering allows for much more complex ways of building the events necessary to reach the goal of "continue game-experience".

But of all this I've talked already lengthily in my post on narrative drive. I'll now turn my eyes towards quest objectives. First, what makes an objective different from a goal? Consider the question of goal-authorship in video games: It is obvious that the player's mind is the last instance of goal-creation. However those goals are oftentimes inspired or even afforded by the game: For example landmarks or those written goal propositions we get whe playing a quest:

Quest objectives in TES V: Skyrim. Source

These I call quest objectives and we see they are designer created and, as quest items, explicitely referenced by a quest system. By quest system I mean that part of the game's code that is responsible for revealing the events of a quest.

Here follows a short list of guidelines I think sensible:

• The KISS principle: Keep it simple, stupid. Players shoudn't have to employ specific postmodern literacies to decipher the objective presented to them.

• Thematic cohesiveness: As with all game elements, the objective too should feel fitting to the theme. One might use e.g. "thy" instead of "your" for a heavily medieval themed game.

• Player expression: As with decisions, goals allow for expressing player thoughts. If a player likes a character, for instance, then you might insert an optional goal of talking to that character before moving on at an important point in the narrative.

Typologies

There have been several attempts to create typologies of (quest) objectives or goals in games. I'll present one here as a pool of inspiration without much further discussion.

Firstly we have Debus, Zagal and Cardona-Rivera (2020):

Choose, Configure, Create, Find, Obtain, Optimize, Reach, Remove, Solve and Synchronize

When reviewing books on quest design or video game storytelling such as Jeff Howard (2008) or Lee Sheldon (2004), then I find that those do not provide exhaustive overviews of such goals. Their value is much rather in the attempt of an overall synthesis of thoughts on their respective topics. What a luck that there are on the hand scholars devoting themselves to specifiv topics such as a listing and destilling of "imperative game goals" (Debus et al.).

Further Reading / Inspiration

• Wictionary Contributors. event, goal. What a time to be alive for linguistically interested people.

• German Wikipedia Contributors. Ereignis (event), Ziel (goal).

• Lee Sheldon (2004) Character Development and Storytelling, p. 224ff.

• Jeff Howard (2008) Quests - Design, theory and History in Games and Narratives, p. 101ff.

A Solarpunk Quest: Implementation Part 2

I'm going to continue my quest for quest implementations. Here is the latest progress:

And it is in its finished form, for now. I added some consequences to the choices and reused the part about tanking from the sun, which I introduced in the first version. Also, some CSS magic, as you see.

Ideas for Feedback

• What design principles do you know or have for (quest) objectives?

• Do you catch up with the story progress in "Sustain the Moon"?

Conclusion

Another post is another win. And I am content with finally having thought and talked about the event/goal/objective difference, whose relations were a point of annoyement to me for quite some time now. Also the feeling of having been able to prototype a quest so fast with inkle is great. I'll probably do that again.

Until then, have a good time!