oakfells

Fun Facts & Behind the Scenes - CoG v0.5.x

Added 2024-10-07 08:00:08 +0000 UTC

Today, v0.5.0 is going out to the rest of the public, and so what better time to talk about the fun facts that I teased a few weeks ago?

Once again, this post contains spoilers for the new content, so if that matters to you, come back here later! If not, let's get started!

Whatshisface?

Because of the independent, parallel way the storylines happen in, you can meet certain characters before others, or find out their names sooner or later.

Allegra: the Stout you may run into earlier during MQ3, or at the end of it during the climactic Norman confrontation.
Darwin: he reveals that Hammond is his son in his 5th fishing event, this dialogue changes depending on if you already know Hammond
... and if you don't, the first time you meet Hammond will have a line pointing that relation out, whether that is at the pub, or at the bar.
Hammond: during MQ3 if you chose to investigate Fernam's/taking over the pub after the end of MQ3/Arnold's bar.
Vernon: In the intro, MQ4 forest, or during Akello's camping encounter.

There are quite a few brief, unique lines in each scene depending on where you first met them.

In Vernon's case, he even tells you during MQ4 to stop by the camp to fight Borik again if you lost and haven't gotten revenge yet.

Darwin's details

Darwin now has a new hat after giving you his old one during the hospital scene! He will wear it sometimes when you hang out with him, just because I felt like being weird and making it a bit randomized.
The new card from Darwin "Drink to forget" is the first card whose name, description, illustration, and battle flavor text changes depending on your Content Warning settings, changing to the more friendly "Eat to forget" if alcohol as a topic is disabled.
You end up getting Darwin's whiskey flask regardless of if you win or lose. That is: if you win, you get it as a battle reward. If you lose, you'll end up getting it in the next encounter where you stay in the shed together.
So in the end, the only thing the outcome of the battle changes is the narrative, as the following few scenes change quite a bit depending on if you won or lost.

Alternative storytelling

Borrowing a bit from the Dark Souls school of storytelling, there are hidden bits of story details in a few of the items and their descriptions.

Darwin's flask contains an inscription that gives a bit of an early peek into his life. His hat sort of does something similar in the branch where you beat him during the second encounter, although it merely notes that the hat is worn-out, implying that it was somewhat beloved.
For the sake of building up a bit of suspense, I'll let you discover for yourself what the item description actually says.
Borik's whittling knife does the same, although this time, the lore is revealed by the mere fact that this item even exists. In fact, the item description reads: "... huh. If you didn't know that he whittled, you do now."
But wait, there's one more: Franklin's battle reward serves a similar purpose! If you manage to beat the uptight man even after having to square off with his brother, you get a small glimpse into his artistic talents and love of animals.
Speaking of battle rewards: Bucky's isn't actually awarded to you right at the end of the battle when you win... but rather a few minutes later during the dialogue itself. This is to create a little bit of intrigue by having Bucky imply what would've happened had the player lost instead.

Accents R Us

Out of the three farmers, I wrote only Bucky to have a consistent "country" accent (and by accent I mean the use of -in' instead of -ing). Originally I wanted to give it to all of them for that attractive, southern zing, but since the farm is near Plursdott, it wouldn't make sense for the farm right over to feature people with completely different accents, since I wrote Plursdott with a "neutral" accent to begin with.

So I instead gave the accent to Bucky and Franklin, since they're not from Plursdott, but instead came to Osman's farm from elsewhere.

"You came in, wanderin' into places you shouldn't have" - Bucky

Now, Franklin actually slips in and out of it every now and then. This is because unlike Bucky he has assimilated to the accent that the people around Plursdott use, so he only goes back to using it when he's particularly exasperated: notably when he yells at Bucky in the shed.

Tropes, Realism and half-assed Research

"You know know how they always knock people out in the movies by choking them, hitting a "pressure point" or "gassing them up" with somethin'? It's all bullshit of course." - Gordon

The little lecture Gordon gives you at the end of most MQ4 playthroughs is actually the result of the research I did while writing the entire farm encounter.

Originally, the plan was to have Bucky knock you out using a method similar to what Gordon describes, but I ended up scrapping it due to me just being picky about using unrealistic fiction tropes.
Of course, in the end I realized that with the setup of the game, I could come up with a pretty reasonable, in-universe method that makes sense in the context of the worldbuilding: the Fattening-induced plant mutations! That finally led to the assignment beginning with Ricky running up to you in a hurry as he noticed someone going on with the plants in the area.
... as a side effect it does make Bucky's actions slightly more excusable as he ended up not being some random creep who just knocks you out and kidnaps you.
It also perfectly played into what happens in the coveted branch where you manage to defeat Vernon, as it provides a sort of reveal and explanation for what he did.

Here are a few more scrapped ideas regarding how MQ4 could have gone:

Russell and Ricky taking a field trip with you to the forest to scan for "suspicious energy" and you getting knocked out by Bucky in the forest after splitting off.
This ended up being scrapped due to the fact that they would just simply go after you to help you and prevent the situation in the shed from fully playing out. Ricky's pig affliction also made writing everything a bit awkward. I briefly played around with the idea, but decided to leave the discussion of how Ricky deals with it in public for some other storyline.
You just accidentally walking into the farm and Bucky just randomly attacking you for trespassing.
This was scrapped due to... well, the unsatisfactory reason for a conflict. This was around the time I discussed my struggles with more organic justifications for battles in one of the development logs.
Bucky was originally written to be a "lovable goofball" type of character, one that is cartoonishly unintelligent and that needed to be watched constantly by Franklin. You can still see hints of this in the way Franklin treats him, but I ultimately decided to make him a bit more sensible which allowed me to write him in a more aggressive manner in the final version of the story.

Little Game Designer's Corner

I've always found the draw options in the game lacking, during my own playthroughs I tend to mostly only use Indulgent stuffing, with a bit of Insatiable sometimes.

And so you might have noticed: Franklin's deck is mainly focuses on new draw cards, that being his signature card Planning Ahead, in addition to Meticulous Draw and Smart Start. I particularly find Meticulous draw satisfying to use, as it requires you fit the tetris blocks perfectly together, so to speak.

In fact, these new draw options were so much needed, that I decided to make "Meticulous Draw" and "Smart Start" both unlock after the farm encounter, regardless of if player actually fights Franklin or not. This means that even people who have lost to Bucky will have access to these cards, which may seem a little jarring as they sort of seem to appear out of nowhere.

As you may have noticed, these new Franklin cards are somewhat technical, requiring some playing around with numbers... but that also meant I had to work pretty hard to get the AI to know how to use them properly. Whether I succeeded in doing that... well, that remains to be seen.

And now a look behind the writing itself

The entire MQ4 farm scene is probably the longest sequence of a single dialogue in the game so far. Since there are so many branches that can happen in it, I ended up having to separate the script into not two, not three, not five, but seven entire script files.

There are quite a lot of obvious call-backs to the first ever storyline of the game (Tom and Vernon in the forest!), and of course I couldn't resist even blatantly pointing it out in-game with the line below:

"Reminds me of our first time." - Gordon

Now what are the actual similarities?

MQ4 starts with you searching the woods for a flower that ends up screwing you over.
A bit of trickery happens to make sure your Wgt is above a certain amount when the encounter begins.
MQ4 features a similar double battle, with Bucky and Franklin mirroring Tom and Vernon.
The second battle is intended to be lost. To be completely honest I didn't have time to playtest it at all, so it's possible that it is either completely impossible, or far more possible than I thought.
If you lose, you end up getting new clothes that Gordon helps you put on.

What makes MQ4 different from that though, is the fact that you get to see the complete aftermath of both victories or losses. Since I largely moved away from using the standard game over and started writing fully-fledged unique game-over scenes for each loss instead, there are 3 main ways MQ4 can end:

You lose to Bucky
You beat Bucky, got to fight Franklin and lost.
You beat Bucky, got to fight Franklin and won.

The first two variations are sort of grouped together, forming something of a "common" conclusion. With, of course, the third one intended to be either impossible, or incredibly hard to achieve.

Then there are also variations based on what you decide to do after your fight with Bucky, depending on if you won or lost. That adds 5 more variations: 2 for if you lost and another 3 for if you won.

On top of that, there are also small bits and pieces that change, so that even if you did lose to Bucky or Franklin, the game takes into account how far you managed to get with them, and ends up having them wear their new clothes or making small comments.

A little tease

There is a brief cameo by a new character at the end of MQ4: Gavin

He was basically a last minute addition to that scene, as I ended up doing a few writing sessions on the going-ons on the farm, and the rest of the workers that would realistically be needed there other than just the three farmers.
I ended up developing Gavin's personality and backstory a bit and decided to give him a bit of a sneak peek appearance to make things feel more connected. In fact, I had such a good time writing him that I ended up finishing several drafts for future scenes with him, so you can look forward to that!
Gavin's cameo also has two variations! He ends up walking in before Franklin and Bucky arrive at the breakfast table on most playthroughs,
... but if you managed to beat both Franklin and Bucky, he ends up coming in after. This done to keep him away from the incident that happens in this latter path.
There's already a small detail some might notice in his brief appearance that foreshadows some of his future involvement in the game.