Feeling Like A Heist | Patreon Weekly #332

Hey Patrons! In this weekly I’m going to go over some progress I’ve made on the ‘feeling’ of the upcoming quest.

Poll results:
71%: Caves Quest Secrets
60%: Chalice Upgrading
40%: Hostile Champions
33%: DM-300
31%: Pacifist Ascent & Taking the Mick
20%: Artifact Transmuting
Thanks for voting! I think this gives me a pretty good picture of which changes are best to prioritize. Based on this I’m definitely going to implement the caves and chalice changes basically exactly as I mentioned. Hostile Champions, DM-300, and Badges changes may happen. DM-300 changes in particular are likely because they’re mainly just targeted fixes.

Lastly, Shattered Supporters will once again feel like they’re read this weekly before, as this post is largely adapted from Shattered Secrets #52. However, There’s also a New Shattered Secrets this week, so everyone gets something new!

Feeling Like A Heist

Last week I shared some early design concepting for environments for the new quest. While that post did demonstrate how a more grid-like level could work, the content of the rooms was left pretty abstract. This is mainly because I’ve been wary of committing to an environment design before I had a solid concept for gameplay.

Over the last while I’ve been trying to think on how to nail the feel and fun-factor of the new quest, as that’s what I struggled with a fair bit while concepting the caves quest. I think I’ve hit on one major thing: the quest shouldn’t just feel like a mini-gauntlet, it should feel like a proper infiltration.

Perhaps unexpectedly, I hit on this realization while playing through a somewhat old game in my free time: Dishonored: Death to the Outsider; most specifically the level that tasks you with robbing a bank. The whole Dishonoured series does an excellent job at making the player feel like an infiltrator if that’s how they want to play. While Death to the Outsider is not the strongest entry in the series, it got me thinking more about the series as a whole and how stealth games encourage the player to explore and pick apart an environment.

These games heavily encourage cautious exploration of a hazard-filled environment, precise planned interactions with hostiles, and steadily building up your power and understanding of an environment before putting yourself at serious risk. Anyone who’s tried to be sneaky during Dishonored 2 levels such as ‘Clockwork Mansion’ and ‘a Crack in the Slab’ (the one with timeshifting) should immediately get what I mean.

This actually comes almost full-circle back to some of my initial concepting for this quest, which had parts of the modern Zelda games as an inspiration. This sort of gameplay also happens in several shrines during Tears of the Kingdom. Link is often stripped of his gear and forced to play in a more cautious and stealthy capacity for a bit. Eventually you find better gear and conquer the challenge, but rushing straight into combat with the nearest enemy is almost always a recipe for disaster.

I think a mix of these gameplay elements, merged with Shattered’s normal gameplay, are going to be the secret sauce of this quest. Rather than just stripping equipment and sticking the player in a gauntlet that gets harder as the player approaches the boss, the dwarven vault should be laid out more like a puzzly maze. This would feature environment hazards and enemies that start out way too strong for the player, but which also can be relatively easily avoided or retreated from. The player then builds up gear by exploring the level and tactically picking fights until eventually they’re strong enough to face the boss!

I think this design should incorporate new fun mechanics in a similar way to the caves quest, and will also go a huge way toward addressing the biggest worry about this quest I’ve seen so far. Players were very concerned about dieing due to bad RNG right at the start, when they have no gear, but by giving the player more control over engaging with enemies that worry should be almost totally eliminated.