883 Multiple Objective NPC Awareness

I’ve always hoped for a objectives system in an RPG that was more comprehensive and aware of its own state. It’s one of those things that seems so simple in theory but I know is incredibly difficult technically.

On the simpler end, and something that I think is more realistic to implement widely in games, is a situation that’s more local to a single quest or a single NPC. For example, let’s say a quest objective is that I need to grab a note off the desk in the next room. But, I didn’t “get” the quest yet, and happen to stumble on the note and pick it up and keep it. I walk over to the character in the next room, and proceed through a conversation with them, half of which is them telling me about this note that’s desperately important to them that they’ve lost. Why can’t I tell the NPC right then that I’m holding the note already? I have what you need already. This situation happens almost every time I play an RPG, and I’ve seen logic to handle it very very rarely.

In the larger games, it’s a lot to ask for, to compete with the massive complexity of the worlds that developers are building, but I think it’s something reachable for medium and smaller games.

[ Today I Was Playing: Metro 2033: Redux ]

#game-mechanic-system