Rimworld: AI Storytellers

 

So I fired up one of my notorious time-consumers last night, the PC game Rimworld, and after multiple stop-starts with updating mods I got it to work again to a degree where the experience is as how I remembered. This is the thing about games with mods, spend any time away from them and you do all this setup work again because everything is likely broken with patches or updates.

So why talk about Rimworld? Well, for one it is a game like the ones I am looking for - a solo RPG style experience without being too predictable. Something I can play, watch how stories play out, and enjoy the trials and tribulations of a group of people from a distance while best trying to guide them on their path through some guidance and suggestion.

This is one of those games I always go into having high hopes for, but walk away feeling I spent way too much time with for way too little satisfaction.

Random Event Simulator

Taken as a whole, the events in this game seem so random and generic it feels like they just exist to slow you down and ankle bite the player. I am not feeling any "story simulation" from this game. Do the characters have long-term ambitions, goals, fears, short-term desires, hopes, and dreams? Sure they have psychological attributes, but those feel more reactive than they do things that feel like they create a compelling narrative.

Let's say I created a pawn called Captain Kirk, from the Star Trek series, and I tried my best to make him profile-wise as the character in the TV shows and movies. Now, would more of Captain Kirk come from the game's interactions with those values, or my perception of that name and likeness? Yes, there is the "something" the player  brings to the experience, but the game has to be able to give something back more than just a random event simulator.

I invariably get Captain Kirk standing at sandbags with a bolt action rifle fighting off raiders, farming rice, and sleeping more than I do Captain Kirk doing Star Trek things. Is there a mystery to be solved? Does the Federation order me to go somewhere and help someone? Did Spock find strange crystals nobody understands thatr he thinks he can communicate with?

I know, I want the impossible, a game with random events that produces realistic narrative stories. Kind of like AI Dungeon does today in text, but we will get to that later.

That said, I love Rimworld as a game and I have hundreds of hours in it, it is just as a sole RPG replacement I feel it falls flat. Maybe I need to tweak the storytellers, but in a way I get the feeling I am just adjusting dials on a Photoshop action and tweaking a photograph's levels when what I want is a real drawing done by hand and a piece of art.

Traditional Western RPGs?

Then play a game like Wasteland or Divinity: Original Sin! Right? I don't get a lot of fun out of those games because they say "create any character you want" and they deliver "but run them through this same scenario and set of events." I miss the old Daggerfall and Morrowind days where you could create an "any thing you want" character and the world existed to react to your trouble-making. Those were too-simple games, but the direction I loved. I get tired of finding the same lost book, rescuing the same cat, and helping the same tired town with a new character the next time through.

Is it too much to ask that my new character build and concept have an experience as unique to him or her as he or she is to the world right now? No, instead, you are the chosen one, just a little different this time, and can you help me my cat is stuck in the same old tree again. The last person got it out just fine, let's see how you do it.

Burn the tree? You can't do that.

Fly up to the cat with my wings? You can't do that.

Shake the tree with my great strength? You can't do that.

Scare the cat with my fear spell? You can't do that.

Sigh.

Let me go get the tuna from under the dock where those goblins are, I guess. Mister, do you think it is still under there?

We always seem to have those goblins under the docks with exactly one tuna fish, yeah. Last person through here said it was the quickest way to solve this, whatever that meant. I am sure an Angel of Death like you could take care of them quick like that Shadow Rogue did last time, but he just stole the tuna without fighting them and that wasn't really fair in a play balance or mechanics sense.

I will be right back. I may be a while because I may go play a pen-and-paper game for a while to get that feeling of "do anything" and "go anywhere" back for a while so I can take those feelings back into this game and project my hopes upon it.

Go right ahead! But don't expect me to support all those mods when you get back!