(NOTE: These devlogs usually lag behind our official updates. The latest up-to-date information about the game can be found on our team's Patreon page!)

For this devlog, we'll be talking about Player choices, and their consequences...

Dialogue responses in most RPGs are usually limited, because there's only so much manpower and development time to go around even in large game studios. Our small team of three is no different, but giving players diverse role-playing opportunities was one of the main gameplay pillars we knew we absolutely had to include while designing ToLLA. Ergo, the vast majority of the game's non-combat content was developed around giving the Player multiple ways of handling each situation!

We also decided that every conversation, quest, event, and decision should have weight to the in-game characters involved in it. While the storyline of ToLLA unfolds over the course of a foreign invasion (thus giving the Player opportunities to engage in epic quests and monster-fighting), there are many NPCs who are just ordinary people, and will look to Captain Hale as a source of inspiration and guidance during the dark times they find themselves in. It's for this reason that we wanted even tertiary, non-epic quests to have a sense of gravitas to them, because we want the game world to feel alive!

The overall critical path unfolds over the course of 3 Acts, each one of these being further broken down into many self-contained areas. If you've played Baldur's Gate or Icewind Dale, then you're familiar with how this zone partitioning is handled...

Your party usually arrives at a new destination where you seek out answers and opportunities to progress the main story (which we won't spoil here!), but doing so lands you in the middle of a settlement full of various individuals who have their own personal problems and issues to contend with! You can opt to ignore them, but favorable rewards await a shrewd Captain who deftly navigates social and political situations to enrich himself and his followers! How you handle these decisions will have far-ranging impact on your personal reputation, your partymembers' view of you as a Captain, and the soldiers' morale who follow you!

Which then brings us to consequences...

It's impossible for a small 3-person team to implement wide-ranging changes to the gameworld depending on the Player's actions, while still offering multiple branching paths. Not even old, monolithic studios with hundreds of developers attempt this, because re-making art assets and areas to cater to every Player decision would push development off a cliff... But there are ways to intelligently design content to take into account Player input, and do so in ways which give players a sense of achievement and fun!

One of these ways (we'll talk about the others in future posts) is through branching quest design, where each decision splits off into its own thread, with its own rewards. There are many, many, many quests in ToLLA (the Prologue Fort will have ~70, and that's just the first area!), where each one is a unique experience for the Player, with its own actors, problems, moral dilemmas, ways of handling it, and ensuing rewards (both material ones like loot, and immaterial ones like reputation gains or losses).

ToLLA's quests will allow you to role-play Captain Hale the way you want to, and will take into account your actions! Your decisions will have consequences for your personal Karma, Chastity/Promiscuity, Lust, Attributes, Stats, and Companions' (Dis)Approval. They'll also influence your party's Morale, Renown, Troops/Materiel/Supplies, and Wargear, depending on the situation.

For example, you might get a reputation among the people of a particular village as a bloodthirsty and maniacal berserker who fights first and asks questions later. In another area (like a large city!) you could become known as a calm diplomat who prefers to stay neutral while weighing the arguments of all sides involved in the conflict. Each decision will lead to a different outcome, and will send ripples through the local population and their view of your Captain and his followers.

Plot-critical quests (and the progression of the main storyline) will have far more wide-ranging effects, and will influence the world at large depending on your playstyle! But there will be a dozen secondary and tertiary quests for every primary one, and while the latter will push the story along, the former will bring the world and its people to life.

And that about wraps up this development blog!

We hope you've enjoyed it, and will return for the next one...

As always, thanks for reading, and have a great day! ;)

~ Crimson Delight Games