Narrative Sorcery: Coherent Storytelling in an Open World

In this 2017 GDC session, Inkle's Jon Ingold outline how inkle Ltd designed and scripted the game to work in an ad-hoc fashion, using defensive logic to ensure the story gets told and makes sense in an open world setting.

GDC talks cover a range of developmental topics including game design, programming, audio, visual arts, business management, production, online games, and much more. We post a fresh GDC video every day. Subscribe to the channel to stay on top of regular updates, and check out GDC Vault for thousands of more in-depth talks from our archives.

[TESkyrimizer]

Literally the best GDC I have ever seen about non-linear narrative design. Only took me like 3 watches to understand what he was talking about but now I'm gonna scrap the current quest design in my prototype.

[Tetime]

Watching this talk again after playing bg3 is great

[johnterpack]

The first developer I've ever seen that actually understands games. So many games are still locked into mechanics that were created 40 years ago- NPCs that give the same canned chat every time you meet them regardless where you've been or what you've done.

[naytron]

This is excellent stuff! Systematizing the flow of causality in a simple and meaningful way that allows for full player freedom and responds to the player... world class.

[jpd]

This is my favorite GDC talk. I keep coming back to it.

[paultapping]

The magic system in Sorcery isn't just cunning it's utterly incredible. Every spell has a 3 letter word, and some of them have a required item, players can only read the spellbook between game sessions, and can only cast spells they have actually, irl, memorised. There are several spells that are just obviously good, ZAP, NOK (opens locked doors) etc. but many were very contextual and specific, but if used correctly could give you massive rewards/cool new content.

I can still remember that small pebbles explode with the spell POP!

[MinosDaedalus]

It is amazing how a game from a small German developer studio in 2002 does a lot of this stuff he talks about and does open world so well that it is still unrivalled to this day. One of your very first task in Gothic 2 is to enter a city to acquire a certain item. Now, because you look like a beaten bandit the city guard won't let you through because the country suffered from a big wave of escaped convicts, so they won't let everyone in freely. Now there are several ways to enter the city: you can bribe the guards, but this requires a good amount of gold coins that is hard to come by at the beginning. You can buy or work for proper farming clothes, so you can pretend you're a farmer; or you can steal the clothes from the landlords chest (you shouldn't be seen in those clothes, though, because he will attack you for thievery). You can also get a permit from a travelling merchant who gives it out for free but will ask for a favour in return later in the city. If you talked to the right guy you get the information that you could disguise yourself as herbalist merchant but to be convincing you'll need at least ten of the same plant or herbs. Or you could just venture off the safer beginner's path, sneak past hostile NPCs that are way too strong for you, jump down to the coast and swim around the city walls into the harbour and get into the city that way. If you do it that way, the game even acknowledges that you didn't enter by any of those other methods, grants you bonus XP and a NPC comments on your "Didn't see you get in by the city gates. Did you swim all the way?".

So what happens is that the game feels much more like a simulation, simulating a living world that reacts to your actions. But you don't need to necessarily trigger a certain quest to open up options. Of course, to act like a herbalist, someone needs to give you that idea. But how you get the money or clothes is completely quest-agnostic and up to you. In fact, you could wander somewhere else entirely, Gothic 2 being an open world game. It's "level design", though, confronts you with enemies you won't be able to tackle on until you're stronger, so the game soft-forces you along a "linear" way. However, there's no level gating. If you put every early skill point into combat, you can get to places with a level as low as let's say 4, while someone on level 10, having spent skill points into thievery and crafting, will have a much harder time.

[污萌螃蟹]

This video blew my mind. I never think about this...

[Jilluminum]

Sorcery! Is the best game I have ever played or ever will play. It changed my life and I don't think that experience will ever be topped for me

[Bloodlinedev]

This is an utterly brilliant talk and answers my biggest question about game structure and narrative design. Thank you so much!

[RolandTitan]

*frantically taking notes*
I am so going to make something amazing off of this talk alone, thanks.

[pedrobelluzzo]

This is actually a masterpiece. Thank you very much for this talk!!

[andreanderson]

This incredibly, exactly what I've been looking for. Thank you for breaking it all down like this.

[DavePelletier_]

Very good talk... I already have ideas on how to use that in my current game. Much cleaner and simpler than what I did before.

[Lunareon]

Thank you for this brilliant talk! Now I can't stop thinking about how grinding could appear in a choose your own adventure -book: a varying loop of turning pages and throwing dice, which annoyingly repeats every time you're trying to do something? It would be an infuriatingly ridiculous concept for sure. xD

[diggygenetics]

This video deserves a second watch. Maybe even a third.

[AntKneeLeafEllipse]

This whole talk, I found myself thinking a lot about Majora's Mask, and wondering what Jon's comments would be on the narrative structure of that game.

[EgonSupreme]

But this "Sorcerer!" model *is* how quests work in some open world rpgs like Fallout (at least 1, 2 and NV).

[YondaMoegi]

Inkle’s and Failbetter Games’ presentations are my favorite

[pufthemajicdragon]

32:45 - You say "these are not quests" but this sounds like a generalized version of The Elder Scrolls quest system, which is essentially a list of linear / causal state machines, some of which are visible to the player and contain plot information.