i like your idea of a points system and a metagame hints option, but to my mind, all that stuff should be transparent.
Oh, by "metagame" I meant -- I guess "exogame" -- that the hint system wouldn't be integrated into the lore of the game itself, as Crispin's system was (or, say, a crystal ball or fortune-teller), but instead would be something "external" like a hint menu. The reason why is that making the hints work as something that someone/something in-game can convey to you is a big part of why they were sometimes cryptic or indirect. If it's too "on the nose" then it makes it clear that it's not *Crispin* talking to you, but The Hint System. As long as The Hint System isn't an in-game entity, that's not a problem, though.
being at a "developer's mercy" and not knowing how or where to score the "hint points" just makes it an exercise in frustration for the player.
I actually disagree. If the hint system had worked as intended, the point was simply that "hint points" would be used to determine if the player was actually stuck, and if he was, they would give a hint. You could always click on Crispin to get a hint if you needed one.
The problem with a "hint menu" system that isn't tied to a tracker of the player's progress is that it is replete with spoilers. Even if the high-level options are general "Dunes" vs. "Metropol" or whatever, you're still spoiling.
LORE
As for the lore stuff, I'll start by cross-posting something I wrote on the Steam forums:
It's more that I just am not particularly interested in continuing Horatio's story, and while I'm *somewhat* more interested in the setting, even that doesn't hold huge appeal for me. Primordia was the best story I could tell in the setting; Fallen was the second-best story. The graphic novel idea -- about a robot built by Horatio v.1 ("First Horusbuilt") who sets out to complete the destruction of Metropol, forcing MetroMind to deploy an Autonomous robot to try to stop First -- is the third-best story I can come up with, and it's not enough to reasonably sustain a game. If I were going to make a "sequel" game, it would probably be about Autonomous 8 trying to find Horatio and maybe hinting in bits and pieces what happened to Horatio and the rest of the Horus crew after Primordia.
But therein is the exact reason it holds so little appeal to me: what was most fun about building Primordia, for me (aside from the particular word-play and word-crafting involved in the specific lines of dialogue), was building the world anew and, to some degree, sharing in its mysteries. Any sequel would inevitably be about answering those mysteries. Where *are* they going to go in the UNNIIC? What happened to Civitas and the Choir? What was the War of the Four Cities about? Will the moon-bound humans succeed in repopulating the world? Etc.
Not only do I think such a narrative would be inherently less interesting for the player, it would be much less interesting for me. For me, all those questions aren't really questions: they're "Ideal Forms." The War of the Four Cities, fought to the last death for unknown reasons between four polities whose names are all synonymous, was never meant to have any content to it; it's an Ideal Form of war for no good reason, to no good end. Civitas and the Choir were just a mechanism for establishing the alienness of Gimbal and highlighting that robots-as-humans wasn't the only path that robot-kind could take. Since Gimbal seems non-violent (albeit litigious) and basically nice, the Choir is a kind of best-case-scenario for the "union" that MetroMind is pushing. And as for "Wherever we want, Crispin" -- it's not that there's meant to be someplace else *particular* worth flying to in the UNNIIC: it's the fantasy of "slipping the surly bonds of earth" and finding freedom in some other, better home. Showing that Clarity died fending off a horde of robo-scavengers in a gulch while Horatio herded the other passengers to safety,, showing that they safely made it to a robo-utopia where they could live in peace and freedom and plenty, or really showing *anything* about where they went would change it from an Ideal Form into a particular thing.
It's not that I think Primordia's story is some brilliant piece of Platonic philosophy or the next Pilgrim's Progress. It's just that I never crafted it as a literal travelogue in a fully-realized science fictional setting. But any sequel would have to start from that premise. And, in my experience, such an approach almost always leads not just to a worse sequel, but to a sequel that reaches back in time and hurts the original work, the way the efforts to answer the mysteries of Star Wars endlessly degraded the movie until, rather than a beautiful rendering of the essence of fairy tales and fantasy, it wound up just being a sci-fi story about mitochondria and politics as usual and sexually repressed super-soldiers.
What I would much rather do -- and what we were trying to do (unfortunately, as I'll explain in a later post, various things have forced this project to go on hold) -- is build a *new* setting, one big and "real" enough to sustain multiple stories if need be.
That said, I think the decision to put the Cathedral "off camera" was probably the wrong one. It's probably my single largest regret about the game (other than not fighting harder to make sure that the Clarity vs. Scraper fight was more polished). In hindsight, rather than a vertical emergency elevator out of the Council Tower, there should have been an emergency lateral cable car (something Vic had wanted from the first day of the project) that carried Horatio and Crispin to the Cathedral. Then there could be some puzzles in the Cathedral, followed by Horatio following a subway tunnel from the Cathedral back to the station where you first arrive in Metropol. (This would've required a slight tweak to the kiosk, which identifies Cathedral Station as being on the Blue Line; it would've had to be on the Red Line.)
While I had lumped the Cathedral in with the other "cool things just past the horizon" (the rocket launch pads, Civitas and Urbani, Factor's sleeping army, etc.), including it would've enriched Horatio's religious journey, paced out the endgame a little better, and provided some striking visuals. I don't think I was *crazy* to have the emergency elevator go straight down -- I thought at that point in the game, players would be frustrated with another long series of puzzle-obstacles and insist on getting directly to avenging / rescuing Clarity, and the added development time for another four or five rooms would've been non-trivial. Still, on balance I think it would've been good to include it.
That said, for what it's worth, the Cathedral was going to be the main setting in the graphic novel I mused about above.
Plus, cutting awesome cathedrals from melancholy, atmospheric games is part of a proud tradition. (
http://legacyofkain.wikia.com/wiki/Silenced_Cathedral)
