This time I’ll talk about the things that bind us.
Attachments
Seven years ago, I started spending around 270h in The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, my first major role-playing game experience. I was catched by the atmosphere, which drove me through the game. The fact that this was a new and long-enduring experience contributed heavily to the fact that I formed an attachement to the game, with me now being able to remember it nostalgically.
What do people love and cherish, despise and detest? Surface appearance and behavioral utility play relatively minor roles. Instead, what matters is the history of interaction, the associations that people have with the objects, and the memories they evoke.
Don Norman, Emotional Design: Why we love (or hate) everyday things
We see that spending time together with something is important for attachment, as are the interactions, associations.
Quests are a tool and a space to create attachements. A tool, because they are a means to structure how the player spends time with the game. A space, because they themselves open up a frame in which a small history can occur.
Let’s see how this applies to the Skyrim quest I’m building.
Skyrim – The Return of Helmdall – Implementations
For this post I tried implementing actors, locations and first dialogues from last posts quest design. This, naturally, had to happen with the Creation Kit. I had already implemented Helm standing around in Whiterun and now proceeded to add Helmdall (for both I customized appearance). Then I searched a location for the dungeon through which the Dragonborn and Helm would fight towards Helmdall, who’d have a camp somewhere inside.
This, as one might imagine, wasn’t trivial because I didn’t want to build a new dungeon and finding a spot in an existing one isn’t easily done. I decided to go with Bleak Falls Barrow, since its likely that the player has gone there at some point and because we can now add yet another layer of synergy questing to this place 🙂
Consequently, the travelling path is quite simple:
In the grave there were several suitable locations for Helmdall’s hideout, but I decided to stick to my plan and place it at the very end of the dungeon. Now, the player has to fight through everything (I hope you can reset the enemies..). Helmdall has set up camp in a small chamber behind the boss room:
So far so good. I then proceeded to trying to implement some dialogue, but it is at this point that I failed: Even though I tried following several advices in the case of strange dialogue behaviour (which was the case), I weren’t able to fix things.
Well, this blog never saw me writing that I failed, so it’s been about time I guess. What means failing, I’m wondering right now – I mean getting stuck in modding isn’t something that is particular uncommon. I believe failing is about setting yourself a goal (in my case successfully implementing dialogue) and not reaching that goal in the time frame you committed to achieving it.
Anyway, I wanted to talk about attachments! The quest I wrote – in my opinion – supports attachment to Skyrim, since it repeats its style in a new and meaningful variation. It might also be a space that creates attachments itself, if the small story around Helm and Helmdall works for players. So that’s that.
Feedback Suggestions
- What should be deemed more important for attachment, duration, interaction or association? Maybe something else?
- Do you have any ideas for writing Helm & Helmdalls personality and speech?
Conclusion
Winter is here, which did have an influence on my choice of game last and this post. But truth be told, Skyrim was on my list since the very beginning and I’m glad I got to finally do something in the Creation Kit.
Hope you’re having a good time!
Gregor Sönnichsen 