Quest Design Documents
Cold Trust
Vertical Slice of an AAA Narrative game, developped as part of my 2nd year of study at ENJMIN.
This is the very first chapter of Cold Trust.
It is exclusive to the Vertical Slice and would not be present in the full game, were it to be developped.
We needed it to introduce the jury to the universe and the ambiance of the game
as we did not intend to work on the actual onboarding of the game.
In this scene, Eden, one of the main characters, has trapped their colleague, Daan in their toilets.
They were fed up with him constantly using them because of the proximity of their room to the lab.
But they overdid themselves and he is now unable to exit normally.
Since Eden is a tinkerer, they build a magnetic overrider to free him.
Then comes Chapter 1
Here, Eden has been accused of Daan’s murder.
They’ve enclosed themselves in their room and are threatening to take their own life by 3D printing a weapon.
Hazeema, another one of their colleagues, investigates the lab to find clues on what really happened
and a way to stop the printing.
The player can reach 2 endings.
- Ending A : Eden survives
- Ending B : Eden dies
They can reach Ending A by being very good at talking to them.
But they can also gather clues to have better dialogue options.
And even stop the printing at a distance.
They can reach Ending B by leaving the scene, failing to convince Eden
or reaching the end of the printing time.
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Quest Design Exercise
This exercise was held on the french Discord “Design & Narration” between May 08th
and May 22nd of 2024
Charlotte Couder, Senior Quest Designer at Big Bad Wolf, offered to work on this prompt
and gave feedback to anyone willing to participate.
Prompt :
In the Horizon license (Zero Dawn or Forbidden West), We consider that we will be producing about thirty sidequests for the game.
You need to come up with three quests, and provide for each of them :
A pitch in 3 sentences max ;
One or numerous themes you want to explore.
One or multiple action verbs that will characterize and differenciate you quests.
My propositions :
1 - Echidna's Heel
In the Province lives a machine in the shape of a horse that is particularly imposing and unpredictable, whose strength, they say, could equal Thunderjaw. It has been responsible of the dissapearance of many a convoy, and Aloy is hired to get rid of it, but is far too weak at the moment she gets the quest to triumph. By observing it's relationship with other machines, gaining experience and finding its blueprint in a ruin, Aloy will be able to trap it in a place where machines that are hostile to it will weaken it, then she'll be able to finish the job using it's weak points or brute force.
Themes :
- Powerful world bosses that give the feeling of progression and power
- The need to learn and observe a stronger ennemy to defeat it and the satisfaction coming from it
Action verbs :
Fear
Observe
Outsmart
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2 - My Little Kitty
When exploring a ruin, Aloy finds a vocal and a present directed to another person living in the same shelter but whose writer doesn't know the identity of. They had an epistolary relationship, and the person wanted to track the present to find out who they're talking to. Further on, Aloy will be able to use the nickname of the person to gain access to an habitation where she will discover that it is a catfish looking for new social interactions.
Themes:
- Life inside the shelters when they are not directed at the main storyline
- The difficulty to create new romantic relationships in a connected but limited world
Action verbs :
Research
Smile
Sympathize
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3 - The Braid
Born from the Nora tribe, Rhope is a young woman who wants to become a shaman. But since she's not from Ban-Ur, she will have to prove that she can understand nature and listen to the song of the machines. By going on a pilgrimage in other villages Aloy will visit, Rhope will offer her to observe a custom in each tribe or group of machines, to help her bring to light the ambiguity that lives in each thing, until she has enough propositions to convince Siluk to train her, in an oral stand-off where Aloy will have the last word.
Themes:
- Make the game's world evolve through secondary characters
- Deepen the discovery of the fauna, flora and customs of Horizon through a recurring character
- Confront the binarity of things by discovering what lies between yes and no, the attacker and the attacked, life and death.
Action verbs :
Philosophize
Discover
Support