Well, not that I thought that Armadan not knowing English would be a really great setback. On the other hand, only a few games EVER provided storylines that are deep, engrossing and original. And those were usually made up by people who did it full-time, had special talent and sometimes professional writers were hired for that. While it's possible for one man to do so, it's VERY hard. After all, it’s not just a book - you should also, preferably, allow player to choose among different paths, make different choices that will affect further plot development, etc. If you think that it's easy, why we have only a handful of games that good? For instance, Fallout and Planescape:Torment were out a few years ago (that's like stone age by computer standards). Why there are no games like them any more? Even Bloodlines and Kotor, that were rather nice, were WAY worse in that respect. And we are talking AAA titles.
By the way, I've already proposed that people could have thought about good quests that fit the game universe and engine, send them to Armadan and the best of them could have included in the game... perhaps even for a certain reward
.
I doubt that a lot of them would be of really high quality... but Space Rangers 2 went that way and kinda succeeded... well, some of those were rather cheesy, but anyway.
And besides, plotline should be non-obstructive enough, and yet give player some sort of objective to strive for. After all, you cannot hack bandits forever... sooner or later, you’ll get yourself best armor, weapons, and things will get boring.
Well, I’ve posted a few ideas that are oriented on prolonging gameplay w/o adding any plot... And besides, remember X:BTF? It had no plot at all, and still was rather successful... not a major hit, though.
I guess I’ll write some of my thoughts about plot a bit later.
