Open Destiny

The ability of agents to have different narrative arcs between game instances due to the events that took place in the game session.

Using the pattern

It may not be clear to players that NPCs and Factions have Open Destinies. The use of Cut Scenes that describe what happened after gameplay ended can solve this since the act of telling this can indicate that other endings were possible (this is especially clear if the Cut Scenes relate to how players solved or failed to solve goals and Quests). Examples of games which use this include the Fallout New Vegas in the Fallout series.

Relations

Can Modulate

Algorithmic Agents

History

A rewrite of a pattern that was part of the original collection in the paper Gameplay Design Patterns for Believable Non-Player Characters.