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The problem presented in part one is in itself the root of the rest of the problems. The inherent difficulty in adhering to the storyline yet creating an expanding realm of play lays the roots for countless other problems. In RPG's we can see that the game play and the story is the basis for the vast majority of the experience, and the eruption of problems from this can spread like a plague.
As such problems are already far too numerous to even consider, let us focus on the more obvious and immediate problems.
The "End". Yes the end. Most people dread reaching the end of the game, while some of us disappear for days just to see a few minutes of gaming glory. Some of us, even if we dislike the game, play like addicted zombies just to claim to have finished. However that makes me wonder.... do true nonlinear games have an end?
If we were to look at it, nonlinear games are supposed to be free-flowing and continuous in every realistic direction in relation to time. As the game progresses we do the variations of actions we choose to do, which could ideally reach certain points that involve boos fights, and in a way, the final boss. Is it truly the final boss? By definition a nonlinear game would allow the complete set of infinite possibilities, but shouldn't nonlinear games include the possibility of playing beyond a so-called "end"? As I said a nonlinear game should not be structured, and by that there must include the remaining set of possibilities beyond a predetermined end. Considering the previous, would there be such a thing as the "end"?
That might come out as sort of confusing, but we're focusing on the expansion of choices. Unless your decisions leave you dead or whatever way of preventing you from continuing realistic play, it should realistically allow you to continue until you die of natural causes. Personally speaking, if a game nonlinear decided to end at some point, wouldn't it violate the rule of unstructured gaming? That's the problem here: Do nonlinear games even have a logical end that ends with the final boss?
One of the few games that have tried to tackle this is Fallout 2. After completing the game, you had the option to continue playing. In this case you had a little more freedom. Going beyond this point, however, there is practically nothing left to do but fight endlessly. No more other activities, no more quests to do, nothing.
The leads to the next problem: Containing and generating endless content. A nonlinear game would ideally allow the constant expansion of the world. Realistically, where the heck are we going to find a medium that can possibly hold this data, and how are we going to create a program that can allow the generation of activities and events due to your actions? Such data probably cannot even be made during a single lifetime. There isn't any medium that would be able to contain all this data. Our best supercomputers can only go so far. That's also considering that a computer and electronic data are themselves limited mediums. To contain limitless opportunities would need a limitless medium. Does such an object even exist?
Then we have the problem of programming. To create this nonlinear game, we would need a program that that could allow to, in sense, write in itself. This game should be allowed to mimic the human brain's capacity to assume and to deduce possible outcomes and events. This would also need a processor that is capable of organizing such complex functions. In short, we need a program that can accept and process infinite possibilities. Such a program must be limitless, and it is theoretically impossible to create such a program or a processor that can handle it. These programs need to constantly evolve to the player's actions in order to let nonlinear game play to exist. It might just take centuries to write such a program, not to mention the medium to store it in.
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