Jagged Alliance 3: Turning a side quest into a major content within an established main narrative

RPG quests are no easy job, especially in a game which is all about freedom of choice, variety of interactions and meaningful consequences. Things get even dirtier when you have to implant those quests in already existing main narrative and scripted main quests. So when I was asked to do Diesel Power - one of the more important side quests of Jagged Alliance 3, I took the challenge with an awe and a grain of salt.

Basically, what I was facing was:

• A game with already finished level design, narrative and main quests
• Intricate ecosystem of interconnected variables which check for any potential player's choice
• Open world non-linear approach to narrative, progression and quest solving
• Limited budget of assets and programming help
• A chance to create the quest of my dreams
• A chance to screw up epically 

Locations

As 80% of the content was already created, I needed to attach my quest to already existing levels. Thankfully, our level designers had done an amazing job with those. In order for the quest to be consistent with the environment it inhabits, I used those level designs as inspiration and a starting point for any content I was about to create. Initially, the budget for my quest allowed me only the two sectors of Landsbach, but soon enough, I was already browsing through the neighboring "filler maps" which were supposed to be only for combat encounters. Step by step, I started appropriating locations such as Abandoned Gas Station, The Grand Prix Outpost and The Mad Max encounter (initially made as a joke by one of our level designers) with the idea of creating something much more epic and impactful than a small side quest. In the end, it was so well received that it spawned its own DLC related quests and characters and became an official part of the main lore of the game.

Themes

While trying to make sense and measure how I feel about those gorgeous but still uninhabited desolate levels, certain things began to emerge in my mind - wasteland, fallout, mad max, diesel punk... and then I knew I had to somehow connect those themes with the main narrative and Jagged Alliance's emblematic tone. As long as I was keeping the narrative within certain limits I could do my own take on the post-apocalypse genre:

• must be realistic (no supernatural elements)
• must be set nowadays (2001 to be more specific)
• must be serious (but not too serious)
• must be comical (but not too comical)

So, I removed the futuristic setting and the supernatural. I kept the diesel-punk aesthetic and used the symbol of diesel as a macguffin, reshaping it into a war drug. I kept the harsh reality and hopelessness typical for the post-apocalypse genre, but transferred them into a poverty-struck third world country and tried to tell the story in a dark comedy style to keep the balance between the drama and the parody. I added gangs, illegal dealings with drugs and sex, rich versus poor power dynamics.... and a cheesy nazi villain on top, so I keep the b-movie tone of the game. In the end, the quest turned out to be an interesting collage of tropes - as if you had mixed Fallout 2's New Reno with Breaking Bad, Mad Max and Dr. Strangelove into a big bowl.

Characters

The budget allowed for two Conversation Characters (with their own dialogue trees and scripted interactions) and several Banter Characters (with only banters as means of communication). My next step in the quest building was defining who those characters were, how the player interacted with them, how these interactions would impact the quest and how did they fit the main story of the game.

Quest Flow

As there were many quest involving the "kill this guy to solve the quest" approach, I really wanted to allow multiple solutions to my quest and account for every approach the player would choose. I tried making it as morally grey as possible, so there is no right or wrong way to act in each situation. The player could act as Siegfried's pet and fetch the illegal substance in order to get a diamond mine in return. Or he could side with Bounce, attack Siegfried and split the mine fifty-fifty. Or he could just kill everybody and not get involved with what is really happening. Or side with Siegfried and then try to investigate the real purpose of the Diesel and finally stab him in the back and destroy his operation. You are allowed to progress the quest in any fashion, but in the final credits of the you'd be able to see the consequences of your choices.

Scroll down to see an overly simplified flow chart of the quest.

Even though I wasn't allowed any programming help and was forced to create only content I could script, I fought hard to make my quest feel fresh and different from the others. With careful tweaks of what the ambient life was capable of doing and a secret rogue feature added by a fellow programmer, I was able to:

• Add a fighting mini game in the Night Club, where your merc is stripped from all his items
• Day and Night routine of all characters and ambient life, so there is an illusion that the city is living on its own
• Make the Diesel an actual combat stimulant
• Handle all the special cases which resulted from the player's freedom (they were A LOT)
• Connect my quest with other content such as Chalet De La Paix and the Sanatorium quest
• Write a lot of dialogue for my characters and for the emblematic situational interruptions of the main mercs

Conclusion

Even though this quest's development cycle turned from a neat content filler to a monstrous hydra where you cut one head and hundreds of bugs appear, I still consider it one of my best works. If I had to do it over, I would probably made my life easier by making it simpler, more linear (just as many of my other quests in the game). But at the same time, working on it completely reflected the way the whole game was conceived - last minute design changes, trial and error iterative process and taking risks in the name of quality instead of aiming for a safe but bland content.