Plot without holes
Learning paths through this topic
Load a game saved mid-scene without giving the rewards twice
Autosave can fire between two beats of a long scene, and when the game loads it must pick the story up at a sensible place without handing out the same gift again or dropping one that was never given. Here is how to rebuild the scene correctly from a save.
Find stretches of play where nothing story-related happens for too long
In an open world players can spend an hour gathering and building and forget there was a story at all. Here is how to read the moments of past story beats, list the dry stretches including the very start and end, and say where a gentle nudge could land.
Hand out story fragments across runs in order, without dry streaks
In a game where every run starts fresh, the story comes in pieces that drop by chance. Players get the ending piece before the beginning, or go a dozen runs with nothing new. Here is how your AI keeps the pieces in story order and guarantees that a long dry spell ends.
Stop the hero's reputation from flipping back and forth on every kill
Spare an enemy and the town calls you merciful, shoot the next one and you are suddenly cruel, then merciful again. Characters react to a label that changes every minute. Here is how your AI makes a reputation that follows the player's habits and still moves when the habits really change.
Find the order of missions that leaves the finale locked forever
The finale opens after enough missions are done, but some missions close others when you finish them. A player who picks the wrong ones early ends with nothing left to play and a locked finale. Here is how your AI searches every order and shows the shortest one that traps the player.
Pick what a New Game Plus keeps without breaking the story
Players finish the campaign and start again with their weapons and upgrades, but the story says they never met the mechanic who built them. Or the ally is both alive and dead. Here is how your AI tests a keep list for missing roots and contradictions and shows what must be dropped.
Make a night-only story scene reachable for a player who arrives by day
Some scenes only make sense in the dark, or at dawn, and a player who shows up at the wrong hour either breaks the scene or has to guess why nothing happens. Here is how to work out when they can really start it, and how long they have to wait.
Make a character react sensibly when the player arrives out of order
Players in open worlds walk to the late places early, and the person waiting there greets them as if they knew nothing, or as if they knew everything. Here is how to choose the right version of a conversation from what the player really has.
Stop the objective marker pointing at a task the player already did
The player blew the door open with a grenade, and the game still sends them to find the key for it. Or an objective can no longer be done because its person left. Here is how your AI decides the one current goal, quietly completes what was done out of order and retires what has become pointless.
Let villagers share news while it is fresh and drop it when it is stale
A villager who still talks about last month's storm as if it happened this morning breaks the feeling of a living world. Here is how to give each piece of news a shelf life, pick the freshest one, say when it happened in the right words, and not repeat it.
Bring old saved games into line when the story's facts are renamed
After an update the story may know a fact under a new name, drop one, or add one that older saves never had, and a player coming back after months must not find the story broken. Here is how to carry any old save forward, step by step, without losing or inventing progress.
Decide which story moment plays when the player walks into two at once
In a big open area two story moments can wake up on the same step, and the player gets both talking over each other or loses one forever. Here is how to choose a winner, what happens to the loser, and when the loser should be dropped.