Fallout co-creator says non-linear design is all about never assuming how players will act, illustrates his point by fantasising about an NPC guard he seems to really hate

Fallout co-creator Tim Cain has a new video going over some of his principles for game design, and as you might expect has some strong opinions on the intersection between design intention, and what players actually end up doing.

“Rule one, our game is non-linear—don’t assume that players will go somewhere first or talk to someone first,” says Cain in a new YouTube video called Eight Level Design Guidelines. “I wanted to remind level designers that just because you put a guard outside the town, don’t assume that everybody will stop and talk to that guard.”

Cain clearly has a bee in his bonnet about guards specifically, and is soon freewheeling through examples of why the above is bad practice: “If you want to force that, you can put a gate in the town that doesn’t open until you talk to the guard or, worse, force the guard to go into conversation with the player.”

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So in Cain’s world, it’s time for that guard to meet their maker. “I point out that if you’re capable of shooting that guard from long distance and killing them, I’m gonna go into that town without talking to the guard. And you may think well, at that point, it’s OK because everyone in the town will attack you.”

But Cain’s principle is basic: don’t expect players to ever act in the way you expect. “In general, I just like to remind level designers, don’t assume anything the player is going to do in a particular order. Your job is to provide a nice map for them to play on and not make such assumptions.”

Eight Level Design Guidelines – YouTube

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— Eight Level Design Guidelines

Cain has previously spoken about the ineffable sadness when he sees a design document that relies on something like locking players in a room until they’ve done a particular thing, and says this shows a misunderstanding of why someone’s playing a game in the first place.

“If at this point you don’t know what all of this is in service of, you’re going to run into problems,” says Cain. “You should know why. Why am I doing all this? Why did I make this setting and tell this story with these mechanics? Once you’ve listed your goals, everything should fall from that.”

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Cain also recently posted a video outlining his love of Dungeons & Dragons, and how that game has informed his own design principles. So whaddya know: we owe Fallout’s existence to an admiral and his officers teaching him to play D&D in 1979.