Hallucinations and NPCs

[Traligon]

This is my first post, but I have been following this forum for about a year now.  What a great community and method for players to interact with Hinterland!  Thank you.  As a new player (about 50 hours) I am so filled with excitement exploring buildings and unique areas in new regions (there are still several regions I have not explored).  For a long time I thought there was a possibility that I could find another person in survival.  It greatly added to the excitement of adventure, but by reading posts on this site I have found this to be false.  Ralph has mentioned he believes a lot of people enjoy the feeling of isolation and I can totally understand this.  I also understand that this is a topic that has been mentioned several times before, but I would like to share my thoughts and introduce some new ideas.

I would like to see random NPCs be added to survival.  The chance of finding one of these characters would be almost unimaginably small, but the idea of thinking someone is out there would be more reason to explore and survive.  It would be very cool to see the chance be so small that it is more than likely to visit all areas of all the maps and still not find one of these NPCs.  They could even appear in buildings or locations that have already been explored.  This would aid the "end game" problem that I hear of others by giving them motivation to continue their journey.  The interactions with these NPCs could be really short too.  Raph has even mentioned that he would like to implement dialog without going into a cut scene so he could experiment in survival.

Just imagine:

* you are in Mystery Lake when you stubble upon the far cabin across the lake.  There are blood stains in the snow leading to the door with one bloody hand print pressed against it.  You open the door to a man with torn clothes laying on a bloody bunk bed.  As you rush to his side, he grabs your arm, looks you straight in the eye, and says "you need to get to..."  The man's hand falls from gripping your arm and his head slumps to the side as he breathes his last breathe. *

* you are in Pleasant Valley as you approach the farmhouse.  As you open the front door you are met with a quick blur and then a struggle ensues.  You choose the knife and fight back but he won't quit.  He forces you against the wall with a firm hand around your neck but before the other meets your face with a rock, you get him right in the chest.  The man falls to the ground and goes limp. *

Also with the addition of NPCs, you could add hallucinations.  These would have a possibility of activating after 50 days  and have a chance slightly greater than the NPCs.  Imagine you are in the watchtower in Mystery Lake.  You spot smoke rising from the camp office.  You rush down hoping to find someone, just to find the camp empty with cold ash in the fireplace.  Or you spot light in the window of the trailer by Carter Hydro Dam.  It looks as if there is a candle flickering inside.  You rush over, open the door, and nothing, absolutely nothing.

[UpUpAway95]

I think I'd like them to focus getting all 5 episodes of story mode out first so that we don't start having competing story ideas or spoiling story ideas coming to survival.  After the Wintermute story is complete, then, yes, I'd like to see additional NPC's pop up in survival from time to time with there own little story to tell... perhaps even as DLC.

[Guest jeffpeng]

I seriously like the concept. Maybe not the part where I have to fight with someone I haven't even seen before, but in general having random NPC encounters would be a nice option to add to the game. But only as that: an option. For many people being isolated is part of TLDs core identity, and I cannot really argue with that. Plus it would be rather hard to give those encounters purpose. Also: why would two people that share the same predicament not stick together? But the game clearly isn't made for that, so this would need a good reason why it wouldn't happen.

I could see this work from a gameplay perspective in that you encounter a few NPCs randomly at several places in the world, like you do with Methusaleh. To give this a gameplay purpose you could maybe trade some things with them.

About the hallucinations: That goes so much deeper than just that, and I feel like for this to work the game would have to seriously tap into the entire mental state issue - but that one by definition is hard to tackle.

Overall: I like the ideas in general, but I don't see them becoming a reality, especially not since, as @UpUpAway95 rightfully pointed out, there are many more and much bigger fish to fry first.