Setting: Late 2010s Contemporary Greater London (Suburbs)
You play as a rat. Your daily life consists of struggle: evading enemies and finding a single crumb of leftover human food just barely got you by. One day, while scrapping food, you have an epiphany. If you can sneak into a human’s house and stay there without being caught, you can have all the food and shelter in the world! With 0 Cheez to your name and running on pure hopes and dreams, you decide to venture into the human world.
You arrive in Rattham, an offshoot of the city bustling with life. You’ve probably only seen one human (if any) in your entire life but you’re excited to see more! As you crawl confidently out into the open, you hear screaming followed by a scuttering of shoes. Humans are NOT friendly. A sequence of evading being brutally squashed by shoes ensues. You barely survive, and out of panic, you scurry into an entryway and keep moving forward, eventually finding your way into a sewer pipe. The only way is forward and after what feels like ages, you finally reach the entryway of a house. Raiding their house out of desperation is yet another mistake you make. When one of the owners catches you, she screams which summons another human who certainly wants to kill you.
Once evading the first house, you realise that trying to find a home isn’t as easy as you thought. Exploring the other houses in the neighbourhood introduces you to other eccentric characters that want to keep you as a pet, kill you, and even… experiment on you. Soon after, you discover the trading centre, comprised of squirrels, pigeons, and owls at the top. You continue onward with your journey…
Endings
Depending on how you fare in levels, your respect score and other factors, there will be 4 endings:
Safety ending: You found a place to stay, the humans are nice as long as you don’t cause a mess.
Conditions: Gain the respect of a level character enough for them to want to keep you around.
(Note: Each level has a special ending that depends on which house you befriend.)
Camaraderie ending: You’ve gained the trust of your fellow rats and discovered a place where Rats live together in peace and harmony.
Conditions: You did a lot of Rat side quests which ended up in the local Rat population knowing you’re trustworthy.
Unexpected Places ending: Your supposed “natural enemy” finds you rather endearing. As a result, you’ve decided to live with them, and they say the rest of your rat friends are welcome.
Conditions: You did a lot of enemy side quests, which ended up in either Rat, Fox, or Bird populations, knowing you’re trustworthy.
Back to the Burrow ending: You don’t find anywhere to stay, you retreat to your life in the burrow and stay there until you grow old.
Conditions: You didn’t make enough friends and humans/animals do not respect you enough for them to permit you to stay in their house or place.
Dialogue and Behaviour Examples
When moving about your day, you will encounter different archetypes and character behaviours, which may determine some of the dialogue the characters tell you. Depending on their innate feeling towards you (archetype for humans, and whether they are a natural predator for animals) will skew dialogue towards a certain way. There would be 100s of dialogues where different NPCs will have lines randomly assigned to them.
Certain actions will be neutral (like continuing to walk past someone if they’ve noticed you). At the same time, some will be charged negatively or positively, e.g. jumping around someone who’s scared of you will decrease their respect for you while listening to a benevolent NPC talk to you will increase their respect.
Some examples include:
On being spotted by a scared human, walking: *shriek* (wobbling text) “WHAT IS THAT! OH GOD, IT’S ON ME!”
On being spotted by a disgusted human, sitting with a friend: “£!@%! There’s a rat right next to us. Nah, this town is on a different level. *gesturing away* Ay, let’s go fam.”
On being spotted by an indifferent human, loitering: “Oh, it’s a Rat. Don’t get too close to me and we can be friends.”
On being spotted by a benevolent human, sitting: “Hey ‘lil guy, come and join me for a bit.”
After a few minutes: “Isn’t the town kind of peaceful like this?”
Dialogue can be used to learn more about NPCs’ emotions, and gain their respect or distrust. The more someone trusts or distrusts you, the more or less likely they are to continue walking around that area. Therefore, skewing to either side on the respect scale is important in what type of gameplay you may experience. Do you want to have a more story-rich atmosphere? Try to gain some people’s respect. Or do you want to play it like a silly animal simulator? Lose people’s respect, and maybe there will be a new challenge for you.
I find that the respect system can accommodate different playstyles and integrate them back into the game.