Because the game was open world, I needed every system to fully work with each other. Think NPCs starting missions, changing states during missions, etc... On top of this they also had to be cancellable and restartable & work with a save system. Because of this I made a lot of use of polymorphism, dependency injection, and the strategy pattern to make sure every system was as modular as possible. It's ended up being modular enough that I still use these systems in new projects today.

• What I ruled out

  A voiceover or intro text would've been easy, but broke a core design pillar: let the player discover the world themselves.

• What I did instead

  Let NPCs explain the world through dialogue, so players pick things up naturally as they play.

• The trade-off

  This meant heavy playtesting to make sure players didn't get lost or confused, but it ended up being the right call.