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5. Plot and Quest Editing Overview

The Plot Editor exposes several related systems at once. The most important first distinction is that this is fundamentally BioWare's plot infrastructure. Legendary Explorer did not invent quests, goals, tasks, plot items, state transitions, consequences, or outcomes. It decodes BioWare's serialized data and presents it through an editor.

Legendary Explorer supplies the interface, labels, parsing, validation, and cross-references. The underlying structures, including BioQuestMap and the plot-state maps, are assets loaded by Mass Effect's Plot Manager.

Running example: Citadel: Negotiator's Request

This tutorial uses the small vanilla assignment Citadel: Negotiator's Request as a running example.

Elias Keeler, an Alliance negotiator on the Citadel, asks Shepard to obtain Videlicet, a legal but regulated mental stimulant. He believes he needs it for an important treaty negotiation, although conversation reveals that he has developed a dependency on it.

Shepard can persuade Keeler to seek treatment, buy and deliver the stimulant, give him a depressant instead, or leave the Citadel under circumstances that make the assignment impossible. The journal supplies an initial description, directions to the Med Clinic, an instruction to return after purchasing the drug, and different text for the treatment, stimulant, depressant, and failure resolutions.

The assignment is narratively small while still involving a quest definition, journal stages, persistent plot state, conditionals, dialogue, inventory-related objects, transitions, and several outcomes.

To inspect it, open the vanilla LE1 package directly from the base game's BioGame/CookedPCConsole directory in Plot Editor:

BioGame/CookedPCConsole/BIOC_Materials.pcc

Its relevant base-game exports include:

PlotManagerAuto.QuestMap
PlotManagerAuto.StateTransitionMap
PlotManagerAuto.ConsequenceMap
PlotManagerAuto.OutcomeMap

Do not use Open version of file with highest mount priority for this case study. That command may open a DLC or modded copy containing changes that were not authored by BioWare. The purpose here is to examine the unmodified vanilla quest as a stable reference.

The examples below distinguish what is observed in the vanilla data from connections that still need to be traced before they become procedural instructions.

The conceptual model

At the highest level, LE1's plot system has three jobs:

  1. Remember the state of the story.
  2. Change that state when something happens.
  3. Present selected parts of that state to the player through systems such as the journal and Codex.
Player does something
        ↓
A transition or state event is invoked
        ↓
Plot variables and other effects change
        ↓
Conditionals evaluate the new state
        ↓
The journal, conversations, Kismet, galaxy map, and other systems react

Quest Map: what the player sees in the journal

A BioQuestMap is primarily a journal-definition asset. It does not contain all of a quest's gameplay logic.

A quest contains:

These are BioWare data structures presented by Legendary Explorer, not an organizational system invented by the editor.

Quest

The quest is the journal's overall container. The Mission flag appears to control how the journal classifies the entry, roughly distinguishing a major mission from a secondary assignment. It is presentation metadata rather than a statement that the quest has more powerful runtime behavior.

Negotiator's Request: One journal identity contains all its stages and endings. Because the game presents it as an assignment, its Quest record also lets us verify how BioWare uses the Mission flag for secondary content.

Goal

A goal represents a major stage or journal state for the quest. Goals have name and description text, a conditional, and a state. The conditional determines when the goal applies. We should inspect representative vanilla quests before documenting the exact operational meaning of every state value.

Think of goals provisionally as major summaries such as accepting Keeler's request, obtaining the drug, returning to Keeler, and resolving the assignment.

Negotiator's Request: Its journal describes the request, purchase of the drug, several successful resolutions, and failure after leaving the Citadel. We still need to determine which of these BioWare represents as Goals.

Task

Tasks are more specific journal objectives. Their data includes a name, description, a quest-completion flag, associated plot-item indices, a planet, and a waypoint tag. Tasks can therefore connect journal instructions to plot-item progress, locations, map guidance, and quest completion.

Negotiator's Request: Going to the Med Clinic and returning to Keeler are useful examples for examining Task descriptions, completion flags, planet values, waypoint tags, and associated plot-item indices.

Plot item

A plot item is a tracked quest-related item or count, not necessarily a normal inventory object. It has a name, icon, conditional, state, and target-items value, and tasks can refer to plot-item indices.

The target-items value suggests that plot items can contribute to counted objectives, but its exact presentation and behavior must be verified against vanilla examples.

Negotiator's Request: Videlicet and the depressant are tangible items used by dialogue choices, but that does not prove that either is a Quest Map plot item. This quest can help distinguish inventory objects from BioQuestPlotItem records.

Plot variables: the game's memory

The game records story state through plot variables:

These values are saved with the game. The Quest Map can consult them, but it is not itself the primary state store.

Negotiator's Request: The game remembers whether Shepard accepted the request, obtained a drug, persuaded Keeler, delivered either drug, or made the assignment impossible. Dialogue and journal conditionals react to those facts.

Plot IDs are array positions

Plot-variable IDs are not stored as isolated dictionary keys. The save represents them in indexed collections. Trilogy Save Editor warns that adding a variable with a high plot ID requires creating every preceding slot up to that ID.

For example, adding plot variable 1000000 does not add only one entry. It expands the relevant collection so that index 1000000 can exist, creating all missing positions before it. An arbitrarily large "surely unused" ID can therefore bloat the save with a very large number of empty slots.

This creates another constraint when allocating IDs for a DLC:

Avoiding collisions and avoiding excessive array expansion are separate requirements. An ID can be unused while still being a poor choice because of its size.

Common plot-variable flow

BioWare plots frequently use similarly named variables to represent broad lifecycle stages. These names are patterns rather than engine requirements, and individual plots do not apply them completely consistently.

Begin_Plot

Many vanilla plots have a boolean named Begin_Plot. It generally records that the plot has formally begun, but the event that qualifies as “beginning” depends on the plot. It may correspond to receiving a briefing, accepting an assignment, entering a location, or reaching another activation point.

Some plots supplement or replace the simple boolean with more specific states. The vanilla data includes variants such as separate general and location-dependent beginnings, as well as substates describing the circumstances under which a plot began.

For UNC: Rogue VI, Begin_Plot is bool 4681. It becomes eligible when Shepard reaches level 20 and has not previously begun the assignment. The Normandy galaxy-map flow then plays Hackett's briefing and sets the plot as begun.

Plot_Complete

Plot_Complete is a more consistent pattern. It generally records that a plot can no longer progress as an active quest.

A simple plot may need only one completion boolean. Plots with multiple resolutions often place more specific outcome states beneath or alongside it, using labels such as the character persuaded, the payment made, the target killed, or the plot aborted. These states preserve both facts:

The plot is complete.
The plot ended in this particular way.

For UNC: Rogue VI, Plot_Complete is bool 4682. Vanilla Luna sets it after the third and final VI core is destroyed, regardless of bunker order.

Treat names as clues

Begin_Plot and Plot_Complete are useful starting points when investigating an unfamiliar quest, but their names do not prove exactly when or how they change. For each plot:

  1. Find the variable and record its numeric ID.
  2. Find the transition or transitions that set it.
  3. Trace where those transitions are invoked.
  4. Identify any sibling or child states that refine its meaning.
  5. Verify the behavior in game or with a controlled save.

This section can expand as we identify other recurring BioWare patterns, such as accepted, failed, resolved, entered-area, and outcome-specific states.

Conditionals

Conditionals ask questions about plot state. They allow the journal, conversations, Kismet, and other systems to select behavior without duplicating the state itself.

Negotiator's Request: Conditions control which Keeler dialogue choices are available and which journal state applies. The exact conditionals for its inventory and resolution branches remain to be traced.

State transitions: named things that happen

A transition or state event is a reusable command identified by a number. Kismet, dialogue, or another system invokes it, and it performs one or more effects. Those effects can include setting booleans, setting or incrementing integers and floats, manipulating substates, calling functions, and invoking other consequences.

This lets several callers execute one named operation without reproducing all of its underlying changes.

Negotiator's Request: Keeler's dialogue invokes different transitions when Shepard gives him the stimulant or the depressant. Those choices change persistent state so the conversation, journal, rewards, and future availability agree about the resolution.

Consequence Map: bundles of effects

The Consequence Map is part of BioWare's event-execution layer. Its state events describe effects the game should carry out when a numbered event is invoked.

Here, consequence is a technical term rather than necessarily a dramatic story consequence. A consequence might set ShieldModuleRecovered to true, increment ModulesRecovered, call a reward function, or chain to another consequence.

Negotiator's Request: Delivering a drug or persuading Keeler may coordinate several effects: recording the resolution, handling an item, completing the assignment, updating the journal, and granting a reward. Its transition IDs still need to be traced before assigning each effect to a particular map.

State Transition Map and Outcome Map

LE1's Plot Manager infrastructure includes separate assets for the State Transition Map, Consequence Map, Outcome Map, Quest Map, Codex Map, and conditionals. These divisions belong to the game, not Legendary Explorer.

For now, use this provisional interpretation:

The exact boundary between transitions, consequences, and outcomes must be verified by tracing vanilla LE1 examples before it becomes procedural advice.

Negotiator's Request has several narrative endings, but that does not prove that each is an Outcome Map entry. It is a useful test of the technical meaning of outcome rather than evidence that the term simply means story ending.

Codex Map

The Plot Manager also owns Codex definitions. A Codex Map contains sections, pages, titles and descriptions, images, ordering information, and audio references where supported. It is adjacent to the Quest Map as a story-state presentation system, but it is not required merely to track a quest.

Negotiator's Request: No Codex entry is necessary for this assignment. Its absence from the running example helps show that the Codex Map is neighboring Plot Manager infrastructure rather than a required part of every quest.

What Legendary Explorer adds

Legendary Explorer provides:

The Plot Database and Plot Editor are different things:

Conversations and other callers

Most visible decisions in Negotiator's Request occur in Keeler's conversation. Dialogue conditions determine which choices appear, and dialogue transitions record Shepard's decision. Other quests may invoke the same infrastructure from Kismet. The plot system connects these callers to persistent state; it does not require every quest to use the same kind of caller.

The most important takeaway

A quest is not one self-contained object containing all of its behavior.

Quest Map
    Journal presentation and objective structure

Plot variables
    Persistent facts saved with the game

Conditionals
    Questions about those facts

Transitions, consequences, and outcomes
    Reusable operations that change state

Kismet and conversations
    Gameplay systems that invoke transitions and react to state

The next tutorial moves from examining BioWare's implementation to defining plot state for a new DLC. As this investigation proceeds, this overview should be revised with the verified details of Negotiator's Request.

Negotiator's Request details still to trace