Neverwinter Nights is an example of a storyline with NPCs that helped the PC. They had all those different classes standing around to join you, there was always some leader type giving you information and directing your major quests, and there was always certain places in the town that were assisting the cause (gave you free healing or something). Though along the way there were completely unrelated errand quests, but I guess I just viewed those as people who aren''t aware of or involved with the main quest.

Tadd
- WarbleWare

I personally like games better when you DON''T know from the very beginning that you''re out to Save The World or some crap. I think I''d like it better if you played a guy who was just a normal guy, but during his adventures put in the time and effort to be able to do things that most others couldn''t. I mean why can''t you have a game where this dude decides to go visit his sister in another town but gets attacked by goblins along the way and barely escapes with his life, then when he gets to his sister''s house he discovers she''s badly in debt and he needs to figure out how to raise the money to keep the evil neighbor from buying her house and turning it into a mad scientist''s laboratory...and then several quests down the road he finds out about some evil spy who''s trying to incite a war between neighboring kingdoms, only the spy turns out to be an underling of the Big Evil Dude. And so on. Let some normal guy get stuck doing all this heroic crap when he really just wants to go home and read a book, and to me it''s even more heroic that he''d rise above his previous life and expectations like that.

And why is it that no one else seems capable of doing *anything* unless they''re supposed to end up being your party members? For instance say the king of Imaria begs you to go clean out the monsters from some nearby cave...well why can''t all his hotshot soldiers do it instead? There''s more of them, and they have professional training. If they''re too inept to go kill a few monsters so their merchants don''t constantly get killed, then how are they skilled enough to defend the kingdom in wartime long enough for it to get to be a kingdom in the first place? This is probably why they use the old "we''ve been at peace for 300 years and our soldiers got fat and lazy" excuse so much, heh.

If a squirrel is chasing you, drop your nuts and run.