Earlier, I discussed William and Sly and some rules changes between the first and second game.
I had trouble comparing the quest structure of the two games using only words, so I’ve drawn graphs of the two:
First Game
Second Game
It’s similar in concept to “skill trees” or “crafting graphs.” For each thing you can get in the game, I’ve identified which can be found directly, and which have prerequisites.
I’m not sure yet how to identify subsets of items. For example most mushrooms can be found directly, but a subset of the mushrooms are inside locked chests, which need a key as a prerequisite. Also, I didn’t treat stationary objects as items for this list. In one sense, getting a mushroom from a chest has two prerequisites, the key and the chest, not just the key. But I left out the chest to keep it simpler.
For the prerequisite arrows, I tried to colour code them because I think there’s value in the diversity of how you use them. (I may also think of these as converting one or more items into another item. This article on Free to Play games analyzed some of them according to “currencies” and how they can be converted. Also the same author wrote about The Sims Social with the same ideas.)
I colour coded them according to variation in the conversion methods. For example, using a key to open a locked chest is a conversion method, and it’s functionally equivalent to using a bomb to explode a rock, just a different metaphor. Both involve finding one item and bringing it to a location. However, using fire to release a frozen spirit is a slightly different method, since you have a time limit before the fire goes out.
So variation is one metric you can get from the graph. The other is depth. Two of the journal pages were stored in ice in places inaccessible without flying. To get flying, that’s three steps from a base-level item. (fairyflies have no prerequisites) And breaking the ice is two again, to use the fire. So that’s three on one side and four on the other, with four conversion methods. The first game had as its deepest item destroying a monster, which is only three deep from fairyflies and didn’t have as much diversity in the methods required.