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When Square start making films it does start to worry me about where games are heading.
The Spirits Within could easily have just been the latest Final Fantasy game rather than a film, but with a bit of walking around between the scenes and some random battles.
It worries me that games are becoming too story driven, and as a result, too linear. If you write a story with plenty of plot twists and surprises, when you play the game you may well be intrigued, but you're not going to be allowed to wander far from this story, are you?
What, in my opinion, would be better, would be if there was an eventual goal, with many, many ways of reaching it.
So rather than a typical game folling a path that involves going into a dungeon to get a certain item than will lead to you opening a further dungeon which reveals an item that.....leads to an encounter with the final boss, and you win the game. Hmmm, just a little too predefined. The problem is that we're still working with models from the 8 and 16 bit days, days in which you HAD to limit what the game could do, as there simply wasn't the power in the machines to allow you to do what you wanted.
Mind you, there's nothing wrong with being sent down a pre-defined route, it can be tremendous fun whilst you play, but it doesn't do much for replay value. It just seems to be a shame that there's only ever one way to reach your goal. We all know that there's more than one way to skin a cat, but in games that simply doesn't seem to be the case, you'll do as the developers want, so you can follow their wonderful story.
I don't know, that just doesn't seem to be making the most of these next-generation consoles. Surely if the game is set in a huge world so much of it shouldn't be out of reach until you've performed a set number of tasks.
Wouldn't a game be fun in which you started to play, not knowing what your quest was. The introduction could introduce you, with a small quest - get new shoes for your horse - something trivial. Anyway, when going to do this you might learn that a princess has been kidnapped, as so oftewn happens in Gameland. So, if you want, you can wander straight across the desert, or wherever, to the castle, and take the boss on. Yes you'd get a severe beating, but hey, at least it let you try it on with him! You'd work out that you needed to be stronger, needed to get a magical weapon, or something, and you could go in search for it.
Mind you, many would find this game frustrating, without any idea of where to look, but it would be fun. Maybe.
The Spirits Within could easily have just been the latest Final Fantasy game rather than a film, but with a bit of walking around between the scenes and some random battles.
It worries me that games are becoming too story driven, and as a result, too linear. If you write a story with plenty of plot twists and surprises, when you play the game you may well be intrigued, but you're not going to be allowed to wander far from this story, are you?
What, in my opinion, would be better, would be if there was an eventual goal, with many, many ways of reaching it.
So rather than a typical game folling a path that involves going into a dungeon to get a certain item than will lead to you opening a further dungeon which reveals an item that.....leads to an encounter with the final boss, and you win the game. Hmmm, just a little too predefined. The problem is that we're still working with models from the 8 and 16 bit days, days in which you HAD to limit what the game could do, as there simply wasn't the power in the machines to allow you to do what you wanted.
Mind you, there's nothing wrong with being sent down a pre-defined route, it can be tremendous fun whilst you play, but it doesn't do much for replay value. It just seems to be a shame that there's only ever one way to reach your goal. We all know that there's more than one way to skin a cat, but in games that simply doesn't seem to be the case, you'll do as the developers want, so you can follow their wonderful story.
I don't know, that just doesn't seem to be making the most of these next-generation consoles. Surely if the game is set in a huge world so much of it shouldn't be out of reach until you've performed a set number of tasks.
Wouldn't a game be fun in which you started to play, not knowing what your quest was. The introduction could introduce you, with a small quest - get new shoes for your horse - something trivial. Anyway, when going to do this you might learn that a princess has been kidnapped, as so oftewn happens in Gameland. So, if you want, you can wander straight across the desert, or wherever, to the castle, and take the boss on. Yes you'd get a severe beating, but hey, at least it let you try it on with him! You'd work out that you needed to be stronger, needed to get a magical weapon, or something, and you could go in search for it.
Mind you, many would find this game frustrating, without any idea of where to look, but it would be fun. Maybe.
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It's still story driven. Stories add depth and a reason to games. Every game has a story of some sort be it as simple as you are the hero that must rescue a princess or some sort of twisted government conspiracy. A good story can make a game very involving so even if it is linear you want to keep playing through to hear the story and see how everything turns out. Many stories aren't entirely linear either, for example, Baldur's Gate gives you certain things that must be done to progress but there is usually more than one way to do them often depending on your alignment. Then they throw in a horde of other quests that you can either complete (also with multiple choices) or ignore. You may never find every quest and certain quests are only available to certain classes of character so this just adds to the freedom of the game.
Games often strive to give some elements of freedom to the player. You will usually have a choice of paths to take, perhaps a choice of weapons, maybe you have to formulate an entire plan and execute it yourself (Rainbow 6, any RTS). The story and the game are separate things but both put together mean that you are playing with a purpose (not just random killing or whatever) and either make you want to hear the whole story or make you able to guide and complete the story yourself.
We can look forward to many more games with freedom in the future. For example Red Faction is linear in the order you must do things but the choice of how to get through certain areas is yours, you could blow up the door, get the keycard or find some other way through. While in the end you will have the same result you will have had freedom as to how to get there. Hitman 2 will be a big change from the original in that there will be a lot more effort put into allowing a horde of ways to complete a level. In the original Hitman you really could only win a level by finding the perfect route and going through it until you got it right but in the sequel they hope to give you the ability to use a variety of ways to get the job done. There will be a rating system that will give you score depending on what weapons you used, how many unnecessary kills were made and if you were noticed. The game also hopes to give you the freedom to find your own way to eliminate your target. You may prefer to find a high point and snipe them through a window, you may find a way to sneak into their room and slit their throat then sneak out unnoticed, perhaps you could poison their food and not even be in the area when the poison catches up with them. The possibilities are intended to be limited only by your imagination (and the tools you are using I suppose).
So I don't believe that story driven games are a bad thing and indeed they allow many different approaches to both game creation and game completion. Hopefully in the future we will see more original ways of tackling stories, more involving stories and more freedom created by stories.
Games often strive to give some elements of freedom to the player. You will usually have a choice of paths to take, perhaps a choice of weapons, maybe you have to formulate an entire plan and execute it yourself (Rainbow 6, any RTS). The story and the game are separate things but both put together mean that you are playing with a purpose (not just random killing or whatever) and either make you want to hear the whole story or make you able to guide and complete the story yourself.
We can look forward to many more games with freedom in the future. For example Red Faction is linear in the order you must do things but the choice of how to get through certain areas is yours, you could blow up the door, get the keycard or find some other way through. While in the end you will have the same result you will have had freedom as to how to get there. Hitman 2 will be a big change from the original in that there will be a lot more effort put into allowing a horde of ways to complete a level. In the original Hitman you really could only win a level by finding the perfect route and going through it until you got it right but in the sequel they hope to give you the ability to use a variety of ways to get the job done. There will be a rating system that will give you score depending on what weapons you used, how many unnecessary kills were made and if you were noticed. The game also hopes to give you the freedom to find your own way to eliminate your target. You may prefer to find a high point and snipe them through a window, you may find a way to sneak into their room and slit their throat then sneak out unnoticed, perhaps you could poison their food and not even be in the area when the poison catches up with them. The possibilities are intended to be limited only by your imagination (and the tools you are using I suppose).
So I don't believe that story driven games are a bad thing and indeed they allow many different approaches to both game creation and game completion. Hopefully in the future we will see more original ways of tackling stories, more involving stories and more freedom created by stories.
Operation Flashpoint is a bit like that.
You are given an end-goal, but how you approach it is entirely up to you.
One mission involves taking out some tanks and escaping.
Tried for 2hrs to sneak in and plant satchel charges etc, only to be constantly caught.
Then noticed a Hind helicopter sitting there.
And a BMP
And a tank
Tried the Hind, got airborne but couldn't fly very well so I smashed into the woods and died.
BMP let me shoot tanks but couldn't climb the hill very well. So I ran everyone over and then escaped slowly.
Then did it in the tank. Blew everything up, ran people over and proceeded to mow the trees down.
Then went back for the Hind and took out anything that moved.
Open-ended levels where you can decide how you want to do it.
You are given an end-goal, but how you approach it is entirely up to you.
One mission involves taking out some tanks and escaping.
Tried for 2hrs to sneak in and plant satchel charges etc, only to be constantly caught.
Then noticed a Hind helicopter sitting there.
And a BMP
And a tank
Tried the Hind, got airborne but couldn't fly very well so I smashed into the woods and died.
BMP let me shoot tanks but couldn't climb the hill very well. So I ran everyone over and then escaped slowly.
Then did it in the tank. Blew everything up, ran people over and proceeded to mow the trees down.
Then went back for the Hind and took out anything that moved.
Open-ended levels where you can decide how you want to do it.
When Square start making films it does start to worry me about where games are heading.
The Spirits Within could easily have just been the latest Final Fantasy game rather than a film, but with a bit of walking around between the scenes and some random battles.
It worries me that games are becoming too story driven, and as a result, too linear. If you write a story with plenty of plot twists and surprises, when you play the game you may well be intrigued, but you're not going to be allowed to wander far from this story, are you?
What, in my opinion, would be better, would be if there was an eventual goal, with many, many ways of reaching it.
So rather than a typical game folling a path that involves going into a dungeon to get a certain item than will lead to you opening a further dungeon which reveals an item that.....leads to an encounter with the final boss, and you win the game. Hmmm, just a little too predefined. The problem is that we're still working with models from the 8 and 16 bit days, days in which you HAD to limit what the game could do, as there simply wasn't the power in the machines to allow you to do what you wanted.
Mind you, there's nothing wrong with being sent down a pre-defined route, it can be tremendous fun whilst you play, but it doesn't do much for replay value. It just seems to be a shame that there's only ever one way to reach your goal. We all know that there's more than one way to skin a cat, but in games that simply doesn't seem to be the case, you'll do as the developers want, so you can follow their wonderful story.
I don't know, that just doesn't seem to be making the most of these next-generation consoles. Surely if the game is set in a huge world so much of it shouldn't be out of reach until you've performed a set number of tasks.
Wouldn't a game be fun in which you started to play, not knowing what your quest was. The introduction could introduce you, with a small quest - get new shoes for your horse - something trivial. Anyway, when going to do this you might learn that a princess has been kidnapped, as so oftewn happens in Gameland. So, if you want, you can wander straight across the desert, or wherever, to the castle, and take the boss on. Yes you'd get a severe beating, but hey, at least it let you try it on with him! You'd work out that you needed to be stronger, needed to get a magical weapon, or something, and you could go in search for it.
Mind you, many would find this game frustrating, without any idea of where to look, but it would be fun. Maybe.
The Spirits Within could easily have just been the latest Final Fantasy game rather than a film, but with a bit of walking around between the scenes and some random battles.
It worries me that games are becoming too story driven, and as a result, too linear. If you write a story with plenty of plot twists and surprises, when you play the game you may well be intrigued, but you're not going to be allowed to wander far from this story, are you?
What, in my opinion, would be better, would be if there was an eventual goal, with many, many ways of reaching it.
So rather than a typical game folling a path that involves going into a dungeon to get a certain item than will lead to you opening a further dungeon which reveals an item that.....leads to an encounter with the final boss, and you win the game. Hmmm, just a little too predefined. The problem is that we're still working with models from the 8 and 16 bit days, days in which you HAD to limit what the game could do, as there simply wasn't the power in the machines to allow you to do what you wanted.
Mind you, there's nothing wrong with being sent down a pre-defined route, it can be tremendous fun whilst you play, but it doesn't do much for replay value. It just seems to be a shame that there's only ever one way to reach your goal. We all know that there's more than one way to skin a cat, but in games that simply doesn't seem to be the case, you'll do as the developers want, so you can follow their wonderful story.
I don't know, that just doesn't seem to be making the most of these next-generation consoles. Surely if the game is set in a huge world so much of it shouldn't be out of reach until you've performed a set number of tasks.
Wouldn't a game be fun in which you started to play, not knowing what your quest was. The introduction could introduce you, with a small quest - get new shoes for your horse - something trivial. Anyway, when going to do this you might learn that a princess has been kidnapped, as so oftewn happens in Gameland. So, if you want, you can wander straight across the desert, or wherever, to the castle, and take the boss on. Yes you'd get a severe beating, but hey, at least it let you try it on with him! You'd work out that you needed to be stronger, needed to get a magical weapon, or something, and you could go in search for it.
Mind you, many would find this game frustrating, without any idea of where to look, but it would be fun. Maybe.
Page: