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Inconsistency is one of the biggest immersion-breakers and game spoilers of all time, yet it is widely overlooked by the gaming community as a non-essential element of gaming. Few people realise the impact consistency can have on a game, yet it plagues almost every game, including such big names as Deus Ex and Half-Life.
Deus Ex made a real effort to create a consistent world, and succeeds up to a certain point, but then shoots itself in the foot with some glaring mistakes.
The baddies and ambient AI characters can usually be dispatched with a one or two pistol shots or a well-placed sniper bullet, while a rocket from your GEP gun guarantees an instant kill. There are slight variations to this formula, like the Men in Black or UNATCO agents that require more firepower to kill, and the weaker AI like the bums that inhabit the back-streets that take slightly less damage before meeting their end. The inconsistency problem makes itself evident when you try attacking some of the plot-essential characters such as Tracer Tong or Gunther Hermann; you will notice that they are entirely invincible. You can unload your entire arsenal of weaponry at their unarmoured bodies without so much as taking a hair off their head, and I have actually tried this many times. This defies belief, and is a bad enough fault in itself, but it gets worse. When you meet some of the invincible characters later on in the game, such as Gunther Hermann or Anne Navarre, they can be destroyed with a single rocket or a couple of sniper bullets. This is because the game developers lazily gave the characters infinite health when their presence was needed for plot progression, and then reduced their life to a reasonable amount when they had served their purpose and were no longer needed.
Half-Life provides a good way round this problem, although not entirely for the same reason. When you shoot too many of the friendly AI such as scientists and security guards then the game will cut to a black screen with info telling you that you've failed the mission for killing too many friendlies. Deus Ex could simply have taken this idea and reshaped it slightly, so that when you shoot someone vital, you just get a 'mission failed' screen. Some, however might claim that this spoils immersion as well since it's not a realistic way of failing a game. So another solution would involve simply letting players who have killed someone important trying to continue the mission without these vital characters. This would naturally be impossible, so the player would feel obliged to reload a previous saved game. This would not only be realistic, but the player would feel the consequences of their own actions, realising that doing stupid things can only be bad for them. But the clever bit being that the player would be able to determine this for themselves, rather than being blatantly told so by the game's inconsistency.
Another weak area lies in the incredibly varied material damage properties. This is most clearly seen through the powerful, nanotechnically created Dragon's Tooth Sword. Using this sword in different locations show the weakness of the game's physics. For example, in some of the earlier levels that contain MJ12 headquarters, all the lockers belonging to the MJ12 soldiers are easily smashed open with the sword. Strangely enough though in more than two later missions, lockers that are exactly identical are somehow indestructible with your sword, and require explosives to destroy. Even more farcical is the fact that some windows are entirely indestructible with your sword or even explosives, yet others can be smashed totally with one baton swipe. Another example is the doors in the game. These all have various strengths, and this could actually be believable if the strengths were consistent with the materials they are made from, but once again Deus Ex is so wrapped up with making it's world believable in other areas that it misses the mark completely. This is evident in the way you can reduce a metal door to rubble with one sniper bullet, yet the glass door elsewhere in the building is entirely indestructible with any weapon or explosive whatsoever. This is one of the biggest immersion-busters of the lot as you frustratedly bang your head on your keyboard or controller, KNOWING that this shouldn't be happening.
Set rules need to be imbedded into the game physics, and these should apply throughout the whole game with no exceptions, whether plot-essential or not. If the player is not meant to enter a room, make the door of hardened steel. If the player is allowed to enter with effort (i.e. using explosives), make the door of solid wood. If the player is intended to enter the room, make it of glass or thin, light wood. Surely that would be more sensible than slapping in doors everywhere then assigning them properties according to the plot. Likewise, if windows aren't intended to be entered then give them wire netting or shutters, or do something inventive like making it too small too fit through or too high up too reach. All it needs is a little imagination to make all the game properties consistent, but not enough thought has been expended in this area.
Another game of remarkable inconsistency is the the infamous Soldier of Fortune. It put most of it's effort into visceral body decapitations, and ignored some vital gaming elements.
There are many lovingly crafted weapons in Soldier of Fortune, one of the more powerful ones being the dreaded flamethrower. Since SOF is violence orientated, you can use the flamethrower on humans to deadly effect, leaving piles of flaming corpes in your wake. But any other objects that come into contact with your flamethrower, such as wooden bookcases, wooden doors, books or carpets, these simply wear small black stars as evidence of contact with your fire-starter. You can't even start the smallest of fires on the most burnable of materials. Another weapon inconsistency can be seen using any bullet-based gun. Firing one of these against a wall will create reasonably satisfying bullet holes, but when you come to something slightly out of the ordinary, such as an exit sign or lamp, these remain somehow entirely undamaged when unleashed upon with the fury of even your best weapons. Not a mark will show to sully their appearance. The point I'm making here is that if weapons create an effect on a particular object or life-form, then similar effects should be made consistent with the rest of the artificial world.
The solution is not hard to initiate, it just takes a lot of effort on the part of the developers as they have to assign weapon effects to most objects and materials in the game. But once initialized, these should be made consistent throughout the game. For example it doesn't matter overly if bullet holes don't appear on metal objects, as long as that rule stays constant.
What really bugs me is the way SOF chooses to implement linearity. Linearity in itself is no curse, in fact it can be quite reassuring, but it has to be initiated properly. In making the game linear, SOF developers have made the fatal flaw of fitting the scenery in with plot. This means that in a hotel, all doors will be inaccessible and undestroyable bar the one door that allows the mission to progress. This spits in the face of both reality and consistency. An indestructible door is bad by itself, but what a coincidence that every other door has exactly these unrealistic properties. And what a coincidence that the only door to break the consistency is the one that contains the terrorists. OK, I'll admit that this exaggerated slightly, but you realise what I'm getting across, that if a game is linear, it should be done properly.
There are so many ways of getting around problems like this if the developers just give it a little thought. The simplest way would be to just create a standard room, and then clone it for every other room in the hotel. There is nothing wrong with this as that's what hotels are like anyway, all rooms are duplicates of the last. If they wanted to add more detail, like making some doors locked, some not, some containing people, some with different colour bedcovers etc. then fine, that would add even more. But the most basic creation would suffice to continue the illusion of realism through consistency alone. So little effort to create, yet such a bad result when laziness takes the upper hand. Of course hotels aren't the only locations needing consistency, and other solutions for other areas can be invented easily.
The AI in racing games has always been questionable, and in many games it is so frustratingly incompetent through it's total inconsistency. Rollcage is one of the worst examples I can think of except for the truly dreadful Powerboat Racing. In Rollcage, if you decide to poodle round a course at 20mph, perhaps stopping for a picnic mid-race, the AI will happily overtake you, but their consciences hit them for leaving you behind. So they kindly slow down, randomly crashing into the scenery round about, waiting for you to catch them up before continuing the race. Alternatively, if you decide to blast round the courses at breakneck speed they'll be right on your tail, slipping past at the first opportunity. But once they have overtaken, again they'll feel deep regret at leaving you behind and wait up for you again.
You notice that the AI will adapt to your driving speed. But WHY? The only thing that does is ruins your immersion, albeit pleasing amateurs. To make things even worse the AI drivers will take random routes around the track, not following any set racing line, but you can bet your life on it that as soon as they are level with you they will 'accidentally' steer in front of you, or take your back wheels out. If they did this to each other as well as you things wouldn't be so bad, but their insistence on picking on you is control-smashingly infuriating as you lose control of your vehicle and career way off course. The total lack of consistency in their driving is what puts you off playing the game, especially as the inconsistency is usually to your downfall.
In the future I hope more developers will become aware of the importance of consistency, even if it's only by realising the problems with inconsistency. This can really be one of the deciding factors between a good and a bad game.
Deus Ex made a real effort to create a consistent world, and succeeds up to a certain point, but then shoots itself in the foot with some glaring mistakes.
The baddies and ambient AI characters can usually be dispatched with a one or two pistol shots or a well-placed sniper bullet, while a rocket from your GEP gun guarantees an instant kill. There are slight variations to this formula, like the Men in Black or UNATCO agents that require more firepower to kill, and the weaker AI like the bums that inhabit the back-streets that take slightly less damage before meeting their end. The inconsistency problem makes itself evident when you try attacking some of the plot-essential characters such as Tracer Tong or Gunther Hermann; you will notice that they are entirely invincible. You can unload your entire arsenal of weaponry at their unarmoured bodies without so much as taking a hair off their head, and I have actually tried this many times. This defies belief, and is a bad enough fault in itself, but it gets worse. When you meet some of the invincible characters later on in the game, such as Gunther Hermann or Anne Navarre, they can be destroyed with a single rocket or a couple of sniper bullets. This is because the game developers lazily gave the characters infinite health when their presence was needed for plot progression, and then reduced their life to a reasonable amount when they had served their purpose and were no longer needed.
Half-Life provides a good way round this problem, although not entirely for the same reason. When you shoot too many of the friendly AI such as scientists and security guards then the game will cut to a black screen with info telling you that you've failed the mission for killing too many friendlies. Deus Ex could simply have taken this idea and reshaped it slightly, so that when you shoot someone vital, you just get a 'mission failed' screen. Some, however might claim that this spoils immersion as well since it's not a realistic way of failing a game. So another solution would involve simply letting players who have killed someone important trying to continue the mission without these vital characters. This would naturally be impossible, so the player would feel obliged to reload a previous saved game. This would not only be realistic, but the player would feel the consequences of their own actions, realising that doing stupid things can only be bad for them. But the clever bit being that the player would be able to determine this for themselves, rather than being blatantly told so by the game's inconsistency.
Another weak area lies in the incredibly varied material damage properties. This is most clearly seen through the powerful, nanotechnically created Dragon's Tooth Sword. Using this sword in different locations show the weakness of the game's physics. For example, in some of the earlier levels that contain MJ12 headquarters, all the lockers belonging to the MJ12 soldiers are easily smashed open with the sword. Strangely enough though in more than two later missions, lockers that are exactly identical are somehow indestructible with your sword, and require explosives to destroy. Even more farcical is the fact that some windows are entirely indestructible with your sword or even explosives, yet others can be smashed totally with one baton swipe. Another example is the doors in the game. These all have various strengths, and this could actually be believable if the strengths were consistent with the materials they are made from, but once again Deus Ex is so wrapped up with making it's world believable in other areas that it misses the mark completely. This is evident in the way you can reduce a metal door to rubble with one sniper bullet, yet the glass door elsewhere in the building is entirely indestructible with any weapon or explosive whatsoever. This is one of the biggest immersion-busters of the lot as you frustratedly bang your head on your keyboard or controller, KNOWING that this shouldn't be happening.
Set rules need to be imbedded into the game physics, and these should apply throughout the whole game with no exceptions, whether plot-essential or not. If the player is not meant to enter a room, make the door of hardened steel. If the player is allowed to enter with effort (i.e. using explosives), make the door of solid wood. If the player is intended to enter the room, make it of glass or thin, light wood. Surely that would be more sensible than slapping in doors everywhere then assigning them properties according to the plot. Likewise, if windows aren't intended to be entered then give them wire netting or shutters, or do something inventive like making it too small too fit through or too high up too reach. All it needs is a little imagination to make all the game properties consistent, but not enough thought has been expended in this area.
Another game of remarkable inconsistency is the the infamous Soldier of Fortune. It put most of it's effort into visceral body decapitations, and ignored some vital gaming elements.
There are many lovingly crafted weapons in Soldier of Fortune, one of the more powerful ones being the dreaded flamethrower. Since SOF is violence orientated, you can use the flamethrower on humans to deadly effect, leaving piles of flaming corpes in your wake. But any other objects that come into contact with your flamethrower, such as wooden bookcases, wooden doors, books or carpets, these simply wear small black stars as evidence of contact with your fire-starter. You can't even start the smallest of fires on the most burnable of materials. Another weapon inconsistency can be seen using any bullet-based gun. Firing one of these against a wall will create reasonably satisfying bullet holes, but when you come to something slightly out of the ordinary, such as an exit sign or lamp, these remain somehow entirely undamaged when unleashed upon with the fury of even your best weapons. Not a mark will show to sully their appearance. The point I'm making here is that if weapons create an effect on a particular object or life-form, then similar effects should be made consistent with the rest of the artificial world.
The solution is not hard to initiate, it just takes a lot of effort on the part of the developers as they have to assign weapon effects to most objects and materials in the game. But once initialized, these should be made consistent throughout the game. For example it doesn't matter overly if bullet holes don't appear on metal objects, as long as that rule stays constant.
What really bugs me is the way SOF chooses to implement linearity. Linearity in itself is no curse, in fact it can be quite reassuring, but it has to be initiated properly. In making the game linear, SOF developers have made the fatal flaw of fitting the scenery in with plot. This means that in a hotel, all doors will be inaccessible and undestroyable bar the one door that allows the mission to progress. This spits in the face of both reality and consistency. An indestructible door is bad by itself, but what a coincidence that every other door has exactly these unrealistic properties. And what a coincidence that the only door to break the consistency is the one that contains the terrorists. OK, I'll admit that this exaggerated slightly, but you realise what I'm getting across, that if a game is linear, it should be done properly.
There are so many ways of getting around problems like this if the developers just give it a little thought. The simplest way would be to just create a standard room, and then clone it for every other room in the hotel. There is nothing wrong with this as that's what hotels are like anyway, all rooms are duplicates of the last. If they wanted to add more detail, like making some doors locked, some not, some containing people, some with different colour bedcovers etc. then fine, that would add even more. But the most basic creation would suffice to continue the illusion of realism through consistency alone. So little effort to create, yet such a bad result when laziness takes the upper hand. Of course hotels aren't the only locations needing consistency, and other solutions for other areas can be invented easily.
The AI in racing games has always been questionable, and in many games it is so frustratingly incompetent through it's total inconsistency. Rollcage is one of the worst examples I can think of except for the truly dreadful Powerboat Racing. In Rollcage, if you decide to poodle round a course at 20mph, perhaps stopping for a picnic mid-race, the AI will happily overtake you, but their consciences hit them for leaving you behind. So they kindly slow down, randomly crashing into the scenery round about, waiting for you to catch them up before continuing the race. Alternatively, if you decide to blast round the courses at breakneck speed they'll be right on your tail, slipping past at the first opportunity. But once they have overtaken, again they'll feel deep regret at leaving you behind and wait up for you again.
You notice that the AI will adapt to your driving speed. But WHY? The only thing that does is ruins your immersion, albeit pleasing amateurs. To make things even worse the AI drivers will take random routes around the track, not following any set racing line, but you can bet your life on it that as soon as they are level with you they will 'accidentally' steer in front of you, or take your back wheels out. If they did this to each other as well as you things wouldn't be so bad, but their insistence on picking on you is control-smashingly infuriating as you lose control of your vehicle and career way off course. The total lack of consistency in their driving is what puts you off playing the game, especially as the inconsistency is usually to your downfall.
In the future I hope more developers will become aware of the importance of consistency, even if it's only by realising the problems with inconsistency. This can really be one of the deciding factors between a good and a bad game.
Excellent topic.
Inconsistency is one of the biggest immersion-breakers and game spoilers of all time, yet it is widely overlooked by the gaming community as a non-essential element of gaming. Few people realise the impact consistency can have on a game, yet it plagues almost every game, including such big names as Deus Ex and Half-Life.
Deus Ex made a real effort to create a consistent world, and succeeds up to a certain point, but then shoots itself in the foot with some glaring mistakes.
The baddies and ambient AI characters can usually be dispatched with a one or two pistol shots or a well-placed sniper bullet, while a rocket from your GEP gun guarantees an instant kill. There are slight variations to this formula, like the Men in Black or UNATCO agents that require more firepower to kill, and the weaker AI like the bums that inhabit the back-streets that take slightly less damage before meeting their end. The inconsistency problem makes itself evident when you try attacking some of the plot-essential characters such as Tracer Tong or Gunther Hermann; you will notice that they are entirely invincible. You can unload your entire arsenal of weaponry at their unarmoured bodies without so much as taking a hair off their head, and I have actually tried this many times. This defies belief, and is a bad enough fault in itself, but it gets worse. When you meet some of the invincible characters later on in the game, such as Gunther Hermann or Anne Navarre, they can be destroyed with a single rocket or a couple of sniper bullets. This is because the game developers lazily gave the characters infinite health when their presence was needed for plot progression, and then reduced their life to a reasonable amount when they had served their purpose and were no longer needed.
Half-Life provides a good way round this problem, although not entirely for the same reason. When you shoot too many of the friendly AI such as scientists and security guards then the game will cut to a black screen with info telling you that you've failed the mission for killing too many friendlies. Deus Ex could simply have taken this idea and reshaped it slightly, so that when you shoot someone vital, you just get a 'mission failed' screen. Some, however might claim that this spoils immersion as well since it's not a realistic way of failing a game. So another solution would involve simply letting players who have killed someone important trying to continue the mission without these vital characters. This would naturally be impossible, so the player would feel obliged to reload a previous saved game. This would not only be realistic, but the player would feel the consequences of their own actions, realising that doing stupid things can only be bad for them. But the clever bit being that the player would be able to determine this for themselves, rather than being blatantly told so by the game's inconsistency.
Another weak area lies in the incredibly varied material damage properties. This is most clearly seen through the powerful, nanotechnically created Dragon's Tooth Sword. Using this sword in different locations show the weakness of the game's physics. For example, in some of the earlier levels that contain MJ12 headquarters, all the lockers belonging to the MJ12 soldiers are easily smashed open with the sword. Strangely enough though in more than two later missions, lockers that are exactly identical are somehow indestructible with your sword, and require explosives to destroy. Even more farcical is the fact that some windows are entirely indestructible with your sword or even explosives, yet others can be smashed totally with one baton swipe. Another example is the doors in the game. These all have various strengths, and this could actually be believable if the strengths were consistent with the materials they are made from, but once again Deus Ex is so wrapped up with making it's world believable in other areas that it misses the mark completely. This is evident in the way you can reduce a metal door to rubble with one sniper bullet, yet the glass door elsewhere in the building is entirely indestructible with any weapon or explosive whatsoever. This is one of the biggest immersion-busters of the lot as you frustratedly bang your head on your keyboard or controller, KNOWING that this shouldn't be happening.
Set rules need to be imbedded into the game physics, and these should apply throughout the whole game with no exceptions, whether plot-essential or not. If the player is not meant to enter a room, make the door of hardened steel. If the player is allowed to enter with effort (i.e. using explosives), make the door of solid wood. If the player is intended to enter the room, make it of glass or thin, light wood. Surely that would be more sensible than slapping in doors everywhere then assigning them properties according to the plot. Likewise, if windows aren't intended to be entered then give them wire netting or shutters, or do something inventive like making it too small too fit through or too high up too reach. All it needs is a little imagination to make all the game properties consistent, but not enough thought has been expended in this area.
Another game of remarkable inconsistency is the the infamous Soldier of Fortune. It put most of it's effort into visceral body decapitations, and ignored some vital gaming elements.
There are many lovingly crafted weapons in Soldier of Fortune, one of the more powerful ones being the dreaded flamethrower. Since SOF is violence orientated, you can use the flamethrower on humans to deadly effect, leaving piles of flaming corpes in your wake. But any other objects that come into contact with your flamethrower, such as wooden bookcases, wooden doors, books or carpets, these simply wear small black stars as evidence of contact with your fire-starter. You can't even start the smallest of fires on the most burnable of materials. Another weapon inconsistency can be seen using any bullet-based gun. Firing one of these against a wall will create reasonably satisfying bullet holes, but when you come to something slightly out of the ordinary, such as an exit sign or lamp, these remain somehow entirely undamaged when unleashed upon with the fury of even your best weapons. Not a mark will show to sully their appearance. The point I'm making here is that if weapons create an effect on a particular object or life-form, then similar effects should be made consistent with the rest of the artificial world.
The solution is not hard to initiate, it just takes a lot of effort on the part of the developers as they have to assign weapon effects to most objects and materials in the game. But once initialized, these should be made consistent throughout the game. For example it doesn't matter overly if bullet holes don't appear on metal objects, as long as that rule stays constant.
What really bugs me is the way SOF chooses to implement linearity. Linearity in itself is no curse, in fact it can be quite reassuring, but it has to be initiated properly. In making the game linear, SOF developers have made the fatal flaw of fitting the scenery in with plot. This means that in a hotel, all doors will be inaccessible and undestroyable bar the one door that allows the mission to progress. This spits in the face of both reality and consistency. An indestructible door is bad by itself, but what a coincidence that every other door has exactly these unrealistic properties. And what a coincidence that the only door to break the consistency is the one that contains the terrorists. OK, I'll admit that this exaggerated slightly, but you realise what I'm getting across, that if a game is linear, it should be done properly.
There are so many ways of getting around problems like this if the developers just give it a little thought. The simplest way would be to just create a standard room, and then clone it for every other room in the hotel. There is nothing wrong with this as that's what hotels are like anyway, all rooms are duplicates of the last. If they wanted to add more detail, like making some doors locked, some not, some containing people, some with different colour bedcovers etc. then fine, that would add even more. But the most basic creation would suffice to continue the illusion of realism through consistency alone. So little effort to create, yet such a bad result when laziness takes the upper hand. Of course hotels aren't the only locations needing consistency, and other solutions for other areas can be invented easily.
The AI in racing games has always been questionable, and in many games it is so frustratingly incompetent through it's total inconsistency. Rollcage is one of the worst examples I can think of except for the truly dreadful Powerboat Racing. In Rollcage, if you decide to poodle round a course at 20mph, perhaps stopping for a picnic mid-race, the AI will happily overtake you, but their consciences hit them for leaving you behind. So they kindly slow down, randomly crashing into the scenery round about, waiting for you to catch them up before continuing the race. Alternatively, if you decide to blast round the courses at breakneck speed they'll be right on your tail, slipping past at the first opportunity. But once they have overtaken, again they'll feel deep regret at leaving you behind and wait up for you again.
You notice that the AI will adapt to your driving speed. But WHY? The only thing that does is ruins your immersion, albeit pleasing amateurs. To make things even worse the AI drivers will take random routes around the track, not following any set racing line, but you can bet your life on it that as soon as they are level with you they will 'accidentally' steer in front of you, or take your back wheels out. If they did this to each other as well as you things wouldn't be so bad, but their insistence on picking on you is control-smashingly infuriating as you lose control of your vehicle and career way off course. The total lack of consistency in their driving is what puts you off playing the game, especially as the inconsistency is usually to your downfall.
In the future I hope more developers will become aware of the importance of consistency, even if it's only by realising the problems with inconsistency. This can really be one of the deciding factors between a good and a bad game.
Deus Ex made a real effort to create a consistent world, and succeeds up to a certain point, but then shoots itself in the foot with some glaring mistakes.
The baddies and ambient AI characters can usually be dispatched with a one or two pistol shots or a well-placed sniper bullet, while a rocket from your GEP gun guarantees an instant kill. There are slight variations to this formula, like the Men in Black or UNATCO agents that require more firepower to kill, and the weaker AI like the bums that inhabit the back-streets that take slightly less damage before meeting their end. The inconsistency problem makes itself evident when you try attacking some of the plot-essential characters such as Tracer Tong or Gunther Hermann; you will notice that they are entirely invincible. You can unload your entire arsenal of weaponry at their unarmoured bodies without so much as taking a hair off their head, and I have actually tried this many times. This defies belief, and is a bad enough fault in itself, but it gets worse. When you meet some of the invincible characters later on in the game, such as Gunther Hermann or Anne Navarre, they can be destroyed with a single rocket or a couple of sniper bullets. This is because the game developers lazily gave the characters infinite health when their presence was needed for plot progression, and then reduced their life to a reasonable amount when they had served their purpose and were no longer needed.
Half-Life provides a good way round this problem, although not entirely for the same reason. When you shoot too many of the friendly AI such as scientists and security guards then the game will cut to a black screen with info telling you that you've failed the mission for killing too many friendlies. Deus Ex could simply have taken this idea and reshaped it slightly, so that when you shoot someone vital, you just get a 'mission failed' screen. Some, however might claim that this spoils immersion as well since it's not a realistic way of failing a game. So another solution would involve simply letting players who have killed someone important trying to continue the mission without these vital characters. This would naturally be impossible, so the player would feel obliged to reload a previous saved game. This would not only be realistic, but the player would feel the consequences of their own actions, realising that doing stupid things can only be bad for them. But the clever bit being that the player would be able to determine this for themselves, rather than being blatantly told so by the game's inconsistency.
Another weak area lies in the incredibly varied material damage properties. This is most clearly seen through the powerful, nanotechnically created Dragon's Tooth Sword. Using this sword in different locations show the weakness of the game's physics. For example, in some of the earlier levels that contain MJ12 headquarters, all the lockers belonging to the MJ12 soldiers are easily smashed open with the sword. Strangely enough though in more than two later missions, lockers that are exactly identical are somehow indestructible with your sword, and require explosives to destroy. Even more farcical is the fact that some windows are entirely indestructible with your sword or even explosives, yet others can be smashed totally with one baton swipe. Another example is the doors in the game. These all have various strengths, and this could actually be believable if the strengths were consistent with the materials they are made from, but once again Deus Ex is so wrapped up with making it's world believable in other areas that it misses the mark completely. This is evident in the way you can reduce a metal door to rubble with one sniper bullet, yet the glass door elsewhere in the building is entirely indestructible with any weapon or explosive whatsoever. This is one of the biggest immersion-busters of the lot as you frustratedly bang your head on your keyboard or controller, KNOWING that this shouldn't be happening.
Set rules need to be imbedded into the game physics, and these should apply throughout the whole game with no exceptions, whether plot-essential or not. If the player is not meant to enter a room, make the door of hardened steel. If the player is allowed to enter with effort (i.e. using explosives), make the door of solid wood. If the player is intended to enter the room, make it of glass or thin, light wood. Surely that would be more sensible than slapping in doors everywhere then assigning them properties according to the plot. Likewise, if windows aren't intended to be entered then give them wire netting or shutters, or do something inventive like making it too small too fit through or too high up too reach. All it needs is a little imagination to make all the game properties consistent, but not enough thought has been expended in this area.
Another game of remarkable inconsistency is the the infamous Soldier of Fortune. It put most of it's effort into visceral body decapitations, and ignored some vital gaming elements.
There are many lovingly crafted weapons in Soldier of Fortune, one of the more powerful ones being the dreaded flamethrower. Since SOF is violence orientated, you can use the flamethrower on humans to deadly effect, leaving piles of flaming corpes in your wake. But any other objects that come into contact with your flamethrower, such as wooden bookcases, wooden doors, books or carpets, these simply wear small black stars as evidence of contact with your fire-starter. You can't even start the smallest of fires on the most burnable of materials. Another weapon inconsistency can be seen using any bullet-based gun. Firing one of these against a wall will create reasonably satisfying bullet holes, but when you come to something slightly out of the ordinary, such as an exit sign or lamp, these remain somehow entirely undamaged when unleashed upon with the fury of even your best weapons. Not a mark will show to sully their appearance. The point I'm making here is that if weapons create an effect on a particular object or life-form, then similar effects should be made consistent with the rest of the artificial world.
The solution is not hard to initiate, it just takes a lot of effort on the part of the developers as they have to assign weapon effects to most objects and materials in the game. But once initialized, these should be made consistent throughout the game. For example it doesn't matter overly if bullet holes don't appear on metal objects, as long as that rule stays constant.
What really bugs me is the way SOF chooses to implement linearity. Linearity in itself is no curse, in fact it can be quite reassuring, but it has to be initiated properly. In making the game linear, SOF developers have made the fatal flaw of fitting the scenery in with plot. This means that in a hotel, all doors will be inaccessible and undestroyable bar the one door that allows the mission to progress. This spits in the face of both reality and consistency. An indestructible door is bad by itself, but what a coincidence that every other door has exactly these unrealistic properties. And what a coincidence that the only door to break the consistency is the one that contains the terrorists. OK, I'll admit that this exaggerated slightly, but you realise what I'm getting across, that if a game is linear, it should be done properly.
There are so many ways of getting around problems like this if the developers just give it a little thought. The simplest way would be to just create a standard room, and then clone it for every other room in the hotel. There is nothing wrong with this as that's what hotels are like anyway, all rooms are duplicates of the last. If they wanted to add more detail, like making some doors locked, some not, some containing people, some with different colour bedcovers etc. then fine, that would add even more. But the most basic creation would suffice to continue the illusion of realism through consistency alone. So little effort to create, yet such a bad result when laziness takes the upper hand. Of course hotels aren't the only locations needing consistency, and other solutions for other areas can be invented easily.
The AI in racing games has always been questionable, and in many games it is so frustratingly incompetent through it's total inconsistency. Rollcage is one of the worst examples I can think of except for the truly dreadful Powerboat Racing. In Rollcage, if you decide to poodle round a course at 20mph, perhaps stopping for a picnic mid-race, the AI will happily overtake you, but their consciences hit them for leaving you behind. So they kindly slow down, randomly crashing into the scenery round about, waiting for you to catch them up before continuing the race. Alternatively, if you decide to blast round the courses at breakneck speed they'll be right on your tail, slipping past at the first opportunity. But once they have overtaken, again they'll feel deep regret at leaving you behind and wait up for you again.
You notice that the AI will adapt to your driving speed. But WHY? The only thing that does is ruins your immersion, albeit pleasing amateurs. To make things even worse the AI drivers will take random routes around the track, not following any set racing line, but you can bet your life on it that as soon as they are level with you they will 'accidentally' steer in front of you, or take your back wheels out. If they did this to each other as well as you things wouldn't be so bad, but their insistence on picking on you is control-smashingly infuriating as you lose control of your vehicle and career way off course. The total lack of consistency in their driving is what puts you off playing the game, especially as the inconsistency is usually to your downfall.
In the future I hope more developers will become aware of the importance of consistency, even if it's only by realising the problems with inconsistency. This can really be one of the deciding factors between a good and a bad game.