Pet Gaming Peeve: False Openness

[kajarainbow]

Okay, I buy a game that advertises itself as having open skill choice. I have the option to give my characters only non-combat skills. Cool ones like stealth and charming people's socks off and nifty non-combat magic. By this point, I know better, but let's say I'm less jaded. I pick all the skills that look cool, not bothering with a combat skill, with the naive assumption that I'll be able to sneak, charm, or fly my way past combats. And I get utterly smacked around in the first mandatory combat I run into.

Now, what's wrong with this picture? How about how few choices there are in most games for actually advancing the story? The game designer wants me to fight this big impressive boss combat, or even just fight my way through this house full of boring if kinda disgusting/creepy creatures, and damn whether I'd rather just keep sneaking like I've basically been doing at every single opportunity handed to me by the game.

It seems like the thinking in way too many games is, "Let's force them to run through the specific cool scenes I have in mind." There aren't considerations given to enabling alternative solutions such as charming the boss into believing you're his friend come to safeguard the Plot Device, or just straightforward filching it, instead of fighting your way through whatever gimmick-filled boss combat the designer has in mind.

Some games do far better at this than others. But some of them are just... frustrating. They offer multiple modes of play and then it turns out you can only use the modes when you're supposed to. I.e. you have a sneaking sequence and then a combat sequence. You aren't allowed to fight through the stealth sequence or sneak through the combat sequence. This ends up making both players who hate the combat system and players who hate the stealth system unhappy. The only happy ones are the players who like both systems.

Big offenders for this are Beyond Good and Evil (some very good qualities, but irksome controls and the problem I just mentioned) and Sly Cooper. Sly Cooper especially frustrates me in that I found a given stage nearly impossible to do by sneaking around, and then it turns out my roomie had an easier time by just bashing her way through. This in a freaking thief-themed game. But then again, Sly Cooper's really disappointing in that it's basically an action platformer of a type I don't even like with a thin layer of thief theme laid on top, rather than a proper thief-themed game.

Mercenaries, on the other hand, I enjoyed greatly. Sure, it's combat-oriented and there aren't any options to advance the story other than by combat, but stealthy assassination is a viable combat system. I had tons of fun scouting and then working out cunning ways to pick off all obstacles to my goal of capturing every named villain for the bounty. And most importantly, I could play the whole game this way. At times I failed at stealth and had to just gun my way out, but this felt more like a natural consequence of plans going wrong than forced game decisions. And stealth still did its part in getting me close to the target. It never was arbitrarily useless. Overall, I had more of a blast with the game than the previously mentioned. Games. But then again, this was basically a sandbox war action game.

Comments

[bossgoji.livejournal.com]

Sly Cooper especially frustrates me in that I found a given stage nearly impossible to do by sneaking around, and then it turns out my roomie had an easier time by just bashing her way through. This in a freaking thief-themed game. But then again, Sly Cooper's really disappointing in that it's basically an action platformer of a type I don't even like with a thin layer of thief theme laid on top, rather than a proper thief-themed game.

As a note, one of the key functions of utilizing stealth in Sly is being able to hear the enemies, since they all have noticeable grunts, footsteps, and idle animations that produce noise, which may have been a factor in your difficulty with it.

And I can't lie, I find EVERYTHING easier when I bash my way through, though that's more due to my nature than actual tactics. XD

[relee.livejournal.com]

The trouble with stealth vs. slaughter is that when you're stealthing and you're 'caught' you have to deal with the entire level coming after you at once. When you're slaughtering you kill the enemies as they come and don't get into a 'pincers movement' trap.

[bossgoji.livejournal.com]

Or you're like me and INTENTIONALLY take on everything in the level at once. I often like sneaking my way to the center of a level in action games then letting an enemy spot me so I can brawl them all at the same time. WHO THE HELL DO YOU THINK I AM?!?! [/Kamina]

[kajarainbow.livejournal.com]

Ooh. Yeah, stealth game often are heavily hearing based.

[eclective.livejournal.com]

One thing I frequently run up against in games, not just in ones that advertise open skill sets but in ones where, while the engine is obviously formula, the plot at least strongly suggests that There Should Be Another Way, is the lack of pacifist options. Particularly, actually, in MMORPGs. You can't play an MMORPG just to hang out with friends, craft things, and enjoy the pretty scenery in another world. To get to any of the areas you really want to get to, you have to tediously level-grind. I wish more game designers would at least allow the option of pacifism, especially since a number of games these games do push it as their ideological message (yet fail to follow through on the gameplay front).

[kajarainbow.livejournal.com]

That's a pretty bitter irony, gameplay totally at odds with message. And, yeah, the ability to do what you said would be nice. I'd actually play a class much like what I described here, too.

[relee.livejournal.com]

"Let's force them to run through the specific cool scenes I have in mind."

Yeah that's pretty much modern game design theory. You figure out what experiences you want the players to have, and set it up so that events happen to give players that experience. It's a lot less about gameplay and more about feeling, most of the time.

It's not that bad of an idea, but it doesn't require them to do what you're experiencing; forcing multiple game styles on a player.

If you publish the best puzzle game in the world and require players to perform a timed jump puzzle every once and a while, you're going to piss a hell of a lot of people off. One thing that bugs me is platformers where they change things up by changing the level from moving at your own pace, to having the screen trying to catch you. If it's really easy then it's okay, it adds dramatic tension without adding real difficulty. But most of them add real difficulty. This was especially bad in the GBA Klonoa games, which are basically platform/puzzle games, but still have action parts thrown in.

The worst cross-genre offender I've ever played was Omikron: The Nomad Soul. Nice theme, nice atmosphere, bad gameplay. It was sort-of an RPG but every once and a while it would turn into a really difficult FPS and sometimes you would be forced to do a Tournament Fighter style melee combat. It wouldn't have been so bad if I could get a joypad to work with it, but no dice. And the FPS parts were way too hard anyway.

[kajarainbow.livejournal.com]

I'm getting tired of those pre-packaged experiences, myself. Tired of being railroaded even in supposedly open games.

I think this is why I play roleplaying games more often than video games those days.

[kajarainbow.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I really enjoyed those games. I typically played all the classes just to see the differences. But, yeah, a lot of things screwed up by games today were done right decades ago. No real sense of history in modern designers, sometimes I get that feeling.

[(Anonymous)]

Exactly.