What is an 'Open World'?

So I was palling around the other day and noticed a brand new category pop up on my homepage for Game Pass, another unfiltered and vapid attempt to try and arrest my interest with something eye-popping and bizarre. Of course I'm typically immune to such attempts, but I couldn't help but raise an eye at the category title. "Open worlds" That was the proposition. "Hmm" I thought. "I don't actually know of many open world games on the service and I've definitely perused through it quite a bit." Which led to make my mistake of trusting Xbox to know what game genres are. Dishonoured 2? Prey? My time at Portia? Totally Accurate Battle Simulator? Of course there were some actual Open World games on offer but it was the mistakes that got my attention.

Of course, to call them 'mistakes' might be overstepping a little bit, because when you stop and think about- what is an open world? I mean sure, if we stick to the very strict confines of the genre descriptor when we've given a world without traditional borders which we can explore with largely lateral freedom wherein narrative progression is not the core means by which our environs shift. But let's get Socratic with our examinations here. Let's me annoying about it. What exactly is it that makes an open world? Is it the presentation of a world that feels open? Is it the freedom to immerse ourselves within a world, no matter how limited our actual exposure to that world it? Could 'The Order 1886' be considered an open world despite it's near 'on the rails' presentation? Could Dishonoured or Prey? (But not TABS. That was just a mistake, that game is a literally simulation playground game, what were they thinking?)

There's a certain style that comes to mind with the utterance of 'Open' in relation to our worlds and I think it comes informed by both The Elder Scrolls and, lamentably, Assassin's Creed. We see for ourselves worlds wherein the horizon beckons and we can simply go an see what's over that hill and sometimes that sense of exploration alone is enough to form the backbone of the gameplay loop. The Legend of Zelda 'of the' franchise pretty much masters this formula and creates a vertical wherein the challenge of traversing the world is it's own reward. Open Worlds don't need to touch quite on that extreme, but traditionally we feel the pull of the non constrained and non-linear pathing structure. 

But then what about the 'Immersive Sim'? Isn't that entire genre funded around the core principal that a focused and directed mission can be anything but linear? Give us a locked door and formulate several dozens ways around it by freely exploring the immediate area, with dictation or direction, utilising wits and skills to take the path less travelled. It's a game mode encouraging and rewarding curiosity, once again! The 'Openness' here is less a open assortment and more a clandestine wave teasing the player to defy the obvious with the multitude of creative problem solving. You'll never be set off to run through fields like a mad man- but wouldn't that still be considered an 'open' approach to world design?

I suppose it comes down to the question of what exactly are we trying to have players experience with the presentation of an open world- then we can really nail down the genres. And right away I'd say there has to be something of a sense of freedom implicit in the act of world navigation. Sure that freedom might be tempered with hazards or complications- you wouldn't have a game if the entire map was a clear open field with nothing to challenge you- but there must be the prevailing sense of non-linear possibility as the player travels. That is a sensation that just so happens to be implicit in a great many games outside the traditional purview of your everyday Open World labelled game- so are we being too broad or is the confines of definition itself too ephemeral? 

Perhaps we might narrow things down by breaking it down to gameplay. We could eliminate the pool somewhat by defining that Open Worlds need expand their scope beyond the Core Path of the game thesis and permit, or even encourage, absolute dalliance. Go around collecting flags that have nothing to do with anything, get lost hunting all the different types of butterfly wings in the wild, go fishing for several hours too many. Is it side content that makes an Open World? And if so- then what counts as Side Content? Are lazily scattered Ubisoft-style collectibles good enough, or do we need dedicated minigames with effort, Like a Dragon style? Or are we getting too nitt-picky? Afterall, 'Shadow of the Colossus' would be excluded under these stipulations and that world is as starkly open as they come.

Is Star Wars Jedi Survivor an open world game for the way it allows us to somewhat freely explore a snaking path around the worlds we discover, or the recent Tomb Raider games that feature directed paths of action dotted with wider and less directed hub spaces? What about Atomic Heart with those wide empty spaces of nothing but copy-pasted prefab structures and endless enemy spam? What are the barriers of design that block off a world from being 'open'? It can't be as nebulous as a simple invisible wall because that would literally prohibit all video games of all time except for, perhaps, No Man's Sky. So does that make No Man's Sky the only real Open World?

For the sake of the genre I do feel like rules should apply, and games that cater towards the free acquisition of mission objectives outside the explicitly mandated pace of the game designers should probably be as far as the rules go. 'Freedom' is really the point of the genre, and as long as we can keep some feeling of control with how we decide to experience the game- as long as there remains significant chunks of the crafted world that are optional to view, that should be considered a game of open persuasion. And at the very least TABS is a ridiculous proposition for 'Open world game' that should have been filtered out on principal alone!

When is the next stealth kingpin?

 

I am a long-time lover of the Stealth Genre of games. From Deus Ex to Metal Gear to Splinter Cell- you give me the opportunity to proceed through an area in a manner so quiet that I am a veritable ghost, and I'm probably going to grind my way through that room, reload after reload, until I master it's every slight shadow, alternative path and split-second opportunity. Perhaps that stems from my inherent invisible nature as the kind of person you forget about the moment after you've met them, but anonymity and plausible non-existence are my utmost forte. Which is why it can be so gruelling being a fan of a genre of games so poorly served over the past few years that I'm starting to wonder if my genre is one of those 'dead genres' that just doesn't sell games anymore!

Started, quite literally, due to a lack of processing power which resulted in a full action game being impossible to make- stealth created a whole new philosophy to the way we play games. Suddenly the idea of going through rooms of enemies without leaving corpses opened up the possibility to question why people needed to die at all, which would pave the way to complex scenario writing where maybe the opponents are always the defacto villains of the story. Deus Ex itself being a great example of a franchise were sometimes the choice to play stealthily and non-lethally can prevent genuinely unnecessary loss of life that can positively come into play later down the line- all possible because of the concept of alternative gameplay paths.

And to be fair, that might be what makes stealth games such a tough proposition compared to your normal run and gun affair. They need to ideally cater for both games, the violent and the quiet. Sure, there are a few pure stealth games on the market such as the Styx games- but they come across as niche even admits stealth enjoyers like myself. Splinter Cell and Metal Gear need to be half competent shooters on their own to facilitate the consequences of failing at stealth, which is what leads to situations such as 'Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain' just being one of the best third person action games to this day, for the sheer malleability of it's many tools and systems creating near limitless gameplay potential- even for what is ostensibly a 'stealth focused' franchise.

But Metal Gear has rusted to a standstill, unfortunately. Splinter Cell has splintered. Siphon Filter needs a replacement. Deus Ex renounced itself and became secular. And Sly Cooper is trapped in an alternate universe or something. (That last one isn't even a joke. I'm pretty sure the last game ended with Sly being shoved off this entire realm.) Every single significant Stealth genre game is currently dormant and all we have to scratch this itch are the works of one particular studio who include stealth not because of any internal passion for the genre, but simply because it's one of those core pillars that someone long ago instilled in their franchises back when the studio had a soul. Yes, for the fiftieth time in the past hour, I'm ragging on Ubisoft.

Assassin's Creed bitterly tries to shirk it's Stealth Gameplay in favour of hit-and-miss combat that is becoming more and more generic as the RPG sub-series progresses. What began as an Arkham light affair of style, flow and speed has become plodding, slow and tedious. Chipping away massive health bars on big enemies with simple attack cycles that are 12 feet tall for some reason because some one on their team played Dark Souls once and now that has to be all their games. Mirage tried to bring back stealth to the franchise and it was an admirable attempt, but it still felt slightly clunky. As though someone was trying to stuff stealth into an engine it clearly wasn't made for. And otherwise Ubisoft are working on the Ghost Recon games which treat Stealth about as basically as they did fifteen years ago. Do not expect any innovation out of that franchise.

In fact, to this day I think the most innovative and creative stealth game on the market is still Phantom Pain, and that was nine years ago! That was a game which featured complex enemy AI packages that reacted to how badly the player had screwed up their infiltration, oodles of reactivity objects and dynamic interactions that still surprise me to this day, (such as the ability to hide bodies on cots to make passerbys think they're sleeping.) and so many tools and gadgets to work with that sometimes it feels as though you are a god of manipulation terrorising these Russian outposts for your own sick amusement. And you know what? I kind of am! MGS V was the kind of game malleable enough that you could play it a hundred different ways practically forever. But it's not enough.

We need a new prince to worship! A new cadre of Stealth that manages to at least approach what MGS V was doing, let alone surpass it. To this day one of those nagging elements of that game which bothers me is the apparent truth that dogs, with smell based gameplay, were conceived of but ultimately scrapped- surely someone out there has taken that as a challenge to see what new elements to the stealth genre they can bring? I've dreamed about what a successor might look like, how it would feel, the ways it would innovate. Perhaps improving on the companion system to give you a plethora of team interactions mid mission, maybe shoring up melee combat to create more dynamic gameplay moments in those times where you're caught off guard up close- or just giving us actual proper bosses to play around with like previous Metal Gear games. MGS V gives us like... one at the very end.

Who has the nads to try at that? At the time being only the Arkane Immersive Sims seem deeply invested in stealth gameplay but I wouldn't call them especially ambitious in their iterations. Deathloop kind of revealed the fact that the team are basically remixing the same stealth tools and abilities they came up with back in Dishonoured again and again, and though they're still fun- there's no scratching at the cutting edge happening to set my stealthy heart aflame. Maybe their upcoming Blade game will have something special, or Kojima's rumoured new stealth action series will be the successor? All I want is for someone to try. And heck, maybe that's a signal for the fact that it's time for me to start learning how to use an engine and give it a crack myself. (It's better than not doing it, right?)

Romance

Five years ago I left an empty blog open in my drafts that had this title, and what you're reading right now are the thoughts I apparently didn't have to share in those halcyon days gone about the way that modern video game media presents and portrays Romance. And you know what, I think it's actually something of a salient topic even more now than it was in the last decade given that now it has become something of the expected norm for every big AAA game with even the slightest modicum of role-playing-potential to feature some form of romance. Once upon a time it was the request that would get the most side-eye in the room, as everyone immediately just identified the Mass Effect lover of the interviewing squad. Today, however, announcing romance possibilities in a game is seen as a bizarre sort of marketing point- which is frankly totally weird given that gaming is still pretty crap at it.

Now to be fair, I'm not the biggest fan of Romance as a concept when it comes to my personal fictional writing- I find it a crutch for building relationships in an organic manner that is best hand waved away- and oftentimes I see versions of romance in media that very much reinforces that world view. Then again, when Romance is done right I think it's one of the most fun aspects of being immersed in a character- coming to invest yourselves in an onscreen relationship will bring you closer to the world and heighten the tension of the dramatic highs. But then if you play around with it too much that extra spice can sour into dust and you'll come to resent the thing you once found endearing. Just consult literally any of the CW superhero shows on the topic- they always threw out all sense in order to pursue frivolous romance drama that made you grow to hate everyone on a deeply personal level.

I can't think of any game that has used romance as a tool like that off the top of my head, but I can definitely think of at least one very recent game that didn't make an especially good go at it. As much as I love the game, Dragon's Dogma 2's idea of romance hasn't really improved from the original game. Just questlines you do for a certain couple of people that results in inexplicable declarations of affection and that is... well, actually that is the extent of them! In fact, Dragon's Dogma 1 at least presented something of a follow-up cutscene after the events of the game but um... yeah this was clearly not an aspect of the narrative that the team thought much about during development. I wouldn't be surprised if they forgot entirely that the original game had any such content and rushed to try and meet a parity during the last few months of development. Because that is what it feels like. Still- lacking effort, in this instance, is better than trying and failing pathetically.

Like, for example, what Starfield does with it's cast. Now to be fair, all of the Starfield personalities are excessively one-note- and so getting closer to those companions was never going to be excessively interesting to begin with- although the extent to which these problems were amplified by the romance paths did, honestly, impress me. Romancing an Companion in Starfield is akin to subjecting them to a Dementor's kiss- robbing them of their soul and leaving a compliant husk. They all become helplessly lover-bombing automatrons that want nothing more than to remind you how in love they are, requiring the same affectations back. It's honestly pretty unbearable, particularly in how it strips what little characters these companions had, squarely away. Big miss on Bethesda's part. Fallout 4 honestly did it a lot better, and I thought that was pretty bare bones at the time!

It's little surprise that some of the best games for depicting romance in a more natural feeling manner are the Persona games, for the very fact that one of the key pillars of the gameplay is about building relationships with those closest to you. Going a bit further with one of those friends and striking up a romance can almost be done accidentally, and it plays out as an extension of your existing blossoming relationships. Persona 4 Golden in particular is especially good at integrating romance into the yearly events throughout the year as The Fool finds time to be alone with the one they have feelings for. It's all very cute, which I presume was the fresh hold that the team were shooting for. Of course, the less said about Persona 3's romances the better. Forced infidelities, inability to say 'no' unless you are a woman and if you are a woman... the Ken romance exists. Enough said, moving on.

Would you believe that more recent Like a Dragon games have romance routes in them? Actually I guess that's no great surprise given that Kiryu's peerless conduct around woman is one of his defining characteristics- which is part of what makes him such an icon among female Like a Dragon fans. With the introduction of new characters, Ichiban and Takayuki, all the team needed to do was lean in a bit on the hostess club minigames they had been recycling for over a decade and put actual main narrative characters in those date spots. Of course, given the nature of how these games play out these activities are typically played for jokes or small time side content. I'm pretty sure all the girlfriends mission in Judgement are required in order to get the secret boss so... once more infidelity is mandated. (What is it with you, Japan?) And 'Yakuza 7: Like a Dragon' plays out it's 'romances' as a series of accidental rendezvous' with all the woman in Ichiban's life which culminates in him receiving an absolute bollocking from all the girls who thought they were his one and only... just for the legend to somehow wiggle out of consequences in famous fashion. I truly think they could do a serious romance subplot if they wanted to, but RGG knows it wouldn't fit into the style of their games and they are absolutely right.

Casting an eye around the last few years, and even further back to be honest- I keep coming back to the single best iteration of video game romance, such to the point it should probably set a standard to be matched in the years to come, it's Baldur's Gate 3. Little surprise there. The game presents natural feeling relationships that evolve from the comradery you're already building- just like Persona- but for me where it goes beyond the basic is in the game's insane reactivity! In the romance just as with any other part of the game, your actions have consequences and the nature of your romantic connection is defined by the people your companions become just as it is by the person you become! An evil-aligned partner might find it impossible to see anything deeper than physical in your relationship, whereas the same partner on a 'good' aligned journey might find sanctity in your connection and feel personally affronted if you start down an alignment shift deeply opposed to the person they fell for. Ultimately, these feel like fully rounded character journeys on their own, which is more effort than I can see any other studio putting into optional interactions.

Romance can enhance a good story, weaving emotion and drama into a delicate tapestry of stakes and drama colliding beautifully. Nothing beats the raw power of sacrificing for love, whether chance, yourself or love itself. Sure, it's a bit of a cliché at this point- but only because it has worked so well in so many movies and shows up until now. I think games, typically not the place to go for character driven storytelling, have always struggled quite nailing the human side of their creations- but given the strange mandate that every single game with at least a single dialogue option is now privy to, I suspect we're going to start seeing smarter solutions to the romance problem in the years to come. Oh, assuming that the future isn't 'all Live Service, all the time!'.

Who are you?

So as I'm getting close to a lot of the games that I've been waiting forever to play, I naturally need to be shoring up my familiarity with the franchise that came before in each case. Like A Dragon 8 needs me to have played all the several thousand games that came before, Dragon's Dogma could do with a refresher playthrough and though I have technically played it before, I should probably finish at least Persona 5 before I get around to 3 Reloaded. (Besides, the longer I put it off the more time I have until ATLUS release their 'full' version of the game which they're pretending they're not making right now. Yeah right, I see you eyeing up that female protagonist with envy in your eyes! Ya'll can't help yourselves!) And in the mood of all of these games I need to get around to polishing off- I'm currently replaying Baldur's Gate 1? Umm... what?

There's something about the Baldur's Gate franchise, and perhaps more Dungeons and Dragon's at large, which touches at the very most base of video gaming- and I think that lies in the genre of RPGs to being with. I've often touted how RPGs are my favourite genre of video game but rarely challenged the reasons as to why that is the case, and it isn't just for the hours of stat piling or inventory management. Certainly the genre holds more to it's name than that. Recently I've come to the realisation that the truth behind my RPG love is the belief that at the heart of role playing games lies the very same primordial essence of what gaming represents as a hobby- and though every genre touches on that essence in it's own unique way- RPGs touch it in the most sacred and raw manner. Pretty lofty claim to just make, huh? Well let me go and try and back it up before writing me off the page, eh?

So we've been through the whole 'games are escapism' thing before, breaking the hobby down to it's base elements, but what if we actually define 'escapism'? "Distraction from realities by engaging in fantasy." Essentially we're looking to obfuscate the circumstance and present situation through immersion into disbelief- we're entering another life. The purest escapism are those that can steal us away the strongest and keep us entertained, which can often translate to those that best sell the illusion of the reality they seek to invent. See where I'm going with this? Role Playing Games present the most fertile grounds for prime-time immersion building by simple merit of what they are- games that seek to place you within the 'role' of a fiction and have you act out that role. Creating the tools to sell that fantasy, building the infrastructure to facilitate it, those are the measures by which successful RPGs are separate from the modern Assassin's Creed games of our time. (Woah, he gets a Ubisoft diss in there! Just when you thought he was over it!)

Which is perhaps why the most important question an RPG can ask is the same question presented at the beginning of one of the best RPGs of all time: The Elder Scrolls V Skyrim- just before you're about to lead to a abrupt shaving appointment manned by a heavily armed barber with questionable aim- "Who are you?" Identity is core to Role Playing Games, and what that means to the player is tantamount to selling the fantasy. Sometimes that is a question asked and answered purely in gameplay terms, such as in RPGs like Diablo. "Who are you?" Would pertain to your class, the build that you craft, the weapons and skills you posses- all which define you as an individual and tie you down to the fiction. For me, however, I prefer when that question holds narrative significance.

Amnesia is such a common fantasy trope to chuck around, particularly in Japanese fantasy stories, because there's little more enthralling a concept than discovering yourself and where you fit into this world. It allows a writer to explicitly detail a complex arc of relationships that includes the player whilst presenting the agency to the player to create their own character and insert them neatly into that slot. To that end the most successful RPG stories tend to be the ones that cease that trope and turn it on it's head, or even better go so far as to question the institution of RPG storytelling altogether and put that under the spotlight. As was famously the case with the classic Final Fantasy 7 story before it got a little too lost in the sauce with all those spin-off narratives.

Final Fantasy 7 is a story about stories. Specifically role playing stories. It is about a weak and insignificant speck on the world that wanted to be more, and yearned to mean something to people and to himself. So that speck becomes someone else who was everything he once wanted to be. Cloud enters into the delusion of being Zack Fair- Soldier First Class. He plays the role of being the dashing and charismatic hero, even when the moniker doesn't quite suit him or his personality, even as the corruption of what he is underneath it all threatens to leak out. That is the under appreciated real heart at the core of what makes FF7's story perhaps the best the franchise has to offer. Nothing to complicated, but oh so terribly relatable.

And Baldur's Gate? Well those games present the kind of fantasy we always find just so enthralling. What if we were really the bad guy? It's hardly a novel prospect and we've seen it done before and since to questionable degrees of success. For every 'Infamous' and 'Prototype' you'll get the odd 'Knights of the Old Republic' to keep faith in humanity alive- because the allure of feeding our base-most inner cruelties is just that tempting of a prospect. We don't all want to be evil in our daily lives- but given a world of fabricated consequence where the things we do won't hurt actual people- well there's an appeal there. And if the world is sold well enough? Then maybe even the idea of struggling against the evil inside can be fascinating all on it's own! (Afterall- evil routes in games are so very often overlooked!)

But does any of this go to explain why it is I'm spending all of my non-working free time playing Baldur's Gate instead of Samurai-Yakuza and pretty-boy-detective-Yakuza? Perhaps. Maybe it's the comfort food of playing a game I already know how to play, doing things I'm already somewhat good at and not rediscovering a world and plot from square one. Maybe I'm a coward terrified of starting over at the beginning again. Maybe I loved the Roles I played in my first playthrough of Baldur's Gate so much that now I'm just haplessly chasing that high like an addict. And maybe I'm just cycling through a list of excuses because I can't justify my tardiness- stop judging me.

Wasting my time

Burning my life.

The other day I mentioned how time is the most valuable resource that a player can have, which is why so many games go out of their way in order to convince a player that they are making some scant progress with theirs no matter what it is that they're commiting to. Only Dark Souls and it's ilk really have the true grit to pull out that last hour of gameplay from under the player's feet and tell them to deal with it without that decision being then lambasted as bad game design. (Probably because the general design of Soulslike games is so geared towards intrinsic progression as well as extrinsic, such that taking away all your 'Souls' is a minor inconvenience in the grand scheme of 'gitting gud') But there are certain games out there that not only care little for respecting your time, but go out of their way to spit on it with systems called 'Time gates'. Let's talk about that.

Explaining a time gate is best done by examining the kings of this particular crop: Mobile Games. Who out there has played a mobile game and reached that point where they can't progress any further because they have to wait for a timer? Maybe it's a a bar of energy that refills 1 unit every 15 minutes. Maybe it's the building process of your barrack upgrade that's going to take several hours, or maybe even several days, to complete. These are time gates. And typically a mobile game will design itself to slowly introduce these inconveniences in order to slowly wring the patience of their free-to-play players just as they were starting to get hooked on the gameplay loop in order to manipulate them into spending money to skip the wait. That is the most cynical version of time gating, but it's not the only iteration that gaming has ever known.

In fact, MMOs have themselves been very familiar with Time Gates for a decently long time now, with the concept typically existing in conjunction with daily or even weekly activity limits. Here the reasoning is a lot less nefarious, you may run a certain dungeon and only be given full rewards the first time a day you complete it, or the first time a week if it's a raid. Most of the time this exists in order to expand out the lifespan of that content in order to stretch out player retention. Grinding for gear drops is the draw of these higher difficulty content patches anyway; and as that loot tends to drop randomly, if you limit the amount of 'pulls' a player is privvy to, you automatically give them a reason to keep coming back day after day or week after week in order to pull the exact right piece of gear with the right stats that they want. By the time that player rolls their ideal drop, they'll have already established the pattern of logging into that MMO everyday.

In a very similar vein, I've noticed that APRGs have begun following a very similar trajectory even with their much smaller grasp of online functionality. Games like Diablo are built around the thirst and hunger for loot drops, as the very gameplay loop from the get-go revolves around hunting after that 1% increase to that one special attack you can do every minute and a half. Sometimes you'll have special gates that unlock during a season of the game, which in itself is tied to a system of FOMO offering unique drops that can only be found in this season through these special dungeons you can only run once in a given time. This way there's an aura of excitement and pressure built around the time gate, where the player is hopped up on the desire not to fail and risk the chance of getting these limited time items.

And to take a more contemporary and specific approach, who played Hogwarts Legacy? Without going into any spoilers, there comes a point within the narrative where the player earns themselves a crafting space within the Room of Requirement. The only hang-up? Crafting, growing, brewing, rearing and breeding is all tied to the limitations of a time gate that ticks along as you play the game, but in real time; alongside the ingredients it takes to make any of this stuff to begin with. The time gates are typically miniscule, and if you set everything off before you leave by the next time you have enough free time to peek back in all the relevant stations will most definitely have popped; but that it even exists like that in the first place is surprisingly out-of-character for any modern open world RPG not on mobile phones or handhelds.

 

Time gates work by tying the interest and investment of the player to a location and activity without any active engagement to that particular point, allowing that pressure point to fester and nag at the player long after they've moved onto other things or, in the case of mobile games, other activities entirely. They work by dragging the player into a relationship of expectation where they are responsible for keeping up with something, which means the game needs to be in a position to remind the player of their timers in order for the mechanic to be effective. Mobile games typically demand notification space to spam you the next day whilst you're sitting on the toilet, and other styles of game either place visual timers in heavily trafficked areas of the UI or have the important pressure point present in a key hub that the player is going to visit often.

But the question I keep asking myself whenever it comes to these systems is thus: Should they even exist? In a world of modern design sensibilities, what actual gameplay value is built for the player through time gating? Nothing. In fact, it's often seen as a lazy way to pad out content, such to the extent that some developers, such as Bioware when they made Anthem, try to hide their gate by creating menial fetch-quests to at least create the impression of meaningful gameplay. But it's so often just an act, or an illusion. Smoke and mirrors to expand the narrow constraints of what the developers could develop for the player to experience. But then again, that's not always the whole story, now is it? It can't always be that nefarious.

I think that the very currency that time gates play with, the free time of the player, turns what sounds like a very simple concept into a much more complex dilemma by it's very nature. Some games have very sensible reasons for not wanting their players to grind through all available content as quickly as possible, and it is true that activities which take someone longer to complete do inherently feel more valuable. But I think there's a very important scale that can be easily tipped with systems like these, and a game that wants to ethically respect it's players time needs to know how to be exceedingly sparing with their usage of time gating as a mechanic lest they cross the very thin line from enriching small systems to annoying everyone with grating meandering. 

Does everything need a reason?

Who is reason?

Why are we here? Just to suffer? Seems so, because without the sweat and blood of the worker, the gears of the world would refuse to turn. But here's a question; does that mean the purpose of life is to suffer? Well, then we start entering the level of metaphysics as it collides with philosophy and theology, all fields dedicated to deciphering the indecipherable in whatever manner best suits them and before you follow that thread for long you'll just end up throwing up your hands and saying; Does any of it really matter? And that's a valid question to ask- does any of that higher pontification on meaning and purpose really matter in the grand scheme of things? Perhaps to the individual, perhaps in reinforcing self-evident truths in their confidence about the universe- but outwardly? To the world? No- I'd wager that it's all ephemeral scribbles blown away by the wind. But how does that relate to art; how does that align with game design?

Purpose is actually a big question that we ask ourselves whenever it comes to mounting a piece of work. As I sit to write this blog the purpose is very evident to me- to explain my thoughts on the matter listed at the top of the page- there's no artistry in presenting or conveying that in clever, subtle ways- in fact the more subtle I am the less successful the blog- in my experience. When we turn to art, however, purpose has a different relationship. Purpose becomes this writhing snake that ties itself to every aspect, every decision, every shift in direction- a tether that connects to all disparate aspects of the development process and bring them all in some degree of harmony to a central ideal or theme. We hold these higher 'purposes' as gospel, in our art, calling back to them when we get lost in the sauce, drawing confidence in expressing them, and often take great pains in deconstructing and then reconstructing their very essence.

Themeing is actually a crux of writing whenever I sit down to pen a story, not so much for the 'higher purpose' of writing to 'teach the audience' or anything like that, just because it helps to narrow down the scope of the story. Otherwise whenever I sit down I'm just looking at a blank page with no idea how to fill it. Story is fine for the overview, but knowing the tone of what characters are doing, what they are conveying and how they choose to do- those specifics always come back to theme. And theme, as I've always come to use it, is merely the reason why. The question of why this story exists in it's most basic and primitive form. The DNA that makes up the makeup of any piece of fiction. And I'm sure if you ask some of the more 'heady' elements of the writing world they'll tell you how nothing can exist without that reason.

But is that strictly true? I mean if you break down some of the most complex works of plot and fictional lore, like Dark Souls, I've always maintained you can strip it down to a story about obstinance and desperation to cling onto past glories. I argue that the whole series, on a theme level, is a treatise to let the worn fade and die like it's supposed to so new things can be born- whatever they may be. But then- what would be the purpose and theme be for, say, the complex narrative of a game like Minecraft? Itself a game that almost purposefully lacks a narrative of any kind except on a very esoteric and mostly aesthetic level? Is there any higher themes at play in Pacman? Tetris? Brawlhalla? Does a work of art need a purpose in order to feel complete and worthwhile? And what does lacking one change about the way we view art?

Well as you can likely tell from my preamble up there, I don't think purpose and theme are necessary ingredients to the completed recipe of art. Plenty of stories exist and are strung together by a thread of 'this works' and 'this is cool' and there's nothing abhorrently apparent in such examples that would hint at any form of deficit. And when look to forms of art that are excessively technical, like that of film or games, it becomes even more common for stories to be told that are spurred up by technical achievement rather than thematic purpose. Mirror's Edge's sterile dystopia is secondary to the raw presentation and, then experimential, mechanics of a robust and intuitive first person free-running engine- and some may say that is just as valid a purpose as a more traditional reason to exist.

Reason is quite often compared to the concept of a 'story moral', which in itself carries presumptive expectation to what is being said and how it should be interpreted. Is it the purpose of every piece of fictional art to define the moral parameters of who we are as people, reshaping them with tales told to admonish and punish certain behaviours and venerate others? Of course not. People who form their belief and personalities based on the media they consume are often some of the least confident and personally fulfilled you may meet. But we can still have the desire to learn, to be challenged or to just be entertained propelled on by a great work of art.

The more I ponder it, the more convinced I am that the actual purpose of a theme is really to benefit the creator and keep them on the same track- because the relevance of being able to identify and pick out the raw thematic purpose of a work is functionally irrelevant. The emotions that works makes you feel, the topics that it raises or the quandaries it has you contemplate- they ideally should be evident to all the intended members of the audience. That is the point of telling a story, afterall. To share something of yourself outwards. Maybe that alone is all the reason there needs to be. Whether it is the way you feel, the way you wish to feel, a truth you want to make real or just a talent you want to show off- performance for performance's sake is, in itself, a reason.

To posit that all things must have a reason confers the onus of purpose onto the creator for some higher reasoning, whereas I've come around to believe that all things have reason simply by being. To reposition an old Socrates talking point- what makes a chair a chair is simply being a chair- does that makes sense? Using the chair as a chair gives it the purpose of being a chair. Treating media as you do, to enjoy, get excited at, be intrigued by, become angry with- contextualises it's purpose even in the most subjective of senses. In that light; reason is malleable, personal and ever-shifting. Thus concludes my essay on why all English examinations are antiquated garbage that the education system should have gotten rid of years ago. FREE THE ENGLISH GRADS!

Improving Skyrim: Aftershock

 Fixing the squeaky wheel

Skyrim is a great game, it should be: getting updated all the way to today, with another huge game changing update later this year. (When I say 'game changing' I mean in the way that it's attempting to reintroduce paid mods back into the ecosystem against everyone's insistence.) But Skyrim is not without it's faults and set backs. If you ask the Elder Scrolls community, they'll tell you that the problem with Skyrim is exactly each and every way it does not match up exactly to what previous Elder Scrolls games were doing. If you ask me, much of what Skyrim falls flat on, every Elder Scrolls game falls flat on. Like worthwhile and meaningful side quests; don't even get me started on Bethesda and their damn side quests. Actually no, do get me started: because that is what today's blog is going to be about afterall. (Might as well talk about the topic, no?)

When I say 'Side Quests' I should probably elaborate. Every Elder Scrolls game, and open world title in general, is stuffed with side storylines and missions that are non-important to the main progression of the narrative and exist primarily to fill out the emptier corners of the world. Skyrim, Oblivion and Morrowind have their share of side quests of all different shapes and sizes, so if I'm going to start critiquing I need to be more specific. My problem is the 'tick box' side quests, the extra missions so empty and interest-free that later Bethesda titles would literally leave it to an AI system to create and present them for a player to delve through. Although that shouldn't be entirely crazy to hear, given that Bethesda were experimenting with AI all the way back in Oblivion for it's world generation. Crazy to think that AI assisted development was going on all the way back in 2006...

Bring us to Skyrim and I'll tell you exactly the type of quests I'm drawing issue with. I'm raising arms against the quests that have the Companions send you off to random houses in different holds to slay home invader creatures for the reward of an actual pittance of gold, the Dark Brotherhood quests that have you track down and slay some random NPC who seemed to spawn up out of the ground without anything in the way of challenge or skill being required, or even just the random hold 'bounty' quests that simply spawn a dungeon to clear despite that being an action most people do naturally whilst just living the Elder Scrolls life. The key problems with even calling these activities 'side content' is their gameplay process and their rewards. They're either too boring and uncreative to be fun to play through, or too unrewarding to bother with to any serious degree.

Which brings us to the topic of today's blog. You see, I was just playing Skyrim myself the other day. There I was, traipsing over rocky crags at the tip of the mountainous regions around the Reach, and I came across a surprise ball of magical aura identified rather suddenly as an 'magical anomaly'. Assuming myself having bumped into the activation of one of my 300 odd mods, I jumped to the task whilst trying to figure out which insane adventure I had stumbled upon. (Which proved difficult once I remembered that spawned creatures carry a temporary Ref ID in the Console that can't be traced back to the source mod in the loadlist.) Only after I finished the insanely basic and boring encounter, got a sudden quest notifciation and looked it up on the Internet did I realise; this was vanilla content, and I had accidentally just finished it. The quest was called 'Aftershock', and it's one of the endless generated 'radiant' quests awarded to players for finishing the 'College of Winterhold' guild questline.

Now before I break down the mechanics and offer a solution, I want to talk about the lore and how it's somewhat wanting. The plotline of the 'College of Winterhold' concerns a magical orb known as the 'Eye of Magnus' which is kept mysterious throughout the entire plotline as to it's true origins. We're told it predates the Atmoran settlers of Skyrim and probably even the Snow Elves kingdom before it. It lacks any signs of known construction except perhaps Aedric, but the Aedra aren't known to manifest any part of themselves physically like the Daedra do, so that alone would make it insanely unique. However, as one of the worst questlines in the game, The College of Winterhold quests only use the 'Eye of Magnus' as a magic McGuffin that forces conflict between faction over some vague and nebulous ideal of 'arcane power'. The Aftershock quest appears to be tied to an event in the climax of the quest line wherein rouge Thalmor dignitary, Arcano, manages to shoot enough magic at the orb to open it up causing magical fissures to bloom across Winterhold shooting out tiny wisps called 'Magical anomalies'. 'Aftershock' blooms more anomalous tears across the world that the player, now entitled Arch-Mage, should close as part of an endless clean-up task for Arcano's bumbling.

Now from a lore standpoint this is excessively boring, a vague 'magic entity' that opens up 'fissures' that leak 'anomalies'; there's no substantive narrative or lore value in anything here that might elucidate or reward the observant player and the gameplay value of this side content is even worse. Every iteration of this side quest plays out thusly; you get the order to visit a location, kill a few wisps, go back home. There's no variation, the gold is crap and it is repeated forever. In order to conceive fixing this side quest into something more interesting I want to highlight both the gameplay and the narrative to serve both core demographics of an Elder Scrolls audience. Also, I think that if you can serve those two sides whenever you approach any quest, you'll go a long way to buffing the value of the content proposition. 

My idea is actually rather simple, what you could do with a quest like this is to borrow from the set-up of the Thief Guild side quests in Skyrim, which are all tallied up to a coherent meta-quest line. For 'Aftershock' they could perhaps lean into the fact that magical fissures which leak out magic are frighteningly similar to the lore of Elder Scrolls stars, which are said to be holes in the sky that the gods made when they fled Nirn, all of which bleed magical energy back into Nirn from the realms of Aetherius. We could turn each fissure into their own distinct portal from which one of the elemental planes of Aetherius is leaking, which means even if you don't want to put in the effort to design distinct creatures for each individual plane, you could colour code each magical wisp to be themed to a certain school of magic. There could be destruction wisps that fire spells, conjuration wisps that summon adds and hide behind them, illusion wisps that cast reflect shields and make themselves invisible- that's the sort of basic theming that doesn't even require a lot of thought or effort. Then, as a reward, you have the individual school of fissures tally up so that once the player has closed a certain number of a specific type (5 illusion fissures, etc.) they can open a portal to that realm and have a short generated dungeon with specifically themed rewards. Perhaps random loot affix with a unique enchant property you can only get in this area. I'm just spitballing things you could do to really revolutionise a single quest chain without going crazy with resources and making new models or something. This alone would bump up the worth of doing these side quests ten fold for players.

Of course this isn't perfect, and it won't make these quests the best in the game; but relatively small scale touch-up work like that should form the foundations of what can make great side content in an action adventure RPG. I think that as long as you can convince the player that they are making progress towards something, a reward with any sort of value to it, even if that is value purely by merit of being unique, then you are on the way to developing worthwhile side content; at least to someone's standards; instead of to noone's. That is the only way currently that ESO trounces single player games from a design standpoint, being born in the world of MMO development taught those devs how to handle an expectant online audience. Some of the those lessons could do wonders being translated down here too, if only Bethesda had the ears to listen to them.

Weighing options.

 Discussing diets.

Role playing games have risen to be some of my favourite experiences ever, for the times when I just want to get lost from the present playing some far flung fantasy, there's nothing more engrossing and enveloping than a fully immerse RPG. You can get so addicted to that style of world, with the character creation, the choices, the personal development, that sense of self-worth, that it can be easy to take every aspect for granted and not really think about the individual elements of an RPG and how they slot together. Or even if they slot together! What if you start to examine some of the independent enfranchised features which make up the typical RPG design front and find them wanting and lacking? What if what you've believed to be the ideal RPG design for so long is no more than a smokescreen fooling you into complacency for a broken cog in a working machine, not enough to grind the whole system to a halt but a flailing and useless extra limb, nonetheless. What if there's literally no good reason for weight systems to exist in RPG games?

My introspection was inspired, as these so often are, by a rant. Not my own, but somebodys. Somebody I don't know, somebody who was complaining about the RPG Encased on Steam Reviews; which got me thinking. 'Inventory management as a game mechanic' he sang, condemning the state of modern RPG as pulling themselves apart under the weight of inventory picking and weight limits. Of course, I wouldn't go that far, and our man himself admitted to having a little bit of a hoarding problem with RPG games. I think it's rather transparent to say that our player here lacks the restraint to prioritise loot gather and has subconsciously thrust blame for his self-control issues upon the designers of these games; but even in his exaggeration he did highlight a interesting topic. Why do we still accept weight limits in our RPG games?

It's the classic question of 'why do we endorse systems that get in the way of the player and the instant gratification that they seek', with the philosophical answer being that the fulfilment of a reward delayed and restricted is far more enriching than the reward easily and readily given. But it's never quite so simple as the bare basic philosophy in matters like this, now is it? Red Dead Redemption 2 ended up being far more polarising than a literal masterpiece should be, simply because people loathed the idea of enduring a narrative that took it's time to tell a complete and blossomed narrative rather than a consistently action packed game. Grand Theft Auto 4 has been memed to high heaven for it's focus on seemingly mundane aspects of a open world simulator. And Death Stranding has been, although largely hyperbolically, been declared as the worst game ever for it's central gameplay loop of delivering instead of something classically exciting like shooting guns.

It's very easy to fall into the trap of assigning the general upset as a symptom of maturity deficits, assuming the maligned are simply those that lack common patience and simply want the world of entertainment to conform to their standards rather than meet it halfway. But in honesty this really comes to a matter of personal taste. I love a full bodied experience that feeds weight and intent behind the action and gameplay so that it lingers and lasts in my heart instead of just tickling my dopamine levels. But by that same merit I get bored of multiplayer games very quickly, because dopamine hits are all they offer. And though we currently flirt with higher topics and ideals of the topic right now, I think the heart of the conversation on seemingly antiquated and played out hold-outs of RPG game design like 'Weight Values' and 'inventory customisation' lies in recognising and understanding this as the background of the conversation.

Weight values are the limits enforced on how many items the player can carry on them at once, and their inclusion creates a system where the player is forced to think about how much they can carry and deposit that which is too much for them. With weight systems, you cannot lug around every tool the game has to offer and merely browse your inventory for the exact tool to solve each job, you also can't pick up everything not nailed to the ground like a greedy magpie. You'll inevitably end up in situations where you're caught short, left without a tool which might have been perfect for this specific fight because you planned for other encounters. You might have to get creative and work with what you've got and you can't realistically expect to power mindlessly through all the action in the game from one set-piece to another without ever stopping to rest until the credits.

And, predictably, those are also most of the reasons why I like weight limits in my inventory systems. Storing useful items in home bases and preparing for an outing is a part of the build-up element of an adventurous gameplay loop which makes the exciting adventure feel more rewarding. Making informed choices about what you want to pick up and what you need to leave behind for carry space is a give and pull concept which encourages sacrifice and imparts extra value upon the loot you choose to keep. Getting caught unawares by a challenge you haven't packed for can be annoying, but it can also spur some of the most dynamic and exciting encounters in the right games. If you can stand a game with more varied pacing, then I don't see why weight values and inventory management is a problem for you.

Of course, there are points where inventory management becomes a problem. Ironically, most modern RPGs know how to create a divide between meaningful loot and random trash, even Bethesda titles are really informed with this; it's more the genres that dabble where they don't belong which screws the pooch with inventory management. Live service games tend to drown players in endless loot drops with insignificant stat improvements that are so inconsequential that they typically come attached with a 'gear value' rating so you can ignore the specifics and just pick the bigger number always. The RPG-fied Assassin's Creed games have come with endless rows of utterly pointless loot systems, where you get clogged up with crappy weapons that are all eclipsed by the Legendary tools you'll pick up throughout the game. Proving the entire loot system to be utterly redundant because you never even engage with 99% of pick-ups. These are the sorts of titles that make me shudder when I hear the words 'inventory management'.

 

In conclusion, I'd say that those who grumble about messing with their inventories in an RPG game, assuming that it's a stop-gap in an otherwise action filled game, might be missing the basic point of what these systems are supposed to be, or are just conflating the worst of this practise with the best of them. I'm not going to pretend that Fallout games don't suffer from rather poor inventory menus, but I'm not going to throw the baby out with the bathwater critiquing them. Besides, I play on PC. Mods are pretty much essential. (Why haven't Bethesda literally just seen SkyUI and make that mods features standard in every game? That can't be too much of a hassle, surely.) I value weight systems and think being restricted in what you can carry is an overall more enriching game experience than the more haphazard, and decidedly messier, concept of 'shove it all in my bag and let god sort it out'. But I suppose this really is an 'each to their own' sort of matter, now isn't it?

Innovation

 Recreation.

Innovation in design is a topic I talk about quite a lot on this blog; although mostly disparagingly in order to insult Ubisoft for their lack of it. But that's only because innovative ideas is one of the few things that can keep push forward a medium that is reaching the ceiling of graphical fidelity more rapidly than it wants to admit. Making games wider isn't going to be much of an option going forward in development, at least according to Sony, who want us to believe they're barely making minimum wage up in their platinum-plated space-station offices. So if we're busy subsiding the absolutely terrible development costs that has Mr Yoshida hunting down stray galley rats in order to cook and feed them to his destitute family, I guess the only way games can improve is by becoming smarting and more complex. By innovating, instead of expanding. Which is an idea that had me thinking about the best innovations in video gaming past. Innovations like the unified control scheme.

Before there was any sort of consensus on what a video game 'genre' was, or how a certain type of game should be designed; there was absolutely no consensus on how video games should control or play; which inevitably led to some collisions in intent. Maybe for one video game the button to shoot your gun will be the red circle; maybe for this other one it would be the blue cross, maybe, if you're lucky, it'll be the trigger button! Some games featured better schemes than others, and whatever you got lunked with typically was your lot because this was the time before options menus and picking your button layout too. In this age, tutorials still served a very real function for telling you how the basic controls of every game worked, because gamers couldn't yet develop intrinsic familiarity with that very basic control scheme which today is compatible with just about every game bar some odd regional differences. (Can never get behind Japanese games and the swapped 'confirmation' and 'cancel' buttons- it bums me out.)

I can't say when the exact moment was when all of gaming made the unified choice to stop playing silly buggers with what controls did what; but that was a huge step forward in general cohesion of game design. Controls were designed to be ergonomic and sensible, prioritising buttons that would have to be pressed often towards fingers that could comfortably do the pressing. The world started to heal, things made sense. Every now and then you get a wild-card developer who believed they were going to reinvent the wheel, but basic settings menus with button configurations thankfully saves us from those anarchistic elements trying so desperately to destroy our clean, functioning, unified control scheme governance. In many ways this was the most important innovation ever to grace game design for the wide reaching effect it's had on the consciousness of gamers and the permutation of game playing proficiency, but it's also the most boring to talk about so how about we get a bit classic and specific?

How about we talk about saving? We all do it all the time, unless we happen to have a free 40 hours to complete brand new games start to finish without taking a single break. And yeah sure, I have that free time but I'm a desiccated old man hooked up to an energy extracting bacta tank; most of the rest of the world isn't. The Legend of Zelda was perhaps the first game to implement the ability to save the state of the world so that you could come back to that comparatively large game and pick up where you left off, and since then it's become an industry standard feature that we don't even think about. As universal as breathing and sleeping, but in digital form. Such that games that muck around with saving become weird and novel for their defiance of a standard, such as rougelikes, or Neir Replicant, etc.

But not every innovation totally rewrites the industry standard, some just do something incredible which makes their game stand out from the crowd. The Nemesis System from Shadow of Mordor was once such innovation, wherein the raw gameplay was enriched with a dynamic system that would remember NPCs and build a history of interaction between the NPC and the player. Injuries would be remembered, victories would be rewarded, ranks of hierarchy would shift, the dynamic make-up of guard outposts would evolve. It was a system that made the world feel living and shifting and made the player feel as though they were at the head of conducting their very own story. The Nemesis system was a huge achievement of robust design and oodles of voice recordings and script writings to create a seemingly endless list of permutations.

And that system, at least somewhat, was innovated on again by Watch_Dogs Legion! Now I know I usually rag on Ubisoft, for very good reason, but Legion did manage to quite interestingly iterate on something that Warner Bros. games created. I mean, admittedly they did just kind of take that concept and expand it laterally, rather than add anything in the way of depth, but I'll take what I can get. In Legion, every single NPC can be recruited into the player's army through a dynamically generated quest system that grows stale very quick through a lack of variety. But the differences in what each potential recruit offers will incentivise you to seek them out and endure the side missions anyway. It still doesn't convince me to actually change to someone who's skills work best on a mission 80% of the time, but having the choice is decent enough.

Unfortunately, Legion only really works as an innovation to Shadow of Mordor. However by the time Ubisoft's version of the concept came out, Warner Bros. had already innovated upon themselves in Shadow of War; and in doing so put Legion largely to shame. War was what happens when the raw framework of how everything works is pretty much done from the beginning and the team can spend as much time as they can creating diverse and varied interactions. The Orc armies you build and fight interact with each other fantastically and impressively all throughout Shadow of War, to the point where you'll see betrayals, surprise revivals, random assassination attempts and ambushes all throughout your playtime. If Shadow of Mordor made you the conductor of the narrative, Shadow of War puts you at the mercy of an orchestra gone wild.

Innovation is the fuel of art, and the games industry is blessed to have been showered with more innovation than most art forms enjoy in their early decades. Stagnancy flitters here and there, but is quickly swallowed up by the every shifting wiles of trends and new genre tropes that can make a game from 10 years ago feel like another world away from the kinds of experiences we enjoy today. Heck, with enough innovation the world might one day make a 4X game that I don't absolutely suck at; but then again maybe that's asking for a miracle too far... All of what I've discussed today has been relevant only to software; but hardware for gaming is every bit as evolving and ever-improving, to a frankly daunting degree. Maybe that in itself is ripe enough for it's own innovation themed blog in the near future-

Limited lives

Who wants to live forever?

Given the ever growing and changing art of gaming it's inevitable that some of the cliches and trends of the day would get whittled out as the years went by. It is, afterall, the course of life to be forever evolving, and art initiates life, no? Still, the consequence is that sometimes the things we love slowly become unrecognisable, and that's the sentiment I hear some people who played the video games of yesteryear share. Most typically people will note that games have become easier, which is true for many a reason, and that back in day there used to be habit for limited lives. And doesn't that seem odd, why oh why was limited lives such a universal thing in the old school of gaming? Especially as nowadays such features are indicative of super hardcore and unforgiving gamemodes. Well, let's postulate.

The first most obvious answer is the most sensible, as it comes down to money. Lacking the home consoles and mobile phone games of the modern age, when gaming started to first become commercially viable it did so through arcade cabinets which kids would spend their money on in order to play. You'd sink some money, play for a bit, die brutally and then slap in some more money; the cycle of arcade machines. Arcade games, for purely financial reasons, would be in their best interest to be both hard and punishing, so that they could extract as money nickle and dimes from their customer base as humanely possible. These almost hostile relationships between consumer and product created an environment where players had to challenge themselves with superior reaction times in order to save on their money, as well as for pure entertainment. Titles like Dragon's Lair, in which death was forever just a single miss-input away, raked in the most income, which shows you the the model to which game difficulty intentionally trended.

Of course, even when games started to get their home console releases, this bitter difficulty followed the game industry well into it's first few generations. Even when we started getting save systems after the innovation of The Legend of Zelda, limited lives were still a stable of just about every game until about the mid to late nineties. Now some of that is waste and leftover from the way that games used to be made, but another is a hold-on of design that fit in line with the way that video games were evolving even on home console. What you must remember is that those early game cartridges and consoles had very limited capabilities in terms of RAM and storage. No game could be a large enough adventure to warrant repeated play sessions, not just because of the lack of saving as a concept. Games retaining the lives system and their trial and failure difficulty helped pad out the length of these products so they engaged the customer for longer.

And after saving was introduced? Well then it started to become more of just a hold-on piece of technology from an antiquated style of game development. As games started becoming capable of being longer, difficulty fell off as a key focusing factor of design, now there was such a thing as replayability and several game play loops stitched together. Even further down the line and the idea of narrative stories being told through gaming started to become popular, at which point throwing in a 'lives' system and 'game over' screen seemed somewhat juvenile when compared to the barriers that the industry was clearing over in it's path to self improvement. As gameplay became more complex and involved, factors started to be shaved off the game development package as they became deemed 'unnecessary'. Limited lives proved to be more annoying than enriching in more modern products, and now the world of norms has flipped completely; games with limited lives are the outliers of society today!

Sonic is a franchise that has stayed staunchly married to it's old school ideals of a life system, even when the rest of the game has modernised and out grown it. In Sonic Adventure, despite that game being a mostly narrative driven story, you have lives to maintain; although when you run out it isn't game over; you just have to start from the beginning of the level instead of from that level's checkpoint. (Which is still pretty damn inconvenient; that final boss is a life siphon!) And even more modern games like Sonic Generations have a life system, even though it mixes 2d gameplay philosophy with 3d game design philosophy which often clashes. Lost World went so far as to thrown in a 25 extra lives preorder bonus, and Sonic Forces kept itself staunchly married to the antiquated Sonic gimmick of a level timer. Even though the limit of that timer was one hour per mission, in a game with missions that average the length of one minute to two. So perhaps modern Sonic Team weren't so invested in making sensible design choices.

But just because lives have gone away, that doesn't mean the world has lost all interest in the idea of death consequences. In fact, I'd argue that 'permadeath' and 'Roguelikes' are ideals that bring us back to the same sort of mindset as live systems in games. Roguelikes are typically more condensed and highly tweaked games that focus around replayability and the fun of starting over from the beginning again and again. With the added bonus that for most of the best rougelikes, failure spawns advantages that can be used in your next run making sure that your time playing the game never truly feels wasted, thus fixing one of the key flaws with the Lives system. This allows some Roguelikes to be tough as nails without feeling demoralising and a waste of effort.

Permadeath is typically even more hardcore and leans heavily on the idea of immutable consequence. The weight of what you have to lose can be enough to scare the player into being more clever and measured in their approach to problem solving, with the threat of a noose hanging over their heads ready to take all progress in an instant. This can be limited to permadeath of a character within a rooster, such as for squad based games, or maybe even the entire player character overall. (Typically found more in indie experiences. Mainstream games aren't quite brave enough to go there.) And maybe even just characters that can die if you screw up enough in a story based game, such as is the case with Quantic Dreams style games... it was actually one of the big selling points of Heavy Rain.

The Arcade beginnings of mainstream gaming still do have their routes in the modern psychology of game design, and not always in obvious ways. The essence of limited lives and what it meant for games of it's time, is still well and alive in conscious design choices that are made today. It's one of the many reasons why I roll my eyes whenever people say that 'New games are too easy, old games used to have difficulty to them'; typically conflating intentional frustration and antiquated design concepts with compelling and insightful complexity. Some of the best games of today can keep their simple mechanics and others can loose themselves in deep complexity, creating some of the most challenging and intriguing experiences in gaming today, all with their new framework of unlimited lives.

I love: Strip off and start from nothing

I thought it said 'Private Beach'!

Of the many uncommon gameplay scenarios that I love and other people seem to deeply despise, perhaps on of the most headscracthing ones on my end is the whole 'times when the game takes all of your stuff and throws you into a challenge area.' Just to be clear, I'm not talking about those final levels where the game takes all your weapons and skills and goes 'challenge time!', ('Half Life: Alyx') nor am I refencing the times when every skill and talent you've forged goes to utter waste against a final boss fight which breaks up into a straight 'press a couple of QTE events and you're done.' (Halo 4) I mean mid-game snippets when you've already reached the peak of your talent but the game design isn't ready to let you stomp all over it without putting up a fight. Just when you think there's nothing more to learn, you're stripped of everything, sent back to zero, and have to prove you're worthy of everything the game has given you.

I think it takes supreme confidence in one's systems to be able to bear itself without all those fancy gadgets and items which has bought you this far. And it's a great tool for contextualising exactly what it is that is making the player a badass; it is their skills or the sword tied to their back? A classic, 'are you wearing the armour or does it wear you' conundrum. And spoken in the unique language of 'gameplay' so integral to this special little industry of ours; I'm amazed, somewhat, that the Souls games have never repeated this rare practice. (Although considering those games depend on gear-defined builds to distinguish their gameplay variety; perhaps that isn't so surprising.) How about I demonstrate some titles that have taken this approach to great effect? 

Breath of the Wild famously features an entire challenge island of the course of Hyrule called Eventide Island. A place which magically absconds with all armour, weapons and food and throws you in the wilderness against everything from Moblins to a Hinox. All you have to defend yourself are the hearts you've collected, and the wits you've honed from using the Sheikah Slate up until now. That means really diving into the fantastic Breath of the Wild physics engine in order to make up the difference. Whether that be through starting fires and letting that rage encircle and burn groups, or rolling heavy rocks down hills for masses of damage; taking away those easy-win weapons forces the resourceful and creative mind out of the player's dormant psyche allowing for the subtle brilliance of BOTWs base systems to shine through. This island proved so successful that for the Trails in the DLC the team opted for a similar 'naked strat' and created pretty much the hardest challenge in the entire game. (Kudos, team.)

Far Cry 4 has a lot of high moments, and some lows; but one of the most promising in my mind came from the scene in which Ajay, the protagonist, is kidnapped and trapped in a mountain-carved prison with none of his tools. None sequentially (Because unfortunately this comes from the Ubisoft era where we can break these games down to their place in the uninspired sequence of repeated design choices) this marks the scene where the player is drugged and goes on a trip. But for its time that concept is actually utilised cleverly to have the player caught in a cat-and-mouse chase against their own delusions. Weaponless and defenceless, players are forced to play Far Cry in a totally different fashion for this moment, utilising cracks in walls and line-of-sight as though this is Outlast! And it doesn't even end with leaving the complex, because then the player is forced to fight their way through several checkposts, without their core gear, just to escape for certain. I'm still slightly peeved with the whole sequence, however, for the way that Ajay is literally placed in a cell without a door and just drugged, expecting that to be enough to stop him. Seems supremely contrived in my eyes, and I expected the entire escape to be a drug-fuelled delusion until the mission cleared and the game just continued; but for that brief moment before the shoe dropped I was enraptured in the challenge, and that's what matters.

Recently playing through New Vegas has given me the chance to confront that least liked of DLC by many, but one of my personal highlight favourites: Dead Money. The first of the additional content quartet, Dead Money traps the player in a Spanish-themed resort called The Sierra Madre, and locks them in a challenge of constant night, choking death clouds and deadly stalking Ghost-like creatures all over the shop. The theme of the DLC is greed and moving on, so it's somewhat fitting that in order to plunder the secrets of this hell you have to go in tool-less and blind, scavenging what you need to survive from bins and vending machines. I think I really started to hone in on what I love about this set-up whilst playing this DLC. It's the way in which the developers force you, through brute-force methods, to play as the weakling you started as but now with the knowledge to pick out what is important to your survival from what is not. You're not taking the Sierra Madre as carefully as you would at level one, you're picking through trash on the ground for anything you can use, using those Survival and Repair skill points to make bombs and poisons, and preparing a guerrilla campaign to overcome the death cloud and pull off the heist of the century! Dead Money is a an invitation to prove your mastery, and it's one I love to meet everytime I playthrough New Vegas.

And finally I present to you the king of this style; those that make use of it so much that it has become a genre style that generates millions upon billions each and every year; Battle Royales! Yeah, think about it! You never keep the same gear from match-to-match, all that differentiates a noob from a pro is the intrinsic knowledge of what loot is the best and how to best utilise it! Fortnite, PUBG, Apex Legends: All tap into that primal hunter-gatherer shade of the human psyche to fuel the power fantasy of starting from nothing and coming out on the top of the pack. And it's a constant gameplay loop of rising to the top and then being cast down to nothing, feeding those emotions time and time again. There's a draw to this style of gameplay scenario, and I think it's in the ego boost; who doesn't love to be the last one standing with the 'Number 1#' badge emblazed on their screen? No pre-game advantages, no pay-to-win, just resourcefulness and skill. This exact paradigm, perfected.

Adversity is sometimes the most useful tool in a game developers arsenal when it comes to establishing the satisfying power fantasy apex, and adversity scales with the advantages of the player. Short of starting the game from scratch, there really is no way to match the thrill of going rambo against a threat which you might role over normally, and overcoming the inflated hurdle regardless. I think this scenario strokes the same ego-glands that difficulty-defined genres that Souls-Likes do, only with the added benefit that you remember what it felt like to be the top-of-the-food chain, so you have the pre-established perception of superiority that now you have the opportunity to strengthen through trial and challenge. I live for those ego boosts.

Of course this is a trick to use sparingly, and like any set-piece this type of gameplay scenario works best in a short segment where we least expect it. I can understand why Dead Money can start to grate on someone when by hour 8 you're still trying to inventory manage whilst surviving the Cloud, and why the burst action of Battle Royales where you rise from nobody to overpowered in the space of five minutes is so easy to fall in lust with. Still, from a genre borne and bread around the ideas of power fantasies and feeding our egos, I'd say this is the sort of sequence that many great games out there would be remiss to omit. So if you're out there struggling to think of what special little moment your budding game needs to stick out that little bit more: try taking everything from the player and making them earn it all back.

To Transmogrify or not to Transmogrify

 That, apparently, is the question

When I first heard of transmogrification within the context of gaming, it was immediately clear to me that I was already very late to the party. I remember discovering it when learning about DC Universe Online, one of the first MMOs I toyed around with back when I was still being suckered into the whole 'this game is free!' grift. One of the flag ship selling points in my eyes was that ability to take an item with powerful stats and disguise it (or 'transmogrify' it) to look like another piece of equipment you liked the look of better. It seemed like an essential part of the visual formula for that game, given how that title was invested in making you feel like a unique and powerful wielder of superpowers with their own distinct style and unique superhero outfit. I remember thinking it was such a clever concept, to the extent that it wasn't really anything I expected to see elsewhere in the industry. WOW released their own Transmog system back in 2011, so I was absolutely late to this little feature, and I didn't realise back then how prevalent of a topic it was to become.

In this age of looter games and looter RPGs and looter shooters and MMOs out the rafters- the discussion of whether or not to implant transmogrification systems as an industry standard is becoming more commonplace, as people are starting to recognise the importance of personalisation over focused stat manipulation when it comes to enjoying long-form games. I think a great example for demonstrating this would be to look at the movement known as 'Fashion Souls'. The Soulsborne series of games is renowned as being some of the toughest, yet still fair and rewarding, in the AAA industry, so you'd be forgiving in thinking that these are the sorts of games that demand its player base learn and take advantage of every errant system and minuscule boost that they can in order to get a leg up on the threats of the world. You'd have to be forgiven, for such an assumption would be wrong. 

For many reasons that don't warrant getting into for this particular blog, Souls games are actually pretty relaxed on what systems you choose to master and which you don't; and in fact, someone who min-maxes in such games will find themselves breezing through those games without any struggle whatsoever. Seriously, just invest in magic and everything crumbles in front of you. (Until you come across Gwyn and realise that he has a dodge mechanic built in specifically so that he can jump around your slow-casting magic attacks. The total arse.) So when it comes to armour and the miniscule defence percentage it offers the player, most levelled Souls players just ignore the stats altogether and instead seek out the armour which looks the coolest to them, that which completes their visual style the best, recognising that the real stats of impact are contained within the levelling stat sheet. Thus is born 'Fashion Souls', and the basis for why transmogrification has become a topic of relevance.

Really the point at which I heard this conversations flaring up around the more mainstream elements of the industry was once we started hearing talk regrading the later Assassin's Creed games, which might not make the most sense if you gave up on the franchise when it started to lose it's steam like I pretty much did, but does track better once you realise that these games are rent-price RPG looters now; for some reason. Odyssey had a transmog system so that fashionistas could parse Ubisoft's garishly bloated gear system and Valhalla had it's own transmog evolution wherein there came a price tag attached to visual manipulation that rubbed some people the wrong way. It just didn't make sense to people why a casual RPG like Assassin's Creed would try and prime its systems like some sort of hardcore gear grinder game or MMO and charge for the privilege of style switching. But then Valhalla was the harbinger of many anti-consumer practices, so one more spit in the face of the customers was hardly unexpected.

And so I've bought myself here to ask the obvious question: where does transmog belong and where does it not? Cyberpunk fans demand a transmog system to make their ugly but powerful clothing more bearable to deal with. (Even though that's literally a first person game and one has to wonder how much value such a system would even generate.) Should we be looking at  a transmog system coming with Elder Scrolls 6 too? What are the games for which this idea works and where does it not; or are there even any limits at all and should every game become a free-for-all of visual and functional mismatch? I'd argue that we don't need to take things quite that far, but there are indeed a few concessions to make. Places where such an idea fits, and places where I think it has no place, and figuring out which is which can help to establish expectations and responsibilities.

Firstly where do Transmog systems belong? Well I've bought up looter games for a reason, I think that the sorts of games that dump hoards of untailored randomly assigned, miniscule stat shifted, armour and weaponry on the player are the most direly in need of systems like this. Your Assassin's Creeds, your Destinys, your Niohs, your Diablos. These are the games where sweating the tiny boost to attack speed is the whole crux of the equipment system, and you'll be grinding day after day to earn that perfect randomly generated keyword spread. But when you hit that apex, get those numbers that you want, there's no reason why you should then be limited to look like Frankenstein's swift-shop reject. Transmog only adds value to systems like these because the items themselves are relevant for their abilities alone, not their visual appeal. Changing up the style takes nothing away from these systems and thus transmog system slide in perfectly.

Where do they not? Well, I'd argue this is the case for the more traditional RPGs with that shy away from random stat combinations and keyword kinder surprise. Skyrim, is the example that most readily comes to mind, depicts a world with various styles of armours, all made from different materials and offering differing weight values. Here's an example where the styles and the stats are important, they match up because they are designed to. Dragonplate armour is heavy and bulky, whilst Elven plate is sharp and thinner, adding a transmog system would dig in a little into the illusion built by that artistic intent. And similar games that champion consistent and contextual design also risk a softening of the immersive bonds that form the package.

We're probably at a point where we should be bringing these sorts of systems into most games that deserve them without question, although for the time being there are still a few archaic holdout's keeping us up with such ingenious plans as 'lets charge people money for this stuff and call it a privilege.' Yeah, there's some growing pains to work out. But for the most part I see the concept of transmogrification mechanics as a win for personalisation in customisation and keeping game avatars looking distinct from one another. MMO's realised this potential problem an age ago, so let's not let every high level endgame for big titles end up looking like a Runescape raid where every player is clones of each other in the same type of armour. (No shade at Runescape, I just think that game offers much better examples for the industry than it's visual customisation appeal.)

The Tutorials Tutorial: The 3D Fallouts

War, War never changes.

Nothing and nothing, but nothing, is as important to the accessibility and adoption of any game with aspirations on mainstream appeal, as those beginning few hours. I'm talking introduction, tutorial and launching off points. If that start of the game doesn't manage to grab, intrigue or encourage the player than they just aren't going to take the time to stick around until the twilight hours for the super special mind-blower climax which totally redeems the whole experience. I mean... unless they happen to be me, because I'm a weirdo like that, but it's probably not wise to assume every consumer is as frivolous with their freetime as myself. And in my mind what makes that beginning hour or so particularly tricky, as well as important, is that it's when the designers need to both hook you into the early narrative as well as arm you with that fundamental knowledge you're going to need in order to carry you through the rest of your play experience. It's a balancing act of information and teaching, and one developer who have nailed this down to a fine art in my opinion, is Bethesda.

Contrary to their cleverly engrained action set piece tutorial intro from Skyrim, Fallout 3 is iconically slower paced and more methodical, and that's because it was elevated through the simply ingenious framing device of the player literally experiencing the life of their characters stretching from birth to death. (Well, in the vanilla version of the game it would be birth to death. 'Broken Steel' borked the neatness of that.) And so, quite literally, the game can take you through every single tutorial they have to offer and merely disguise it as another scene of you growing up. Of course, being professionals, Bethesda weren't that obvious with their implementations, and thus they did endeavour to ensure that every scene of the Vault Dweller's childhood was fuelled with narrative purpose too, but in concept alone the whole 'early years in the vault' has to be one of the most slam dunk marriages of narrative and functional tutorial in all of gaming and I just want to gush about it for a bit.

So like I alluded, shortly after being introduced to the world of Fallout 3 by the iconic narration of Ron Pearlman, the player is immediately thrown into the most immersive scenario one could possible expect from a first person RPG: their own birth. Functionally it's all rather straight-forward, you get popped out and then design how your adult self will eventually look through the use of hand-wavy science-magic something (with the game even taking count of your ethnicity so it can dub your Liam Neeson-voiced father with that same race) The next glimpse comes from the toddler years, and it's here where the smart design starts to really shine. So like every single game under the sun, Fallout 3 teaches the player how to move. (I know: someone would complain if games stopped doing this eventually, but sometimes it makes me wonder what the point of standardised control schemes even is.) But then you're taught how to pick-up and throw toys out of your toybox, showing off the physics engine and teaching the player of this functionally perfunctory, but still pretty fun, mechanic. (Every Scrolls-Out player has spent a morbid minute playing with the physics of a corpse they recently made.)

Then we have the actual building of the player's stat sheet integrated into the immersive setting of the game! (I don't know if I'm adequately displaying how cool I find that.) The player reads a children's book which rudimentarily explains the relevance of each stat before asking the player to lay their stat point spread, that's character creation effort I've never seen a CRPG put in! It carries over to the next snapshot of life too, with the game showing the player their young kid years. Here you're introduced to the Pipboy, the concept of branching dialogue trees and basic consequences and even a little bit of shooting. You're getting how this works by now, right? Bethesda feed you formative character scenes whilst slotting in tutorials to systems or game concepts wherever they might naturally fit. It's a total masterclass of immersive introduction and the designers don't make it feel like the narrative has slowed down for lessons in the slightest. (I actually think it does a better job than Skyrim at maintaining a consistent momentum.)

New Vegas, on the otherhand, is seemingly intentionally barebones by comparison. You have the same maintained precedent, of character sheet building wrapped into the immersion of the world, but it's less intertwined in the momentum of the moment. You know immediately when you're in a tutorial area and thankfully don't have to wait too long before you're let loose. As for gameplay tutorials... well the game teaches you how to move. And... that's about it. Yeah, New Vegas is a game that relies on it's similarity to Fallout 3, and the knowledge of that largely-shared audience, to justify cutting back almost totally on the tutorials. All of New Vegas' gameplay tutorials are optional and mostly geared to introducing players to New Vegas specific mechanics, rather than teaching the basics. This has the benefit of giving the player more early freedom, but the drawback of making each 'tutorial area' stick out like a sore, momentum-halting, thumb. Still, it works perfectly fine for a first playthrough and that's all that matters at the end of the day.

Fallout 4 is a curious one, because having been made after Skyrim, you can see the ways in which Bethesda wanted to try and marry the two styles of Skyrim's intro and Fallout 3's. You have the contextually-sound character creation mixed with the immediately core-plot-relevant set pieces, high on the adrenaline and excitement, to try and teach-the-player in the action. Escaping Vault 111 is basically Fallout 4's version of Helgen, with more of a dynamic twist to the way systems are introduced rather than having an instructor standing over your shoulder literally telling you what to do. There are terminals to hack, locks to pick, and even one higher level closet with a powerful weapon inside that exists just to show you the limitations of your exploration at this early level so you know the sorts of rewards you're working towards.

Of course there is no single 'right way' to introduce these game as beyond sharing the same world and genre, they're all vastly different in the scopes of their regions, stories, and themes; but that's the kind of crappy toeing-the-line answer that'll net you decent marks during a Secondary School English exam. It's much more fun to pick a blanket favourite out of the 3D Fallout games, which leads me to comparing benefits. Fallout 3 has a tutorial that is immersively baked-in to the early game in an unmatchable way, however that does equate to a pretty bloated first hour of tutorial and introduction. Fallout New Vegas is hands-off and largely optional, but the tutorial sections stick out so much you'll probably never opt to endure them again on repeat playthroughs. Fallout 4's is exciting, integrated and forward moving for the plot, however it toes the divide between too long and too frustrating to go through again willingly. Ultimately I'd have to go with my main man Fallout New Vegas on this one, purely because I value replayability so highly, even if I think Fallout 3's intro is a freakin' masterpiece.

The whole point of a well crafted tutorial is the way in which it props up accessibility, for as many people as possible to engage with and enjoy the game. But so many ingredients go into the recipe of 'accessibility', clarity, brevity, optionals, integration, that the idea of hitting perfection is nigh on impossible. But then, perfection is forever an impossibility, is it not? That's what makes life so fun! Bethesda does have this type of interactive tutorial that resonates so clear and deeply with my personal perception of what makes a good tutorial, however I looked forward to being presently schooled by other approaches to this integral game design step when I soon expand my horizons into other sorts of games. And as we explore ever deeper, I want you to ponder, just as I do, how the art of the tutorial comes together to create that ideal tee-in to the games that we love.