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Phil Cook v2 wrote:
> Take Myst, what the heck are you supposed to do yet it was a
> massive sellout; was that despite its open nature or simply because it
> looked so good that finding tasks naturally occurred as you looked around?
I think even sandbox type games need careful level design and planning of
guidance. Myst is an excellent example.
You can't get off the island, and that's obvious from the start. You know
books have something to do with why you're there, but there's no real
backstory you need to understand. The hints on how to proceed are in plain
view (namely, the letter from Atrus and the pages next to the books in the
library).
Once you figure out you need the other pages, it's clear you have to find
the books, find a page in each age, and find your way back. The other books
in the library give hints as well.
So Myst starts with a set of simple goals once you take more than a dozen
steps, obvious limitations on where you can go and what you can do, with
hints telling you how to solve the puzzles without them being obvious. In
addition, the puzzles are logical within the game space, rather than just
arbitrary "you find a locked door, go hunt down the key that won't be far
away." There's a reason for things to be locked, and a reason for the key
to be available.
Riven is similar: A handful of clues, thrown into the fray to figure out
what you're supposed to do beyond "catch Gehn, rescue Catherine, signal
Atrus." But as the game progresses and you explore more, there are more
hints and story that come about, just as left-over artifacts from the
civilization and all, that tell you what you're supposed to be doing and how
to resolve the conflicts.
The individual levels of Thief also sometimes had a similar structure. You'd
have a main goal or two, that may or may not change as the game progresses,
but a big sprawling level with no hint as to which way to go, where the
secrets are, or how to achieve the goals you've been set. Other than "steal
lots of goodies", there weren't really any utterly arbitrary goals there either.
Black & White was probably a decent game of a type I'm not really into. I
don't much like real-time resource management games, but it was open,
sprawling, and had various goals you could solve or you could ignore. (And
some you had to solve for the story to progress.) It was nice because you
could solve stuff in lots of ways. I'm honestly not sure why I didn't really
like it. Probably because there wasn't any real exploring going on. There
was open, and everything was above-ground and evident before you started.
Nowhere was closed off, and you could see everything, and it's just a
question of setting off the quests you felt like doing. There was no
discovery, but just plodding thru the game doing what it told you to do.
Most of the other "Myst-like" games that came right after myst completley
abandoned the "open" format. There was even one called "lighthouse" where
you start in a house maybe a quarter mile from the lighthouse in question. I
spent 20 minutes trying to figure out how to get out of the first room
before I realized you had to listen to the answering machine before the door
would unlock (eh?). Then to get the front door to unlock, you had to pick up
the umbrella in the stand. Then you couldn't walk to the lighthouse - you
had to find the car and drive there. Totally not what an adventure game is
supposed to be like.
So, in short, an open world with no hidden bits to find and explore and
challenge is just boring. There have to be places where it takes thinking to
get to them. And it's best if the thinking is real-world logic. To say "this
door is locked, let's find the key" is not nearly as interesting as "this
door is locked, but it's made of wood, and there was an axe in the forest,
let's see if I can open the door that way."
--
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
Eiffel - The language that lets you specify exactly
that the code does what you think it does, even if
it doesn't do what you wanted.
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