CarlZog
Explorer
I've been having a a great deal of difficulty with several CRPGs lately, mostly because of the built-in requirement to pursue sidequests at the very beginning of the game, and by the absurd scatterings of loot that I'm expected to comb every inch of the scenery looking for.
I follow the main plot hooks of the game, but I quickly find myself stuck -- without the skills or resources to go any further. A glance at a walkthrough shows my error: Instead of fleeing from the building that was under attack, while my leader screams orders in my head, I was supposed to have meticulously scoured every room of every apartment, raiding refrigerators and bookcases for gear. Instead of urgently seeking out the contact that will help me in this dire situation, I was supposed to hang out at the bar and pick up odd jobs from a bunch of local scumbags as if I had nothing better to do and no other cares in the world.
It's absurd, and it makes it particularly difficult to suspend disbelief or feel really involved in otherwise incredibly immersive games.
Twenty years, finding loot and fighting bad guys was all you really did on a computer. But today, in games with elaborate settings and plots, designers still seem compelled to continue to rely on these two flawed devices to advance the action.
Why? I don't get it.
The particularly bad example that got me thinking about this is Deus Ex II: Invisible War. I was shocked when I looked at a walkthrough and saw what I'd been missing. My favorite example was in a coffee shop in a seemingly law-abiding area. The proprietor is standing behind the counter, chatting with a customer in front of the counter. Everything seems quite normal.
-- Under the circumstances, it NEVER would have occurred to me to just walk around the back of the counter and begin searching for stuff to take while the manager is standing there.
-- If I did, I CERTAINLY would have expected the manager to object.
-- Once behind the counter, I NEVER would have expected to find an ammo clip just lying next to the coffee maker!
-- And in ANY coffee shop where ammo clips were just lying around like that, I SURE would have expected to have been shot by the manager before I ever found the clip.
The entire scene was so utterly random, I suddenly realized that no rational decision-making processes had any value in the game. I kept playing, but instead of making decisions in character, I just became an automaton -- methodically searching everything everywhere, and exhausting every discussion tree with every NPC I met.
Fun at some level, but certainly not role-playing.
Carl
I follow the main plot hooks of the game, but I quickly find myself stuck -- without the skills or resources to go any further. A glance at a walkthrough shows my error: Instead of fleeing from the building that was under attack, while my leader screams orders in my head, I was supposed to have meticulously scoured every room of every apartment, raiding refrigerators and bookcases for gear. Instead of urgently seeking out the contact that will help me in this dire situation, I was supposed to hang out at the bar and pick up odd jobs from a bunch of local scumbags as if I had nothing better to do and no other cares in the world.
It's absurd, and it makes it particularly difficult to suspend disbelief or feel really involved in otherwise incredibly immersive games.
Twenty years, finding loot and fighting bad guys was all you really did on a computer. But today, in games with elaborate settings and plots, designers still seem compelled to continue to rely on these two flawed devices to advance the action.
Why? I don't get it.
The particularly bad example that got me thinking about this is Deus Ex II: Invisible War. I was shocked when I looked at a walkthrough and saw what I'd been missing. My favorite example was in a coffee shop in a seemingly law-abiding area. The proprietor is standing behind the counter, chatting with a customer in front of the counter. Everything seems quite normal.
-- Under the circumstances, it NEVER would have occurred to me to just walk around the back of the counter and begin searching for stuff to take while the manager is standing there.
-- If I did, I CERTAINLY would have expected the manager to object.
-- Once behind the counter, I NEVER would have expected to find an ammo clip just lying next to the coffee maker!
-- And in ANY coffee shop where ammo clips were just lying around like that, I SURE would have expected to have been shot by the manager before I ever found the clip.
The entire scene was so utterly random, I suddenly realized that no rational decision-making processes had any value in the game. I kept playing, but instead of making decisions in character, I just became an automaton -- methodically searching everything everywhere, and exhausting every discussion tree with every NPC I met.
Fun at some level, but certainly not role-playing.
Carl
