Posts on Current Forum | Archived Posts
|
|
|
||
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
| Frequently Asked Forum Questions | |
|||
|
||||
|
|
|||
| ||||
| ||||
| ||||
| Search Older Posts on This Forum: Posts on Current Forum | Archived Posts | ||||
| ||||
| ||||
| ||||
| Re: Story and Gameplay Integration | |
| Posted By: 3Suns | Date: 1/13/07 10:26 a.m. |
In Response To: Story and Gameplay Integration (Narcogen) : The "that didn't work" angle I find interesting. At some point, I'm : going to do a review of the level objectives you're given in Halo 2, both : in cutscenes and in the game menu, and see how many you actually achieve. : Not as many as we might assume, I think. That sounds like a lot of work! Don't do it for my sake, but if you do, I look forward to reading it. : Do you mean the story of Gears is dumbed down to the level of its story,
No, I mean that the the gameplay, what you do, is the story. People have complained that we don't get very much background on the characters (in Gears), or that the story is nonexistent. We don't get much info about the characters at all. But the story is far from nonexistent. It is just that it is almost completely played out while you are actually playing the game (i.e., engaging enemies and moving through the environments). It is unfair to say that the story is dumbed down, because it isn't; the opposite argument, that other games have their story trumped up, would be more accurate. Gears is like a Michael Bay film. I am sure that some would argue that many of his films don't have a story. : In a sense I agree with what you're saying; but I have to admit I cannot
I think that I don't fully appreciate the challenges that developers face when designing a game, especially as regards simulated intelligence (what I will reluctantly refer to as A.I.). When I first read about how The Sims models life, I was completely blown away by the simplicity and elegance of the programming. Everything is an object. Each object has its attributes, and calls out to other objects to see if they can satisfy each other. Sam is hungry, so he is crying out "I need food". The refrigerator has food and it beacons "I have food". So, Sam walks to the fridge and gets food. In my limited understanding, it seems to me that one should be able to adapt that model to the A.I. of a FPS (and get away from scripting). Actually, I am pretty sure that this is what Irrational Games (Bioshock) is doing for their A.I. and why they are having a heck of a time debugging it. They give the objects attributes and then let the objects interact on their own. As they have mentioned in interviews, they never experience the game the same way twice, because there is so little (if any) scripting involved. I suspect they are finding that they need to add more "rules of conduct"/attributes to the objects in the game. But you know, if they ever get that worked out, it is going to be a game that no one forgets. I do think that object oriented simulated intelligence is the future of games. Now, if that kind of A.I. is successfully implemented, then the idea of giving the Master Chief a single objective for an entire level, for example, "Blow up the bridge on the other side of the city - how you get there and how you do it, is up to you. Just DO IT!" becomes a distinct possibility. Perhaps more than the technical challenges, it requires thinking beyond the familiar, and a leap of faith because the developer does ultimately relinquish control. (Again, I know that, on the scale I am envisioning, this is not the direction that Bungie has taken for H3. So, I am not expecting this. I say without malice that I am not expecting that I will play much of the campaign. Bungie is really giving us two complete AAA games for the price of one, as far as I am concerned, and if I find myself not bothering with campaign, I will still have gotten a steal of a deal. ) : Think of another epic story, like LoTR. The heroes there are hobbits--
That is why I have never purchased a LoTR game in which the game followed the events of the original literature. That, and the fact that they are made by EA (ha ha -- had to get that jab in). : Marathon's story is deeper mostly because it is told in text. The
: That said, the integration of gameplay actions and storytelling in Marathon
See, this fascinates me and I think that we are on to something here. Incredibly entertaining stories can be delivered within a FPS, but I don't think the standard oft-employed "Do this objective, ok, now watch this cutscene" is ever going to be the satisfying method. I don't think that we need to return to reading text in computer terminals within game, but perhaps, viewing footage, or newsbriefs at a terminal or on the inside of the visor (i.e., the hud) is going to be a minimal requirement. You know, it seems to me that everytime a FPS takes the player from gameplay to a cutscene, it is analogous to an author changing the point of view in a novel. It is not something that is never ever done, but it sure ain't done a lot - and is generally be considered undesirable. Yet, that is the form of most FPS games right now.
| |
|
| Replies: |
The HBO Forum Archive is maintained with WebBBS 4.33. |