Scale, Size, and Scope: The Mass Effect Series

After a successful game, it always seems that the game designers ask themselves the question: “how do we make it bigger?” As a result, often the sequel ends up jumping the shark – so named for the Happy Days episode where somebody literally jumped over a shark. In other words, the plot nosedived from epic to ridiculous faster than the main character could clear the dorsal fin.  Gaming has generally been the second home for the bombastic action sequence after movies of course, so game designers should really consider this question instead: “how epic is too epic?” The Mass Effect Series had a really good approach to scale and scope.

So, what makes the Mass Effect Series idea of scale different?

Everyone loves epic space adventure. Unless you hate fun. And joy. And puppies.

Mass Effect, the first game in the series, feels small scale, despite the galaxy-wide implications of your mission.  The story starts out with Geth, the reclusive race of machines, attacking a human colony. You, Commander Shepard, expose Saren and his involvement with the Geth, and track him down for the rest of the game. The pacing of Mass Effect makes you feel as if you’re just on Saren’s tail the whole time because you just miss him, or clash with him every time. Since you spend most of your time in a self-contained ship with a clear-cut mission ahead of you, the large number of planets you visit fade into the background. Rather, the story is really about Shepard, and how you choose to develop them as a character.

Your companion loyalty missions are way more interesting than any of the story missions you go on, save the last one. They take you to new planets or areas and really help you understand your companions and how they fit in the game world.

In Mass Effect 2 instead of dealing with an entire army, you are trying to stop a single ship. A huge ship kills off Shepard and destroys your ship in the first five minutes, which is a hell of a memorable start to any adventure. Cerberus, a pro-human terrorist group, brings you back to life to you chase after the Collectors who are abducting human colonists. Turns out, they’re all on the same ship that killed you at the beginning of the game. The Collectors are presented as mysterious, yet one-dimensional, so you spend most of your time building your team. Each member is detailed, has a unique backstory and loyalty mission, and is generally enjoyable to talk to. In fact, most memorable moments of the game don’t revolve around you, but your teammates.

This picture sums up Mass Effect 3 pretty well. Shepard walking away from the total destruction of Earth. It pictures the focus of the game, rather than any companions as in the previous games.

Mass Effect 3 is the appropriately grandiose last hurrah. Within the first ten minutes of starting up the game, you escape Earth as The Reapers annihilate Earth’s armies. You acquire companions, but as The Reapers, as ominous as The Collectors were bland, threaten the entire galaxy, your mission doesn’t focus on your team, but on helping the galaxy prepare for what might be their last stand. Shepard, by this point, practically legend, doesn’t have much character exploration left. Much of the cast from ME1 and ME2 return, though your squad is much smaller. With these familiar faces, you focus more on the places you go and the people around you. It’s a clever subversion of the intense character-introspection of earlier games, but it’s almost expected; this is the final game in an epic trilogy, of course it would be about the spectacle. Yet, it never feels like too much, overblown, and manufactured.

Ending a trilogy like Mass Effect is like difficult, and many might say that it was underwhelming, but I’m not sure if there was a better way to tie everything up. Once you dig into each game, you can see how the designers used scale to make you care about Shepard, your companions, and then the galaxy. Because you care about all three of these aspects of the game, the conclusion feels like the end of a cohesive journey.

What’s in a Sequel: Knights of the Old Republic and Knights of the Old Republic 2: The Sith Lords

I love Star Wars. I’ve seen the original Trilogy more times than I can count, and I saw Episode VII: The Force Awakens somewhere around 7 times in theaters. I’ve played a lot of the Star Wars games as well, from Dark Forces to The Force Unleashed. Most of them are pretty good, but few compare to the Knights of the Old Republic series. Both games are held up as examples of how to do a role playing game right, and both are still popular today. As with any sequels, there were a few changes made from the first game to the second that are worth discussing.

Who doesn't love Star Wars? Idiots that's who.

So, what’s different between the games? Was it an improvement, or a detriment?

Knights of the Old Republic (KOTOR hereafter) had an interesting tone; it was very mysterious and it had a great sense of discovery. You spend most of the game trying to find the mythical Star Forge, a place where the Dark Jedi Masters Malak and Revan supposedly fell to the Dark Side. You travel from planet to planet piecing together bits of a map to lead you to the Forge, all while completing quests, picking up companions, and dodging Darth Malak.

The Star Forge maps are hidden all over the galaxy and you get to see some really atmospheric parts of the Star Wars universe trying to find the maps.

The tight focus on this mystery made the game feel smaller than it should, but in a good way. You had a concrete goal to achieve and each time you found a new piece of the map, you felt yourself getting closer to the mysterious Star Forge and its secrets. You start as just a regular member of the Republic Army, caught up in a bad situation. Your humble beginnings give the game a real sense of a hero’s journey besides the usual leveling up in most RPGs. By focusing on a smaller start, you feel like a part of the universe, not some super special anomaly.

Knights of the Old Republic 2: The Sith Lords (KOTOR 2 hereafter) was also rushed out to release a little early, so there’s a general unpolished feeling to the game, but it’s not a huge issue. The game has a much more standard Star Wars sort of plot, which hurt the game a little. In KOTOR 2, you are trying to assemble the last remaining Jedi Masters to combat a newly arisen Sith threat.

The Sith in KOTOR 2 are mysterious, and their backstory is dolled out throughout the game at a good pace, which keeps you interested.

The goal feels a little less concrete, which does rob the game of some of the focus in the first. You also don’t feel as if you’re progressing nearly as much because little changes as you find the remaining Jedi Masters, other than the fact that you’ve found them. You start as a renowned Jedi Knight, though you’ve lost your connection to The Force. You are keenly aware that your character exists outside of the natural order of the universe, the Jedi, and even your companions. You’re already defined as a character, so there’s not really anyplace to go besides the usual Light or Dark side choices. Interestingly enough, some of the main character progression has been transferred to your companions. In KOTOR 1, your companions were fairly defined when you met them, and though you discovered new things about their backstories and personalities, they didn’t change much. In KOTOR 2, a fair amount of them can become Jedi if you can gain the required influence.

You can turn all but one of your non-droid, non-already-Jedi, companions into Jedi throughout the game.

This is a really interesting idea, and there’s a lot of directions that the game could have gone with it, but all it amounts to is that some of your companions can also use force powers and lightsabers. The influence system itself was a new addition in KOTOR 2 where you would gain or lose influence depending on which choices you make and how your companions felt about them. It’s a neat idea, but it just means that you switch out your companions constantly for certain situations to get them to like you more, as there’s no benefit to them disliking you.

There are also a number of mechanical differences made from KOTOR 1 to 2. One of the biggest is the crafting system in KOTOR 2, which allows you to build various items, weapons, and upgrades if you have the required skills. In KOTOR¸ certain rare pieces of equipment (and lightsabers) could be modified with upgrades that you found around the world, but they were few and far between. The upgrades would do different things for different items and it was tough to find enough to upgrade all your items, so you had to make some choices around your equipment. In KOTOR 2, almost every weapon and armor piece can be upgraded with a huge variety of upgrades.

This allows for a lot more customizability, which a lot of people might appreciate, though it fell a little flat for me. When the customizable items were limited, it felt as if you found a more unique weapon/armor that had its own story. When you can modify everything, the items feel a little less special.

You can build a number of versions of all the upgrades, which gives you more options, but makes upgrading more of a chore and less unique.

There was also a huge jump in combat complexity from KOTOR 1 to 2. In KOTOR 2, you could use a variety of lightsaber forms that gave you different kinds of bonuses, hand to hand combat was a viable option if you had the right skills, and there was a number of new combat feats, force powers, and items. Combat was a lot more customizable in KOTOR 2, and it was interesting to have your companions be able to fill more roles than they did in KOTOR. In the first game, you would often just line your party up and have them wail on the enemy, whereas in KOTOR 2 you could specialize them more. There’s also more situations where you control one of your companions on a side mission, rather than always controlling your main character, which does give you an incentive to make sure that they’re upgraded in a sensible way. These missions start really early on, so you have a good idea that you’ll be doing it again. Overall, the combat was improved in KOTOR 2, despite some of the crafting shortfalls.

Both KOTOR 1 and 2 are great games, and more than worth your time, though the first one is 12 years old this year. KOTOR definitely has a tight focus, a great sense of discovery, and grounded, believable characters. KOTOR 2 improved the combat, offered a lot more customizability to your characters, and made your companions more useful in general. I think there were a lot of stumbles from the first to the second, but KOTOR 2 tried some new things and made some improvements, which is always better than going with more of the same.

Impossible vs. Cakewalk: Difficulty in Games

Difficulty can be a hard subject to talk about in games. Some people play a game religiously, so it all seems easier. Sometimes somebody has trouble with just navigating 3D space in games.

For instance, while some might consider it hard, I can speed-run Grey's Anatomy: The Video Game in 38 seconds.

 Difficulty is still worth discussing, though. Game designers and developers put so much work into how a game looks, feels, and plays that there’s no way they didn’t think about how hard to make it. Developers have betas and alphas to help narrow down how hard is too hard, or if a section is too easy, but sometimes the end result still feels off.

So, what makes a game hard without being frustrating? What can developers do to make an easy game still feel like a worthwhile experience?

Kirby Nightmare in Dreamland was the first Gameboy Advance game to feature the pink puffball we’ve all come to know and love since Kirby Superstar on the SNES. The gameplay follows the usual Kirby formula of “eat enemies and gain their power” and make your way through colorful and linear levels.

Look at him! So adorable. the Kirby series has always been more about the world than extreme gameplay.

From the moment you start playing Nightmare in Dreamland, it’s evident that this game is not going to frustrate you will difficulty. Instead, it’s going to take you an adorable journey filled with cute monsters, interesting bosses, and oddly named levels (Yoghurt Yard anybody?). The levels are filled with food to restore health, enemies are generally easy to beat, and if you do die, you’ll only be sent back a small bit in the level. This game is about making your way through the world and trying out new powers. Watching Kirby change as you go through the dozens of forms you can find is fun and cute. The game never tries to say that it’s going to be a harrowing journey so it never feels “too easy.” It falls into that Goldilocks zone of juuuuusstt right.

On the other hand, The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim always feels a bit too easy. The second you start playing the game, you see the total destructive power that the Dragons have, and the thought of taking one of them down might fill you with fear. Then, you actually fight one and it feels like a total letdown.

Look at this thing! It's terrifying! It breathes fire, can cause meteors to rain from the sky, and is crazy evil. Yet you beat it by slapping it in the face with a club.

You just run around until they land, then wail on them. Before you know it, they’re dead and you’re absorbing their soul and everybody else is staring at you in awe, like it was hard. Two hours later, you’ll see a Dragon land in the middle of a little farming village and get torn apart by peasants. Skyrim fails to present you with danger in 99% of fights, though the Dragon Priests can be tough to take down, due to their powerful masks and staves. Skyrim starts you out with a full set of armor, weapons, and potions so there’s never a time when you feel like you’re just starting out in the world, or feel vulnerable. You can pause the game a second away from death to eat 50 raw potatoes and 5 health potions and bam, you’re all better. When a game is inconsistent like this, it removes a lot of the satisfaction you might get from overcoming its “challenges.”

That covers “easy”, but how do you make a game hard without going to fuck-you-that’s-bullshit-are-you-kidding-me territory? The trick is fairness, really. You have to make the player feel like any death they experience is a result of their choices and actions, and not the game suddenly deciding that’s how things are going to be. And while there’s some definite RNG rage, FTL: Faster than Light does a really good job of showing you how proper planning and decisions can beat even the hardest enemies.

Victory here will feel better than beating 10,000 Dragons in Skyrim.

By defeating enemies and acquiring scrap, you upgrade your ship and crew in any way you see fit. FTL makes it clear from the beginning that you are outmatched, outgunned, and that only a clever mind will help you survive. The game is hard because of the overwhelming force against you and because things can change in an instant. One missile aimed wrong and the enemy can repair their weapons engine subsystem and get away, leading the rebel fleet to overtake your position. FTL demands your attention and concentration, and though there are times when your defeat feels undeserved, it generally does a good job of respecting your choices.

If “fairness” makes difficulty feel okay, then “unfairness” must make it feel frustrating. Bioshock Infinite was generally a fairly easy game, but it featured a difficulty option called “1999 Mode” that went too far in the opposite direction.

All complaints aside, this game is absolutely gorgeous. Columbia, the floating city where most of the game takes place, is beautiful and very atmospheric.

For the most part, the rules of 1999 Mode are pretty well thought out. Enemies inflict greater damage on you, the navigation arrow is removed, and there’s no weapon auto aim. However, enemies also gain increased health, there’s less ammunition for your weapons, you have less health, and respawn points are reduced. What ends up happening here is that the enemies can take a huge amount of punishment and stay alive, whereas you take a hit and you’re down. Enemies also know where you are at all times, as soon as you fire on them once, even if you try to hide. Some of the bosses already have a lot of health, and in 1999 Mode most firefights become a war of attrition, rather than a thrilling and bombastic experience. You also have less ammo, and given that you can’t upgrade every weapon, you’ll end up fighting a lot of bosses with whatever you can find ammo for, which will take even longer.

Anybody who's played Bioshock Infinite can tell you how annoying this boss is on normal difficulty. It gets 50 times worse on 1999 Mode.

Increased difficulty modes are good, but they need to be implemented carefully. Increasing the amount of damage everybody does make sense because it makes combat deadlier. Increasing the enemies health while lowering the player’s makes it feel as if you’re hobbled before you even start the fight. It’s a really delicate balance and definitely hard to strike, but as long as things get harder on both sides of the equation, everything can still feel fair. You can give enemies more programming routines so they might try to flank the player,

Difficulty is tough to do well. It’s like trying to balance scales on a rope bridge in a very windy valley. There are a few things developers can do to make things easier on themselves, though. Start your game with a sense of where things are going, make player’s choices feel important to the outcome, and avoid making the enemies way more powerful while making the player weaker. Everybody has a different idea of what makes a game too hard or too easy, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t think about what makes for a good level of difficulty.

You stand in front a dark, foreboding cave. What do you do?

Exploration might be the oldest kind of fun mankind has. It’s pretty much written into our DNA to want to see what’s over the next hill, the next horizon, or even the next planet. It’s only natural that games have included more and more exploration as time has gone on. Since the very first games came about, little Easter eggs were hidden, and secret areas secreted away for the hardworking player. Over time, games were developed with exploration in mind. There’s little else to do in Myst but solve puzzles and explore a magical island, for instance. Exploration is everywhere, but sometimes it’s plodding and annoying, and sometimes it’s great.

If you're telling me you don't want to see where this path goes, I'm callin' you a liar.

So then, we need to ask. What makes good for good exploration?

Fallout 4, and the Fallout series in general, are exploration heavy games. In the most recent game, there is a slew of post-apocalypse Boston locations to explore. From the second you start the game, exploration is shoved in your face. You’re supposed to go looking for loot, people, and enemies from the minute you can. This never-specified quest has several connections to your gameplay, which is good. Weapon and gear modification, settlements, and companions are built and found by exploring ruins, vaults, and tiny hamlets.

I'm gonna turn all of this into a really sweet gun.

Boredom sets in a little faster than you’d think, though. As you continue on, your map fills up with fast-travel icons, but they never end up being anything else than quest points on a map. Rooting through ruins for duct tape and wonderglue becomes boring and annoying. All of these fast travel points become little instances, rather than part of a larger place. What changed? Well, you only spend a small amount of time in each place, and most of them look very similar. Exploration is rewarding because you feel like you’re making progress, finding new places, and you feel like you know more about your world. In Fallout 4, you never feel like you’re finding anything interesting, with a few key exceptions.

Oh so memorable. This what hundreds of thousands of man-hours are reduced to; just little points on a map.

Every once in a while, Fallout 4’s environmental storytelling shines. For those who aren’t familiar, environmental storytelling is the notion that you can tell a narrative with an environment, and you can let a player piece things together as they move forward. Fallout 4’s vaults are great examples of storytelling, with a few enemy-occupied exceptions. One vault was comprised of addicts who all worked together to overcome addition with group meetings until a plant revealed a secret cache of contraband that caused the occupants to fall apart.

Here, in the members-only Boylston club, the members committed mass suicide with poisoned wine when the bombs fell.

Another vault was designed to create a superior human being through genetic experimentation and education, with the older children folding into the vault staff. Little notes and carefully arranged skeletons can tell much more of a story than all the cut scenes in the world.

Ratchet & Clank might not be the game you think of when somebody talks about exploration, but it might surprise you. Ratchet & Clank is a platformer with light 3rd person shooting elements, based in a futuristic and alien galaxy. You travel from planet to planet and head through the mostly linear levels, progressing through the story.

Future! Robots! Weird cat thing with robot backpack! These games are full of fun nonsense.

Through the game, you acquire items that make revisiting levels enjoyable, as you unlock new areas. Every level has a number of hidden areas that are filled with secrets, items, and even the coveted gold bolts, used to unlock golden versions of all the weapons. All of the levels are colorfully designed, and sprawling, so that exploration doesn’t get dull often. Each new area you unlock is a testament to how well you pay attention to the level and how well you use your arsenal.

There's probably all kind of stuff hidden in that city. All we've got to do is figure out how to get there...

Though exploration is by no means required to beat the game, it definitely improves the experience and the replay value. Ratchet & Clank is one of the only games I’ve ever 100%-ed, just because it was fun. A lot of fun hinged on the rewards I got for exploration, though. There are definitely times when your reward for the work you do is a little lackluster, which can hurt the natural fun of exploration.

The Grand Theft Auto series is also a series that’s big on exploration as well. Each game gives you the reins to a huge city, filled with shops, characters, and weapons. The cities are almost universally well designed to have distinctive areas, radio stations, and people. GTA IV is no exception, with its famous Liberty City getting a nice update from GTA III.

Such a beautiful city, full of people to run over with a dune buggy that I painted neon pink.

Exploration in this game is as natural as driving. You pretty much have to get to know the city, and over time, you get a really good sense for how it all fits together. A lot of games fail to make the various areas of the games cohesive and feel connected. Each area of Liberty City looks very different and has its own kinds of shops, restaurants, and people. Finding new kinds of clothing is really rewarding, and makes you feel like your character is progressing through the game, rather than just being static.

Started from Serbia, now we here.

There are things that could be done better, though. Besides clothes, all of the various restaurants and gun stores just offer the same things, rather than having different kinds of inventory. While going around the city is fun and easy, there’s not a huge point to doing it besides finding missions and the plain fun of wreaking havoc.

So, when all is said and done, what makes for good exploration? Well, good use of environmental storytelling, levels with intrigue, good rewards for exploration, and a sense of progress. Not a bad list, all in all. Man that was easier than I thought it would be. Alright developers, get on it. Let me know how it turns out. 

What's in a Sequel: Bioshock and Bioshock 2

Sequels are crazy common in the video game world. Maybe it’s because the developers feel more comfortable with an established IP (intellectual property), maybe it’s because the money people push for something with more brand recognition, or maybe developers just think they have some more stories left to tell. Any way you slice it, Space Marine Shooter will sure as hell spawn Space Marine Shooter 2, as long as Space Marine 1 sells well enough. Let’s have a look at a notable game and its sequel and see what went right, what went wrong, and why. For this edition, let’s have a look at Bioshock and Bioshock 2.

I think they could have changed up the cover art a little. I mean, it's the same exact thing.

To start, we need to know what makes a good sequel. It’s hard to establish a hard and fast rule, but I’ll say that a good sequel needs to expand upon the ideas of the original while exploring new territory.

Bioshock was renowned for its story. It’s a tale of Objectivism gone mad. Andrew Ryan, an Ayn Rand stand in, creates a utopia underwater for society’s elite, named Rapture. After a few successful years, a scientist named Brigid Tenenbaum discovers Adam, a genetic wonderdrug that lets anybody rewrite their DNA to give themselves fantastic abilities. Society quickly falls apart when addiction sets in and the crème of society’s crop start killing each other for a fix. Twisted human beings roam the city, and the Scuba suit enclosed Big Daddies protect the grotesque Little Sisters as they gather Adam from corpses. You enter years later, a victim of a freak plane crash in the middle of the Atlantic. Bioshock tells you one simple thing: You make choices but, in the end, your choices make you.

Meet the man who burned down a forest after the government tried to turn it into a national park, Andrew Ryan.

Bioshock 2 did not get the praise that the original did, especially not for its story. You play as a prototype Big Daddy who has his Little Sister reclaimed by her biological mother. Sophia Lamb, the girl’s mother, forces you to shoot yourself in the head, but you somehow survive. 10 years later you wake up, revived by Little Sisters under control of your former Little Sister Eleanor. Her mother activates a prototype failsafe designed to keep the Big Daddies from wandering away from their Little Sisters. Your heart will slowly stop working if you cannot make contact with Eleanor. Throughout the game, Eleanor attempts to help you while her mother attempts to kill you. Where Andrew Ryan spoke about the power of the self, the “Great Chain of Progress”, and free enterprise, Lamb speaks about the power of “The Rapture Family”, faith, and altruism.

Welcome to the Rapture family. Imagine a new age cult, but with murder and drug addiction. So, just a new age cult, really.

While Bioshock 2 certainly added a new angle for its story, it still boils down to the same general thing as Bioshock, with a very important exception that I’ll get into in a bit. In both games you are still opposed by a person with control of Rapture’s citizens, including the Big Daddies and Little Sisters. In both games, you can rescue or harvest the Little Sisters, but it falls flat. There's no middle ground between being a saint and being the devil, and in both games, you are rewarded more for taking the moral path. The problem with this is that for the whole game, you're told that taking the high ground means you're making sacrifices. There are more moral choices to make in Bioshock 2 besides just “will you harvest the little sisters or rescue them”, which is interesting, but it doesn’t really lead anywhere. You encounter several people who have wronged you or Eleanor and you can choose to kill them or spare their lives, which changes the ending a bit. Bioshock’s Andrew Ryan makes for a much more compelling antagonist than Sophia Lamb. Lamb comes off as dry, and a bit uninspired where Ryan came off as furious, charismatic, and dangerous. While both characters speak to you continuously throughout the game, Lamb is much more accessible and when you do finally confront her, there’s not nearly as much nuance and emotional buildup as there is with Ryan. Bioshock 2 feels like it should have been an expansion, rather than a standalone game. There is one area where Bioshock 2 trounces Bioshock though: Motivation. In Bioshock 2 you have a clear and extremely pressing motivation to move forward. Your heart is stopping and only being with Eleanor can save your life. In Bioshock, you’re just dropped into Rapture and expected to move forward because some Irish guy named Atlas says, “Would you kindly?” It feels like there should be a moment when you at least try to escape from the city. Near the end of the game, there is a justification for this, but it feels very hollow until then, and makes the whole deal a little less plausible.  

While a cool idea, the harvest/rescue option in Bioshock really fell flat. It really clashes with the overall message of the game, and is too simplistic.

Bioshock also got a lot of praise for its combat system, which relies on both guns and “plasmids.” Plasmids are essentially magic and you have access to the usual lot (fire, lightning, telekinesis, etc.), but there are a few interesting ones, like the ability to temporarily trick Big Daddies into protecting you, or the ability to create a temporary hologram that enemies will chase. There is also a whole slew of “Gene Tonics” which give you passive boosts like increased speed, or an easier time hacking the various machines around Rapture. You can even hack stationary turrets and security drones so that they protect you, which is fun. Maybe ironically, the combat is at its best in the beginning of the game when you are forced to use your environment to defeat the heavily armored and equipped Big Daddies. You hack the turrets, security cameras, and security drones to create a hail of lead that allows you to take down even the strongest enemies. Constraints breed creativity and all that. As the game progresses, you become so strong that you take down multiples big daddies with ease, which takes a lot of the fun out of the combat.

There's a lot of combat options in the picture, and Bioshock does a good job of making you adapt on the fly, at least in the beginning. 

Bioshock 2 on the other hand, made combat faster, punchier, and deadlier. Your weapons are souped-up versions of Bioshock’s, but they are tailored to your larger stature and are fittingly more destructive. Your plasmids have also been expanded, with a few new abilities. Your hacking ability has also been improved, with the ability to heal and improve your hacked drones, turrets, and cameras. While you’ve definitely lost the fun of setting up traps and such for larger enemies, combat has become much more enjoyable overall. There are more gene tonics with verifying effects that really allow you to change up your playstyle, more than just moving faster or doing more damage with your melee weapon, like in the previous game.

The Rivet gun you see here is basically the revolver from the first game, only a bit larger. New weapons would have helped separate Bioshock 2 from the original. 

While similar, Bioshock 2 has far superior combat in almost every way. Bioshock’s combat can feel a little plodding and wooden, and the later stages of combat feel far too easy. Bioshock 2 has difficult combat throughout, along with a number of different playstyles, rather than just the running and gunning of Bioshock. However, Bioshock has the advantage when it comes to traps. There’s something so fun about setting up a corridor littered in proximity mines, turrets, and hacked sentry drones. You fire off a shot at the Big Daddy and gleefully watch him come careening through your carefully designed snare, or panic as it all goes wrong at the last second somehow. Bioshock 2 also wastes the opportunity to really change up how combat works by not focusing enough on the fact that you are a Big Daddy. It’s pretty well established that Big Daddies are slow, heavily armored, and extremely deadly. While you’ve got the deadly bit down pat, you’re as damageable as you were in the first game, and you are far too fast. It would have been really interesting if the game forced you to play at a slower pace, rather than taking the safe route of giving players exactly what they had in the last game.

The large variety of gene tonics and plasmids really help Bioshock 2's combat stand out compared to the first game.

So, now we come to the real question. How did Bioshock 2 do as a sequel?

Unfortunately, not so well. While Bioshock 2 did have better combat and an arguably better story motivation, it re-used so much from Bioshock from the general story arc, to the array of the weapons, to the game feel without really trying anything new. If you play Bioshock and skip 2, you wouldn’t be missing much besides the improved combat. While playing as a Big Daddy is fun, bigger doesn’t always equal better.

Oh, my Knee is Aching. Bet There’s a Level 100 Dragon Coming.

Age is not a subject that gets a lot of discussion in games. It might have something to do with the fact that the people that made games have been young themselves, but that’s been changing with time. Still, while age might be used as a setting (playing as a father in That Dragon, Cancer, for instance), it’s not used as a mechanic very often. Some games mention it, but it really goes underused in general.

Well, except for Snake. He got old in MGS4. Damn planned obsolescence. 

So, how do games use age? What could they do it that they’re not currently doing? Why would it matter?

Fable, a RPG by chronic-over-promsier Peter Molyneux, is the ultimate example of “oh man, this was so close to being the best thing ever.” Fable was billed as the be-all and end-all of role playing games. You could plant a tree and watch it grow throughout the years. You could kill a child’s parents and the child would grow up and hunt you down for your evil deeds. In reality, it ended up being a charming RPG with enjoyable (if exploitable) mechanics, a fun story, and lackluster expansions.

So much promised potential, so little of it actually there.

One of the few unique things Fable had was its aging mechanic. When you defeat an enemy or complete a quest, you get experience which can be spent to level up a particular attribute, or gain a new spell. Every time you “level up”, you character ages. If you upgrade all of your possible stats, your character ends up being about 65. I found this really odd as kid and, I’ll admit, frustrating. I wanted to be young and powerful, not some old fart. It makes sense though. Age and experience tend to go hand in hand.

I hope I look this good at 65. This guy looks like he could bench press a few mobility scooters, riders included.

The best adventurers might not be the young ones, but the grizzled veterans who know their own strengths and weaknesses. Ageing had no effect on your gameplay, though. You got more powerful as you level up, and you end up as this ridiculously buff old man. The more and more I played it (once I got older), I wanted age to have some kind of effect. It seemed like such a missed opportunity. I’m sure there have been games with ageing mechanics that do effect gameplay, but no mainstream ones, certainly.

The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind is the opposite of Fable in a lot of ways. It’s serious where Fable is cartoonish, complicated where Fable is simplistic, and open where Fable is linear. Though it doesn’t have any kind of age mechanic, ageing plays a certain part in your story. Whenever you level up, you get a short message before you choose how to upgrade your stats. In the beginning, the messages are very upbeat, and almost inspiring.

“You realize that all your life you have been coasting along as if you were in a dream. Suddenly, facing the trials of the last few days, you have come alive.”

— -Morrowind, 1st level up message

Messages like the above can make you realize exactly how much you’ve learned about the game, the enemies you face, and your own abilities. For the first 14 levels, the quotes are about how you’re learning new things, getting stronger, and becoming better. After that, however, they start to take a slightly depressing turn.

“Today you suddenly realized the life you’ve been living, the punishment your body has taken — there are limits to what the body can do, and perhaps you have reached them. You’ve wondered what it is like to grow old. Well, now you know.”

— Morrowind, 14th level up message

Suddenly, experience becomes something very different. It’s not about getting better anymore; now it’s about clawing to hold onto everything you have learned. There’s a kind of horror that comes with these words, and I think it reflects something very real that people feel about getting older. At some point, you peak. Everything after that is just downhill. No matter how hard you work, struggle, or learn, there will be somebody just as good as your who’s younger. The last unique message you get is at level 20, and it always sends a chill down my spine.

“You’ll never be better than you are today. If you are lucky, by superhuman effort, you can avoid slipping backwards for a while. But sooner or later, you’re going to lose a step, or drop a beat, or miss a detail — and you’ll be gone forever.”

— Morrowind, last unique level up message

Games aren’t supposed to do this! They’re not supposed to remind me of the fact that I’m not a digital, immortal, all-powerful avatar! It’s a huge break from the usual young man’s power fantasy and incredibly unique in that regard. Unfortunately, the one thing that Fable and Morrowind share is the toothless nature of their ageing mechanics. Nothing happens to your character despite these messages. You’re the same at level 1 as you are at level 20. Another missed opportunity from a great game.

I think ageing is a really good area to explore in games. As games have changed, they have moved from simpler tales to more complex ideas, like love, sacrifice, family, and grief. I think it would be great if you had a game that could paint a picture of what it means to grow older. What if you could play a Viking, once greatly renowned in your town for your ferocity in battle and your bravery, who has to deal with the fact that your axe gets harder to pick up each day? Would you still go out on raiding expeditions, knowing that your chances of coming back from each one get smaller and smaller? Would you be able to face the sneers of your village for your “cowardice”, or would you face your death? What about a game that starts you at your adventuring peak, and you decide to open a school to train new adventurers? Could you stomach sending young souls off on dangerous quests without going yourself? Do you have a duty to your own thirst for adventure, or to train the next generation? There’s a lot of territory here to cover, and I’m interested to see if any developers think so as well.

Ageing is a powerful sort of thing, but it’s also interactive in a way. You feel it when you get older. You get new creaks and aches, and things don’t work as well. I think games are a really good area to explore what this is like, because they can put limitations on a player. “No, you can’t do a triple backflip slice with that greatsword anymore. You’re 50. Why don’t you try a sensible slash instead?” We’ll see where things go, but I think age is a fruit ripe for picking.

Judging Books by Their Covers: Graphics and Themes

People might spend more time arguing about graphics than they do arguing about anything else in video games. Every time anything comes out, approximately 5000% of all forum posts are about the graphics being the best ever, or the worst thing since E.T. for the Atari 2600. Graphics have definitely become more complex over the years, but now that designers can make pretty much whatever they’d like, your style of graphics a more a choice than a limitation.

it's like I'm really there. E.T. for the Atari 2600 is one of the games that lead to the great video game crash of 1983 and the  graphics certainly didn't help.

But what do the different styles of graphics tell about a game, or theming? Why do designers go with certain styles over others?

Cell shaded graphics are definitely a modern style of graphics that’s come about. Cell shading was made famous by Jet Set Radio for the Sega Dreamcast in 2000. The style allows you to create graphics that resemble a cartoon in 3-dimensions. This is a really cool style which ages well due to how stylized they are. This style is really cool for a number of reasons, not the least of which is because it looks like a damn cartoon. I think lots of kids dreamed about being able to interact with their cartoons, and cell shaded games let you do that. Cell shaded games also have certain air of fun about them. They’re usually colorful, fast paced, and cheerful. The Borderlands series does a great job using its cell shaded graphics to bring some irreverence and fun to the depressing-when-you-think-about-it setting.

So colorful and so depressing to actually think about.

There are certain downsides to the style though. I think it’d be very difficult to make a “serious” cell-shaded game. The style looks best with bright pastel colors, and those generally don’t translate very well to serious subject matter. The contrast between the brightness of the colors and the black outlines doesn’t work nearly as well when the colors are dull. I think you could design a good introspective game, but I don’t know about serious. It’s hard to deal with intensive subject matter when you look like you should be on at Saturday at 9AM.

Seriously, this could be a cartoon. I'd watch it. Who doesn't love awesome tunes and roller-skates? 

When people think about improved graphics, they usually think about “modern” graphics. I use quotation marks because technology advances and “modern” changes. After all, Deus Ex looked pretty great in 2000, but nowadays it looks pretty ugly and unrefined. The upside to these graphics is that they’re the height of graphics at the time when they came out. They show how much work designers put into their concepts because you can more accurately recreate the drawings in the game. Older games were basically just pixels on top of each other, so some of the nuances of the original ideas might get lost, but the better the graphics, the more accurate the recreation. Better graphics also allow designers to make more detailed worlds

The Crysis series is renowned for it's realistic and demanding graphics. The games look incredible, but in 10 years, maybe they'll look like mud.

The disadvantage to this kind of graphical style is that it ages very poorly. There might be some charm in looking at what was considered the height of graphics in 2004, but Doom 3 looks pretty gnarly these days. Using a modern style of graphics basically ties your game down to a specific era, and can really limit its life, though there are ways around that. People are still making graphical updates for games like Deus Ex or System Shock 2 to help improve their dated looks, but short of a total redesign, the majority of players will pass these games up.

Doom 3

Deus Ex

Lastly, we should talk about pixels. The art style, not that terrible movie that came out last year. I’m not actually sure if you can make a good video game movie, to be fair. Seems like most of them are pretty terrible. Well, Silent Hill was actually okay. But man, Pixels was awful.

Where were we? Oh right.

 Pixel graphics are what defined classic games, for the most part. There were some other interesting directions that came out at the same time, like vector graphics, but pixels definitely prevailed as the style of the time. Pixel graphics may have started blocky, like in Pong, or most Atari 2600 games, but by the time of Metal Slug pixels became an art form all their own. Detailed pixel art is impressive, not just because it takes forever to make and animate, but because it looks really good. Since pixels dominated for the first 4 generations of gaming consoles, pretty much every kind of game is represented, which means they can be used for any style. Pixels can also be as colorful or as monotone as you’d like them, so they can fit most tones that a game can have. Modern games that use pixel art are usually trying to callback to this classic era of games, and games like Shovel Knight, Axiom Verge, and Titan Souls use their style to great effect this way.

The Metal Slug series is fun, addictive, and beautifully made. The amount of detail in these games is pretty nuts, considering how long it takes to make the art.

There are limitations though. Pixel art is not great for 3D games, with a few exceptions. 3D animation requires sprites to be drawn from a huge number of angles, which is obviously very time consuming and difficult. Pixel art is also not the best for very detailed character faces, without falling on the old JRPG trope of having the characters faces be next to the textbox. It seems like it would be very hard to use pixels as an art style and not bring older games to mind, so if you’re looking for something newer, there are definitely better options.

These sorts of screen really break up the flow of a game and are best left in the past. Star Ocean: Second Evolution has a lot of old fashioned design.

So, we’ve seen how an art style can affect the tone of a game, and the advantages and limitations of a few. This is by no means an exhaustive list, but these are some standouts for sure. When making a game, every piece of it is there for a reason, and trying to figure out why makes the experience so much better. So, next time you’re playing a game, ask yourself why the designers chose the style that they did. What does it add to the game? Was it the best choice? 

Pace Yourself now

Some players think about pace a lot less than game designers do, which is a shame because pace can lie at the root of why players might appreciate their favorite games. Before we start, a quick definition of pace in video games, for those of you that aren’t familiar: Pace is the speed at which you move through a game. Pace can be how fast you move through levels, how fast the game shuttles you through the story, or even the speed of the combat.

But what is good pacing? How does pace improve a game?

You might think that action games need to have a constant ramp up as far as pace goes, and many do. However, some might argue that the best action games understand the importance of a little down time. Quiet moments give you a chance to explore the world that you’re in and understand what the characters are going through. 

Wolfenstein: The New Order did a great job with the little moments. In between bombastic combat sections where you literally fight moon-Nazis, you head back to your home base. Usually, you have a little quest to find some tools, or just explore for a few minutes.

Yes, literal moon nazis. Bet you thought I was joking.

Each time you go back, things change a little. Maybe a room once empty now holds a rescued resistance fighter, or maybe a civilian’s room is now empty. You’re never removed from the harsh realities of a Nazi dominated future. You can talk to the other characters and really get a sense of why you’re fighting, ensuring that the combat never gets too ridiculous or boring because it means something.

Wolfenstein: The New Order focused on environmental storytelling in the quiet moments, to its benefit.

Half Life 2 also understood how much a quiet moment here and there can mean. The opening plays much differently than the rest of the game, adding flavor and context with observation. You walk through a train station in City 17, meeting civilians and civil protection agents. You understand the oppression that the citizens of City 17 labor under, and you can get angry on their behalf. You can see how terrible this world is and how many of the people have lost hope. Most importantly, you’re given time to digest these feelings and the world. When you actually get to fighting, you have a reason beyond “oh hey this is fun.”

"Pick up that can, citizen." That simple line tells you so much about how people are treated in this new world.

Level design also has a huge amount to do with pace. If a level requires you to backtrack 500 times, it feels tiring or annoying. Conversely, if a level is just a straight line, it can feel a little too simple.

Shovel Knight is a game that excels at clever level design. The whole game is a callback to NES era platformers, from the look, to the gameplay, to the sound of the game. Much like those earlier platformers, the game has an overworld where you choose which level you want to play. Each level is uniquely designed with its own set of challenges, enemies, and treasures. Not only that, but each level’s pace plays into the challenges you face. Mole Knight’s stage, for instance, is filled with lava that you can “goo-ify” to bounce on.

Bounce, Shovel Knight. Bounce to your doom.

You spend most of your time in this stage hanging in the air, and the enemies are designed to knock you slightly off course as you fall, or be where you're going to land. The pace of this level is fairly slow compared to some of the other levels, but it never feels tedious.  You feel like you’re really improving as a player because you learn to deal with everything the game throws at you, despite the differing feelings of all of it.

Shovel Knight captures the Super Mario Bros. 3 style, where each level has it's own unique challenge and speed.

Does pace have to change from level to level, or do you need different levels to make an engaging game? Doom, a breakneck ride from start to finish, might have something to say about that. You’re dropped into a space station on mars with a pistol and you carve your way through hellspawn (and that’s all the story you’re getting).

John Carmack, Doom's lead programmer, once said, "Story in a game is like a story in a porn movie. It's expected to be there, but it's not that important."

Doom is a game of reflexes, frantic movement, and keeping a cool head. The pace of Doom never really dips, it just sort of increases as you have the chance to use more intense weapons. Each level has a “par” time, usually under 5 minutes. The fast pace forces you to rely more on instinct rather than planning and the weapons and enemies are designed around this. Most enemies fire slow moving projectiles or need to use melee attacks. Many of your weapons follow similar rules, so you have to move around enemy fire and you strafe, jump, and run around pillars to return fire without eating too many fireballs to the face. A slow space marine is a dead space marine, according to Doom.

Doom is full of traps for the unwary player, but with quick feet and a quick trigger finger, you'll make it out.

So, we’ve seen how pace can be changed up to great effect, how levels can be paced to keep the game feeling fresh, and how a constant pace can tell you how the game is meant to be played. Pace tells us a lot about how the game designers thought about progression, atmosphere, and playstyle. Think about your favorite game. How was it paced? Where was that pace the most obvious? Why did the pace fit?

Wide as an Ocean, Deep as a Puddle

I think a lot of us remember being a kid and splashing around in puddles. Who didn’t love doing that? You probably also liked pools, or maybe the ocean, if you swam in either. Maybe you liked one more than the other, but both were fun. Video games are pretty similar, when you think about it. There are games that are shallow and games that are deep, and both are fun.

But what are the effects of increasing the scale of a game? What kind of experience do you find?

Sometime in the recent past, games focused on scale rather than responsiveness. By that, I mean that games have more places to go, but that you can see where things don’t quite connect. The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim is a great example of this. Skyrim is gigantic in terms of land, dungeons, caves, and exploration. There are hundreds of NPCs to interact with, quests to take, and chests to open. You can spend hundreds of hours in the game without even touching the main quest.

The world  of Skyrim is huge,. You can travel everywhere you can see, but does it react to you? Does it care about what you do and how you play? 

After a while, however, you might notice that a lot of the caves seem to repeat themselves, and that most of the quests are little more than fetch quests. The ocean you thought you were swimming now looks more like a kiddie pool. You can head to the College of Winterhold, the magical center of the region, earn the Robes of the Archmage, and NPCs will still say to you, "You know, if you have the aptitude, you should join the mages' college in Winterhold." You’re literally a legendary and mythical hero but nobody in the game reacts to what you do. None of this is to say that Skyrim is not enjoyable or anything of the sort, but I think it’s clear to see how the world is less responsive when scale is increased. Of course, not every RPG runs focuses on scale.

Hope you like looking at these three kinds of dungeons, because that's what you'll be seeing for your exploration time in Skyrim.

Hope you like looking at these three kinds of dungeons, because that's what you'll be seeing for your exploration time in Skyrim.

Hope you like looking at these three kinds of dungeons, because that's what you'll be seeing for your exploration time in Skyrim.

Dragon Age II is a game that attracted a lot of flak when it came out. Many people thought it stripped too much from the first game in the series (Dragon Age: Origins) and reused too many locations.

A followup to the hit Dragon Age: Origins:, Dragon Age II had a much tighter focus in terms of explorable space and character interaction.

DA II shined when it came to responsiveness. You had a core group of characters that you saw grow and react to your choices and you got to see how your choices changed the world around you. As you became Champion of Kirkwall, the city where much of the game takes place, people reacted to you differently and the kind of quests you found changed. You went from just another refugee to the most important citizen of Kirkwall and advisor to the Viscount. The intense focus on characters also made you feel as if your choices had impact, because they affected how your companions viewed you and how their combat skills grew. DA II lacks scale, however. It may have been intentional, or it may have been due to a lack of time, but you don’t go many places in DA II. The places you do go you see again and again. Eventually you start to ask why pirates, apostate mages, and darkspawn all hang out in the same cave at different times. There is also a huge reuse of objects in the game, and it does start to wear on you. The intense focus on responsiveness makes you really realize how small the game world is.

You will see this warehouse over a dozen times, with different enemies, quests, and treasure inside.

At this point, you might think that responsiveness and scale can’t exist together. There really aren’t many games which managed to blend the two, but Fallout 2: A Post Nuclear Role Playing Game manages to. Fallout 2 is a much beloved game and some people consider it to be the last true game in the Fallout series because of the large changes the Bethesda made in the later games.  

In Fallout 2, you took the place of a descendant of the main character of Fallout 1, and you ventured out into the wasteland to find the Garden of Eden Creation Kit (or G.E.C.K) to save your dying village. As you head through the game, you gained a reputation according to your choices. For instance, you can join a Mafia family and stores give you discounts, you can become a champion boxer and doors, usually open to only the most charismatic, will open, and you can defend the innocent and all the evil characters in the world will be suspicious when talking to you. The world and people around you reacted to you in a way that makes sense, even though the in-game world of Fallout 2 is huge and filled with characters, settlements, and quests comparable to Skyrim. The combination of responsiveness and scale help Fallout 2 stand out in a crowd populated by some of the best games ever made.

IT’s hard to make a large world that reacts to player choices, but it can be done. There aren’t many games that accomplish it, but it adds something very special to those that do. It’s easy to imagine how hard it would be to great something huge with great detail, but maybe it says something about what makes a truly talented developer, that they’re somebody who can get fire and ice to work together.

Pickling Games: Atmosphere

Imagine that you wake up on a train. There are only two other people in your car, both say that they didn’t see you get on. The train stops, and with a heaving sigh and a "Well, end of the line" from one of the other passengers, you enter a dirty train station. High above you, gigantic screens show a man, speaking to all of you. He mentions the" generosity of our benefactors” in allowing you to live in “one of humanity’s finest remaining settlements.”  Meanwhile, you can get a better look at the people inside the station. They are frightened, depressed, and extremely wary of one another. The police force abuses the populace with total for fun, taking some into “interrogation rooms” and beating others for nothing more than not picking up a can. You can see the desperation and anger in the citizens who wait for a single bag of food from an automatic dispenser. Walking out of the train station, you are blinded by the flash from a security drone taking pictures of all the populace. “Welcome to City 17”, the overseer says.

Though over a decade old, the opening of Half-Life 2 still stands as one of the best introductions to a world in games.

This is the opening to Half Life 2, considered one of the best video games ever made. A large part of this is because of the well-constructed and designed world and atmosphere of the game. Atmosphere is the salt of the video game world. It adds flavor to normal games and drastically increases the chance of preservation. Those few games that get it right are guaranteed at least a footnote in the history of Video Games.

So, how do you do atmosphere right?

The Shock games (System Shock/System Shock 2/Bioshock 1, 2, and Infinite) are loved by many players.  Every step you takes, every sound you hear, and every new room you see adds to the atmosphere of the game.

From the very opening of System Shock 2 you know that only a thin metal wall separates you from the gigantic cold void of space.  As you move through the station, enemies’ mumbled cries echo around the empty rooms and the slowly decaying station machinery blips and beeps. The game shows you clear evidence of the people living there: audio diaries, magazines left out on beds, and discarded drink cans in the mess hall. More importantly, the layout of station is designed for people, rather than just a level in a game. All of these little things make the space station of System Shock 2 a haunting and unforgettable environment despite uncomfortable combat, a confusing upgrade system, and wildly unbalanced weapons.

The villain of System Shock, SHODAN, adds a huge amount to the atmosphere  with her almost Max Headroom style messages.

If you are interested in western RPGs in the slightest, chances are you have seen a lot of discussion and comparison between The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind and The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. In Morrowind, the minute you step into the playable part of the game (in the hold of a ship), you hear all the sounds you actually might hear on real wooden boat; the creaking of the wood, the water splashing against the hull, and the footsteps of the people upstairs. These little environmental sounds immerse you in the area, to say nothing of the visual aspects of Morrowind.

The first town looks normal, but even that has tons of visual and audio cues that let you know that it’s as close an to a real place as video games can create. The town is built around a few buildings, like the Trade House and the Guard House. There’s a lighthouse near the water and several lower income houses near the less desirable, swampier parts of town. The outdoors themselves are really well put together as well, and give you clues about how this world works. Step a few feet outside any town and the you find mushroom trees, giant bugs that serve as a sort of public transport, and areas ranging from damp swamps to giant mountains hidden in swirling clouds of red ash. Your character reacts to all this like you actually might.  You have to wade through ash storms when you encounter them. They slow your forward movement and force your character to shield their eyes. When you walk under the mushroom trees, you can see various creatures scuttling  underneath and flying gas creatures moving gently from place to place.

The first area you see in a game helps set the tone for the rest of your time int the world, and a lot of games don't use the first area as well as they could.

Skyrim misses a lot of these little touches. The sounds of the world are generic and your character moves the same whether you are trudging through snow or running in a field. The dungeons of Skyrim are almost always designed in the same way. You follow a crescent shaped path only to find a switch at the end which allows you to move from the beginning to the end much quicker. The dungeons are oddly quiet and the exact same color palette and textures do start to wear on you. These details make you feel unconnected from the world and reduce atmospheric quality of the game.

However, there are parts of Skyrim that do further atmosphere, like the lighting and weather systems. In one of the first dungeons, a single fire on top of a pedestal illuminates a broken down chamber, and the enemy slowly crosses the room. The flickering flame and the quality of light make the room seem warm, somehow. You can almost feel the one room of heat in this cold tomb, and feel the trepidation when the enemy emerges from the shadow.

You find the best moments in Skyrim happen when you're exploring. When you trudge up a mountain, over rocks and through a blizzard, only to look up and see an ancient structure slowly appear out of the snow, you get a feeling like you're exploring something that's been untouched for years. You can almost feel the cold that chills your bones and the snow that weighs your feet down. The sense of adventure here is almost unparalleled; what's in that template, just waiting for me to find it?

Discovery is one of the best things in The Elder Scrolls series, and Skyrim definitely has that in spades, but other issues weigh it down when compared with earlier games.

Atmosphere does not always have to be beautiful or inviting; the dark and lonely world of the S.T.A.L.K.E.R games tosses you into a dangerous and tense fight for survival. This series of games takes place in the area around the Chernobyl reactor, famous for its 1986 nuclear disaster. You assumes the role of a stalker, an adventurer who goes into the “Zone” to bring back mysterious artifacts created by disaster.

Most worlds draw you to go outside and adventure, but not the S.T.A.L.K.E.R series. Every time you go out into the Zone you risk getting mauled by psychic dogs, gasmask-wearing snorks, or white eyed blood sucking humanoids that can become invisible at will. The unfriendly humans can be even worse. When walking through “The Zone”, you can hear the haunting cries of the mutated animals and feel a chill run up your spine, you can see the far off light of gunfire and decide whether intervening is smart given your ammunition count and health. You can see the various radioactive anomalies light up as an unfortunate person or animal wanders into them and feel your steps become more cautious to avoid a similar fate. You can feel the cold of the rain and the anticipation for safety upon seeing a friendly group of stalkers around a fire. The world forces you to treat it with caution and respect, making it far more memorable than most video game locales.

If the mutants of the S.T.A.L.K.E.R don't creep you out, I don't want to know you.

Imagine dropping into the cockpit of a space fighter. Immediately, you see the metal bulkhead in front of you that reads “Trevithick Dock.” You select the “launch option”, and your ship is carted through the station until you are on the surface, the black void of space around you. In the distance, you can see millions of stars through the translucent glass of your cockpit. Inside the cockpit, you can see your ships controls, and watch as your avatar responds to your commands, readying to ship for launch. Around you, your audio feed picks up various ships docking and leaving as well as the Dock master’s stern warning not to cause any trouble. You launch your ship off of the landing pad and suddenly, the galaxy is open to you. All you have to do is chose where to start your adventure. This is what atmosphere does. It creates memories that stick with you for far longer than any game can last. 

Welcome to the galaxy, pilot. Where to first?

The Agency of Controls

Anybody who has ever played a game has used good controls, bad controls, and everything in between. Controls can be designed to do more, however. Well-designed controls can give a certain feeling to you; a sense of fluidity or helplessness that changes the game completely.

So what makes controls well-designed?

Both the Silent Hill and Resident Evil series’ controls, although sometimes complex and uncoordinated, enhance the central horror themes in both games. In most of the Silent Hill games walking around requires you to turn the character based on a fixed camera. This is awkward and can take some getting used to. When combined with the slow-to-respond controls it makes reacting to and fighting enemies frustrating at best.

The forced camera angle featured in games like Silent Hill 2 allows developers to really control how the player experiences the game.

While these controls might seem unresponsive or just plain bad, they are actually taking cues from Japanese horror movies and stories. In Japanese horror, a large evil force tries to make the characters feel unwanted and uncomfortable. Japanese monsters do not jump out at you, but rather create a world of constant anxiety; you are not wanted in this place, you have no control in this place, and you will never feel safe here.

 Resident Evil, as well as Silent Hill 2, translates this (traditionally) cinematic feeling into games by making you into a fumbling mess. With Resident Evil’s “tank controls”, so named because of their 6 directional nature, you control the character based on the fixed camera that changes every time you enter a new room. Given that you cannot move and shoot at the same time, it makes for a surprisingly nervous cocktail. While Resident Evil is generally fairly amusing and campy, the controls do a lot to increase the tension and horror.

Moving through the mansion in Resident Evil wouldn't be nearly as anxiety inducing if it weren't for the cumbersome controls.

In the opposite manner to Silent Hill 2 and Resident Evil, controls can empower you with almost total agency, like in Dark Souls. While Dark Souls has garnered fame (or infamy) for its difficulty, its control scheme deserves more praise. You choose from a very large number of weapons, most with their own unique move set. You can beat the game with each weapon, so it really comes down to preference. The control scheme might seem slow or heavy to newer players, this adds weight and consequence to movements. The controls force you to think more carefully about when an attack, or roll, or any other move..Once you get the hang of it, you'll  have near perfect control over the character’s walking, running, jumping, dodging, rolling, and parrying. The controls let you almost orchestrate combat, becoming less frenetic and more thoughtful.

The controls and hitboxes of Dark Souls are so precise, it's actually possible to dodge below enemy attacks, rather than just dodging back.

Similarly, Receiver’s tightly controlled gunplay makes you feel totally in control of the character and the game. To reload your handgun, you must eject the magazine, put the gun away (you only have two hands after all), fill the magazine with bullets one at a time, get the gun out again, insert the magazine, and pull back the slide to chamber the first round. To fire the weapon, you must turn the safety off. To check how many bullets you have left, you have to take the magazine out of the gun and count. Combat in Receiver can switch from slow to extremely fast in a split second, depending on how quickly you become overwhelmed. However, a quick hand and knowledge of the controls allows you to go through the full reload process in under a second, which feels smooth and imbues the player with a feeling of total agency.

Receiver uses complex controls to do something that's usually simple in games, which definitely changes the feeling of agency.

            Over time, controls have evolved into a bigger and bigger part of the experience. More than just an interface, controls complement the atmosphere of a game, increase your immersion, and make the game memorable far past its release. Well designed controls add to and improve the experience, which is definitely something to strive for.

Formula Friction

Ubisoft, a French game publisher, has sold millions of games since its inception in 1986. Now it is a near household name, known for Assassin’s Creed, Far Cry, and Tom Clancy series. Ubisoft’s strict adherence to formula has drawn recent criticism, but not the right type. The inorganic nature about Ubisoft’s game design formula causes problems, but not necessarily formula itself. 

From left to right, Watch Dogs, Assassin's Creed, and Far Cry.

An organic process follows logically from start to finish. For example, imagine if you are spawned in a room with a nailed-shut door at the end and provided with a claw hammer. You would use the hammer to pry out the nails to open the door and get out. An inorganic process would not follow logically. Imagine if you were spawned in the same room, but given a salmon and expected to know that you have to knock on the door exactly three times with it, at which point the door will open.

The special weapon unlock system in Watch Dogs provides a perfect example of Ubisoft’s game design philosophy. How does completing 17 QR codes teleport a Thompson submachine gun into your inventory? How does solving six missing person cases unlock an Assault Rifle? No explanation or in-world connection is present or offered. Similarly, the in-game world and the side-missions don’t connect. When you move to a start indicator and you are magically transported into the mission, a lack of transition or connection to the game world draws you out of the experience. The side missions lock you into a nonsensical closed-off section that destroys the notion of “open world” almost entirely.

Watch Dogs QR codes appear in various places and can give you rewards once scanned.

Inorganic game design is present in a fair amount of incredibly well selling games, so people might assume that it’s the norm, or that there are no other ways to make games. However, one need not look far to find plenty of examples of more logical game design.

Assassins’ Creed 4: Black Flag might not be the title you think of when you think organic gameplay, but a large portion of the game is in fact a great example of good design philosophy. Assassin’s Creed 4 tells you that you are a pirate, and you quickly find out that you can do what pirates are famed for: pirating. You can board enemy ships, capture their resources, hire crew members, sell contraband goods at the various ports, and upgrade your pirate ship to allow more pirating. Sailing your ship to find loot to plunder is responsive, intuitive, and enjoyable. Perhaps the only confusing part is having to cut down your opponent’s flag to “claim” their ship. The enjoyment of this game is only marred by the stock Assassin’s Creed style gameplay when off your ship. 

The exciting and fast-paced pirate gameplay elevates Assassin's Creed 4: Black Flag over the rest of it's franchise.

In a different vein, Amnesia: The Dark Decent offers some seldom used design choices. In Amnesia you cannot fight the various enemies the a dark and terrifying castle you are trapped in, so you hide. Not being able to fight makes you think hard about how you use the tools you’re given. You can light various candles, or use a lantern, but light allows enemies to see you. Hiding in the dark is an option, but the longer the character is in the dark, the less of a grip your character has on reality. There is no point at which fighting is an option, or when you are expected to figure out that one monster is actually killable if you throw enough barrels at it. You are instructed about the game’s world, given the tools to use, and their use follows very clearly, adding tension and atmosphere and to enhance the horror in the game.  

Since combat is not an option, hiding is the only method you have to deal with enemies.

In the Pokémon series, right in the beginning of the first game, you are told that there are many different types of Pokémon. You quickly learn that certain types have strengths and weaknesses and that the best strategy is to use a team of different types. This general style of game has remain mostly unchanged for 20 years. As the success of Pokémon proves, formulas are not necessarily problematic. Many series follow formulas, but they escape the criticism that has plagued Ubisoft of late because they employ organic game design and gameplay.  

While formulaic and increasingly complex, Pokémon types create strategic and compelling gameplay.

Organic mechanics are a large part of what makes the aforementioned games great, enjoyable, and some might say timeless. This is not to say that Ubisoft games cannot be enjoyable, or that the company is doomed financially, or that anybody is going to forget the various Ubisoft series, just that good game design should be the focus of any gaming company.