It’s all in the Details: How Little Things make a game Better

There’s a saying that goes, “God is in the details.” There’s another that says “The Devil is in the details.” Theologically confusing? Yes, but it does tell us about how important details are. Details add color and richness to experiences that you can’t get if you’re just looking at the whole thing. Games are no different in this regard. Details keep you involved in a game’s story, it’s world, or its characters.

Each of these shops is a little bit of detail that made the world a little richer, if confusing. Who do these shopkeepers sell to?

How do small details enrich a world? What are some good examples?

Mass Effect 3 is the epic end to a space opera that took our Commander Shepard from a special ops soldier to the hero of the Galaxy. You meet companions, fight enemies, and even find love along the way. In such a large series of games, one might assume that the little things would be left out.

Mass Effect 3 is the story of a person very in love with shooting things and chest high walls.

After all, who the hell has time to figure out why the spaceships still make noise in space? Mass Effect 3's writers, that's who.  In a scene with your dropship pilot, Steve Cortez, on the Citadel, Steve relates you to how he comes to the viewing port to relax. He has a line, “When I was alone, I'd turn off the auditory emulators and just watch them drift by silence.” The ships in Mass Effect 3 don't make pew-pew noises, you just thought they do because of the emulators!

in fact, because they have sound in space, they can take it away at crucial moments like in Mass Effect 2 when your ship is destroyed and you walk through it's hull.

The writers know that people expect to hear something when they see something on screen, even if real life physics would disagree. With one little line, the universe of Mass Effect becomes that much more concrete, unrealistic expectations of sounds in space and all. It's nice to know that not everything will change when we figure out how to punch holes in the fabric of reality.

Also a strong entry into the "generic white guy holding a gun" poster contest.

Alone in the Dark (2008) is not a particularly well made game, small details or otherwise. The story is meandering, most of gameplay is dull and repetitive, and the numerous set pieces wear out their welcome quickly. Alone was not without it's good qualities, however. The fire in the game behaved so realistically that it was shocking at the time, and the melee combat was more visceral than anything most triple AAA games feature.

The moment it really shined for me, however, involves one of the most common tropes in gaming: a locked wooden door. In most games, you'd have to go find a key, or find some way around.  Alone in the Dark threw me for a loop. When I swung my axe at the door, I busted a piece of the door right into the next room. I stared, totally shocked, for about 30 seconds. Then I gleefully hacked out a protagonist sized hole in the door and walked on through.

You swing melee weapons by moving the thumbstick back and then whipping it forward. Awkward? Yes. Better then pressing the mouse? Abso-fucking-lutely.

Most games will tell you you're a super powerful warrior or mage, but when you try to knock down a damn wooden door the whole lie the game built up around you falls apart. Alone in the Dark says, knock yourself out kid. Beat down that stupid door. Maybe even burn it? Shoot the lock out! Be a real person! Reality is funny in games; we want all the good parts without any of the bad parts. Alone in the Dark actually delivered what I would argue is a better version of game reality than most games. Bit of a shame the rest of the game had more technical issues than a giraffe trying to use a fax machine.

The Witcher 3 is full of things to amaze you, big and small. You can lose hours of your life to Gwent or just walking around the countryside. One of my favorite little details is one that many people might not have even found.

Witcher 3: The Wild Hunt, or "how to make all other open-world RPGs look like yesterday's trash"

Doesn't this guy look trustworthy? What with the drying blood and general look of hate?

On one monster hunting quest you are sent to deal with a Leshen (a kind of forest spirit) that was aggravating a small village. Once you get there, you find the whole village slaughtered. On closer inspection you find a little girl alive, who says that a man with eyes like yours did this. Eventually you find the witcher Gaetan. He took the quest before you and killed the Leshen, but the villagers tried to stiff him on payment. Two of the villagers tried to kill him with a pitchfork when he argued. Enraged and wounded, he slaughtered the whole village. The whole tale is deep and winding, but the best part comes as you approach Gaetan. If you're wearing the School of the Cat witcher armor he will remark “Well well, what have we here? Feline armor, wolf's head medallion- a crossbreed?”

Witcher Schools are notoriously strict in their traditions, so it makes sense that he'd be more than a little amused with your copycat style. In fact, he's one of the few people who would actually know anything about different kinds of witcher gear. His one line makes you think differently about him and consider your options for completing this quest much more carefully. He's not some mindless brute, he has a sense of humor, and he appears to regret what he did. Any way you chose to end the quest, that one line made Gaetan a little more human.

Video games have gone from little pixels on the screen to massive, engaging, sprawling wonders of technology. No matter how long or massive games get, little details are what is going to engage people. Nobody is going to remember the 85th firefight in Halo: Combat Evolved, but they'll always remember Sarge's pep-talk in the first level. God's own anti-son-of-a-bitch machine indeed.

The Katana and the Longsword: Strengths of Japanese and Western RPGs

Most videogames are about escapism, getting into somebody else’s skin for a bit. While almost every game has you playing a role of some sort, RPGs have always been the genre for the story-loving gamer. RPGs come in two overarching flavors: Western and Japanese. While they both share a general genre, you’d be wrong in assuming that they’re similar. Some message boards are filled with threads over which type of RPG is superior, but I think that’s the wrong tree to be barking up. There’s no real point comparing vanilla and chocolate, after all.

This is one of the less confrontational pictures I could find when I searched "Western and Japanese RPGs." As you might notice in this image, there are some strong stylistic differences between the two sides of the genre.

What are the strengths of the two types of RPG? How do the two styles complement each other?

You could say that Japanese RPGs are like rollercoasters; there are ups and downs, twists and turns, but you’re strapped in for the ride. Generally, you (as the player) don’t drive the story forward. Instead, you control a character in-between story sections and watch the plot unfold. In Final Fantasy X/Final Fantasy 7, you control Tidus/Cloud (both blond haired young men with very impractical weapons) in combat and in the overworld, but when dialogue starts happening, the game takes the reigns from you.

Most of FFX's story comes through in cutscenes.

Battle is turned based, instead of the ATB system other FF games used.

There may be the occasional choice to make, but the story is going to the same place no matter what. When the player can’t influence the story, the writers can set up character’s stories without having to worry if the side characters should be reacting differently to the world and the main character. The writers and designers can also engineer a different sort of attachment that somebody playing Fallout might feel for their character, much like the attachment you might feel to a book or movie character.

People still have serious feelings about Aerith Gainsborough, the kindest character in FF7. The remake is going to stir up some tears for people.

The more focused nature of JRPGs also lead them towards longer stories, due to the absence of a lot of side content. This means that stories can develop in a slower way, often with better pacing and tone. A good portion of this is probably due to cultural differences, but JRPGs are also more willing to get a little weird. In Persona 3/Persona 4 you play as a high school student by day, answering test questions and hanging out with your friends, but by night you enter an alternate reality (through your high-school in 3 or a TV in 4) and fight evil spirits.

Here's normal school life.

And here's fighting demons by night. In the same school.

The focus on mobile gaming in the Japanese gaming market has also created some really interesting mechanics that you don’t see anywhere else. In The World Ends With You (an RPG for the DS), you fight enemies by drawing shapes on the bottom screen of the DS rather than hitting buttons, for instance. You start to think of combat in a very different way, more related to your own reflexes and the patterns of your attacks rather than just swinging a sword.

If JRPGs are like riding a rollercoaster, Western RPGs are like driving an ATV; you can stick to the trail, but you can also try to drive over that mountain over yonder. One of the principal strengths of the Western RPG is the level of player interaction with the story. You can see from Dungeons and Dragons to Baldur’s Gate to Fable that your choices move the story forward.

Each dialogue choice here could learn a different outcome and change the story moving forward.

Gameplay and story aren’t kept as separate parts of the game in WRPGs. You choose what your character says, does, how they act, and what kind of person they are and the story reacts to your choices. Many of them are less linear and offer more freedom in terms of movement. In Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura, you can flit from town to town, solving side quests and leveling up, discovering side content. Many western RPGs never force you down their story’s path; less than 30% of people on Steam have completed Skyrim’s Main Quest. These games generally have more content to explore and more replay value compared to JRPGs because seeing everything in one go is very hard, or even impossible due to the game locking you out of some content due to a choice you made.

So many places to go and not progress in the main quest.

Western developed RPGS are also free to explore more niche sides of the genre, such as Real Time Strategy RPGs like MechCommander. You also have games like the Mass Effect and S.T.A.L.K.E.R series, which both toe the line between shooters and RPGs. The strong PC support of western developers for RPGs also means that WRPGs are more likely to foster a strong modding community which can extend the lifetime of a game by years. Hell, people are still making mods for System Shock (which came out in 22 years ago!).

You can see how the two kinds of RPG are two sides of the same coin. Both kinds are about immersing yourself in a fantasy (pleasant or not) and both usually involve some degree of stats, micromanaging equipment, or leveling up. They take such complementary directions that you have to wonder if developers on one side saw what the other was doing and though, “Hey, let’s fill in the gaps!” Sometimes you even get games like Dark Souls, a very western style Japanese-developed RPG. It’s kind of like when chocolate met peanut butter, except in the case of the Souls series, chocolate and peanut butter teamed up to kick the crap out of you.

Hope you enjoyed this Topic Post! Stick around for a new Let’s Look At coming soon.

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Love to Hate ‘Em: Villains, Blackguards, and Jerks.

What is it about a villain that makes them compelling? Why do people see Darth Vader and think he’s the coolest character in Star Wars? What makes people despise Delores Umbridge more than Voldemort in Harry Potter? In traditional mediums, you experience a story passively, but video games allow you to personally confront villains, so it makes sense that players might hate their virtual adversaries a little more than you might have a movie villain.

Except for Delores. We can hate Delores just fine without having to actually deal with her.

So, how do you construct a good Video Game villain?

Mass Effect is a series filled with antagonists, big and small, but few are as well composed as Saren, the villain from the first game. Saren is a Spectre, an agent of the inter-species galactic council. Spectres are the right arm of the Council, their eyes and ears across the galaxy. You first encounter Saren on a human colony, where he and his robotic Geth have brutally slaughtered the colonists. He even murders another Spectre in cold blood.

Look at this jerk. About to kill his friend. Didn't even give him the dignity of an awesome fight on a rooftop.

Saren makes for a good villain for a number of reasons. The first is that he’s present from the start of the game to the end of the game. While you face smaller enemies along the way, you never forget that he’s the one you’re working against. Saren is also clearly dangerous; his army of Geth easily lay waste to every place they visit, he himself is an extremely well trained special agent. When you do encounter him face-to-face, he’s a challenge to fight and he can easily beat you and your team if you’re not careful. In the few moments you get to speak to him, you learn about why he’s doing what he’s doing. He believes that he can secure a future for organic life by helping the Reapers take over the galaxy, and though there’s definitely some cowardice in there, he’s trying to preserve the galaxy, in his own way.

Well, maybe he's just a coward. 

The one area where Saren falls short is this development, which is basically non-existent, besides going a little crazy near the end of the game. You have no chance to see what Saren was before he met Sovereign, how they met, or really understand his journey, which is a shame.

The town in Silent Hill 2, aptly named Silent Hill, is more memorable than most villains, despite no final battle, or even a body. As James Sunderland, you journey through Silent Hill, trying to find your wife. The town has no form, but you can’t shake the feeling that it has feelings; specifically, the feeling that it doesn’t want you there and that it will get you to leave. From the minute you get there, an oppressive fog makes navigation hard, and not-quite-human monsters crawl out of the woodwork to harass you.  

Charming place, no? Who wouldn't want to find an AirBnB here? Nobody that's who.

Here is where Silent Hill succeeds where Saren failed; as you progress through the game and explore the town, you understand a little more about it and why it is the way that it is. When you look at the characters in the game, you see that the town reflects what they bring with them. The town is a trial by fire, in a way. You made Silent Hill the way it was; you’re not here to fight the monsters in the town, you’re here to confront your own demons.

Maybe there's a reason this game opens with the main character starting at his horrible twisted reflection...

The town is obviously present and presents a danger, so it’s only real failing is the lack of gameplay challenge. Without challenging gameplay, the town of Silent Hill almost feels like it would make a better movie villain than a game villain.

How much of a jerk must this guy be that his own granfather doesn't even know his name?! At least you can name him ASSFACE if you want.

What about something smaller, more homegrown? Pokémon Red introduces you to Gary (or Green if you’re a game purist) right off the bat, and boy, is he fun to hate. From the minute you meet him, Gary is snobbish, rude, condescending, and just a general jerk. 

Gary impedes your progress with a well-trained team a number of times, he’s always one step ahead of you, and somehow he’s still smug after you’ve beat him down every time. Sure, Gary isn’t grand or evil or even that threatening, but he’s all the more infuriating because he’s much realer than a rogue government agent or a supernatural town. Gary can send you packing to the Pokémon center and he’ll laugh at you while he’s doing it.

You never question why he’s doing what he’s doing either; you know that he’s trying to do the same thing as you, become the Champion. The only issue with Gary is that he never changes, no matter what you do, or how badly you beat him. Gary is always Gary, and you never figure out why he’s the way he is, or get to see him evolve.

There is no good story without conflict. There is no protagonist without an antagonist. Games put you in the protagonist’s shoes and a good antagonist helps make the journey memorable. A good video game antagonist should be present throughout the whole game, be dangerous, develop throughout the story, be challenging, and have understandable motivations. Though none of the villains we’ve looked at here had all of the qualities, they’re still good villains and antagonists because they’re well rounded. 

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.