Reprise wrote:marurun wrote:Reprise wrote:That said, there are a few aspects that I find frustrating.
1. Extended tutorial sections
2. Increasingly complex games
3. Unnecessary and annoying talking, story exposition, characters explaining stuff in an obnoxious way.
I have some thoughts on these as well.
1. This arose as a response to the problem of players leaping into games and being confused because they don’t bother to read manuals. There is a very high chance of losing a player if they are confused or frustrated in a game world, so this is an attempt to acclimate players in a way they can’t route around easily. Better developers do this in less disruptive ways. Poor developers do not.
2. Complexity in games is not a new thing at all. Some early PC games were often needlessly complex (sometimes for all the wrong reasons). If you are talking about shoe-horning systems into games that don’t “need” then, that’s not an issue of complexity but rather a mismatch of game styles and expectations.
3. Game developers have wanted to do that forever, but only could when storage got cheaper. You see early signs of it in some SNES and it takes off in PS1-era and GBA games. Basically, it was inevitable.
You make some good comments, but I don't think I articulated my as well as I could.
1. And I do understand this. It makes perfect sense and it's a natural progression that games have made. Not every person is the kind of person who can learn and pick things up by reading a dry instruction manual, plenty of people are visual learners who learn best through doing and by being shown things. In a way it has made games more accessible.
What I am talking about though, is probably more bad design, but I have also played plenty of amazing games with phenomenal gameplay that still have drawn out or boring tutorial sections. I don't know how to explain it, but I don't really like tutorial sections that don't feel organically interwoven into the game. I dislike it when they have tried to make it feel like it is woven into the game, but it's really obvious you are playing an extended tutorial section. I feel like good games gradually introduce you to the mechanics and it all connects seamlessly, whilst the annoying "tutorial sections" I mean are very much part of the game, but it's obvious you are playing a tutorial and the cut between it and the wider game is more jarring.
I also hate really obnoxious tutorial sections, for example: you move your character for three seconds, game pauses *press X to jump", move your character for two seconds, game abruptly pauses again "use the right stick to move the camera" etc. I dislike ones where it cynically puts you into a battle scenario and you take no damage and it holds your hand through each move with abrupt pauses and button commands.
2. I know this. I grew up with PC gaming. That's not entirely what I am talking about. I am talking about how more complex nearly every game and genre is nowadays. Perhaps my complaint again is more about bad design. That said, I am coming from this angle from someone whose brother has autism and special educational needs and disabilities is the area I have worked in most of my adult life. I feel like the barrier to entry for some is now higher than it was. I can think of a couple of examples.
The first example is cumbersome or multiple menus. Back "in the day" most games had one menu. You pressed "start" and it brought up everything you needed. Now a lot of games have 2 and sometimes even 3 different menus and it can get really confusing. Look at the new Pokemon game. If you want to access your inventory, the save function, look at your Pokemon and a few other things, you need to press the 'UP' button on the d-pad. Now if you want to access your pokedex to properly view your Pokemon and the research tasks you need to complete in order to complete your pokedex, then you need to press the 'DOWN' button your d-pad. Now if you want to view your map, main quests and side quests though, you need to press the "-" button. That's three menus to remember to use when it could have all been amalgamated into one menu. And whilst that example may be "bad design", it really is incredibly common to have multiple different menus for different functions and I just think it's a bit confusing and annoying at times.
The other example is how many different buttons and gameplay functions games have. Look at Sonic games. I understand that the transition to 3D means more design inevitably gets more complex and Sonic is perhaps an extreme example, since the games are often derided for their "poor" 3D games (hey, I actually like most of them, but different strokes for different folks I guess), but anyways, I digress. In the original Sonic games, all you needed to know to play is the direction buttons and one button that was used to jump and to form a spin dash. Since then, you have a homing a attack to use, you can use a 'light speed dash' to zip along multiple rings in a row (a functionality that is needed to progress in some games), there's a function to do a bounce jump thing in some games I think, there's a boost button in some games, there's the wisp powers to use, in one of the games there's a homing kick attack and a normal homing attack and you use different versions to defeat different enemies. It can all be a little overwhelming.
Even Mario Odyssey, an absolutely fantastic game, has an insane number of 'moves' to remember. I returned to that game late last year and found it completely overwhelming coming back to it and trying to learn all the moves you use to navigate the levels.
3. Sure, I guess. But it's still annoying. As someone else said, having forced walking sections where you talk to characters or having characters telling you the entire plot, because the think the audience can't keep up is just bad writing. If the story captivates me and it's the kind of game where the story is a central part of the game, then great, but if it's a 2D platformer or, I don't know, a run n gunner or something (I don't know), maybe don't make me go through pages and pages of text or talking. I'm not playing a visual novel.
There seems to be an obnoxious obsession with the majority of game developers these days in making every game a narrative experience, even on the indie scene. Arietta of Spirits is a game with way too much talking. Meanwhile, the actual gameplay is fairly bland. It's clear which part of the game got the most attention. To be fair, it tells a decent and interesting enough story, but it's not the reason that I chose to play the game. I chose to play it because I wanted to play a video game, not a "narrative experience"
I think game developers are forgetting what makes games unique in the first place. It's like they are all trying to create a Netflix series or a movie instead of an actual video game.
We need more games like Astro Bot: Rescue Mission or Blazing Chrome where you start up the game and you just get actual GAMEPLAY. Astro Bot sets up its story in like the first five minutes of the game, and that's it. No more story for the rest of the game. Instead you get one of the most fun gameplay experiences I've ever had, because THAT is where the dev team's entire focus was.