What Xenos said. (Gaming)

by Cody Miller , Music of the Spheres - Never Forgot, Thursday, May 12, 2016, 14:05 (2914 days ago) @ Kermit

Perhaps it's because of all the time I spend in Destiny, but these days I seriously crave being immersed in a well-crafted, linear story. I know that in gaming linear is a bad word now, and it's considered regressive if you can't affect the outcome, but games that do a good job of having multiple endings are rare (Dishonored is one), and even then having one logical, inevitable ending is always more satisfying, to me anyway.

I think a lot of people misunderstand the concept of linearity, both in games and in game stories.

First of all, t's ridiculous to say that for ANY game if you don't control the outcome of the story it is regressive. That is only the case if the interaction the game offers you is story related. If you're playing Heavy Rain, and your interactions with the game are purely story choices, then it would be criminal if those choices don't change the story, because games are supposed to respond to your inputs. That's the whole point of interactivity.

You have an FPS game, which offers the player the interaction of shooting and moving. Thus, how and where the player moves and what they shoot should effect the outcome of the battles. Right? But having a Heavy Rain type game that doesn't let you control the story is like having an FPS where the action plays out the same no matter where you go or who you shoot. That would be insane and instantly rejected. Yet, it's far too common in story driven games.

But in the FPS it is fine to have an unchanging story, because the interactions the player is afforded are purely physical, move and shoot, and they are not asked to make story decisions. The game should change vis a vis the player's interaction. So, if the player is not given story interactions, then there is no need for the story to change.

As far as linearity in games goes, it is a necessity. Otherwise you'd have a mess of a game with no direction or flow. The trick is to allow for lot of ways to reach the end though. In and FPS, the player can move a lot of places and shoot a lot of different things. So, there should be multiple ways to accomplish that. Look at the first Deus Ex. The very first level has you rescuing a hostage in the statue of liberty. There are no fewer than 7 different ways to go about this depending on how you want to play the game. But then you are on to the next area, and the next, then the next. So it's linear, but with the freedom to change and flex based on the player's inputs.

Uncharted's linear story is in no way a bad thing, and anyone who says otherwise is confused in my opinion. You can legitimately make the case however that there could be more alternate ways to climb things, as 90% of the time there is only one route, and climbing is under the player's control. You want to make a player feel like they've created their own solution, rather than simply found the solution.