HITMAN (Destiny)

by CruelLEGACEY , Toronto, Tuesday, May 23, 2017, 21:31 (2528 days ago) @ Harmanimus

It is really hard for people to break things down and force themselves to take breaks from things they enjoy. I decided when my friends wanted to watch Stranger Things "as a family" that my condition was we watched it like it was an old TV show. With a Wednesday evening time slot. We watched one episode a week, had to skip a week, so we watched two episodes, like we recorded the prior weeks episode. It was hard to avoid spoilers, I admit. But it was a much more enjoyable experience than anything I have ever binge watched (with the caveat that you can't actually binge watch anything by Bryan Fuller) and part of that was the inter-episode tension and build up.

Compartmentalized pieces of of entertainment actually do a lot of positive things for the expeience. In the same way that opening up maps and new areas of progress create renewed vigor in Metroid-style games. Or, for me, new runs are exciting in Rogue-likes. I think what Destiny could learn from episodic releases is keeping the open world more alive. Such as dropping in new areas to explore periodically. Little dungeon places. Opening up a building that was previously closed. Not rewriting the face of a gameplay space, but massaging in more small experiences that draw people back into it.

The problem I have with generalizing one way or the other is that I think some entertainment is designed to be experienced all at once, while other entertainment works better spread out over time. Both are great, both are equally valid, IMO.

In the case of Hitman, the release schedule affected how the devs and the player base approached the game. I have no doubt that the game itself, and the player base's experience of it were both changed and arguably improved by the episodic format.