Creaphis
I will deliberately take a contrary position just for the sake of writing incredibly long arguments
Posts: 3991
Registered: 10-05 |
PhilibusMo said:
All those are excellent things ot have in levels, they can make an actually quite compact and linear level feel like a vast and very real area as in real life there is very rarely only one way in which you could proceed to reach your intended destination, and so it should be in games if you wish to retain realism.
Indeed. Modern shooters are a tad schizophrenic in their approach to realism, as while the graphics aim to be ever-closer to believably real, the layouts are as far from realistic as ever. I mean, hypothetically, suppose you're on a martian base that suddenly becomes invaded by hellspawn, and you need to assail certain key objectives in certain locations quickly. You'd prefer not to die, if feasible. Would you:
1. Find yourself in a large and branching complex where every wrong move could get you killed, and therefore you are forced to intelligently choose the safest, fastest and most secret routes, and avoid side treks at all times, unless you need to risk extra travel to reach areas which would logically contain useful resources such as security offices and infirmaries?
Or
2. Find yourself in a complex, where, coincidentally, only one avenue of movement is ever possible, except for where small, dead-end side paths exist, which you are rewarded for traveling on, even though this is technically a waste of valuable time, because these side paths always contain cashes of ammo and health even when they're highly illogical places for such resources to be? Oh yeah, and there are PDAs out the wazoo.
That said, I like linearity, when the series of sequential challenges is involving enough, when the game art is immersive enough, when the straight-forward cinematic story is told skillfully enough. However, I learned while playing the original Thief games that using your brain to choose your own path and your own tactics, then executing your own plans successfully, gives you a good feeling. I know of no modern games that give you this feeling. So, I'm going to say there are two ways to do it:
1. Make a linear gaming experience, that's really good. That means providing a great deal of variety in encounters, and careful balance and pacing, among other things. I played Portal for the first time yesterday, and for the second time, yesterday, with director's commentary. That's what good linearity looks like. The commentary makes me marvel at how much thought and testing went into every individual aspect of the pacing and the environment so that the players would be guided through the puzzles while still being allowed to feel like they solved it themselves.
2. Make a non-linear gaming experience, that's really good. That means, for me, creating an environment where some areas are optional, and perhaps where some areas are actually best avoided altogether. The environment should contain logical cues so that the player can guess at where to look first for supplies and what route would be safest while traveling to some further objective. Among other things. Of course, non-linear levels in Doom typically have an equal difficulty level across all possible paths so that the player is safe regardless of where he goes and these levels are also designed so every single monster is the level can be killed with no great strain as opposed to there being rooms best avoided and there's never any clear destination objective in these levels because an exit room can be tucked away anywhere, so you can follow that formula if you want to I guess. What are we talking about again?
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07-13-09 16:01 
