Obob
Level: Goblin
Rank Points: 16
Registered: 09-12-2004
IP: Logged
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Re: Gunthro and the Epic Blunder : The Spider Cave : Entrance (+3)
NOTE: Some very minor spoilers follow. If you've read the thread this far though, there's nothing you don't already know.
As you of course realize, you're vastly and inappropriately generalizing what I was saying. The RPG market still exists, even if it is much less popular than it used to be. Your description of a formulaic Half-Life clone is of course spot on for one very popular genre of game, but this is not at all what people expect out of every game--gaming as an art form is far more diverse than this oversimplification, which is no doubt part of the reason why we all enjoy gaming so much.
Documentation for most games has become pretty terrible over the past several years, and with the increased prevalence of digital downloads, in-game tutorials, and in-game key-binding charts (all of which DROD 4 has), it is increasingly rare for somebody to even look at the documentation. I may have read pieces of the documentation for DROD 1, which was introduced before some of these features became expected, as DROD 1 expects you to figure out things for yourself much more than the current games. Having played all 4 main games now, I would never look at the documentation without being told to do so, any more than I would play the tutorial before just diving into the game.
When a riddle is posed in game, I think it is reasonable to expect (and I do expect) that the necessary hints to solve it also exist in game. Telling someone to read the help files smacks of breaking the 4th wall when there are good ways of implementing the entire riddle in game. However, NOT telling someone to read the help files when that is in fact where they must go is just frustrating in my opinion, when people may not even think to look there as they have previously had no reason to consult the documentation.
Back in the 90's, I recall several games required you to consult the manual to solve necessary in-game puzzles. I remember one very complicated puzzle from Space Quest 6 required solving a logic puzzle where all the clues to the puzzle where contained in the manual. The reason for this was primarily one of piracy prevention--before the internet was commonplace, it was reasonably difficult obtain a solution to the puzzle if you didn't have the physical manual.
Was this a good implementation, however? I'll speak just for myself: I hated it. There were many times when I would want to play the game and had the CD readily available, but would have to search for the manual for hours to be able to get past that puzzle. Of course these days it would provide basically zero piracy protection.
Furthermore, from an artistic standpoint, it breaks the flow of the game. My character shouldn't need information that is unavailable to him as a character, and only available to me outside the game world.
From a storytelling standpoint, why is it that I as the human player need to learn the lore of the world in order to crack a puzzle? Surely my character Gunthro is the one that needs to learn how to solve the puzzle, and I as a person am along for the ride with Gunthro. But then Gunthro should be able to explore the world and consult with the relevant scrolls and/or people to solve the puzzle.
In my mind there is a big difference between a help file that incidentally contains some necessary information for puzzles and a "codex"-type system (see the Mass Effect games) where lore that you have discovered in game is saved to be perused (or not) at your leisure. Such snippets of lore stay within the game universe and are information available to your character, who is the real entity tasked with solving the puzzles.
A "codex" like system would also be much appreciated in DROD 4, as it is only after you have likely already discovered half the scrolls that you discover you need to remember their contents. Backtracking to recollect them (which often can only be done using the clunky Restore system, as several are inaccessible after the monsters in the rooms are dead) is both tedious and breaks the flow of the game. I eventually ended up print-screening all the scrolls and pasting them into MS Paint to make sure I wasn't getting duplicates. Needless to say, this process was one of the least enjoyable parts of the entire game.
(It's right up there with hunting for breakable, often nearly indistinguishable wall segments, which IMO is something the series should have done away with a long time ago--just make the breakable blocks more visible. There are already two different arts for breakable blocks, one easy to distinguish and one difficult to distinguish. What do the blocks that are harder to find add to the game when you're poring over the map searching for hidden rooms?)
An in-game notebook system of some sort that keeps track of collected scrolls and any other lore Gunthro learns would be a welcome addition. This could also help to better develop some of the mythology of the series, for people who care about that sort of thing. Alternately, similarly useful would be a library in town that contains the contents of the lore sections of the help file. The scrolls Gunthro has discovered along the way could also be placed there.
[Last edited by Obob at 04-06-2012 12:44 AM]
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