Saturday, August 30, 2008
Ultima VII: Off The Beaten Path
Corvus Elrod has a post about my favorite CRPG of all time, Ultima VII: The Black Gate. More specifically, he's talking about what he refers to as "Sub-Optimal Paths." Part of what made Ultima VII such a great game was that there was a LOT to the game that was off the "optimal" path to the conclusion. Not to mention that this makes any story more interesting - a hero who never makes a mistake and takes a direct path to the end of the story is pretty boring.
Ultima VII: The Land of Sub-Optimal Paths
An excerpt:
"Britannia, the realm in which the Ultima games are set, contains more than ten cities and a great many tiny islands. Every city has a story taking place within its borders. The Avatar herself is a reflection of the virtues upon which the Britannian cities were founded and the struggles of the citizens reflect the decay of those virtues. By diverging from the central plotline, which takes you to all of the cities at one point or another, the player learns about the culture of the world and her character’s own role in the creation of that culture. Additionally, the little simulated lives you touch bring greater purpose to your grand goals. No longer are you merely saving the world simply because you’re a hero, but because you want to save all of the individuals you’ve met along the way."Origin had a motto: "We create worlds." The extended version of it, I think, was "Others make games. We create worlds." I think this was never more true than with the "middle trilogy" of the Ultima series. Granted, it was far from perfect, and the illusion would get frayed a bit at times. But there was a lot packed into the game - even in the places where players were unlikely to see.
You don't see that so much anymore. Many games are pretty rigidly linear, making certain that every ounce of expensive development effort is enjoyed by the maximum number of players. Even in sandbox-style games, so much is randomly or procedurally generated that you don't really feel like there is anything truly interesting to be found off the beaten path.
Labels: Game Design, Roleplaying Games
- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 9:52 AM (Permalink)
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I fear that 'The Black Gate' will always be my personal favourite CRPG of (insert cosmic dimension) time - simply because I like exploration of and playing with another world more than anything else in a game.
I miss the same feeling of immersion in modern massive single player games like the ones from Bethesda and BioWare (though Baldur's Gate 1+2 and Oblivion come close). Many other games - Ultima 8 & 9 for example - gave me a feeling of solitude.
Games from other genres like Deus Ex (the first one) and Thief (1+2) offer more than roughly comparable games and their dumbed down sequels. Also the spiritual successor to the System Shock games - BioShock - is more of a shooter than a 3D action-adventure.
I don't say that all older games are better (far from it!) but there seems to be a limit what a publisher or developer expects from his audience (at least if he wants a large audience).
I miss the same feeling of immersion in modern massive single player games like the ones from Bethesda and BioWare (though Baldur's Gate 1+2 and Oblivion come close). Many other games - Ultima 8 & 9 for example - gave me a feeling of solitude.
Games from other genres like Deus Ex (the first one) and Thief (1+2) offer more than roughly comparable games and their dumbed down sequels. Also the spiritual successor to the System Shock games - BioShock - is more of a shooter than a 3D action-adventure.
I don't say that all older games are better (far from it!) but there seems to be a limit what a publisher or developer expects from his audience (at least if he wants a large audience).
# posted by 
: August 30, 2008 11:30 AM
: August 30, 2008 11:30 AM
This change in game design is why I buy few story-centric games these days. They leave me feeling that the world is hollow, that I HAVE seen everything in the world, and it exists just as a play put on in my computer screen.
The Fallout, Ultima, Baldur's Gate and even Final Fantasy series were not like this. You'd bump into optional content all the time if you wandered off the beaten path.
Even if I only saw a tiny bit of this extra (no doubt expensive) content, it paid off in spades, precisely *because* it was optional, and I had no idea how much of it was out there.
If I ran into Optional Quest Boy by accident, my thought wasn't 'I've run into THE Optional Quest Boy'. My thought was, 'Wow, I've had a significant interaction with a 'random' member of the world that is not connected to the main story'.
I had no way of knowing whether OCB was a huge fraction of the optional material, or just a taste, and if I found these extra touches often enough (which doesn't have to be often at all), it would lead me to believe the game world was FAR more detailed and vast than it actually was.
Not only that, but it led great replay value to the game - and re-PURCHASE value. I think I've paid for BG II five or six times by now. I'll play it, finish it, lose it in a move, or give it away, or some such, and then I'll think, 'Hey, I wonder what would have happened if I'd gone north instead of south', and buy it again.
Jade Empire? I played a few levels - that's a key word right there - at a friend's home, and lacked any interest at all in buying the game, because I could SEE that every penny of development time was on screen. There was nothing else to the game (or such was my perception; I haven't played it through, after all).
As Shakespeare put it, 'a little figure can attest in little place a million' - the main quest doesn't have to be only 5% of game content, but even a splash of depth to the game world adds a lot when multiplied by player perception.
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The Fallout, Ultima, Baldur's Gate and even Final Fantasy series were not like this. You'd bump into optional content all the time if you wandered off the beaten path.
Even if I only saw a tiny bit of this extra (no doubt expensive) content, it paid off in spades, precisely *because* it was optional, and I had no idea how much of it was out there.
If I ran into Optional Quest Boy by accident, my thought wasn't 'I've run into THE Optional Quest Boy'. My thought was, 'Wow, I've had a significant interaction with a 'random' member of the world that is not connected to the main story'.
I had no way of knowing whether OCB was a huge fraction of the optional material, or just a taste, and if I found these extra touches often enough (which doesn't have to be often at all), it would lead me to believe the game world was FAR more detailed and vast than it actually was.
Not only that, but it led great replay value to the game - and re-PURCHASE value. I think I've paid for BG II five or six times by now. I'll play it, finish it, lose it in a move, or give it away, or some such, and then I'll think, 'Hey, I wonder what would have happened if I'd gone north instead of south', and buy it again.
Jade Empire? I played a few levels - that's a key word right there - at a friend's home, and lacked any interest at all in buying the game, because I could SEE that every penny of development time was on screen. There was nothing else to the game (or such was my perception; I haven't played it through, after all).
As Shakespeare put it, 'a little figure can attest in little place a million' - the main quest doesn't have to be only 5% of game content, but even a splash of depth to the game world adds a lot when multiplied by player perception.
# posted by : August 31, 2008 12:50 PM
: August 31, 2008 12:50 PMLinks to this post:
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