Prelude of the Chambered

Notch, the creator of esteemed indie hit, MineCraft, recently released a made from scratch in just 48 hours freeware 3D browser dungeon game called Prelude of the Chambered. And it's brilliant.

The game begins in a small jail cell; players have only one interaction (press space to use) and then start to explore and collect different items which have new interactions; as they continue to discover items, each new ability gives players access to larger areas with new items and more puzzles. The graphics are reminiscent of doom; the textures are extremely pixelated and the corridors are completely rectangular. And yet, despite the crudeness of the experience, the game evokes more primary joys of gaming than many modern games with years of work put into them. And I'm going to talk a little bit about why I think that's the case.

Games have the capacity to evoke certain experiences not found in other media and they do this through interaction. Whereas books and film directly communicate to the viewer through pictures, text, and sound, games communicate to players by letting them experience things and making choices firsthand. In theory, this can produce a much more engaging experience than being at the passive end of the literary stick. Part of what makes Prelude so good is that there is virtually no text in the entire experience. All of the journey, the characters, the explanation, comes as a result of firsthand player experience. We start in a jail cell - innately, we know we need to escape now. This isn't told to us in a cut-scene, rather, it is experienced by us. And there's no cut-scenes either. When something happens as a result of our direct participation, it becomes much more real to us and strengthens the experience so much more.

Prelude also contains a unique sense of empowerment through self-made goals. In the beginning, we are trapped in the jail cell - we have the goal to escape. Then we break open a wall using our only weapon: our fists. However, the next area is blocked by a boulder, too heavy for us to move. Instead, we descend into a dungeon behind us and find a power glove; we head back up and knock the boulder out of our way to continue on. The goals in Prelude are not forced upon us as a player - we are meant to discover them, create our own goals, and then find the means to reach those goals ourselves. When we finally find the item that can enable us to continue on, it empowers us in a way that many other games cannot. This sense of personal empowerment - the at first unsolvable problem becoming solvable through firsthand discovery - is something that Prelude does perfectly - it lets us create our own goals, and then empowers us with new abilities to find the means to reach those goals.

Finally, Prelude also creates meaning through gameplay--the narrative, the goals, and the emotion in the game come from our interaction with the world itself and how it reacts to us as a player. We start to feel and understand the world around us, not through exposition or backstory, but through gameplay. For instance, bats are perceived as friendlier due to their more harmless nature, while cacti men are dangerous due to their harmful projectiles which propel towards us. We understand who these characters are in relation to how they function in the world; a crack on the wall symbolizes a new path just waiting to be opened; a ladder represents a descent into a new territory; a golden enemy symbolizes a powerful foe with a great reward waiting to be gained upon its defeat. Meaning is created through interaction, which is something Prelude capitalizes on excellently.

The last boss encounter in Prelude is one in which we must face an enemy whom we cannot kill or attack - a golden ghost whom we must lure back through a bewildering maze into a magic urn, while dodging enemy attacks, and staying close enough to the ghost that it will continue to follow us. The experience this creates, while extremely low-fi at best, is one that evokes intense feelings of desperation, anxiety, and in the end, triumph.

Prelude is a simple game, which is also why it succeeds. It doesn't hinge on the outward form of its presentation, but rather presents an engaging set of mechanics that create an experience, rather than force one on the player. Prelude doesn't do more than it needs to and it sticks to what it does best - it returns to the primary roots of gaming and what makes it so fun in the first place: an immersive, empowering, and meaningful experience.

6 Things I Learned From Mass Effect

Mass Effect (2007), by BioWare, is an exploration of a traditional role-playing-game mechanics into less traditional RPG spaces. It takes risks, explores customary RPG tropes, and comes out a mixed bag. I would not say it's better than Knights of the Old Republic (well the combat, maybe) because it lacks several things that KoTOR just did so excellently: the proper sense of adventure (replaced in Mass Effect by a lawman investigation), a galactic conflict (replaced by a mostly solitary manhunt), or the endearing cast of characters whom you pick up in the most varied of ways (replaced by a small cast of characters mostly all picked up at the beginning, who really want to talk about their unique position in the universal socio-political space drama affecting everybody it seems).

The game explores character customization, loads of backstory, a fusion of RPG and FPS elements, and the ever-popular moral choice scheme. However, at the same time, it felt like BioWare was holding back - that they were keeping the best on reserve for use in coming sequels. Here are six things that I discovered while playing it, concerning both RPGs and storytelling as a whole in games.

1. Player Customization Only Occurs Out of Necessity

Like in so many other role-playing games, in Mass Effect, you are allowed to customize your character's armor and weaponry on the fly. The sentiment behind this is that you want to adjust your character's attributes for your style of play and the enemies you will encounter. For instance, when fighting organic life forms, you want the "organic-life-killing" type of bullet.

However, I totally ignored these options - whether out of boredom or plain negligence - until I finally started dying - a lot. Which made me realize in this case that dying was actually a good thing. It forced me to re-evaluate my stance on how I was playing the game. It forced me to actually strategize and make use of the game's features (granted, I still didn't know about biotics and I was six hours in). Once I kept getting killed by the same three Krogan mercenaries, I finally customized my armor and weapons in order to be able to survive the next battle. Dying is not necessarily a bad thing. It can actually enrich a player's experience, when used correctly. You want your game to be hard enough that it forces players to actively engage the features in front of them, and to make choices that thereby enrich the game's experience.

2. Backstory is Interesting Only When it Matters

An unfortunate incident that occurred in Mass Effect was the introduction. Unlike Knights of the Old Republic, BioWare's previous foray, Mass Effect begins with a lengthy dialog sequence on our ship's helm, explaining who we are about to fight, where, and for what reasons.

Does this matter to me as a player right at the beginning? No, not really. When KoTOR began, we understood that the Sith were evil and were trying to kill us. The game doesn't need to explain every detail of our mission (we're here to escort Bastilla, a Jedi - good enough). We just need to know the immediate situation. But in Mass Effect, we are encouraged to listen to something about a human colony, Prothean artifacts, intergalactic racial tension, and more all before we even have any actual gameplay. Since I have no emotional stake in this world or in these characters, why should I care about these things? Only when I have actually started playing the game, or experienced the world, or can connect these facts to a sympathetic character would these things start to matter to me.

Not to say that all exposition is bad - it works when it is presented at the right time and in the right place. But in Mass Effect, there's just so much of it - you can learn about the Citadel, dozens of alien races, countless planets and moons - that it becomes hard to realize what is important and what is just "filler", so to speak. Which led me to realize that the only time I cared about backstory was when it had a direct influence on my character and my main goal: to stop Saren. If it was important about the main goal, about the Protheans, or about understanding what I was doing, then it was important to me. Anything else presented was at a disadvantage of "Why?" Why is this useful to me as a player? Does it give me a better understanding of why I'm doing what I'm doing? If not, then that backstory information holds little value.

3. RPG Elements Only Succeed When We Have Enough Time to Act

Mass Effect is unique among many RPGs in that it is really an FPS-RPG: a First-Person-Shooter with Role-Playing-Game elements. This means that there exists both real-time, skill-based gameplay (aiming/combat), and turn-based, strategy-type gameplay (powers/customization). Mass Effect is not the first game to try this - the BioShock series also did something similar with its own assortment of weapons and Plasmids. However, Mass Effect's execution succeeds far more than BioShock due to one critical element: time.

In Mass Effect, players have a sufficient amount of time to strategize with their powers due to the fact that they can pause the game mid-battle, set up their next attack, and then resume. Contrast this to BioShock, in which when you want to use the appropriate plasmids on the correct enemies and environmental objects, the game can at many times be so chaotic that you don't really have a chance to make informed, strategic decisions, which defeats the purpose of having so many powers in the first place. On the other hand, because Mass Effect gives players sufficient time to pick and choose their powers of attack, it successfully melds both skill and strategy-based gaming elements.

4. Planning and Progression is What Makes Players Come Back

Why are RPGs (including Mass Effect) often so addicting? One way Mass Effect accomplishes this is through setting up goals only achievable in the future. For example, when you bring your two best buddy squad mates with you on a mission, you probably level up several times, and then realize that the other squad mates you left on the ship also leveled up. After this, you want to keep playing to get back to your other squad mates and level them up. You want to play and finally regain access to that reward - it's the idea of planning your next actions and playing in hopes of fulfilling that plan.

So many games today are about instant gratification and action that it's refreshing to play games that offer long term rewards. It also comes back to Flow Theory - you want the player to be engaged at the micro and the macro levels. Mass Effect contains both immediate goals (kill the enemies in the level) and long term goals (upgrade your squad mates with the loot you got, sell this weapon you found, complete this quest you discovered). Engaging the player both in the immediate and the long term encourages players to keep playing the game, enhancing its longevity.

5. Quests are Cumbersome Once Loot Becomes a Burden Rather Than a Reward

At a certain point in Mass Effect, side quests become very repetitive, becoming a chore rather than a fun activity. Part of this comes from the fact that the reward from the quests start to become a burden rather than a reward. How does this happen? Once loot from enemies starts to become useless (meaning you would have to sell or discard it to gain any real value), then the quests associated with that loot become a chore, since the reward from the quest is not worth getting at all. Therefore, it doesn't make any sense to go through the quest if your time is not justified by the ends.

What would have worked is A) Removing many of the side-quests; many of them are simply repetitions of each other and have no real intrinsic value. Just imagine if in KoTOR there were random side quests in-between planet-hopping to kill a Sith outpost resulting in useless loot - it doesn't add anything to the game - rather it just distracts from the main storyline. B) A second solution is to lessen the amount of "useless" loot and assign one specific item of value to the completion of each side quest. This way, players know that the completion of each side quest results in something particular gained, not just a repetition of the last quest's rewards. C) Or, simplify the process of discarding "useless" loot, so that the burden to sell it or break it down is removed from the player. Much of the hassle from these side quests and their loot comes with the monotony of performing the same item-discarding after the quest is over. When the rewards in a quest don't justify the means, then that quest no longer is fun for the player.

6. Choices Without Emotional Investment Aren't Meaningful Choices.

***Spoiler Alert*** One of the main emotional cruxes of Mass Effect takes place during an infiltration mission in which your team gets split up into two branches. With you are your immediate two squad members, and with each separate branch is another of your squad mates. One branch contains Kaidan, a biotic soldier; the other contains Ashley, a gunnery soldier. At a certain point in the mission, you are separated from both groups, each under attack by Geth soldiers. At this point, you only have the option to save one group and its squad member, leaving the other to die.

Admittedly this is a great set up. It forces you to make an actual decision which has severe repercussions - a character you have been playing with for 10-20 hours will die because of your actions. However, this didn't work for me because I wasn't emotionally invested in both characters enough to have to make a difficult decision. What I thought was going to happen was that the game would force you to choose between one of the members in your immediate squad. If one of these squad members had died, then I certainly would have been more emotionally invested, since I liked them enough to take them by my side in the first place. However, certain characters like Kaidan I almost never interacted with or shared any sentiment for. This could have been alleviated had the game forced me to use different characters at different sections of the game, becoming more attached to them emotionally. But because I never really used Kaidan anyway, a choice that was supposed to be emotionally difficult ended up not really being a difficult choice at all.

Part of that is understandable, for if the game let any character die, then it wouldn't make any sense, production-wise, to record so much dialog and gameplay in the sequels for characters that could have died. So, by limiting it to only one of two characters, Mass Effect restricts wasted production costs in the next games.

Conclusion

Mass Effect is a game that tries to do many things: meld FPS and RPG combat, create a living universe, have vehicle sections and many explorable planets, but it seems to fall prey to a recurrent trend in open-world gaming: the more freedom a player has, the less interesting the choices become. That is, the more options you give a player, the more generic they must become in order to be produced. It's the same in The Elder Scrolls: Oblivion - the world is huge and filled with so many things, yet the more you explore, the more everything seems to remain the same. Mass Effect appears to fall susceptible to the same error, for in trying to accomplish so many things, the game becomes more and more cumbersome and less generally interesting. There are so many repetitive side-quests, identical worlds, useless dialog sequences, endless backstory, and unintuitive customization options that Mass Effect becomes redundant rather than immersive. Had BioWare focused less on sheer quantity and crafting a tighter player experience, then Mass Effect would have been a much more enjoyable game.

Maybe in Mass Effect 2.

BioShock 2: On Rapture and Isolation

BioShock 2 is a re-journey through the city of Rapture, the failed underwater utopia, since befallen at the helm of Andrew Ryan, so thoroughly investigated by the game's predecessor. This time, you play as a Big Daddy, and your villain is the all-powerful female psychiatrist, Sofia Lamb, pitting against you many "Big Sisters," (above) while your goal is still somewhat to escape. However, the more I waddle through Rapture, the more I realize that BioShock is in essence not about failed utopias so much as the idea of social isolation.

From the beginning of BioShock 2, we get the sense that we are hated, as we were apparently forced to commit suicide in the distant past through the Plasmid mind control of Sofia Lamb. Once we wake up, we return to Rapture, still despised by the mix of raging splicers, whom we are forced to battle through a series levels, each controlled by a quaint ol' character with a stake of their own in Rapture's lineage. But the point being, the only social contact you have with the world is always plagued by negative reinforcement. Everyone out there is trying to kill you and even your fellow Big Daddies want you dead. And the only sane characters are always separated by a pane of glass, in a different room than you, disembodied - speaking to you through the radio (or even telepathy) - or in hiding. In this sense, you remain constantly isolated from every other character in the world of Rapture, including those of your fellow Big Daddies.

The Big Daddies, of whom you are the foremost, are some of the few characters who actually have a social attachment to another entity: the little sisters. In killing the Big Daddies (which is so integral to the gameplay - they give you Adam, the necessary ingredient for upgrading your character attributes and abilities) you sever the little sisters' connection from their Big Daddies, and forcingly take the little sisters to your side. This somewhat contrived social relationship gives you, the player, some form of companionship, yet it is tainted by forcefulness and fabrication, still leaving you with a lack of genuine friendship.

Yet the little sisters stand at the centerpiece of BioShock 2. You are meant to rescue them - and eventually be united with your original little sister - by exploring Rapture with all of its inhabitants, since impacted by the changes after the fall of Andrew Ryan. However, the times where I truly started feeling something - any sort of emotion in Rapture - weren't the times when I learned about the history of Rapture or its inhabitants' troubled pasts. Those stories are just words - they don't have any pertinence to the immediate. They don't have any impact on my journey - it's all history. On the contrary, what created feeling for me was what impacted me in the present, and that was companionship - from the little sisters, or even the hacked turrets, or the sentry bots, simply by fighting at my side.


BioShock 2 is a game in which you are literally pitted against an entire world of crazed maniacs who really, really want to kill you. Because of this, any sort of companionship means so much more, because of this great negativity oppressing you. This runs more so than other games such as Halo or Call of Duty, because the very nature of your character as a Big Daddy reinforces this, coupled with the physical detachment of being deep underwater. I didn't care so much for the plot - the gameplay was fine, although it turned into a cycle of 'spam projectiles, scoff down medkits, and then scavenge each room like a homeless person' - it doesn't matter why we're going through these levels, does it? We just do it because that's how the levels are designed - to be completed and explored by players. It's not because we really want to find Eleanor Lamb - we don't know her, or have any emotional connection to her; she's a disembodied voice who tells us things that we don't even know are truth. We go through these levels because they exist as levels, meant to be progressed and completed.

Which is disappointing because the real essence of the game comes from that sense of purposeful companionship, between Big Daddy and Little Sister. Yet the majority of the game is spent on killing varieties of monotonous enemies, scavenging resources, and performing the same mini-games over and over in order to survive. We do interact with the little sisters, but their function in the game is to serve as mini tower-defense sequences, not as a physical character journeying with you, sharing your hardships and trials. Yet it should have been more about the gaining of companionship, the triumph over isolation. Because that's what Big Daddies are about, right? The loss of humanity, the severance of emotional ties, the fabricated relationship with a 'Little Sister.' And to regain that true humanity is what the story should really be about.


The highest crux of emotional feeling in the game, being the arcing change from social isolation to companionship, occurs towards the end, when you are reunited with your little sister, Eleanor, now a Big Sister, ready to fight at your side. She comes to your aid in times of distress, actually wards off dangerous enemies, and finally gives you accompaniment through the once desolate and deadly environments of Rapture. When the game ends with your mutual escape, it is a powerful thing. It wasn't about all the environments, myriad of details, or the well-written depth of characters, telling us why we should do certain things. It was that feeling of companionship that made the game - some emotional connection to a character that actually affected us, not a disembodied voice or an array of narrative backstory. It was to about going from being isolated, socially, to having a friend. And that's what BioShock 2 was about in the end: gaining a friend - a big sister.

How Halo 3 Ended a Trilogy

I liked Halo--the first one. It was a game about space, discovery, science-fiction. It was about saving the human race, killing aliens, exploring a mysterious new world, escaping alive in one piece--discovering something unique, leaving it behind and having changed something along the way.

It was a story about the hero's journey. We are Master Chief, in the human fleet, minding our business, trying to do the best we can to keep Earth a secret from these nasty Covenant aliens. But they attack our ship, we get thrown off course, and crash on a mysterious alien world which turns out to be an artificially constructed ring (a Halo, get it?). We grab our assault rifles, join forces with our comrades, rescue our captain, explore this ring, discover that it goes deep for (hundreds of?) miles, and try to find a way to escape. Eventually this means we blow it up, and in a thrilling final sequence we barely escape as the last soldier or alien alive.

But six years later in 2007, Halo 3 seems to have forgotten what made it so great in the first place. Halo 3 isn't about a journey, the battle for people we care about, or even survival against an unstoppable foe. Instead it's about repetitive action and bad space drama, barely excused by a setup of invasions, war, explosions, and ancient alien technology. It's a game that's lost a sense of self, what it's trying to achieve or convey to players. It's a game that tries to be too many things, and in the end, isn't left with much anything at all.

It first started in Halo 2, when it tried to portray both sides of this intergalactic war and have us empathize with our enemies. The game had us control a new protagonist, the Arbiter, who previously killed humans but then decided to rebel and stop the other Covenant aliens. Then the true villains turn out not to be the covenant, but a council of evil snail-like aliens, which is spearheaded by an even more evil snail-like alien who wants to activate an ancient alien technology in a remote part of the galaxy that will inevitably kill all humankind and probably the universe.

Alarm signals started to go up when we were watching long cut-scenes about aliens incapable of human vocal tracts speaking in English and debating space drama unrelated to what we thought was a story about Master Chief. This is raised another step in Halo 3 when the Flood, the zombie-like creatures in the game, proceed to join forces with us, speaking to us through animated tree-branch-like appendixes hanging out of their deformed mouths. This is the equivalent of the zombies and headcrabs in Half-Life 2 deciding to ally with Gordon Freeman and doing so by speaking to him with sensible English dialog. In Halo 3, the dynamic relationship between the Flood, the Covenant, and Master Chief constantly shifts until all understanding and sympathy is lost in the process.

The gameplay in Halo 3 consists of romps through different locale throughout Earth and beyond, but the setting is barely made important other than the fact that we are always chasing someone or something related to the end of the universe. Contrast this to the goals in Halo 1, which are progressive as we discover with our friends, the other human soldiers, where we are, and what we are trying to achieve. First there is the discovery of the Halo, the map room, and then the control room, each adding deeper layers to the story and our overall goals. Halo 3's goals consist more of locations--the game wants you to be here, and then there, which is briefly explained in a voice-over and pitched with a few key terms, such as "Ark," "Covenant," or "High Runner," meant to alleviate the fact that there is no progressive reason for you to be at these locations other than for convenient action sequences.

Interrupted by these segments of action in Halo 3 are meaningless monologues by Cortana, whom we have since been separated from in Halo 2, who spouts bits of information without any real purpose. These aren't like the audio logs in BioShock or the propaganda in Half-Life 2, which enrich the world and enlarge our sense of immersion by detailing important backstory and enhancing characterization. Halo 3's monologues consist of phrases such as "I am your light, your savior. I knew you," or "The way it ends is foreseen. You know this to be true." These segments are more like bad poetry than any pertinent story development. Furthermore, these segments actually slow down time in the game to a crawl and steal control away from the player, getting us further annoyed by hampering our progress in between actual gameplay.

There were one or two moments in Halo 3 where I felt that sense of meaning in the original Halo. It was when I jumped into an Orca (the flying helicopter thing, like the one in Avatar), and two other human soldiers jumped on the side of the wings, and we proceeded to do something related to one thing or another. But the point is we were part of a larger battle. The game wasn't about me killing endless enemies with a large assortment of weapons. The game at that moment was about achieving a series of goals with your human comrades, as part of a larger battle against a horrible foe.

As a whole, Halo 3 lost this sense of meaning for me. It appeared to be a game constructed for the sake of itself--for action, closure, and the fulfillment of the marketing of a popular sequel. Halo 1 was about something, even to the smallest degree: discovery, survival, camaraderie. Halo 3 wasn't about this; rather, it was about the immediate, the superficial--action for the sake of action, an ending for the sake of an ending--a game that existed just to exist.

Portal 2

Sequels must balance a fine line between predictability and novelty. They must capture the essence of what made the original so great, while standing on their own as a complete experience. The first Portal succeeded because it surprised players. It took something vaguely expected--a challenging, dimension-altering puzzle game--and subverted that with dark humor, an emotional and physical rebellion of the artificial intelligence overlord, Glados, and the manifestation of a world beyond the immediate testing chambers. We expected to be trained in portal technology--we didn't expect to go an emotional journey through a science fiction narrative.

With Portal 2, we come with many expectations. At the end of Portal, Glados is destroyed, we escaped (or did we?), and Aperture Science stood as the enigma facility that it was. So how do you innovate on the concept of portal gameplay, testing chambers, aperture science, and the artificial intelligence overlord, Glados?

The beginning of Portal 2 gets this right. We are awakened by a new voice, that of Wheatley, in a foreign location. This creates an expository "gap-filling" in the player's mind, causing them to interact with the game narrative by filling in the missing details between Portal 1 and Portal 2: how did I get into this 1950s hotel room? Where am I? Who is Wheatley? And how does he function? This gets us interested in the narrative in the same way that Portal 1 interested us: Who/where are we? Why are we testing with portal guns (and so on)? If Portal 2 began outdoors, with the wreckage of Glados, then it would not be nearly as engaging, because that is the expectation. Portal 2 subverts that with a new, disembodied character in a foreign environment, and thus we are motivated to keep playing and alleviate this narrative dissonance.

Unfortunately, the game becomes more predictable from here on out. With the revival of Glados, she re-assumes her role from Portal 1, and expectantly takes vengeance upon us. Having Glados serve as our overlord does not offer us anything new, because we already experienced this in Portal 1. We know how she will act as our testing proctor, we know how the test chambers will proceed, and so this decreases our motivation as a player. Even though it was fun to fight Glados the first time, we evolved from that. We overcame Glados. We defeated her. And now the story and gameplay should move on.

Moreover, reviving Glados this early in Portal 2 disinterests players by removing that great "gap-filling" narrative dissonance. By entering the narrative this early, she is able to spout direct exposition at you, removing key mysteries in the narrative: What happened since she was gone? Was she really not even angry? Was she being so sincere right then even though you broke her heart and killed kill her? If you do not allow Glados to answer this by keeping her dormant, this leaves those open questions to the helm of Wheatley. This would make it much more interesting, since Wheatley speaks to you with the clout of unfamiliarity, not directly acknowledging the events of Portal 1. Continuing this would have made the story much more engaging due to the lack of narrative closure, motivating the player to continue playing and find out the answers to the dissonant questions between Portal 1 and Portal 2.

In contrast to reviving Glados early, a better way to have subverted player expectations in Portal 2 would have been to treat Wheatley as the main villain during the first act of the game. Instead of reviving Glados, simply input Wheatley into the dead Glados core early and have him betray you at that point. Then, leave Glados out of the narrative until the mid-section of the game when you explore Aperture Science's history. If you let Wheatley serve as the villain during the first act, it gives the player the firsthand experience of his villainy so that players can learn to despise him as a character. You can use him as a different test proctor to provide a new testing experience for players instead of rehashing Glados in the first act. Then Wheatley's evil nature would be directly impacted on the player's tests, motivating the player to overthrow him as the facility overlord. This makes the player much more motivated to defeat Wheatley in the second act by finding and allying with the player's previous enemy, (and the lesser of two evils) Glados.

Moreover, you can use Glados' second act introduction as a catalyst for the backstory of Aperture science. Just say that Glados has a reboot copy of her personality hidden deep within the mining sections of the facility. This gives a natural story incentive to explore these back sections of Aperture Science other than just, Let's run with Potato Glados, escape the underground, and defeat Wheatley while learning about the history of Aperture Science on the way! You can then tie in learning Aperture Science's personal history into discovering the location of Glados as a story means. Then, the back-story of Aperture Science would be embedded into the story goal of finding Glados' backup, rather than the side-juxtaposition it is now in the happenstance discovery during your mining escape.

Finally, the last act of Portal 2 subverts the player's expectations better, but by this time in the narrative, we can already see how the game will end. The original Portal was great because we started the game only with the expectation of completing test chambers. However, this was totally subverted towards the latter chambers, as notions of an escape crept in on us. By the time we switched our goals from testing to escaping and got to Glados' final test chamber, the realization that we were going to destroy her finally became a fulfilled reality. In contrast, in Portal 2, our expectation at the beginning is already to escape. Even after this is thwarted with Glados' resurrection, our goal never changes from this, even after Wheatley betrays us, and we get dumped into the back-sections of Aperture's history. Despite the fact that the during the last act, the game uses a great set piece (Aperture Science 1950s-1970s) and the new gameplay devices of the gels (which are implemented very intuitively), it is all progressing toward a predictable conclusion. Because of this predictability and the fulfillment of our expectations in our narrative goals, we are not nearly as motivated to escape as we were in the spontaneous rebellion in the last act of Portal 1.

CONCLUSION
So how do you successfully subvert player expectations when creating a sequel? Valve already did it with a different "2" game, Half-Life 2. That game took the original source material of Half-Life and expanded on it to create the oppressed, post-apocalyptic world of City 17, where aliens have enslaved the human race. It did not retread its old material at all--an alien invasion in a subterranean New Mexico facility--rather, Half-Life 2 used its source material as a foundation to go further, to explore new areas (Ravenholm, the Coast, Nova Prospekt), new characters (Alyx, Eli, Dr. Breen), and new forms of gameplay (the Gravity Gun) not restricted by the original concept of Half-Life. Half-Life 2 subverted our expectations as a player, and because of that, it broke new ground and made Half-Life 2 an arguably even better game than the first.

Portal 2, however, mostly sticks to the expectations from Portal 1: the return to Aperture science, the continuing use of test chambers, the vengeance of Glados, and more portal puzzles in a linearly progressing chamber sequence. We experience the same type of portal gameplay as Portal 1, yet unfortunately we don't have the succinct emotional beats of isolation, rebellion, and escape or even that sense of mystery which motivated us to escape. Instead, we experience the expected: a prolonged and failed escape, a continuous use of testing chambers, our submission to Glados, and a foreshadowed betrayal with Wheatley. Portal 2 does do many things right, such as the role-reversal of Glados as our inferior, the handling of the gels, and the ultimate relationship with Wheatley, but its failure to subvert our overall expectations results in a game that cannot match the same awe as in the first Portal and the surprises that it gave us.

Gemini Rue: coming FEB 24, 2011

Gemini Rue
Coming Feb 24, 2011 to a PC near you

Playthrough :: The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening

This article was originally written over the Summer of 2010 with the intent of a full play-through with commentary--However, that never happened, and so the article will only be published in its first part. Enjoy! -J

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The Legend of Zelda series uses a recurrent formula. Over eighteen years ago, A Link to the Past was released as the third game in the Zelda series, and since then, the Zelda formula has been more or less set in stone: Wake up with little more than the clothes on your back, find a sword and a shield, progress through several initial dungeons in order to gain power-ups, encounter a story reversal at around dungeon #3, and then complete several more dungeons to fight the ultimate boss and restore balance to the world.

Although this formula has been well-used, the fourth game in the series, The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening, was the very first game after A Link to the Past to continue to build on that formula, bridging a gap between the 2D Zelda games and the then upcoming 3D Ocarina of Time.

Through particular design choices, Link's Awakening crafts a prime example of what makes the Legend of Zelda series as engaging, stimulating, and successful as it is today.

The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening Playthrough!
(With Analysis & Commentary)

Part 1: Intro - First Dungeon

Player Motivation

How do you motivate players to do something? Why should they jump across a pit, stomp on a bad guy, or crack open a crate? The reason players do this is because they are faced with the prospect of reward, whether it is narrative progression, health power-ups, or extra ammo.

So let's say you want players to talk to NPCs in your game, either to dish out narrative or world exposition, and you also want players to explore your game world. How do you get the player to talk to NPCs out of his or her own free will and how do you get him or her to explore the game world?

The very first room of Link's Awakening uses the concept of gameplay rewards to encourage the player to talk to NPCs. How? By asking a NPC how he knows the player's name, the player receives his shield back as a reward. This sets up a correlation with the player: talk to NPC; get a reward (my shield). The presupposition of a reward through NPC conversations is thus encouraged by the game, prompting the player to continue to talk to more NPCs later, even though they may just respond with a "Have a nice day, Sir!" However, by setting up this correlation early on in the game, it creates an incentive for players in the back of their head to continue to talking to NPCs, resulting in both narrative and gameplay information relayed to the player.

What about rewarding exploration? By giving the player a map with the entire island in shroud, Link's Awakening creates a goal for the player to achieve--uncover every square inch of that map by traversing every screen on the island. When the player enters a new screen, she is rewarded with the addition of that screen revealed on her world map, creating a sense of accomplishment. Also, crucial items, such as the player's sword, are only discovered after exploring the game world for several screens--they are not found immediately without any effort. These two features set up an automatic reward/explore system that gives a small sense of achievement to the player as she explores the game world.

Thus, for both talking to NPCs and exploring the game world, Link's Awakening uses a system of reward so as to give the player incentive to apply its game mechanics.

The "A-Ha!" Moment

In creating puzzles, there is a certain "A-Ha!" moment that is so coveted to implant into a player's mind when they discover the solution. If in Portal the goal is to jump across a chasm much too long to traverse, and the player finally discovers the tiny bit of portalizeable wall that allows them to attain enough forward momentum to jump, it creates that "A-Ha!" moment when she realizes she's solved the puzzle. This occurs because the player first knew the problem (the chasm), which then prompted her brain to search for the solution. Upon discovering the solution (the extra portalizeable space) it creates the "A-Ha! I found it!" moment, resulting in a satisfying conclusion to the puzzle.

Link's Awakening does something similar by establishing a series of problems before presenting their solutions. For example, a little Bow-Wow creature wants to be pretty; a young couple needs a Yoshi doll for their child, an Alligator wishes he had dog food, etc. These problems are then implanted in the back of the player's head as a check-list of items to attain or search for. When the player finally does find an item in question, for example, the can of dog food, a light then springs on in her head, resulting in the "A-Ha! I found it!" moment, giving the player further satisfaction.

What's worth noting in Link's Awakening is that all of these needs or wants are firmly established in the introduction, much earlier than the solutions are found, giving players the room to explore and find those solutions on their own as a satisfactory gameplay goal.

The Power of Limitations

Since Link's Awakening is on the GameBoy, it has many technical limitations. One of these is the small, pixelated font, which can only display about 4-6 legible words on screen at a time, until it prompts the player to press a button and scroll down to see the next part of the sentence. While this may been seen as an outdated, lo-fi, feature, in retrospect, it actually forces the designers to consolidate each message and expository point of the game into its purest, least-amount-of-words form.

Just think of games today that are able to display pages upon pages of information, but how much of that information is actually useful to the player or even relevant to the game or the gameplay? Why should the player have to read one page of contextualized exposition in order to arrive at the one message of "Go Right and Kill the Reactor!" Instead, Link's Awakening takes each bit of expository information, and distills it down to only the vitally necessary bits so as to speed the player through to her goals.

This goes to show that restrictions, although many times obligatory, are actually useful as they force designers to think around the box to come up with even more creative and efficient solutions.

Gameplay & Narrative Progression

Zelda games--and nearly all other narrative-based games for that matter--exist on two axes: story and gameplay. Both story and gameplay have their own independent structures, features, and progressions, which should be equally balanced when transmitted to the player. If a player goes through a series of eight dungeons over twenty hours, but nothing happens in the story, it creates a sense of futility, that none of the player's actions have any ultimate consequence on the narrative axis. Or, if the player successfully restores balance to the world by simply slaying one monster without even trying, then the narrative axis supersedes the gameplay axis. Games then, have to maintain an appropriate balance between their narrative and gameplay axes to complement the player's progression.

One moment in Link's Awakening that embodies this balance is when the player rediscovers his sword on the beach, which is linked with the introduction of the Owl character, who guides you in the game's story. The Owl is the one character who relays information to the player about the island, the player's goals, and the mystery surrounding the egg. By introducing the Owl with the discovery of the sword, the game correlates gameplay progression (the sword) with narrative progression (the Owl), making sure that both the narrative & gameplay axes progress at the same rate. The Owl, who orders the player to take heed to your journey, and the weapon, giving the player an attack ability, come together to move forward the story and the gameplay together at the same pace.

Trusting the Stranger

Finally, the Owl presents an interesting character, often present in most video games: the one of the helpful, insightful, yet unacquainted stranger. The Owl is first presented to the player at the discovery of the sword, and then orders the player to embark on a quest to the forest in part of a larger goal to wake the egg and escape the island. One factor that attributes to the Owl's trustworthiness is the fact that he shows up at each location he sends you to, rather than not show up at his spoken location. If the game did not do this, then the player would be less willing to trust in the character as the Owl continues to give the player advice and guidance throughout the game. Unacquainted side-kicks are often used in video games, and Link's Awakening reinforces that trustful relationship by having this new stranger follow up on each promise he makes.

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Link's Awakening, though by now over 15 years old, still contains inherent design principles that attribute to a meaningful player experience, many of which are still in use in modern games today. Whether it is a simple gameplay-story correlation, or even a technical limitation, Link's Awakening is a prime testament to the excellence of Zelda's design.

Game Review: Fallout 3

Edited for clarity - 3/7/2011

Fallout 3 is big, really big. However, size does not equal greatness. Having a dozen bad tasting cupcakes is not as satisfying as one deliciously sprinkled cupcake. In the same way, Fallout 3 certainly gets the notion of quantity right, but fails to engage the player in the aforementioned quantity of content. If Fallout 3 focused more on how to get the player to engage its world and gameplay, then Fallout 3 would be a better, albeit smaller game.

1. Story - Lack of Conflict
First, the player's narrative motivation in Fallout 3 could be improved by the earlier introduction of narrative conflict.

The beginning of the story is marked by the disappearance of your father from your hometown, the Vault, prompting you to leave the vault to find him once again. But this then leaves the questions: why do you want to find your father when he disappears? What's the motivating force?

In Monkey Island, your goal is to rescue Elaine, but you are always faced with the looming threat of LeChuck after you leave the SCUMM bar, creating a reason for you to hurry up and become a pirate. In Knights of the Old Republic, your goal is to find star maps, but you are constantly in battle with the Sith, forging a race for each consecutive star map. In BioShock, even though you must escape Rapture, there is the ever-imposing figure of Andrew Ryan, a nemesis whom you must overcome to escape.

So what is there motivating you--conflicting you--to find your father in Fallout 3?

Nothing, really. Your goal has no direct opposing force (there are Mutants who fight you, but their goal is to kill everyone--not specifically you) until about nearly two thirds of the way into the story. Once that happens, you realize who your enemies are and who you have to stop in order to find your father. Before that point, however, no one is trying to stop you from finding your father; no one is battling against your progress.

A lack of conflict breeds a lack of tension, urgency, and challenge to overcome any obstacle in order to reach your goal, in this case, your father. Instead, the majority of your journey to find your father stems from town-hopping, interrogating by-standers for answers, and then performing fetch quests to gather more clues--not fighting your adversary for dear life as s/he battles against your every progression and accomplishment.

Guess who's trying to stop you? Nobody!

An alternative way to begin Fallout 3 would be this: make it so that your father is kidnapped from the Vault. This sets up a mystery (who kidnapped my father?), an opposing force (the kidnappers), yet still creates the same narrative goal as before (find your father); except now you have a conflict to engage in which you must overcome in order to rescue your father. Fallout 3 eventually does this by introducing the Enclave two thirds into the game, but that is much too long to wait for this sense of a larger conflict. Before this, you are allowed to just meander around the wasteland, with no real excuse for finding your father, no sense of urgency. Introducing an opposing force earlier would have made the story much more instigating for you to find your father.

2. Gameplay - Guns vs. Swords
Fallout 3 also boasts the unique inclusion of FPS elements within its RPG table set, yet this doesn't come without some drawbacks. With FPS elements comes the fear of labeling Fallout 3 a "First-Person-Shooter with RPG elements" rather than"Role-Playing Game." So, what the developers do to alleviate this is include the VATs targeting system which essentially pauses the game, lets you choose limbs and areas of enemies to shoot at, and then the game executes those orders based on a percentage of impact. This system, while appreciative, is much less fun than the combat system in Oblivion, because it's just a simple probability roll.

VATs: A series of percentage signs.

Contrast this to an adaptive combat sequence which is more of what Oblivion had with its melee combat. What made these encounters much more fun than the ones in Fallout 3 is that you were always involved in each battle. You had to swap between a series of block/attack moves in each encounter and always had to adapt to your enemies' movements in each situation. This put a constant life or death struggle onto each enemy encounter--you had to keep your guard up in order to not fall susceptible to your enemies' blows. Also, just hearing your blade slice into your enemies' flesh was much more satisfying than the click of a bullet piercing your enemy's skin. (Moroseness! Hooray!)

Fallout 3's VATs system doesn't have this strategic balance, this level of required thinking or involvement in each battle. Instead, you can just run up to an enemy, point a gun in their face, and then let VATs calculate that you will get a 95% hit without the need for you to retaliate or adapt to the enemy's next action. It's just a simple roll of the dice, a playing of the odds.

Gameplay mechanics should be fun, challenging, and thoughtful, forcing you to adapt to each situation by requiring you to improve your current level of skill--not just a viewing of the odds and then a decision based off of a percentage point.

3. Exploration Motivation
Lastly, Fallout 3 suffers from exploration motivation--in other words, why explore this world? Why traverse through this gigantic, uninviting, mono-chromatic wasteland? This is because of three main reasons: lack of novelty, ambiguous atmosphere, and lack of challenge.

First, every location is just a copy and paste rendition of the other, so there's no real reward for exploration. You can enter any number of buildings that you want, but you're still going to find the same 2 stimpaks, 3 ammunition crates, 8 Super Mutants, and the generic toolboxes with wonderglue and hammers that come with it. Locations or quests have the same, generic items associated with them so that it becomes tedious, rather than exciting, to advance through your journey. Even though games such as Final Fantasy or KoTOR offer fewer more compact worlds, each discovery in these worlds is made all the more important because of that. You know that every treasure chest you open and every new weapon you find can be unique and different from all the others in the game. However, Fallout 3 removes this novelty of discovery by generically copying its items and environments, and because of that, the game lessens the value of its discoveries for the player.

Down these mean streets a man must go--
but oh well, they're all the same.

Second, Fallout 3 suffers from atmospheric ambiguity in its environment. Part of the fun in exploring any environment is to be immersed in it--to truly feel as if you are there. For post-apocalyptic environments, this is most often a feeling of solitude and isolation--the lonely realization of humanity's self-demise. However, in Fallout 3, this feeling is consistently destroyed by lonely robots, mutant zombies, or an annoying, chattering voice screaming "Free dawg! Owwooooooot!" Before the player has a chance to become immersed in any one specific feeling (isolation, humor, danger), the game consistently flips itself upside down. This changes the game's experience from a lonely, post-apocalyptic world, into a awkwardly heterogeneous world.

Think of a game like STALKER: Shadow of Chernobyl--this game lets you run along vacant roads and hills for what seems like miles, encountering few or no enemies; and when you do finally encounter another living being, the impact is made all the more forceful, thanks to the amount of solitude you just experienced. In Fallout 3, this feeling of solitude is constantly destroyed by haphazardly trotting mutants, brain-bots, zombies, rabid dogs, and scavenging wastelanders, decimating the atmosphere and discouraging exploration in the process.

Thirdly, and lastly, a lack of challenge in Fallout 3 removes any need to further explore new environments. Fallout 3 is too easy, which is the exact opposite problem that Oblivion had. This is because Fallout 3 does not contained scaled enemies (in contrast to Oblivion), meaning that when you level up in Fallout 3, your enemies do not level up with your progress. Non-scaled enemies make sense, because if they leveled up with your progress, it would reduce all cause to improve your character, as your enemies would increase in strength at the same rate, which was one of the core problems of Oblivion. However, because Fallout 3 removes scaling-enemies, the game becomes ridiculously easy during the latter half.

The second half of Fallout 3: Hi-tech power-armored Gatling-gun wielding super soldiers vs. defenseless Zombies

Because players can already destroy most every enemy opposing them, this removes rationale to keep exploring because there is no reason to obtain better weapons and items since enemies are not difficult enough to make obtaining those items necessary. Enemies start to drop without any real challenge, and health never becomes a concern for the player, thanks to the endless amount of Stimpaks found scattered throughout the world. Since enemies are easily defeated, there is no reason to gather more weapons, items, or health packs via exploration, thus removing a whole purpose for exploration. Even though having non-scaled enemies is a good thing, there should have been some kind balancing factor or reason for players to continue to exploring the world, gathering more items.

Conclusion
Players need reasons to do things--goals to achieve. Goals drive players--they give them a reason, a motivating factor to guide themselves through a meaningful experience.
If the player doesn't need ammo, there's no reason to scavenge new areas for crates of ammo. If the player doesn't need to upgrade his weapon and can defeat every enemy he faces, there is no reason to try and gather new weapons. If the player already owns all the best items in the local shops, there is no reason to gather or look for any more gold in each dungeon.
Fallout 3 contains a massive, very-well constructed world, yet lacks the incentive to drive players to explore it. Why should players explore open-ended worlds? For the reward? For the story? Games can have the most inviting, detailed, and rich worlds, but unless there is a reason to explore these worlds, then the players will never do so.

Boryokudan Rue: Official Trailer 1

Up now. Watch it.

Boryokudan Rue: 2010 IGF Student Finalist

For the past two-ish years, I have been working on a game. This game is called Boryokudan Rue. For some reason I haven't been posting much about it; however, in November of 2009 I entered it into a little contest called the "Independent Games Festival" as a student entry. Today, I found out it has just been nominated as a student finalist in the 2010 Independent Games Festival.

This is the game. Boryokudan Rue.

This was a very, very, awesome surprise. Thanks to everybody who helped support this game, whether it be through a simple play-test, or a word of encouragement. Without you, Boryokudan Rue would not be where it is today, so thank you, one and all.

Hopefully, I will be going to the Game Developers Conference in March for the Independent Games Festival, where the final winners will be announced. Until then, I will keep you posted! Thank you, and good night!

Review :: STALKER: Shadow of Chernobyl

There are games that create stories and there are games that create worlds--the truly greatest games are ones that do both. Games that create worlds exist independent from any situated narrative; games that create narratives are locked on that narrative's rails, usually restricting the player from exploring that world. STALKER: Shadow of Chernobyl is a game about a world; it's not about a linear narrative, moments of high-escalating action, the illusion of morals and free choice, or all that other nonsense. Instead, STALKER drops you into an environment: the post-apocalyptic fallout of the Chernobyl power plant, and you are put at its mercy and rules until the game promptly ends.

In that respect, it is a convincing world with a desolate atmosphere. You can stop walking along the barren roads, observe the sun beaming through a patch of clouds, see the trees and grass swaying ever so slightly, uncover a briefcase in an abandoned, rusted, truck, and then notice two mercenaries on an upcoming road heading towards you with guns ready. In much the same way of Oblivion, this is a world that you have entered, which happens to contain a narrative in it. It's not a narrative you enter which happens to contain a world around it. The difference between the two is that you can enjoy being immersed in a world without having to do some specific task, but it is much harder to enjoy being in a narrative without any specific task.

When games create their own worlds, it is an ambitious undertaking, and oftentimes the narrative can suffer as a result. Here are some ways that I think the narrative could be improved in STALKER.
Ways to improve the narrative in STALKER (the game, not the profession)!
1. Introduction of Conflict
There's a certain element that is needed to maintain interest in a story: conflict. This means there is an opposing force to your action: you try to do something (rescue a princess) and somebody tries to stop you (the evil Koopa king). What's the conflict introduced in KOTOR? The Sith attack the Endar Spire in order to capture Bastilla; you have to stop them. In The Elder Scrolls: Oblivion? The evil council of bad guys kill the king as you try to escape; you need to save his son. What about in Half-Life²? The opening scene in which the Combine have enslaved mankind; you need to rescue them.

All of these stories introduce conflict either in the opening scene, or very, very shortly after.

The sooner you introduce conflict in a story, the better, because it introduces an obstacle to overcome: a goal, and with that, a chance of failure, challenge, and victory. When I awoke in STALKER, there wasn't a sense of conflict. There was no power-push intro in which to establish an opposing force who would try to destroy me for the rest of the game. When the game started, I was in a little homey town in which I could wander and explore endlessly. This wasn't like the intro in Oblivion or KOTOR, in which I knew there was a larger goal at hand, a narrative which I needed to return to, which propelled my motivations forward even in the most mundane dialogs.

However, when I finally ventured out of my starting point in STALKER and encountered a group of loners fighting off mercenaries, that's immediately when the story (or world) became interesting to me. I finally felt that sense of a larger battle, a sense of an opposing force that I had to overcome, a goal to which I had to aspire. When the conflict was introduced, that's when I finally started caring.

2. Heart

I once saw somewhere that the "BioWare method" for side-quests was something akin to this: Make the player compelled to act because of an emotional connection to the character giving the side-quest. Why do we care to perform a "quest" for a non-player character? What's our motivation? In film and movies, the audience needs to sympathize with a character in order to care about that person. The same principle can apply to games. For example, don't just have an NPC come up to a character and say "Hey, can you kill these two bandits at this shed and I'll give you some gold?" Instead, give the NPC an emotional context in which to engage the player: "Hey, can you kill these two bandits because I'm a pilgrim and they stole my loot and murdered the rest of my family and now I am homeless and this evil gangster lord is out to kill me because I can't pay him back?" Which of the two is more engaging and compelling for the player to act? With the emotional back-story, or without?

As STALKER currently stands, there's not much of an emotional connection--there's not much heart to it. All the characters in the game exist as pointless mercenaries just sitting, waiting, guarding; shooting anything that enters their territory. That actually makes contextual sense, I guess, because why would there be any heart in the midst of bands of mercenaries in a desolate and mutated fallout region? Despite that, I still believe there should be more substance, more life to the characters in STALKER. They need to have more dreams, aspirations, lives, or cares; not just be sitting around waiting for something to happen or to shoot the next guy not on their patrol. Giving the characters more heart would give me more of reason to care for them (and then carry out the side-quest they give me!).

3. Player-Control
Rather than going into the myriad of problems associated with the second half of the plot (amnesia, wish-granting, meta-physical scientists, plot-twists) I'll just discuss the one of the player's control over the narrative.

The final scene in the game (depending on which ending you receive) takes place in the form of a granted wish (don't ask what this means in a science fiction story). You spend hours killing mutants and other mercenaries in order to get into the core of the power plant and approach the "Wish Granter," when suddenly the game takes over in a cut-scene showing you, the player, saying: "I wish... I could be rich/powerful/not-an-emotionless-loser!" and then the ceiling collapses on you and you die. What makes this so frustrating is that you spend all this time embodied in the protagonist (who up to this point was totally 1:1 with your actions) only to have him independently grant a seemingly arbitrary wish at the end which subsequently leads to your demise.

I don't want to play through a game, able to control my player's actions for the entirety of the time, only to have this control yanked away from me at the very end for the very last and crucial decision of the game. I don't want to play Half-Life 1, only to watch myself reach the final stage in Xen, then witness a cut-scene where Gordon falls into a pit because that was the presupposed ending the designers wanted you to have. I want to be able to control my actions, especially at the end, because that is when my actions (usually) matter the most--that is when I can resolve the conflict, and end the story.

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Interesting and compelling worlds in games are great, but there also should be something to direct a player's actions: a narrative. It should compel the players forward, encourage them to explore this world, and remind them of their goals, no matter how far astray they may run off. STALKER still stands on its own as a world, but without a strong enough narrative, it is not the complete and engaging experience that it could have been.