#linear game design

[mashounen1945]

I'm gonna try to put my two cents after reading other users' reblogs and replies.

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First of all, what does "open-world videogame" mean here?

Wait, no, I'll rephrase it better...

What's the difference between a game belonging to the open-world genre and a game merely having open-world elements? And at what point would a game become "too open-worlded"?

If having sidequests makes a game "open-worlded", then the Pokémon Gen 1 remakes released on the GBA belong to this genre. I've already seen quite a few people here arguing the Pokémon main series has had open-world elements and potential ever since its inception (although one user claims Pokémon lost its open-world traits around Gen 6, then Game Freak went to the opposite extreme and made Gen 9 too open-worlded while forgetting why the open-world elements worked well in the first few Pokémon generations). Another game series that had this kind of thing was Mega Man Battle Network -along with its continuation, the Mega Man Star Force trilogy-, but in this case, I've also seen people criticizing those games for making the player spend way too much time on "wild goose chases" (I'm in the middle of a Battle Network 2 playthrough right now, and I kinda have to agree with that).

If being open-world means having areas where you can leave the level progression aside for a moment and freely explore and do stuff other than beating levels and advancing on the story... That's just a hub world. Sonic Adventure already had at least three of them, and Sonic Unleashed also had a bunch of those (and it also had some sidequests, IIRC), as well as Sonic 06. Kirby and the Forgotten Land has a hub world, too.

If a game belongs to the open-world genre because it has multiple optional paths for the player to freely follow in any order they want -or several bosses for the player to also beat in any order they want-, then the older The Legend of Zelda titles (or at least A Link to the Past) and Metroid * -along with the entire Metroidvania genre- already have that (I think people mostly agree that the Metroid series is open-worlded enough and doesn't need the "Breath of the Wild treatment").

[* Namely, Zero Mission would be the maximum expression of open-world elements in any Metroid game (at least within the 2D ones), with all the sequence-breaking it allows. I thought about using Super Metroid as an example instead, but then I realized most of the sequence-breaking in Super Metroid is technically possible due to glitches and was probably not intended by the developers, unlike the "sick tricks" you can pull off in Zero Mission.]

Also, we should probably remind everyone of the difference between "open-world" and "sandbox". If I've read it correctly, "sandbox" is when the player can take stuff from different parts of the game and make new stuff with it in the game, like taking ingredients from different places and using them to make a potion you'd never get if you tried to find it in the game's world. If that already made a game "open-worlded", then Freedom Planet 2 would be an open-world game since it includes a gimmick of synthesizing custom potions out of items and stuff you collect throughout the game's levels, but everyone agrees on classifying it pretty firmly as a Sonic-inspired linear platformer (it does have multiple branching paths to follow, but that branching only happens on a couple of points for Story Reasons and the only way to "freely" explore all branches is by opening and simultaneously playing several save-files for each of the four playable characters).

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Someone else said in the tags that, despite enjoying Pokémon Violet, they had to play it with a guide. That sure sounds familiar to me: if I tried to play something like Breath of the Wild... I know what Zelda is about and how those games usually go, so I'm not totally uncultured on that front, but I'd still feel utterly lost the whole time, most likely. For similar reasons, the mere idea of playing either Ocarina of Time or The Wind Waker by myself for the first time is also making me feel a subtle existential dread, even though I have some interest in trying out any of them someday.

But the thing about a guide being required to enjoy playing an open-world game also reminds me of some very specific criticism I heard against The Legend of Zelda (the original one released for the NES back in the mid-1980s): that it's a "guide game" and you'll need to get from the Internet a detailed map of the game's entire world if you wanna play it. If the Zelda series released an open-world game that accidentally does this BS again, it'd be so hilariously ironic (and it's a deeply worrying thought, too).

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I have a suspicion that the current "open-world trend" is just an excuse to do the bare minimum during a game's development process: just grab a couple regions of the game's world, copy-paste them as much as the SD card's or the disc's max memory capacity allows to, make a few changes to each repetition of those few regions to pretend that they're unique in some way, put items or whatever in that world, and boom, you have a game. As others already said in various ways on the reblogs, making a decent open-world game requires commitment, planning, care, attention to detail and such, and game developers ain't putting in enough of all that lately.

There's a debate that needs to be had on who's at fault for this: the development teams being lazy, or the gaming companies not paying enough and not giving enough time to those development teams. But that's another story.

I would simply not make Pokemon an open world game

[nokillbananashelter]

People shit on BOTW’s Shrines WAY too much.

I replayed TOTK recently and am replaying BOTW now and I can safely say these shrines hold the fuck up. They are just as clever, just as creatively illuminating, just as focused mechanically, and just as varied and unique to eachother. The only one not is the Test of Strength shrines, and even those have more variance than people give credit for (because players tactics trend towards efficiency, not environmental novelty, in those fights… I think).

And that’s not the only thing that holds up, TOTK actually increased my appreciation for how linear BOTW *can* be if thats what you want out of it.

One of the biggest tricks these games pull off, IMO, is that the maybe most exciting and most cohesive experience narratively and gameplay loop wise is literally following the path as they point it to you-and that is neither immediately obvious nor desirable for so many players, that when you do find that path, it feels like you’ve uncovered something very special just by sticking to the road and the sign posts.

Both of these games played on rails are such great experiences. Following the path feels so subversive when you can go anywhere. It becomes novel to simply follow the story along it’s intended presentation and simply listen to what the game is telling you to stay on track.

The same goes for the shrines in both of these games- even though finding the wacky solution is what you’re probably going to find at first, when you find what the Shrine is actually wanting you to do, you uncover something very cool and very special. And not only that, they often teach you how to use your powers directly when you do, and it’s not just an arbitrary number go up mechanical reward. Both sets of shrines teach you functional things and are there to make you have a greater sense of knowledge about the game and how to you use your powers- which is something that supports the narrative purpose of the shrines. Link is being taught things by wise teachers at these shrines. That is such a clever reward and people do not sing that praise enough.

[trisarahtops-sketches]

Zelda! ✨🪄💫

[vaguely-concerned]

there's nothing quite like a dark souls game when you're really depressed. fromsoft places a hand on your shoulder and says "yeah no you're right. sometimes the whole world really is coming at you shrieking and flailing and trying to claw your face off and there is no hope in sight. what is left for us here but the deep sorrow of a magnificent beast doomed to a slow and possibly endless descent into ruin? here's a sword about it. go wild"

and then you stand there with tears in your eyes clutching your giant claymore to your chest like a lover and whisper "I. love my sword" and you do. you love that sword

[corvus-council]

Im in a pickle rn

Im making an interactive fiction dating sim for fun (nothing too serious, im just letting myself be whilst writing it) and now i have a problem

There are 6 characters you can romance here- 3 females and 3 males. Nothing wrong there until I SUDDENLY WANT IT TO BE A YAOI NOW

And the MC is a male bc idk how to change the gender and i am JUST learning how to code on my own

Send help

[rawliverandgoronspice]

man, I love A Link Between Worlds... sometimes I remember it, its hyper-competent yet humble design and storytelling proposal, and I genuinely think that makes it among my favorite Zelda games ;;

[namira]

Remember in like 2010 when it was in vogue for gamers to use "it's linear" as a criticism without any consideration towards genre, tone, etc.

[knightofleo]

Congrats on becoming the real Royal Rat Authority, its been a real fun time watching your escapades!!! DLC time perchance?

[cetoddle]

ppl who make their sims hyper realistic and super detailed are so strange to me. yeah they look pretty in cas and when you pose them for screenshots but i KNOW those goofy ass facial animations are not translating onto your blob of alpha cc in actual gameplay

[gu6chan]

perhaps as a ploy to become the world's most dedicated drakengard 3 hater, perhaps to strengthen my spite-based narrative design, perhaps even out of sheer desperation for drakengard content..... ive finally decided to do the unthinkable and holy shit i didn't even know it was possible but how is this even worse than i thought

[autolenaphilia]

I like linear games, despite “linear” becoming something of a dirty word about video games, especially in the open world craze that has dominated the mainstream game market for years now. And that’s a shame, because linear game design is an artform.

The great advantage of linear game design is pacing, structure and focus. Linear games are often not that long, at most often only 8-10 hours or so. You can’t really expect much more meaningful content out of a game developer, not without exhausting their well of creativity and how much of a single game a player can endure. And linear game design is putting that gameplay content in a coherent sequence for the player to experience.

Much of this design relies on pacing, creating a good gameflow, where each successive element builds on the previous one.

The most obvious is probably pacing the difficulty, going from easy to difficult. A good game usually introduces its mechanics in a simple and understandable way, gives the player easy challenges at first, and as the player develops their understanding of the gameplay mechanics, the game ramps up the difficulty to provide a consistent level of challenge. So in the end the game is not too easy and not too hard (depending on the difficulty option chosen). And instead of introducing mechanics all at once, the game maybe introduces them gradually during the early game, so that you learn one mechanic, and then another, instead of being overwhelmed by mechanics.

There is also pacing the gameplay to avoid monotony. Even action games can become too much if they are all fast paced action all the time. It can be important for an action game to have variation from the combat with exploration sequences or puzzle solving. And point-and-click adventure games may need to have variation between dialogue and puzzle solving.

Linear game design also allows for more coherent and complex storytelling. Story can matter in video games, and linear game design helps with that. Linear game design means that the developers can pace the development of the story alongside the gameplay. It allows the parts of the story to build on each other in a coherent and well-paced fashion. That doesn’t mean cutscenes, necessarily. Half-Life uses mainly environmental storytelling to tell an interesting story, and it does so in a very linear fashion.

Indeed the linearity of Half-life is part of the story. The game’s linearity reinforces how Gordon Freeman is ironically not a free man, but follows a path laid out for him by the G-man’s manipulations. The Max Payne series has similar themes about determinism and free will, reinforced by the linearity of its design. The second game has multiple levels taking place in an abandoned funhouse and the game makes those themes explicit by having him monologue that “A funhouse is a linear sequence of scares. Take it or leave it is the only choice given. Makes you think about free will: have our choices been made for us because of who we are?”

It’s a good comparison, a linear game is like a funhouse, or an amusement park ride. You get a linear sequence of gameplay and story, and you either take the ride and enjoy it, or you do not. It’s not lacking in interactivity, the player still get to actually play the game, they just don’t get a choice about the sequence of events. But if the game is well-designed, the sequence the developers offer makes sense, creates a coherent and well-paced experience, so you don’t care. Player choice is not everything, and offering a coherent tightly designed experience is a good thing for games.

It’s something that open world games can’t offer. They lack the focus and pacing of linear games. In your average open world game, the actual interesting gameplay and story content is often spread out haphazardly throughout a huge map, with lots of boring traveling. This old Prozd sketch pretty sums up the average open world experience, lots of walking between when actually interesting things happen. And non-linearity means that the various gameplay and story elements can’t build of each other in the tightly paced and coherent fashion of the best linear games. Often open world games boast of dozens upon dozens of hours of playtime, I’ve read boasts about a game having one hundred hours of gameplay. Yet because of human limits on time and creativity, the games don’t offer much more actually meaningful content than the “short” 8 hour linear games of old. Instead the rest is taken up by filler, such as travelling, and meaningless busywork sidequests like “fetch these materials” and “kill those enemies.”

I think the open world genre is part of the decline of mainstream “AAA” game design over the past fifteen years or so. Massive open world games with highly detailed realistic graphics require massive resources to create. It’s one thing that can justify the massive budgets of big game studios, and provide something that small indie devs can’t. That’s why it’s the only type of single-player genre that mainstream devs release nowadays. But it’s quantity over quality, replacing carefully tuned game design with just more content. Filler sidequests are often churned out by over-worked developers being ruthlessly exploited.

It’s also a way to justify predatory “games as a service” monetization with DLC, as it is easy to just add more content to an open world game (for a prize) compared to a small linear one. It’s easy to see when you compare modern game DLC to the expansion packs of linear AAA single-player games of old. An expansion pack in the 90s and 00s was often a short but substantial game of its own, with its own campaign and story taking about 3-5 hours to justify its existence.

Things being better in the past is often a conservative lie, but triple-aaa game development sure was. I love to play mainstream games from the 00s, and it’s stunning how well-designed they can be. And it’s partly because these developers were good at linear single-player game design, something we tend to only see in indie games today. The open world genre has proven to be fertile ground for triple-AAA games to grow its worst habits into the shambles it is today.

[ms-all-sunday]

in op world seeker nami is described as "a flamboyant young woman with red hair" and i think that's my favourite description of nami I've ever seen

so far op world seeker is the most engaging one of these games story wise. its gameplay is mid, true, (i like the combat, for the record.) but the fact oda wrote the games story does shine through immediately.

[singlecoilneckpickup]

i wish someone would beat it into nintendo’s skull that “open world” doesn’t automatically equate to “good content”

you can’t just slap shit into an open world with zero narrative context or tie-in or even just… out-in-the-world intrigue. you can’t tie stats to puzzles and expect me to care after i’m at a comfortable point with stats. you can’t expect me care about cool pieces of gear and their effects when half the time they require a set that you probably won’t be wearing anyway because you’ll need some other effect one single piece gives you from some other set.

like…. idk man. the themes they play with and a lot of the environmental storytelling in botw specifically is pretty solid. but fuck me is the gameplay-exploration loop just…. bad.

and the stupid part is that this 100% could also apply to [insert Fallout/TES game here]. but like at least Generic Skyrim Cave #132 might have a tunnel to Blackreach or some note that’ll point me towards treasure or a different cave or a quest or something. like give me a reason that isn’t just stats.

if i wanted that i would have just played a final fantasy.

also the cooking system as a substitute is lazy and bad (albeit fun and sometimes enjoyable) and serves zero purpose outside of game padding, and every time i have to stop and spend several minutes cooking with the worlds clunkiest inventory ui just makes me want to eat my switch.

[lesbianshadowheart]

How I sleep knowing Aloy is a lesbian and HZ3 will not have dating sim-like romance options

[addoves]

i think in terms of dungeon and battle style berseria is my least favorite. you can really tell where arise branched off from this game. the story and characters are really good and fun though so that makes up for it

[artist-mallow]

On one hand I understand why dungeons in 14 are linear but on the other hand I missed when dungeons in MMOs were treated more as places of danger and not something you have to do so regularly as part of the design so they have to be short and linear. Idk after getting my teeth into HW and thinking back to my earlier days of WoW, it makes me kinda miss that.

On the other hand though, the longer something is out (trials, df, yadda yadda) the more I feel like people expect you to know the ins and outs of everything so the less I have to memorize in order to not be “dead weight” the better, so call it a wash. But at the cost of what makes the genre fun? Idk…

Still love HW though and I can see why people hype it up. HW good…