the antithesis said:
I got frustrated like this in the Medical Pavilion in Bioshock as I was hunting around for where I was supposed to go next. Just hunting around and looking at the map to see where I haven't gone yet. But even in "sandbox" style games, the play is still linear. It's just that you have to find/activate activate the story missions to get to it. Maybe I haven't seen the better examples, but I find so-called non-linear games to be just as linear, only with that linearity hidden somewhat.
It all comes down to story structure, I suppose and how that works as far as linearity goes. I once read a book on storytelling which said that the only meaningful decision James Bond ever makes is whether or not to take the case. If he refuses, he would have to resign from HMSS and all that, so naturally he takes the case, but he never makes a single meaningful decision after that. Everything he does is just the natural progression of that initial meaningful decision. (This book was published before the Daniel Craig movies, so they might not fit this generalization)
This same observation could be made of other genres and properties. Batman learns that the Joker is stealing billboards that look like giant versions of giant objects. He can either decide to stop the Joker, or just let him have his fun. Watch "Law & Order" sometime and the same meaningful decision is here, too. The cops are assigned the case, so they really don't have much choice unless they wish to resign. But occasionally, particularly on "Law & Order SVU," there'll be a scene where the investigating officer is approached by the captain because "this one is hitting too close to home" and offers to take them off the case. Why? So the officer can insist on staying on the case and seeing it through to the end. It's so they can make a meaningful decision, even if it is a hollow illusion.
What meaningful decisions are made in Bioshock? How you gather Adam? Oh, please. That has absolutely no bearing whatsoever on the game or the story with two exceptions: 1) depending on whether or not you kill the Little Sisters, you get either the good or bad ending and 2) choosing the "bad" action just gives you a slight in-game advantage of gaining more Adam. Everything else that happens in the game is exactly the same.
I was thinking about this the other day. Who is the main character? Why did he get into the bathysphere and go to Rapture? Was he heading to Rapture and the plane crashed? (I don't know if this is revealed later as I am avoiding spoilers at the moment) If he wasn't going to Rapture in the first place, why would he go into the bathysphere? Wouldn't it make more sense to stay on the surface and await rescue and try to help other survivors? It would but Sitting Around Like Possum Giblets On the Highway Waiting For Rescue just is not all that exciting a game. The only real meaningful decision the player ever makes is to play the game in the first place. That's it. Not going into the bathysphere means not playing the game. Not doing what Atlas tells you means not playing the game. To be honest, I don't think there's anything wrong with that.
Linearity is always going to be there no matter what. Even if Bioshock have been a large, decrepit, underwater sandbox where you could bump into ordinary citizens and either chat amicably with them about their day or murder them in cold blood and loot the bodies and story missions that would allow you to either work for Atlas and the resistance or Ryan and maintain the status quo, there would still be a linear progression to it. It's because life is linear. What seems to be considered non-linear gaming these days is not really non-linear so much as just mucking around in an environment until that gets boring and you follow the linear story missions anyway.
I suppose a game where real meaningful decisions is possible, but it is likely to come on twenty DVD-ROMs and require a 4 TB hard drive just to contain all the data, and that's just if it's done in text adventure style with no graphics. (although, if someone knows of such a game that even comes close to offering meaningful decisions, I'd be interested in hearing about it. I understand Fallout 1 and 2 fit this bill somewhat)
I'm starting to meander a bit. My thoughts are organized like a pile of dirty socks. But I want to touch on your second point before I regret posting all of this.
Frankly, I'm finding the game to be fucking impossible at this point. I'm up to where I get to collect some Adam and I find battling the Big Daddies an unwelcomed chore. Actually, I find the combat in general to be an unwelcomed chore. I could go into specifics but basically I find the first person shooter genre to be needlessly difficult for a number of reasons that do not have to be.
My and many other's favorite weapon in the first two Doom games was the shotgun because it was one of the more effective weapons in the game. I never used the pistol because it was ridiculously ineffective. It never managed to take down even a basic zombie without requiring several hits which gave them plenty of time to shoot back a couple times. The shotgun could take down a couple zombies in a single blast if you lined them up properly. It was less effective against higher monsters, but that's what the rocket launcher and plasma guns were for. Where I'm going with this is that I have yet to find a shotgun in Bioshock. By this I mean not the shotgun proper but a weapon that I find effective against the low-level crunchies. I find my entire arsenal ridiculously ineffective.
Part of this is my ham-handed aiming abilities. If they ever make a game where the object is to shoot a wall right next to the bad guys, I will be KING! This is made worse by everyone dodging like acrobatic monkeys. Maybe expecting the zombies to sit still while I draw a bead on them is unreasonable, but being completely unable to get them in my crosshairs because they move too fucking fast compared to how I'm able to manipulate the controls is also unreasonable.
Part of this is my difficulty in navigating my currently small arsenal quickly using the interface. Having to choose between ammo types is a bit of a pain in the ass. I find the wheel mouse to be way to touchy to use effectively. I'll need to switch to the number keys or shift button to see if that's any better.
What this all boils down to is that Doom was probably the last first person shooter I enjoyed and that was partially because it was primitive compared to the modern shooters where you look up and down as well as side to side. It's like my complaints about 3D platformers. The extra dimension doesn't just add a single additional variable but multiplies the number of variables to a degree that I find play unmanageable.
It would be easy to dismiss my complaints as just an old fart complaining about games he's just no good at playing, but I can't help but wonder if some of the gameplay design decisions are not there just to make things more difficult arbitrarily. Because I would like to like Bioshock just as i would like to like Psychonauts and, hell, even games like Halo. But when I find myself getting frustrated more than I'm having fun. Those glowy green phone booth things you go to after you die are no comfort to a mediocre skilled player like myself. They don't make things easier. It just means I have to go all the way back to where I was only now I have a lot less ammo and med kits, so it's going to be even harder now.
I finally got around to reading this ( I love long posts, just hardly have the time - ) and it appears I've mislead you. I'm no industry professional, but I've made some pretty badass usermaps that people like that have gotten thousands of downloads, and I've made some duke maps sorta better than the game designers (According to other people), but it's not like I'm paid to do it or its my job - but I do have the mindset that you seem to describe.
Things I appreciate is more of "Oh, yeah, he did THAT here, yeah, I've done that..." or "Oh, that's quaint, I would have never thought of it" as opposed to actually being there. It's very strange, but it makes me play most games as a complete joke. Honestly, I just stood still at the start there, I don't even hesitate when going into a dark room, and the moving water example had me splashing about and hitting the walls with my wrench for a while.
What you said about "cutscenes where you can move the camera" pretty much sums up how I've felt about all scripted events. It's all just smoke and mirrors when it comes down to it - if the game really allowed the player to interact in a fashion that did anything as remotely awesome as breaking holes in the glass on demand to flood sections of the area, or if AI actually acted like it did in the cutscene with the splicer on the bathysphere, the game industry would be a lot different, a lot more open ended (I mean actually open ended) and a lot more interesting.
Sandbox games are often sort of cop-outs to most players. "I paid 60 bucks for a game, not a toybox where I have to create my OWN game..." Honestly, I really enjoyed GTA 3 which is probably the pioneer of the "sandbox game" genre, but it seems that the other 20-30 I've seen (from Spiderman 2 to True Crime: Streets of LA to Prototype) are very, very similar.
GTA3 was good because it was original and probably the most polished/well designed example of the game I've seen. Even though it advances with its tiny leaps and bounds, the current pinnacle simply doesn't interest me. It just comes down to having a huge hub level with a bunch of optional pointless things to do, or going on these little quests around that giant level - which might as well just be a linear game aside from the occasional "open choice" which comes down to a problem vs a choice anyway... (Do I use the fast car or the slow car...?)
In the Medical Pavilion, the game gives you the illusion of an open level, but it's really just you have to go to point A to unlock the ability that lets you proceed to point B to get the ability to let you go to point C. Etc, etc. Zelda's done it for 15 years. Megaman had a similar style of play. That's just how it's done for some reason. It's true, the games are still linear or else there would be no progression, which is what most gamers are looking for. I agree with you completely.
When it comes down to "meaningful decision," perhaps it's just me being too jaded from bad storylines, but I don't quite see how the batman and law & order examples really are meaningful decisions. If you mean that they characterize the character's determination and such, accepting Atlas' plea in Bioshock to help find his family seems about as legitimate to me. None of it really makes sense, but it's obvious you can't just say "NO, I'M GONNA HANG AROUND HERE FOR THE REST OF THE GAME/show/movie/whatever." If you had that choice, you wouldn't have a game, eh?
The only real "moral choice" in Bioshock comes down to the little sisters, and yeah, it has barely any outcome on the game. Honestly, it's not even much of a choice. If one option is better for the player, they'd do that aside from their own preconceptions from their society. Of course most players will go good and that's fine - it's not like it makes the game much more difficult. Just saying that they should at least give equal benefits to each side, or make both sides sort of bad so you have to pick a lesser evil that isn't obvious when you choose...But that's a complaint about moral choice system in general. It's not too important.
I'm trying to not spoil anything, but this is hard here: Your plane crash was arranged, and you were called down into Rapture via a neural connection with someone down there or something like that. It doesn't make sense at the start, but they give you some explanation later. I found it very illogical as well. Like, "YEAH, I KNOW IF I JUST SURVIVED A CRASH LIKE THAT, THE FIRST THING I'D DO IS GO INSIDE THIS LIGHTHOUSE!" - Who in their right mind would even attempt to go into that bathysphere? :/
Your quote here is probably my favorite: "What seems to be considered non-linear gaming these days is not really non-linear so much as just mucking around in an environment until that gets boring and you follow the linear story missions anyway."
I couldn't have said it better myself. It's true, unfortunately, and you know, back in 2001 when GTA3 came out, that in itself was a marvel to behold. It was new, it was interesting, and it was fun. Nonlinear gaming nowadays feels more like a chore. "Oh, I have to collect a bunch of hidden stuff, or take pictures from these balconies, etc, etc..." especially with the addition of achievements, but eh, I won't go into that. Games sporting their "nonlinear gameplay" title basically mean that you have plenty of stuff to do that you don't have to which is entirely useless to the game's "plot" which you progress through by heading from spot to spot and watching cutscenes to introduce them. Especially in something like Farcry 2, which is more of a "hell, what am I supposed to do next?" type of game than most of the ones I've seen over the years.
Real meaningful decisions I've never quite seen done, but Fallout 2 is probably the best example I can think of. Perhaps Deus Ex if you're into it. I suppose it would take some getting used to, but you might like it if you can tolerate some unintuitive control schemes/interface options. (But it's not like Fallout 2 is intuitive, so I guess that wouldn't matter.)
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As for your difficulties in the game, I feel that I understand. The first time I had to switch to WASD + mouse made me feel awkward and my aim was like I had never touched a computer before. Honestly, I still love the arrow keys and ctrl/shift/alt/space and comma/period to strafe setup, but it's sort of ineffective these days. Especially since, as you said, another dimension was added so you have to actually aim up and down (it's not Wolfenstein 3D anymore.
).
Bioshock really has some stupid design choices with the weaponry. I don't think it should take half a clip from an SMG to kill a splicer. That's just stupid, but that's how the game is. Ammo is relatively scarce as well, which is very much a problem if you have trouble aiming well. To be completely serious, even though it's frustrating, it's easily possible to do the whole game with the wrench because of vita chambers. Just run in a room of 10 of them, kill two, die, respawn, run in, kill two, die, respawn, etc, until the room is done.
My best guess is that Plasmid combos are supposed to be useful - they are early on, but as the game goes on it seems to be less of the case. Honestly, the shock + wrench hit did it pretty well for me against most splicers, but eh...
The game's combat system feels clunky as all hell. Slow, awkward. It's as if it was tacked on, but I suppose that's how combat systems usually are in slower-paced shooters. Each weapon in Bioshock doesn't really seem to have a strength as opposed to a situation to use it, and the ammo types are an unnecessary addition that made me smile at first but then I realized how pointless they were most of the time. It just gives you more garbage to switch to when a certain thing happens.
ie: "Oh, you have a shotgun! That shotgun's great, right? Hey, you know why? Let's add some special ammo for it! Isn't that cool? But wait! If the weapon was ok in the first place, why ever use the special ammo? HEY, I'LL TELL YA WHY! We added a gimmicky enemy that is immune/very strongly resistant to your normal shotgun attack, so you have to switch the ammo type when he's there! We'll make sure to throw him at you at regular intervals just to make sure you know you have a key that changes ammo type. You'll never use your other ammo type for anything else, because you'll be saving it for when this guy shows up, and the regular ammo type is about as good as this one against all other enemies."
^ I swear, that must have been what they were thinking. "Hey, our engine allows our guns to have a secondary fire, Bob!" "That's not too useful in THIS game, Tim." "What if we dick the player over by forcing them to use other ammo types in certain situations, Bob?" "Brilliant Tim! Have a promotion."
Honestly, I don't use the wheel mouse setup. I use the 12345 etc keys when I can, and rightclick to swap for plasmids...forgot my ammo change key, but it's not the default. I play with ESDF and the mouse so I can have more keys for my left hand's pinky to hit, so I think changing ammo was A or something. It's been a while since I started the game, hehe. In other games, I have individual keys bound to different weapons, at least popular ones. So instead of, say, mousewheel up and down being "change guns between 6 I don't want and 3 I do" it's just mousewheel up is my rocket launcher, mousewheel down is my shotgun, and W, R, Q, A or Z are other guns I like. Along with 12345 (since reaching over to press 7 to get the BFG was annoying as hell, right?)
If Doom is the last game you've enjoyed because of the simplicity of it all, there's plenty of older FPS games that are a lot better when it comes to forgivingness with things like that.
Players like me who have been using the mouse to aim for 10ish years since Unreal Tournament came out find Bioshock slower and easy. The enemies move fast, but if you move with them and lead ahead of them, they sort of run into your crosshair most of the time. I lead them around corners and just wait with my crosshair pointed at where they'll pop up sometimes.
It is undoubtful that many of the gameplay decisions are there to make the game more difficult. One thing the game could have really made itself better by having would have been a FLASHLIGHT. I can't stand fighting enemies I can't see, which is why Doom 3 was really damn annoying to me. (In doom 3 you had a flashlight but couldn't mount it on your guns, so you had to choose between being able to see your enemy or being able to kill them).
And some of the game design issues I'm not sure if they meant or not. I found it too dark, a bit cramped, enemies move too fast compared to the player speed, and maybe this was just me, but even with headphones on, it was hard to tell how close enemies were. I got a good sense of if their talking was to my left or right, but was it above me? Below me? A room away? Behind a wall I'm right next to? I couldn't tell.
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All I can really help you with is that saying quicksave/quickload are my favorite two keys in most FPS Games. In Bioshock I think it's F6 and F7, might be F5 and F9 (though I think that's Fallout 3). The in-game options menu should have a control scheme that tells you what it is, and I rely on those CONSTANTLY.
Saving my game frequently helps a lot and removes a lot of the challenge. It helps to know what enemies are in a room, where they are, where they'll come from, what they'll attack with, etc, etc.
Try turning up your mouse sensitivity if you find your aiming to be too slow, or turning it down if you've having trouble with precision (able to get the crosshair CLOSE to the enemy, but not quite on them).
I'm sure there are cheats if you wish to progress through the game, but you strike me as the type of person who would rather be able to continue without breaking the experience so much as being invulnerable.
Perhaps you could download and install a mod that changes weapon damage or something. I'm not sure.
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Anyway, this long winded post doesn't quite have a conclusion, at least not one that I was hoping to give you where I was able to fix your problems and explain your questions, but at least I was able to agree and elaborate on some points. Hope you get to read it all, sorry for the late reply.
