Next Generation Think Tank

[kr1shnak [deprecated]]

I'd like to see a higher level of "dynamic scenarios" in games. I recently got a 360 and have been playing Gears of War, and the amount of obvious triggered events is just depressing. Half-Life 2 also suffers from this. Replaying certain encounters in GoW seems to yield very little difference in the behaviour of the enemies. Halo 1 was great at this, Halo 2 somewhat less so.

So: less scripted, triggered events. Most interesting scenarios that let you try different approaches to solve the problems/win the fight. More emergent behaviours and scenarios.

I guess what I'm really asking for is more sophisticated level design and better AI.

 

[David Miscavidge]

have been playing Gears of War, and the amount of obvious triggered events is just depressing. Half-Life 2 also suffers from this.

There's a time and a place for such event-scenes. I thought the scripted sequences in Half Life 2 were excellent, top-drawer user-navigable cinematic experiences. Sure, it would've been even cooler if they could change and vary based on contingency, but could you imagine working for Valve and having to write, design, flow-chart, script, voice-act, etc, for such contingency? Sheesh.

Then again, back to Deus Ex. In my couple of playthroughs of the much-maligned Deus Ex 2:Invisible War, I was shocked by the amount of possible variances and outcomes based on which characters got killed early on and which factions you allied yourself with.

Oblivion did this stuff a lot too, tho it seemed to me that Bethesda played a bit fast and loose with programming; More than once I had to go to the command-line to re-animate critical NPCs who had somehow been caused to die earlier, in unrelated quests. (One character is actually prone to falling off of a bridge--unprovoked, by himself! And you can't buy a house in that town without him.)

 

[patbox [deprecated]]

I guess what I'm really asking for is more sophisticated level design and better AI.

Yeah I'm in the same boat. With this generation I don't really care about shiny graphics, amazing textures or whatever. I think game development and the use of development-tools is allowing the creation of games where it doesn't have to be utterly amazing to be great-looking. We need evolution in game-design - its good to see some developers doing just this in games like Bioshock, Mass Effect, Assassin's Creed (although I'm starting to fear this will turn into a cash-in) and what not. I really hope this generation brings in real 'mature' games, not just fragfests or whatever. PCs have had this benefit in the past with the likes of Half-Life and System Shock, but it seems these companies are abandoning the sinking ship that is the PC industry and making for greener pastures. A good sign for console videogames, maybe they will breathe some fresh air into it.

 

[Russ Pitts]

I guess what I'm really asking for is more sophisticated level design and better AI.

Yeah I'm in the same boat. With this generation I don't really care about shiny graphics, amazing textures or whatever. I think game development and the use of development-tools is allowing the creation of games where it doesn't have to be utterly amazing to be great-looking. We need evolution in game-design - its good to see some developers doing just this in games like Bioshock, Mass Effect, Assassin's Creed (although I'm starting to fear this will turn into a cash-in) and what not. I really hope this generation brings in real 'mature' games, not just fragfests or whatever. PCs have had this benefit in the past with the likes of Half-Life and System Shock, but it seems these companies are abandoning the sinking ship that is the PC industry and making for greener pastures. A good sign for console videogames, maybe they will breathe some fresh air into it.

Ironically, this kind of ties into the "are you sick of Zelda' thread for me. As far as l;level design goes, anyway. Because that's one of the things that really impressed me with Twilight Princess - the amount of effort put into some of the levels. But level design is a tricky nut to crack, because there were just as many levels in Twilight Princess that made me want to throw a Wiimote against the wall as there were ones that had me jumping out of my chair (as Simon Cowell says) with excitement.

I guess level design is like any other trade, you have to start somewhere, and level designers rarely srping fully formed from the head of Zeus, ready to have you bouncing off the walls with metal boots and giant magnets.

I know a lot of devs are learning lessons from past failures (sometimes from each other) and I can see little islands of genius-level thinking cropping up around the industry, but I think level design is more of an art than a science. We're right to expect perfection, but it's not always going to come.

 

[patbox [deprecated]]

As far as l;level design goes, anyway. Because that's one of the things that really impressed me with Twilight Princess - the amount of effort put into some of the levels.

Yeah I will agree on some of the great level design in Twilight Princess. As I said on the other thread, I did thoroughly enjoy it, and I think the water temple in TP was one one of the most well designed temples I've played in a while. I just think TP was missing a lot - at some point it became too easy, there wasn't enough sidequests, there didn't seem to be the same 'feeling' that one gets from galloping through Hyrule, the town was large, yet uninteresting, the story died half way through even though they had the perfect chance to steer out of the Ganondorf rut they've been in for a while. But I'm sure you've heard all of this before.

Nintendo make great games, but in the case of Zelda, they seem to be recreating the same great game. I think that is starting to happen a lot in the industry as well. We're getting all these great games, but nothing new. I'm not necessarily begging for innovation (that seems a bit of a cliche these days), but we do need some originality, both in storylines and game design.

 

[Tarmanydyn]

This isn't something directly tied into next gen technology, but I'd like to see more developers taking the virtue of "when it's done". To me, that would solve most all problems that would be apparent in most games. I know for a fact Blizzard uses that methodology, and I'm fairly certain Flagship Studios (Hellgate) and Destination Games (Tabula Rasa) are using it as well. Granted they are both MMO's, and WoW set the bar for 'how to launch an MMO', but I hope that if/when their success is seen, the methodology will be picked up.

 

[hammarus]

Just like the political saying "Its the economy stupid". In the gaming world, "Its the game stupid". Consoles have very little to do with it. Oh the new ones are always "shiny", but the luster wears off quickly if the game selection blows. The best games of all time have always been those with staying power, and the games with staying power have always been those with a certain level of re-playability.
One need look no further than the modern day grandfather of games, Monopoly. Or the ancient forefathers of all gaming, a deck of cards and a chessboard.

 

[Tarmanydyn]

One need look no further than the modern day grandfather of games, Monopoly. Or the ancient forefathers of all gaming, a deck of cards and a chessboard.

Interesting way of looking at it, I suppose a simple way of applying those games to video today would be:

Monopoly: Party games and PVP

Deck of Cards: Modability

Chess: Depth

 

[Dom Camus]

Just like the political saying "Its the economy stupid". In the gaming world, "Its the game stupid". Consoles have very little to do with it.

It is indeed the game, but apart from that I think you have it wrong. Because in theory this console power could be used to bring us games which were simply never possible before.

Consider fantasy adventure games, for example. They started as text. Increasing graphical power then made games like FF-VI possible, then later games like Baldur's Gate II became possible. Now we have decent real-time 3D worlds to explore. Maybe next it will be possible to have full scale fantasy battle games like the siege of Helm's Deep from the LotR movie, but interactive. Each of these technical advances makes new kinds of gameplay possible. That matters a lot.

I think what blinds people to this fact is the way that greater console power is so often wasted. Tekken 2 blew me away when it came out on the Playstation. Tekken 5 made me yawn and find something else to so. But it didn't have to be that way.

In fact "wasted" is sometimes better than we get. Lemmings clearly never wanted to be 3D.

So for me the question is not what the new consoles will make possible, but how much of that possibility will make it into real games. Developers are not all idiots, they just have their hands tied by the need to make money from what they create.

Or to put it another way: It's the economy stupid. ;-)