Taking On "Detrimental" Isometric Game Design

[-Dragmire-]

Playing an isometric game feels like watching a theater play from the balcony. To some that's disengaging, to me that draws me in.


[small]... Just saw Book of Mormon, twas awesome![/small]

 

[Sylocat]

I too find the isometric view to be rather... crude. It makes me think of the cruddy graphics of early attempts to use it to replicate 3D. The only really good version of it I remember from the early days was in Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars, but that was because they also allowed you the straight NSEW axis (and it broke up the stumbling around with a more straightforward RPG combat system).

Though this does remind me of Naya's Quest [http://jayisgames.com/archives/2013/09/nayas_quest.php], a Flash game that took the fundamental limits of the isometric viewpoint and made a puzzle out of them.

 

[Llil]

Well, I feel like nitpicking a little, so here goes:

Most games that people call "isometric" aren't isometric at all. They are usually using a dimetric projection, sometimes trimetric (Fallout 1&2) or some sort of oblique projection (Ultima 6&7). But I guess the usual 2:1 perspective is close enough to isometric that I shouldn't worry too much about it. Something like Fallout is clearly not isometric, though.

I only complain because I care! This is really interesting stuff.

 

[gaving7095]

Well done Yahtzee - I also agree wholeheartedly & have, by & large, never been a fan of isometric games.

 

[Nazulu]

Dammit Yahtzee! I'm so offended. In fact I became so offended that I took offense to myself, and then forgot what I was originally offended by.

I don't remember playing many isometric games other than all the RTS games, so maybe I don't have the experience, but I really can't recall ever being bothered by feeling far away or that it looks predictably gamey. Even when they told an interesting story in some RTS games, I still became 'immersed', I think. I still call StarCraft and Red Alert atmospheric.

However, I agree with the diagonal movement and getting lost in the foreground/background bit. It was a little issue I had with The Binding Of Isaac, as I could only shoot in 4 directions unlike my movement, and some of the enemy's would fling a whole lot of fire towards you and it was hard to tell where it was going to land. I had to carefully lookout for incoming shadows, and I found it somewhat annoying.

I'm curious to know if the isometric view would bother you as much if you were in space. Or anyone else in that matter. Maybe with little platforms here in there, but they didn't look so flat, if you know what I mean.

 

[loa]

I never had a problem with bastions perspective since it doesn't pull a devil may cry and thinks it's a platformer now.
Problems only arise once you add precision jumping puzzles.
See landstalker for the genesis as a prime example of that nonsense.

The "which direction is up?" thing is also a non-issue in the day and age of analog sticks which basically turn isometric games into top down ones gameplay-wise and most good isometric games will let you move up if you press up because they're 8-directional.

As for only seeing the floor, well that's top-down for ya. It's nothing inherently exclusive to isometry.
I bet you'd never criticize a zelda or a pokemon that way though.

 

[Grimh]

I'm fine with Isometric perspective in games. It works really well in some games I think, though admittedly those games are usually older ones. It's not exactly one of my favorites though, that's third person view. I even dream my dreams in that perspective.

 

[CaitSeith]

I'm into the storytelling aspect of games, and there's not enough context going on in chess for me. What nations do these armies represent? Am I the only one picking up on the subtle sexual tension between the queen and the bishop?

That's actually funny. And what's more funny is that some of the best isometric games in the last years are turn based strategy games (chess-like games) where the pieces have dramatic stories.

 

[Thanatos2k]

Well sure, using an analog to control something isometrically sometimes won't be as good, but using a mouse it's a piece of cake - click where you want to go and there you go.

Click-to-move has an inherently distancing effect in games for me, as it removes the player from the active process of moving. I'm not moving my avatar, I'm telling them where to go and like Yahtzee said I feel like a separate entity in the sky.

....So? Why are we acting like this is some kind of flaw?

What it also allows you to do is shift your attention to other things once you've given the move order. Like figuring out what you're going to do after you get there, or queueing up actions, or moving someone else.

 

[Cerebrawl]

Well sure, using an analog to control something isometrically sometimes won't be as good, but using a mouse it's a piece of cake - click where you want to go and there you go.

Click-to-move has an inherently distancing effect in games for me, as it removes the player from the active process of moving. I'm not moving my avatar, I'm telling them where to go and like Yahtzee said I feel like a separate entity in the sky.

I hate click to move in real time games because it's a horrible horrible control method. Not because it distances me from the play, but because it's so damn clunky, it has no place in an action/twitch game. NONE. Don't tell me there's a good reason for the attack and movement inputs to use the same controls, when reactions matter, it's just stupid.

It's fine for turn-based though.

 

[Zombie Badger]

Well sure, using an analog to control something isometrically sometimes won't be as good, but using a mouse it's a piece of cake - click where you want to go and there you go.

Click-to-move has an inherently distancing effect in games for me, as it removes the player from the active process of moving. I'm not moving my avatar, I'm telling them where to go and like Yahtzee said I feel like a separate entity in the sky.

....So? Why are we acting like this is some kind of flaw?

What it also allows you to do is shift your attention to other things once you've given the move order. Like figuring out what you're going to do after you get there, or queueing up actions, or moving someone else.

Because if the game requires me to be invested in its story or action I need to feel a direct connection to what I'm doing; I got far more invested in Fallout New Vegas than in Fallout 2 because I felt more present in the game world. However my favourite game is still Planescape Torment despite it being isometric because Torment was entirely about the dialogue which I was directly involved in.

 

[Thanatos2k]

Well sure, using an analog to control something isometrically sometimes won't be as good, but using a mouse it's a piece of cake - click where you want to go and there you go.

Click-to-move has an inherently distancing effect in games for me, as it removes the player from the active process of moving. I'm not moving my avatar, I'm telling them where to go and like Yahtzee said I feel like a separate entity in the sky.

....So? Why are we acting like this is some kind of flaw?

What it also allows you to do is shift your attention to other things once you've given the move order. Like figuring out what you're going to do after you get there, or queueing up actions, or moving someone else.

Because if the game requires me to be invested in its story or action I need to feel a direct connection to what I'm doing; I got far more invested in Fallout New Vegas than in Fallout 2 because I felt more present in the game world. However my favourite game is still Planescape Torment despite it being isometric because Torment was entirely about the dialogue which I was directly involved in.

Why do you have to imagine you're the character in order to be invested in the story or action?

Fallout 2 is leagues better than New Vegas, and a tactical RPG battle system beats out a dumbed down shooter. I was invested in the gameplay, which is far better in Fallout 2.

 

[Kinitawowi]

So there was me singing the praises of the Spectrum.

Of course, whether isometric perspective presents a "true" 3-D view is arguable - the player in these games is "positioned" somewhere up in the air, outside the playing area, so any game using the technique looks forced, like a technical drawing. Though its representation of object and rooms may be highly effective, if we're going to nit-pick we can't say isometric perspective gives a realistic view.

But the technique has proved perfectly satisfactory for countless games, and it's pointless to damn them all for lack of realism.

More significantly, it will be interesting to see if the market for isometric graphics ever dries up, and if the public will one day reject the genre as outdated and overused, just as it once refused to accept any more Pacman clones.

 

[Smooth Operator]

It is true that the presentation is jarring for human eyes because we only ever see in perspective view and all the others don't make sense.
But on the other hand you can present things with solid accuracy all the time, and you can put a 3D world into sprites since everything maintains it's size and angle. Which makes all the visual assets far far cheaper to make, and because they are only sprites it also takes very little power to run no matter how detailed the environment.

Obviously it's only a substitute for when you haven't got the time/money to go full 3D.
But going up close and personal also requires the visual fidelity to jump 20x, and if you can't get it there shit might turn out far more disconnected then with sprites. Fallout was mentioned already and makes for a good example, even though the new ones came with 12 years of technological advancement they really didn't feel that far away, because their 3D fidelity (especially with characters) is still pretty damn poor.

 

[srpilha]

All that being said, it is now high time for a storytelling-oriented challenge in Uncivil Wars.

MAKE IT HAPPEN !

 

[Mexen]

I have to agree with most of his points although I tend to get over it in most JRPGs I play that take the isometric path.

I supposed for me, it comes down to how much "control" the game is offering. Simple turn-based JRPGs work just fine to me (there's something mechanical about them that I quite enjoy) but I'd hate to have an isometric map with ludicrous "free-flowing" seamless interactivity that would be far more suitable for "real" 3D.

 

[DeathQuaker]

I think the thing to take home from this, even if you are a gamer who likes isometric play, is that designers really need to think about how to handle camera movement and the UI for an isometric game even more carefully than, perhaps, for other game perspectives. I've played isometric games that are intuitive and makes the best use of its format (such as, as Yahtzee notes, games requiring some field tactics), and I've played ones where movement and such feels frustrating or clunky. As a matter of fact, Bastion was one of the latter for me -- I am a PC gamer and don't have a controller for my games (most of the kind of games I prefer tend to play well if not preferably with mouse and keyboard), and the keyboard/mouse commands in Bastion really felt awkward. Yes, it was set on the diagonal and you almost always had to be pressing two movement keys at any one time to move effectively, and playing after awhile made my hands hurt (which is part of why I've never finished the game, even though it is a lovely game with a compelling story). There's other annoying factors in isometric games surely.... especially when indeed they weren't built on 3D engines and you couldn't zoom in or out or rotate the camera (a "feature" some indies recreate in the name of nostalgia). I recall several moments in Baldur's Gate 2 where I couldn't loot bodies (including my own PCs if they'd died) because they'd fallen behind a piece of scenery.

I do like isometric play and it doesn't affect my immersion -- rather, I don't need to picture "myself" in the game world, I am just as absorbed watching a story from a distance (like watching TV, but interactive, which is what for me makes it immersive and engaging). And that's a lucky thing for me--because first person perspective unfortunately makes me physically ill, a condition/situation that is getting worse as I get older. (And before someone asks, altering FOV can sometimes mitigate but does not eliminate the problem.) And some games would not do well to be over-shoulder camera--I like playing party/unit-based games and I do think isometric format can often work best or at least very effectively (which again, I know he acknowledges). I don't need everyone else to like isometric play and Yahtzee states good reasons for why he doesn't do it for him--I'm just glad there's a variety of POVs out there for a variety of gamers to enjoy.

 

[baba44713]

I never actually liked isometric games... yet one of my favorite games is Head over Heels. I love that game so much I actually played the PC remake of it very recently (and IMHO it holds up very well).

 

[Kinitawowi]

I never actually liked isometric games... yet one of my favorite games is Head over Heels. I love that game so much I actually played the PC remake of it very recently (and IMHO it holds up very well).

Yeah, the RetroSpec guys are geniuses (their Wizball conversion is something to behold too). But while I love their HOH, it has two minor glitches that bug me every time I play it - the doorways protruding into the room rather than being set back (makes accessing the Safari crown room infinitely easier, but no) and a couple of problems involving shadows (watch Head climb the ladder in the very first room - he casts a shadow onto every step underneath him).

Other than that, yeah, it's still HoH so it's still wonderful.