The Problem With Rockstar Games

[Phoenixmgs_v1legacy]

Mercenaries is the best sandbox game I've ever played because the missions were great and offered true gameplay freedom (there was so many ways to complete each mission).

Just out of curiosity, but are you referring to Mercenaries: Playground of Destruction?

Yeah, and I didn't care for Mercenaries 2 at all, I played a few hours of it and I was extremely disappointed.

 

[GotMalkAvian]

I definitely think these are unfair criticisms for Rockstar's type of games. The freedom to be a rampaging murderer between missions is kind of there as icing on the cake for anyone who wants it; Rockstar has a very linear story to tell, and they've been getting better at storytelling, in my opinion, with each new game over the last few years. If a player wants to blow off some steam and go on a rampage between missions, they've allowed that leeway, but they still want to tell the story as they've written it.

If you want a world that reacts to every bullet you fire, go for Bethesda's games. Unfortunately, I don't think games have reached a level of sophistication where developers can give players complete freedom to interact with the world while still telling a deep narrative that takes into account every choice made by the player. Even one of the (in my opinion) best examples of interactive storytelling this generation - Mass Effect - is still little more than a series of branching choices when it really comes down to it.

 

[GigaHz]

While those are all great points, a game that seems to offer a wealth of choice (Dragon Age, Mass Effect, SW:TOR) are all guilty of most of the things you describe.

The ending of these games is ultimately you overcoming the bad guy. If these games offered any real choice, there should be an option to side with the villains and join their agenda, or join neither and do whatever the hell you feel like. But there isn't because even though there are slight variations between certain scenarios and how you experience, they all begin the same, the quests largely have you doing the same thing, and they end the same.

How is that very different from GTA 4 or Red Dead Redemption? or any other game with a strong narrative?

 

[Savagezion]

I don't know if I want Rockstar to become more RPG oriented. The stories they tell are actually good. I don't think sacrificing companies with good writing is good for the industry right now. And frankly, it isn't broke so there is no need to 'fix' it. There are a good amount of RPG devs and titles out there. There are few who do sandbox narratives along the lines of GTA. OUtside of Rockstar, Sucker Punch may be the only one closest.

 

[Lenin211]

Seeing Red Dead mentioned in the GOTD thread, it has got me thinking about my primary beef with that game, and with Rockstar Games in general:

(This post contains some spoilers to Red Dead Redemption, GTA 4 and L.A. Noire. You've been warned.)

Many people say that what they love about Red Dead Redemption is it's ability to let you live out your cowboy fantasies: You've got a huge playground to run around in and there are countless hours of fun to be had playing in the Wild West sandbox that Rockstar has put together for you. Similarly with GTA4: You've got a fantastic re-creation of NYC (and it is pretty amazing: The parts of NYC that I know personally fit together pretty much exactly as I know them in real life!) with a bunch of things to do.

However, the big issue that have have with these games is that while they give you a huge amount of player choice in between missions, allowing you to fly off the handle and murder and rampage or to abide by the rules and help those in need, ultimately the games take any real player choice away from you.

In both games you find yourself in situations where you're working for people you don't want to work for or have you in situations where there are clearly other solutions that are not being explored. When in player hands your avatar can be a one man army, killing hundreds of people without blinking an eye, but all of that disappears when it's time for a cut scene.

I guess my beef really boils down to the fact that your "freedom" is something that the designers don't really feed back into the game: No matter how many evil things your John Marston does, he will still be a stoic, heroic figure in the cut scenes, incapable of say, attempting to murder the people clearly setting him up over and over and over again. (You kill them in the third act, dummy!)

At least games like L.A. Noire force you into a particular role: Cole Phelps is a police officer, and a pretty damned good one, and you only control him when he's on the job: In the context of that, it makes sense that you don't have a choice to say "Screw this police department!". And then, when it's revealed he's been having an affair, it doesn't feel like choices were taken away from the player: The player never chose what Cole did in his off hours to begin with. All you do is control a man's working hours, and he works as a police man, with a necessary amount of control out of his hands: He doesn't choose his cases, he just tries to solve them.

This makes less sense with Niko however: At a certain point, you've got a million dollars, a loving cousin and things are going along great with your girlfriends: It would be narratively interesting to allow the player the choice to give up the grudge: Even more so if doing so had consequences- But no, Niko persists and the story plays out more or less the same any way you slice it.

Ultimately, at the end of Red Dead Redemption, you take on the role of James Marston and take revenge for the death of your father, to continue a cycle of violence that has consumed your family. The goal is to feel the inevitability of the situation and see how John's choices led not only to his own destruction but to the destined path that his son will take in his shadow. It's a powerful moment, but one whose poignancy was always blunted, to me, by the fact that I never made any of the choices that brought me there.

Did rockstar ever claim to "let the players make their own experience"? The games that you cite are driven by the story that the game devs make for the player. The fact that they are sandbox doesn't mean that choice needs to be in every part of the game. These are not RPGs, don't treat them like RPGs.

 

[Dirty Hipsters]

No, the problem with Rockstar's games are that the movement is absolutely horrible. Your people feel like cars, and your cars feel like cars with flat tires.

 

[Ed_Fox]

The freedom to be a rampaging murderer between missions is kind of there as icing on the cake for anyone who wants it

Must be part of the unlockable content on the table-tennis...

 

[Something Amyss]

While those are all great points, a game that seems to offer a wealth of choice (Dragon Age, Mass Effect, SW:TOR) are all guilty of most of the things you describe.

The ending of these games is ultimately you overcoming the bad guy. If these games offered any real choice, there should be an option to side with the villains and join their agenda, or join neither and do whatever the hell you feel like. But there isn't because even though there are slight variations between certain scenarios and how you experience, they all begin the same, the quests largely have you doing the same thing, and they end the same.

How is that very different from GTA 4 or Red Dead Redemption? or any other game with a strong narrative?

The unfortunate thing about this is that actually creating a game that tailored to your actions and gave freedom would be an enormous and potentially impossible.

On the other hand, the gap between story and sandbox IS kind of irksome.

I just don't know what the solution is. I don't think there is one. At least, not well.

 

[veloper]

It's a legit complaint, but it boils down to how the story and cinematics sucks.

When in player hands your avatar can be a one man army, killing hundreds of people without blinking an eye, but all of that disappears when it's time for a cut scene.

Not just Rockstar though, this is a trope of gaming.

Your unstoppable killing machine becomes a weakling as soon as the controls are taken away from you for a scene, like the game designers were working from a different premise than the cutscene artists and writers.

 

[Blackadder51]

Thanks for the spoiler for La Noire.

Dick.

 

[Amnestic]

I think the OP has a point really. The tonal split between the sandbox and the mission structure is pretty jarring. I didn't mind so much in RDR since I mostly played as a good guy, but it was really noticeable in GTAIV. This was brought up in another semi-recent thread [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/9.321178-The-radical-jump-in-tone-from-San-Andreas-to-GTA-IV-Or-lack-thereof#13132385] and I decided that the main issue was that Niko's character simply wasn't suitable for the normal sandbox gameplay from your typical GTA player. As I said in that thread:

I think a major problem is that Niko's character doesn't really gel with his actions as dictated by player input.

You're Niko Bellic. You escaped your old country to come to America and hopefully put a life of crime and death behind you, take up some real, honest work and carve out a small but respectable (and perhaps more importantly, legal) part of Liberty City for yourself. You find yourself on a pavement and need to get from point A to point B.

Does the player:
A) Flag down a taxi (or call one up).
B) Walk to the nearest train station and catch a train, before walking the rest of the way.
C) Run into the middle of the road, blow the face off someone in a car, steal said car and then make a high speed getaway from the one police officer who chose to follow you, likely mowing down a dozen pedestrians at least in the process.

The sort of crazy crime spree gameplay...it didn't really 'fit' with Niko's reluctant character, but it was how (and I'm assuming here) the majority played it, which gives you a certain jarring issue when trying to reconcile his actions and his character arc.

It fit with Tommy Vercetti. It mostly fit with CJ. It fits extremely well with the sociopath that is the protagonist of the Saints Row series. GTAIV...not so much.

Does that make GTAIV a bad game? Well, probably not, though I do view it as a negative. I still enjoyed it regardless. What I do think is that Niko as a protagonist isn't suitable for GTA games as they exist. His character arc just doesn't seem to 'fit' when stacked up against the gameplay.

 

[MirkoP]

I'm not saying that they havn't broken ground, GTA III is a prime example of how RockStar have made a massive impact on the gaming world.

What I was saying is that there are fanboys (and girls) out there that won't hear a word said against RockStar, and whilst a company only hears those voices that praise them, they won't change what their doing.

I'm confused...after all the fuss about the next GTA again changing the pace,becoming much less childish and going to try a potentially suicidal attempt at a "Serious Game" approach->GTA style...

And you're saying they're not changing what they're doing?! For the love of good man!

They've got a franchise that CAN work exactly like you pointed out.And yet those mother-effers are sticking their throats out with that GTA V like no other company has done with a sequel in a very long time.

Personally,I probably haven't even played more then two Rockstars' games by now (the only one I actually remember is GTA III),and I'm as neutral and most of all indifferent towards them as I can be,and man...I'm all up for opinions and shizzle...but the stuff you're talking bout...is just plain wrong...

 

[EvilPicnic]

They're narrative driven. It's not like they put "Your choices affect the story!" on the box or anything.

The freedom they offer is in the gameplay, and that's the point.

True say.

Nothing less, nothing more.

 

[ooknabah]

Thanks for all the replies everyone.

Let me just say this: Freedom in games is an illusion. It could be argued that it is the same in the real world as well.

That's very true. The goal in good game design, particularly games with a story, is to make the player feel like it is his choice to take the prescribed path: That it is something he wants to do and not something that the game is forcing him to do. It's most frustrating in games when you're forced to do something that is annoying and not what would have been your choice, especially if another solution seems in evidence but the game won't let you do it.

You mean how making 1 choice in a mission just before the one you are referencing that changes between the 2 final mission sets? The one where Niko goes kill-crazy over a woman I never had him bother with? It really isn't any different than in Demon's Souls where you could walk away or kill the Maiden in Black at the very end. Nothing up to that point mattered. You could kill all NPC's you came across and be more evil than Lex Luther (he took forty cakes, that's as many as four tens and that's terrible) yet still get the same ending as Mother Teresa.

And it's a problem there too. At least in games like Deus Ex you stand at the crossroads in the final mission: While your ending may not match up to the way you were playing the game until then, you did make a choice with a good understanding of what the consequences might be.

Well, how exactly would you have every decision effect the game and have random and non linear contacts while still having a story? Even if you were to pull off all of that writing and make every choice direction and ending satisfactory, there would still be a disk space issue. We're simply not at the point where narratives can be completely dynamic yet, so we really shouldn't expect it right now. Maybe 3-10 years down the line, but definitely not now. The reason games like frontier elite and vega strike are non linear is because they just randomly generate news stories and war progression and AI ship entry timing. Even then, dialogue choices are limited as to feel somewhat like an actual conversation rather than a linear one. Lower your expectations for now.

There are tons of ways to make the player feel like he has a choice but ultimately make the story linear. For instance: In GTA 4, Niko executes someone at about the half way mark (I can't remember the name of the character, but I do remember hating this moment.) You can take your sweet ass time doing it, pointing your gun at his head while he begs for his life, but the game does NOT continue unless you pull the trigger. This was a stupid gameplay moment because as the player, I felt no need to kill him but the game was forcing me to. I would have rather they put the execution in a cut scene and let the consequences fall from that.

HOWEVER- If they are going to give the player control there, then let me choose if I kill him or not. Ultimately, both choices can lead down the same path (as they tend to in most RPGs, really) but if you let me make that choice (and if there are some minor changes to the story because of my choice- The character shows up again to fight me in another mission or something) then I feel like I'm actually accomplishing what I want to accomplish and living with the consequences.

Alpha Protocol is probably the best "fake choice" game I've ever played. The writing is very smart and branches out in all sorts of interesting ways, but the game still runs you through the same missions with pretty much the same events happening every time: The only differences will be some of the players and the way characters react when you speak with them. Ultimately, you are going to walk the identical path of every other player, but you FEEL like you're doing it your way. That's smart game design.

Mass Effect is one of the few games that gives you lots of dialogue choices and narrative choice. There isn't much narrative choice for the main storyline itself, but those side stories do give you quite a bit of choice.

The main point of a sandbox style game is not to let you do whatever the fuck you want and have it affect your character and the storyline, it's to give you a massive amount of freedom in how to complete mission objectives. Just something like go to point A and kill a group a thugs could be done by walking there and shooting them, getting in a helicopter and killing them, blowing up the building they are in, etc. You still kill the thugs no matter what, you are basically a killer then no matter how you went about completing the objective (there is no Batman option to knock them unconscious). So, no matter how you did it, your character's development is the same and the story is still the same.

Mass Effect is another good example of a game that gives you the illusion of choice. It's done well, and it make the player feel like they have control of the story. They don't, but it feels like they do, and that is fun.

RE: The whole thug killing thing- That's a good example of a way to give choice in the game design. If there WAS a knock out mechanic and the game took it away from you for no good reason, then you've got an issue. But when you've got to get from point A to point B and there are guys in your way, you will take them out any way you've got available to you.

Thanks for the spoiler for La Noire.

Dick.

That's why I put a big spoiler warning in the second line of the post. Not my fault you didn't read it.