Hardware and open-choice games

[Valenza]

I posted a thread a week or so back [www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/9.368380-Poll-Being-told-the-story-vs-Making-the-story] about illusion of choice in games, and if it's something people really enjoy. Basic gist of what I gathered was that the reason a few people prefer linear titles is down to the fact that more open-choice games have problems in being truly open. This got me thinking if this is something that may eventually be overcome, or will be a persisting problem into the next generation of consoles.

In terms of games offering a massive range of choice to the player, I feel that the ones that do it best right now are Fallout and The Elder Scrolls, with New Vegas in my experience probably being the best of the bunch. The thing is, these games also have a well noted problem of being buggy as all hell. These are the games I love the most, and right now what is stopping them from being truly great is current hardware.

So, how long do you think it'll take for technology to reach the stage where we can experience a sprawling, open narrative in a massive world with the perfect illusion of freedom, without any sort of strain on hardware? I guess what I'm asking is at what stage do you think games as open as Fallout and The Elder Scrolls will be common occurrence within the market, rather than a specific niche with notable technical downsides?

Also, if more and more devvelopers start making these types of games instead of more narrow ones, will such a development actually be a good thing?

 

[RJ 17]

I don't think it's so much an issue of hardware and technology, but more an issue with story telling. To imply total and absolute freedom in a game is to imply that the game itself can have absolutely no story. Stories what need telling are the driving force behind games, it's why the Dovakhin is around: sooner or later he has to go kill the damned black dragon. In absolute freedom there'd be no motivation to go do this, and as such the game wouldn't have any story at all.

Could they have made Skyrim so that you could go from town to town, city to city, hold to hold and just perma-kill EVERYONE from the moment you escape from the chopping block at the beginning of the game? Of course they could have. It was well within their technology. However having the freedom to turn the lovely world of Skyrim into a desolate wasteland utterly devoid of all sentient life would ruin the story.

Captcha's not a believer in Gandalf..."It Will Pass".

 

[Kahunaburger]

I don't think it's so much an issue of hardware and technology, but more an issue with story telling. To imply total and absolute freedom in a game is to imply that the game itself can have absolutely no story. Stories what need telling are the driving force behind games, it's why the Dovakhin is around: sooner or later he has to go kill the damned black dragon. In absolute freedom there'd be no motivation to go do this, and as such the game wouldn't have any story at all.

Although absolute freedom in a well-designed system can also create its own emergent story, and often one more interesting than a canned narrative. See also: Paradox Interactive games, Dwarf Fortress. It would be interesting to see more single-player games going in this direction.

 

[dimensional]

Im not sure these games are buggy because of hardware limitations I think its more down to improper testing and time issues also im not sure about Fallout but the elder scrolls series is getting smaller and arguably more linear.

As for how long technology will take to reach the stage of sprawling open narrative in a massive world with the perfect illusion of freedom im not sure but its way way off in the distance if its there at all everything is constrained in its own way and games are no different (depends on how youre definition of perfect illusion though).

Im not sure tech is the problem more than just people dont really know how to go about creating a huge sprawling world with the perfect illusion of freedom even games such as the elder scrolls and fallout havent come close to this you can only do a certain amount of things that have been accounted for and you can only get so creative with these constraints.

these sort of games arent the holy grail though some people want huge open world others want a tightly crafted tale if more people want open there will be more open if they want focused they will get focused, they will exist quite happily side by side unless a demand for one far outstrips the other. Plus some games arent suited to being hugely open with lots of choice i.e visual novel,platformers,fighting games etc they rely on focus its what makes them great.

I think they will have to improve coding techniques and interface in games as well as have true A.I for a start to get a truly open world game with true freedom then at least there may be a chance to see a text based game of this sort some time in the far future.

If you just want huge open world though that you can mess around in with a fair few constraints well the techs been there for ages Elite did it pretty well back in the day.

 

[RJ 17]

I don't think it's so much an issue of hardware and technology, but more an issue with story telling. To imply total and absolute freedom in a game is to imply that the game itself can have absolutely no story. Stories what need telling are the driving force behind games, it's why the Dovakhin is around: sooner or later he has to go kill the damned black dragon. In absolute freedom there'd be no motivation to go do this, and as such the game wouldn't have any story at all.

Although absolute freedom in a well-designed system can also create its own emergent story, and often one more interesting than a canned narrative. See also: Paradox Interactive games, Dwarf Fortress. It would be interesting to see more single-player games going in this direction.

Oh I agree completely, and at that point I can see where it becomes a technological problem. I'd imagine Skyrim could possibly be the most amazing game in history if it allowed you to run out from the opening sequence, find yourself a cave to call your lair, and become some sort of wicked sorcerer that terrorizes the land, ultimately leading to a massive coalition being formed to storm your fortress and try to rid the land of your evil. Or you could go out and become a wandering monk who's sole purpose in life is to slit the throats of anyone who uses the term "milk-drinker".

You'd need an adaptive AI that could adapt the story, world, and characters to all react to what the Player decides to do.

 

[EmptyOptimist]

I don't think it's so much an issue of hardware and technology, but more an issue with story telling.

I concur with this - to have complete freedom, you need one or a combination of 3 factors: you need writers that can think up and write EVERY possible scenario; you need actual sentient AI that can develop and respond to EVERY possible scenario; or you need no storyline at all.

For an end game to exist, there needs to be a way to reach the end game. Let's use a popular title as an example: Mario.

Spoiler - Mario defeats Bowser and saves the princess.

If you wanted to make Mario open choice, you would need to recognize the possibility that Mario may choose to not actually save the princess, and instead run off and shack up with a different maiden (Zelda?). Or perhaps Mario saves the princess, but chooses to keep her imprisoned, and rule over the land himself. And a writer would need to recognize these possibilities and be able to write them into the game in advance, or the hardware/software needs to be smart enough to create the game as the player plays it.

"Open choice" games as they exist now do get closer to the concept of open choice worlds. I think where developers fail is to actually have the choices be morally ambiguous, and have actual repercussions on the game. Now I need to preface this because I have yet to actually finish it, (nor do i actually know the ending, so I apologize if I'm wrong. And no I don't want spoilers, so any responses, please code appropriately), but my understanding is that the biggest issue with the ending of Mass Effect 3 is that it completely ignores all of the decisions the player made through the previous 3 iterations. The game failed to actually be open choice not because of hardware limitations, but because it didn't take the 'open' choices into consideration at the end of the game.

 

[Valenza]

Could they have made Skyrim so that you could go from town to town, city to city, hold to hold and just perma-kill EVERYONE from the moment you escape from the chopping block at the beginning of the game? Of course they could have. It was well within their technology. However having the freedom to turn the lovely world of Skyrim into a desolate wasteland utterly devoid of all sentient life would ruin the story.

Captcha's not a believer in Gandalf..."It Will Pass".

Here's why I specifically name-dropped New Vegas, though. It's pretty much possible to do all that, and I personally felt the game was stronger for it. I mean, say if it was possible to do such a thing to Skyrim. At the end of the day, such a choice is that of the player, and when everyone is pretty much dead and Alduin stands unopposed, they'll only have themselves to blame.

I mean, I understand this isn't going to work for every game (nor would I want it to). But I'd argue storytelling isn't the biggest issue when it comes to this subject. It is still an issue, mind, just not the most significant one.

Im not sure these games are buggy because of hardware limitations I think its more down to improper testing and time issues also im not sure about Fallout but the elder scrolls series is getting smaller and arguably more linear.

As for how long technology will take to reach the stage of sprawling open narrative in a massive world with the perfect illusion of freedom im not sure but its way way off in the distance if its there at all everything is constrained in its own way and games are no different (depends on how youre definition of perfect illusion though).

Im not sure tech is the problem more than just people dont really know how to go about creating a huge sprawling world with the perfect illusion of freedom even games such as the elder scrolls and fallout havent come close to this you can only do a certain amount of things that have been accounted for and you can only get so creative with these constraints.

I should probably rephrase a little bit, then. At what stage would it become a non-issue for developers to be able to implement more choice and features without having to worry about time and resources, so that it might be easier to implement more for less?

Captcha: marital aid. Thanks, Escapist!

 

[Fractral]

At the end of the day, such a choice is that of the player, and when everyone is pretty much dead and Alduin stands unopposed, they'll only have themselves to blame.

Except that this would only work if Bethesda had programmed a clause in which makes alduin actually go out and wreck stuff if there was no-one to oppose him. Thats the problem as I see it, in order to make a really realistic open choice game you have to take account of nearly everything that players are going to be able to do, and that is nearly impossible. Even if you could have sweeping, open rules that define everything, there would still be situations where these do not work or work in odd ways. Basically, there will never be a game where you can do whatever you want, because programming to allow this would be a nightmare, or even impossible.
Thats not to say that developers shouldn't strive towards this goal, its just that true, dynamic choice will never happen.

 

[RJ 17]

Could they have made Skyrim so that you could go from town to town, city to city, hold to hold and just perma-kill EVERYONE from the moment you escape from the chopping block at the beginning of the game? Of course they could have. It was well within their technology. However having the freedom to turn the lovely world of Skyrim into a desolate wasteland utterly devoid of all sentient life would ruin the story.

Captcha's not a believer in Gandalf..."It Will Pass".

Here's why I specifically name-dropped New Vegas, though. It's pretty much possible to do all that, and I personally felt the game was stronger for it. I mean, say if it was possible to do such a thing to Skyrim. At the end of the day, such a choice is that of the player, and when everyone is pretty much dead and Alduin stands unopposed, they'll only have themselves to blame.

I mean, I understand this isn't going to work for every game (nor would I want it to). But I'd argue storytelling isn't the biggest issue when it comes to this subject. It is still an issue, mind, just not the most significant one.

But that's kinda what I'm talking about. In order for a game to be completely open to choice, it would have to have NO story whatsoever. As EmptyOptimist said: it would require writers to come up with every possible choice that the player could make in any possible situation. The problem is that even in that case your freedom is limited to only the possibilities that the writers could come up with. Even if it were a game that didn't have voice actors, but rather went back to the good ol' fashioned text boxes, those text boxes would have to be written by someone.

 

[dimensional]

*snip*
I should probably rephrase a little bit, then. At what stage would it become a non-issue for developers to be able to implement more choice and features without having to worry about time and resources, so that it might be easier to implement more for less?

Captcha: marital aid. Thanks, Escapist!

In that case hopefully very soon but there will be a trade off either they will have to have a breakthrough in the way they design games to make it a lot easier on them or they will have to trade it off with the visuals to focus more on the choices. I think smaller teams will focus on the latter while big teams will attempt the first.

 

[Valenza]

But that's kinda what I'm talking about. In order for a game to be completely open to choice, it would have to have NO story whatsoever. As EmptyOptimist said: it would require writers to come up with every possible choice that the player could make in any possible situation. The problem is that even in that case your freedom is limited to only the possibilities that the writers could come up with. Even if it were a game that didn't have voice actors, but rather went back to the good ol' fashioned text boxes, those text boxes would have to be written by someone.

Yeah, I know what you mean. With a story present, you're never going to get true freedom, because overall there's going to be some chain of events that must be adherred to, even the loosest ones. The story can be ignored, but it's ultimately present, and in being so, some limitation has to be drawn. Some choices are excluded because they don't make sense in the context of the world, for example.

And quite right, in some cases. I'd say fine-tuning the illusion of free choice is more important, which leads back to the question: if/when technology will reach a stage where developers can find it easier and more cost effective to make games like New Vegas or Skyrim, because even if it possible now, it still seems damn difficult to pull off.

 

[RJ 17]

But that's kinda what I'm talking about. In order for a game to be completely open to choice, it would have to have NO story whatsoever. As EmptyOptimist said: it would require writers to come up with every possible choice that the player could make in any possible situation. The problem is that even in that case your freedom is limited to only the possibilities that the writers could come up with. Even if it were a game that didn't have voice actors, but rather went back to the good ol' fashioned text boxes, those text boxes would have to be written by someone.

Yeah, I know what you mean. With a story present, you're never going to get true freedom, because overall there's going to be some chain of events that must be adherred to, even the loosest ones. The story can be ignored, but it's ultimately present, and in being so, some limitation has to be drawn. Some choices are excluded because they don't make sense in the context of the world, for example.

And quite right, in some cases. I'd say fine-tuning the illusion of free choice is more important, which leads back to the question: if/when technology will reach a stage where developers can find it easier and more cost effective to make games like New Vegas or Skyrim, because even if it possible now, it still seems damn difficult to pull off.

Really all Skyrim would need to do is remove that god damn "These NPCs are immortal because we say so."

I can accept the children being immortal because they didn't want you going around butchering kids, the media back-lash would be unbelievable. However when I walk into Ulfric's former castle which is now apparently filled with all the nobles from western Skyrim - who are all very much pissed off at my character for some reason - I should be able to say "Fuck all you bastards", jump up on the middle of the big banquet table they're sitting around, charge up the Master Level fire spell, and blow them all to hell!......without them just flying up against the walls and crawling around on their knees for a bit.

That's actually what it would take to have a completely free world: a story that evolves with your decisions. All those nobles might be important to various quests or part of the story, but I should be able to kill them all and have the game change around me. Unfortunately that breaks the restraints of the story.

So back to your OP: until they can create a game AI that literally writes and codes itself, we'll never have true free choice in a game as games will always be shackled by the story they are trying to tell.