Presenting the third in a trilogy of lengthy pieces by me about various things. This one follows on from the Crysis 'review' thing with some thoughts on the big topic of the day- Linearity, and when it's sometimes simply not appropriate. Hope you enjoy it- if you don't feel quite free to rip the piss out of it. If you do enjoy it...well then, I've brought a little happiness into the world.
You know when you're on a bus, and you hear people sitting behind you, talking about videogames, spouting off their ill-formed opinions as though they were going out of style? Recently I heard two young men discussing the relative merits of the Source and CryEngine 2 game engines. One (Let's call him Dave) was of the opinion that the Source engine was the better; the other (let's call him Margaret, because it amuses me to give him a girls name) favoured CryEngine 2. Both seemed to treat the other's opinions with the same level of contempt normally reserved for when I tell people that I think about Hitler during sex.
It's a conversation stopper, that's for sure, but it normally gives you a good extra minute.
Dave insisted his engine had the better physics. Margaret insisted very much the same. Which of them is right? Fucked if I know. Having never blown up an explosive barrel with a shotgun round I felt it inappropriate to side one way or the other. Margaret said his engine was prettier. 'True' Dave gracefully conceded 'but my engine is more flexible.' As a wasp played out it's death throes on the seat in front of me it occurred to me that neither of the comments made the least bit of sense. Dave's engine was categorically the 'prettier'- it was a much newer engine, after all. But I'd bet my shoes that his computer can't run the games (or game) on it in such a way that they appear both stunningly pretty AND provide double digit framerates. So, was the game engine really prettier in any meaningful sense? My car might be a lot faster, if only the engine were larger and the exhaust pipe didn't keep falling off. I'd be able to pick up coins from the ground behind me if I had four knees. Coulda Woulda Shoulda Buddha. Margaret's comment was the more mystifying though.
In the bus (in my mind) I swivelled round in my seat, opened and closed my mouth repeatedly, oscillated my vocal chords and vocalised the following:
'Really, Margaret? More flexible is it? More flexible how? How has this flexibility aided you in the many mods you've crafted with the Source engine? Quantify the inflexibility of the CryEngine 2 for me! Elucidate, you little shit! Go on! Stop crying you sniveling cu...'
In the bus in reality I amused myself by trying to drop chewing gum wrappers onto the dying wasp as though they were miniature funeral shrouds.
What can we learn from this anecdote thus far? Well, not that much. People love arguing about game engines as much as they love arguing about consoles and arguing about the logical development of the Freudian Uncanny into Kristevan abjection theories. It's good to argue.
Then Margaret said something really interesting, and I damn near fell off my seat with surprise. Or I could have damn near fallen off my seat because we'd just hit a particularly aggressive speed bump. What he said was this:
'Well my engine's way less linear.' Dave looked perturbed. 'Yeah...I guess.' A stony silence descended, only broken a few minutes later when they started playing God-awful R&B ringtones on their mobiles and drawing willies in the condensation on the window. A shame, because their conversation stopped just as it had a chance of getting good. I shall continue their thought processes for them, in their honour.
We can set aside Margaret's misconception that his engine is less linear- clearly he meant to say that his game (Crysis) was less linear, and he almost certainly would have said this had his brain been any larger than a grapefruit. A game engine is what you make of it, really. Valve took the Source engine and whittled it into a masterpiece- a linear masterpiece, but masterful nevertheless. It's all in the wrist really. Crytek, meanwhile, took the CryEngine 2 and made their own two-thirds of a free-form masterpiece (see my review on Crysis for my thoughts on this). It's the L-word, though, linearity, that really bothers me. Half-Life 2, as it has often been noted, works BECAUSE of, and not in spite of, it's scripted nature. It's a roller coaster, and a roller coaster without any tracks would be a serious health and safety issue, and you'd be a fool to have it any other way. To call a game 'linear' these days seems to invoke pejorative connotations that should not be there- linear= scripted= no player choice= uninteractive= boring. People have pointed to the last third of Crysis as evidence for this. 'Look how linear the bit with aliens is. Look how non-linear the parts before are. Ergo, linearity is inferiority.' Balls. Balls and thrice balls. I've mentioned this in my Crysis review, and I'll mention it again. The last third of Crysis is not bad because it's linear, it's bad because those aliens are plain shit. Cheap attacks, cheap respawning: just no bloody fun.
Crysis' trump card, undoubtedly, is it's free-form nature. Approach problems from any number of angles- it empowers the gamer, which is very nice of it. Need to sneak into that base? Try crashing through the wall in a truck. Sneak in through a convenient hole in the fence (they should repair that fence). Pretend to be a Jehova's Witness and go knock on the door. If none of that works just fire up the Editor and stick 3000 explosive barrels and a tornado in there, see how they like those apples. Is this the elusive flexibility those chaps were talking about? Whatever, it makes for a damn fine game. Why, then, can't game designers just have faith in this? Why must they make the last part of a game a penance for the part we did enjoy? It's like we're not trusted with a free-form game because we'll only fuck something up. We'll end up quicksaving just before being crushed by one of those blasted realistically falling trees and have to start the level all over again. Better to avoid that sort of thing by bypassing freeform gaming altogether, right?
It puts me in mind of the difference between the Elder Scrolls III and the Elder Scrolls IV. Specifically, this:
Morrowind doesn't care about you.
Morrowind lets you step off that ship, leave Seyda Neen, wander into the wilderness and be mercilessly raped to death by a giant rat. And it's brilliant. Bring on the raping, i say. Morrowind is a very distinct class of negligent parent.
'Mum, where do we keep the matches?'
'Just over there, dearest.'
'Thanks. We got any petrol?'
'Petrol. Hmm. No. We've got some brandy. That's quite flammable, and what you don't burn you can drink.'
'Nice one. Is that knife sharp?'
'Not really. Have this one instead.'
'Thanks. Can I borrow the car keys?'
So on, soforth. If you wander off unprepared in Morrowind you'll find yourself very dead very quickly. It's a refreshing attitude, if not a very fashionable one. What's the point in making a game if people can't progress in it? If it's failure I crave then I'll go talk to a girl in a bar. I come to games for a modicum of success. But it means some things happen in Morrowind that never happen in Oblivion. You can wander off into the wilderness, find a legendary, magic weapon, go back to those rats and show them what a raping really looks like (figuratively speaking). You can go kill any (ish) main character you want and completely break the fucking game. The point is, whatever you do, it was your choice, and your own bloody fault. Lovely.
Oblivion, it has been often rued, contains a silly-arse leveling system that scales the world up with you. It's nanny-state hand-holding at it's most patronising. Why should I be able to wander off and slay a minotaur with a rusty dagger I found on the ground? If I wander into a pub and start a fight with a bunch of squaddies I'd fully expect a good kicking, I don't want them tying an arm behind their backs and closing their eyes to make it fairer on me. Bollocks to you Oblivion. I remember stumbling upon a shrine in Morrowind, one which was clearly far too high level for me. Every enemy was a fucking slog; every corner threw death, dismemberment and disablement at me (the three best D's). At the end was a chest, floating magically in the air (I assume it was magic. Could've been a bug, in hindsight), which held a powerful but impossibly light enchanted hammer called something awesome like 'Farvar the Featherlight Brain Fucker'.
Let's take the same scenario in Oblivion. Each enemy is appropriately scaled to your level. It's like kicking a sack full of kittens down a corridor. You open the chest at the end. It contains a pencil and some string. I get enough fucking pencil and string in real life as a traveling pen and string salesman, fuck you very much Bethesda. A fairly specific example, and by no means fully representative of either game, but certainly symptomatic of the problem here. Non-linear games must allow us to accept the consequence of our actions. That minotaur should cave your fucking skull in, because that's what they do best. It makes it all the sweeter when, eventually, it's you doing the skull caving. Call it karma, call it a fuck-off huge magic hammer, if you will, the skull remains caved in either way.
Linear games are restrictive, but they are restrictive by design choice. Half Life 2 would not have been improved if you could wander City-17 at will, shooting trees over and killing prostitutes. Sometimes a good story can only be told in a specific way- it's not even about maintaining the illusion of free will, it's just about doing it with such panache you don't care. Bioshock, a case study for almost any point one could care to make about videogames, demonstrates this by showing that when a game says 'would you kindly' do something, you do it. It's not real life, it's artifice. Bioshock is fundamentally linear- think how nonsensical it would be if you could wander Rapture at will, choose which of the game's 'villains' to pursue. Tell your own story, basically. Bioshock plays with the whole notion of free will, and it does so through rigid linearity. Oblivion dangles the carrot of non-linearity tantalisingly before our snapping maws, but ultimately disappoints because, if anything, it cares too much about the fate of the player. The intent is that players of all abilities and class proclivities ('a mage specialising in Heavy Armour and Calligraphy? Certainly, sir!') can play and finish the game. The effect is that, come level 65, you're up against Goblin Warlords with eight and a half million hit points and bandits decked out in armour and magic weaponary more valuable than the GDP of a small continent. And if that's not a load of balls, I really don't know what is...
In loving memory of Dave. And Margaret.
You know when you're on a bus, and you hear people sitting behind you, talking about videogames, spouting off their ill-formed opinions as though they were going out of style? Recently I heard two young men discussing the relative merits of the Source and CryEngine 2 game engines. One (Let's call him Dave) was of the opinion that the Source engine was the better; the other (let's call him Margaret, because it amuses me to give him a girls name) favoured CryEngine 2. Both seemed to treat the other's opinions with the same level of contempt normally reserved for when I tell people that I think about Hitler during sex.
It's a conversation stopper, that's for sure, but it normally gives you a good extra minute.
Dave insisted his engine had the better physics. Margaret insisted very much the same. Which of them is right? Fucked if I know. Having never blown up an explosive barrel with a shotgun round I felt it inappropriate to side one way or the other. Margaret said his engine was prettier. 'True' Dave gracefully conceded 'but my engine is more flexible.' As a wasp played out it's death throes on the seat in front of me it occurred to me that neither of the comments made the least bit of sense. Dave's engine was categorically the 'prettier'- it was a much newer engine, after all. But I'd bet my shoes that his computer can't run the games (or game) on it in such a way that they appear both stunningly pretty AND provide double digit framerates. So, was the game engine really prettier in any meaningful sense? My car might be a lot faster, if only the engine were larger and the exhaust pipe didn't keep falling off. I'd be able to pick up coins from the ground behind me if I had four knees. Coulda Woulda Shoulda Buddha. Margaret's comment was the more mystifying though.
In the bus (in my mind) I swivelled round in my seat, opened and closed my mouth repeatedly, oscillated my vocal chords and vocalised the following:
'Really, Margaret? More flexible is it? More flexible how? How has this flexibility aided you in the many mods you've crafted with the Source engine? Quantify the inflexibility of the CryEngine 2 for me! Elucidate, you little shit! Go on! Stop crying you sniveling cu...'
In the bus in reality I amused myself by trying to drop chewing gum wrappers onto the dying wasp as though they were miniature funeral shrouds.
What can we learn from this anecdote thus far? Well, not that much. People love arguing about game engines as much as they love arguing about consoles and arguing about the logical development of the Freudian Uncanny into Kristevan abjection theories. It's good to argue.
Then Margaret said something really interesting, and I damn near fell off my seat with surprise. Or I could have damn near fallen off my seat because we'd just hit a particularly aggressive speed bump. What he said was this:
'Well my engine's way less linear.' Dave looked perturbed. 'Yeah...I guess.' A stony silence descended, only broken a few minutes later when they started playing God-awful R&B ringtones on their mobiles and drawing willies in the condensation on the window. A shame, because their conversation stopped just as it had a chance of getting good. I shall continue their thought processes for them, in their honour.
We can set aside Margaret's misconception that his engine is less linear- clearly he meant to say that his game (Crysis) was less linear, and he almost certainly would have said this had his brain been any larger than a grapefruit. A game engine is what you make of it, really. Valve took the Source engine and whittled it into a masterpiece- a linear masterpiece, but masterful nevertheless. It's all in the wrist really. Crytek, meanwhile, took the CryEngine 2 and made their own two-thirds of a free-form masterpiece (see my review on Crysis for my thoughts on this). It's the L-word, though, linearity, that really bothers me. Half-Life 2, as it has often been noted, works BECAUSE of, and not in spite of, it's scripted nature. It's a roller coaster, and a roller coaster without any tracks would be a serious health and safety issue, and you'd be a fool to have it any other way. To call a game 'linear' these days seems to invoke pejorative connotations that should not be there- linear= scripted= no player choice= uninteractive= boring. People have pointed to the last third of Crysis as evidence for this. 'Look how linear the bit with aliens is. Look how non-linear the parts before are. Ergo, linearity is inferiority.' Balls. Balls and thrice balls. I've mentioned this in my Crysis review, and I'll mention it again. The last third of Crysis is not bad because it's linear, it's bad because those aliens are plain shit. Cheap attacks, cheap respawning: just no bloody fun.
Crysis' trump card, undoubtedly, is it's free-form nature. Approach problems from any number of angles- it empowers the gamer, which is very nice of it. Need to sneak into that base? Try crashing through the wall in a truck. Sneak in through a convenient hole in the fence (they should repair that fence). Pretend to be a Jehova's Witness and go knock on the door. If none of that works just fire up the Editor and stick 3000 explosive barrels and a tornado in there, see how they like those apples. Is this the elusive flexibility those chaps were talking about? Whatever, it makes for a damn fine game. Why, then, can't game designers just have faith in this? Why must they make the last part of a game a penance for the part we did enjoy? It's like we're not trusted with a free-form game because we'll only fuck something up. We'll end up quicksaving just before being crushed by one of those blasted realistically falling trees and have to start the level all over again. Better to avoid that sort of thing by bypassing freeform gaming altogether, right?
It puts me in mind of the difference between the Elder Scrolls III and the Elder Scrolls IV. Specifically, this:
Morrowind doesn't care about you.
Morrowind lets you step off that ship, leave Seyda Neen, wander into the wilderness and be mercilessly raped to death by a giant rat. And it's brilliant. Bring on the raping, i say. Morrowind is a very distinct class of negligent parent.
'Mum, where do we keep the matches?'
'Just over there, dearest.'
'Thanks. We got any petrol?'
'Petrol. Hmm. No. We've got some brandy. That's quite flammable, and what you don't burn you can drink.'
'Nice one. Is that knife sharp?'
'Not really. Have this one instead.'
'Thanks. Can I borrow the car keys?'
So on, soforth. If you wander off unprepared in Morrowind you'll find yourself very dead very quickly. It's a refreshing attitude, if not a very fashionable one. What's the point in making a game if people can't progress in it? If it's failure I crave then I'll go talk to a girl in a bar. I come to games for a modicum of success. But it means some things happen in Morrowind that never happen in Oblivion. You can wander off into the wilderness, find a legendary, magic weapon, go back to those rats and show them what a raping really looks like (figuratively speaking). You can go kill any (ish) main character you want and completely break the fucking game. The point is, whatever you do, it was your choice, and your own bloody fault. Lovely.
Oblivion, it has been often rued, contains a silly-arse leveling system that scales the world up with you. It's nanny-state hand-holding at it's most patronising. Why should I be able to wander off and slay a minotaur with a rusty dagger I found on the ground? If I wander into a pub and start a fight with a bunch of squaddies I'd fully expect a good kicking, I don't want them tying an arm behind their backs and closing their eyes to make it fairer on me. Bollocks to you Oblivion. I remember stumbling upon a shrine in Morrowind, one which was clearly far too high level for me. Every enemy was a fucking slog; every corner threw death, dismemberment and disablement at me (the three best D's). At the end was a chest, floating magically in the air (I assume it was magic. Could've been a bug, in hindsight), which held a powerful but impossibly light enchanted hammer called something awesome like 'Farvar the Featherlight Brain Fucker'.
Let's take the same scenario in Oblivion. Each enemy is appropriately scaled to your level. It's like kicking a sack full of kittens down a corridor. You open the chest at the end. It contains a pencil and some string. I get enough fucking pencil and string in real life as a traveling pen and string salesman, fuck you very much Bethesda. A fairly specific example, and by no means fully representative of either game, but certainly symptomatic of the problem here. Non-linear games must allow us to accept the consequence of our actions. That minotaur should cave your fucking skull in, because that's what they do best. It makes it all the sweeter when, eventually, it's you doing the skull caving. Call it karma, call it a fuck-off huge magic hammer, if you will, the skull remains caved in either way.
Linear games are restrictive, but they are restrictive by design choice. Half Life 2 would not have been improved if you could wander City-17 at will, shooting trees over and killing prostitutes. Sometimes a good story can only be told in a specific way- it's not even about maintaining the illusion of free will, it's just about doing it with such panache you don't care. Bioshock, a case study for almost any point one could care to make about videogames, demonstrates this by showing that when a game says 'would you kindly' do something, you do it. It's not real life, it's artifice. Bioshock is fundamentally linear- think how nonsensical it would be if you could wander Rapture at will, choose which of the game's 'villains' to pursue. Tell your own story, basically. Bioshock plays with the whole notion of free will, and it does so through rigid linearity. Oblivion dangles the carrot of non-linearity tantalisingly before our snapping maws, but ultimately disappoints because, if anything, it cares too much about the fate of the player. The intent is that players of all abilities and class proclivities ('a mage specialising in Heavy Armour and Calligraphy? Certainly, sir!') can play and finish the game. The effect is that, come level 65, you're up against Goblin Warlords with eight and a half million hit points and bandits decked out in armour and magic weaponary more valuable than the GDP of a small continent. And if that's not a load of balls, I really don't know what is...
In loving memory of Dave. And Margaret.
