Seeing as how I finished my resume site, I know I need to start blogging a bit to put some ideas out there. So here we go.
Recently I was thinking about some of the games I’ve been playing. More specifically, I’m talking about Final Fantasy XIII and New Super Mario Bros Wii. Both games are what I would consider to be AAA titles, and were released 6 months apart from each other, and are both made by major Japanese developers . What popped up in my head while driving around one day was the difference in focus that each of them have.
In Final Fantasy XIII, the focus is on character development in cutscenes with intermittent areas where the player battles. If you’ve played the game, I probably didn’t need to even say that, as pretty much the rest of the game is missing. You see, this is how XIII is played; I watch a cutscene, after which I am placed in control of a character with a map that tells me where to go. As I walk towards the goal, there are enemies in the area that when touched will prompt a battle. Once I have made it to the place I’m supposed to be, another cutscene triggers. That’s pretty much it, recycled over and over. The more I play the game, the more I just want to get to the next cutscene to see the character development further. So in essence, the only thing the player actually does, is run into battles and fight the battles. (Yes I realize there are all sorts of equipment upgrading and character leveling as well, but that isn’t really gameplay, those are text based choices.) Don’t get me wrong though, I actually thing the battle system is the best battle system to date in a Final Fantasy, and is definitely worth entering battles for. I just feel like the implementation is completely wrong. Why waste such a good battle system by making it the only thing the player does through the entire game? It just waters it down, and fails to highlight the genius system.That’s why I started thinking about how New Super Mario Bros Wii is the complete opposite of XIII.
New Super Mario Bros Wii focuses almost entirely on gameplay. The only time you ever menu dive is in between levels, when you select the next area and/or power up Mario before you enter the level. Not just that, but NSMBW has nearly 100 levels (I’m totally guesstimating that), all with their own unique play style. There’s very little exposition as to what is happening, and it doesn’t matter. You want to know why? Because it’s a video game. You see that, the very last word in the previous sentence? It’s game, a game, which one plays.
Gamers don’t really want to jump on their console and start watching a movie with some gameplay in between it. I’m going to let sales back me on this point; which one sold more out of the two? NSMBW, by several million copies, despite the two being available to a comparable amount of consoles in homes. To go even further, at E3 recently we saw Nintendo Show off several games that disprove the idea that cinematic games work. Both Donkey Kong Country Returns as well as Kirby’s Epic Yarn caused huge amounts of excitement around the show. Neither of them seem to have much exposition. Even when you look at some emotional stunners in the past couple of years, the focus is on gameplay, not cutscenes. I’ll point to the fan, and critic, and every single gamer favorite Bioshock. Bioshock was a game that implemented story into the gameplay, rather than pulling the player out of control. In fact, the couple times control is taken away from the player are the biggest emotional moments. That’s not because the player doesn’t have control, it’s because the player has been so used to having control of things around them that when that control is taken away, which by the way is the expertly done main hook of Bioshock, the player is appalled and shocked. It creates emotional upheaval. Look at the fan, and critic, and pretty much everyone favorite Half – Life 2 (and episode 2) as well. Controls is always in the hand of the player, except when emotional stirrings become the focus. When that happens, the player is distraught from loss of control and causes the focus to be placed onto what is happening. You do that too much, like in the case of Metal Gear Solid 4 and FFXIII, the player can get lost in exposition, creating too complicated of a story. What developers can do is focus on gameplay, and work on storyboarding design to allow for as few player control loses as possible, and make those the most emotional moments, in other words, players should only lose control during the denouement.
For the majority of my gaming life I considered the more story, the better, and lack of story created a disconnect from what was happening on screen. After really thinking this through, I feel I was wrong. I think the best way is to focus on gameplay, and whatever story you have, keep it light, and integrate it into the game. Only take control out of the player when you want the player to experience an emotional high. But the big thing here is to focus on gameplay, because remember, we’re gamers, we like to take an active role in the game, not a passive.