So first up, there’s Heavy Rain. Flawed though it may be, one of its many high-minded ideas managed to stick the landing after making the big leap from concept to execution. See, no matter what you do or how horribly your clumsy, sweat-soaked fingers manage to fumble through one of the game’s heart-rending life-or-death scenarios, there’s never a single Game Over screen. Quantic Dream programmed its game with so many plan Bs, Cs, Ds, etc that it probably exhausted our alphabet and had to dig a fair way into Japan’s 20,000-character variation on the theme. Main characters can kick the bucket, and the game doesn’t miss a beat. This, of course, handily deals with the problem of player death, but it also shows just how much interactivity and variability you can squeeze out of a few relatively small scenarios.
And then there’s Way of the Samurai, which GameSetWatch columnist Quintin Smith recently did an excellent job of explaining. Here’s the gist of it, though: you’re a lone samurai in a village. Really though, you – as in, the player – are a dumb, curious kid with a long stick standing over a hornets’ nest. You poke, prod, and pretty much inevitably piss off one samurai faction or another, which usually leads to hilariously violent results. And the kicker? You can accomplish your ill-defined goals however you please. Key NPCs, shopkeepers, random folks on the street – you name it – are no different when reflected in the gleaming steel of your sword. The game, however, gleefully shoves a middle finger in good ol’ Uncle Ben’s face. With great power comes very little responsibility, as it turns out; if you off an important character, the game takes it into account and keeps on going. And so, once again we see that true freedom – a real sandbox – functions best in a smaller environment. Consequently, is Way of the Samurai a long game? Definitely not. But it’s incredibly replayable, and – in many ways – better off.
And these two games are both incredibly rough around the edges – the first trickles in a wellspring of potential. It’s a shame, then, that they’re anomalies, exceptions to the rule. I’m sick and tired of watching the open-world genre languish, content to more or less tread water ever since Grand Theft Auto 3 put it on the map. The first Way of the Samurai came out in 2002, for Pete’s sake! Why has no one taken this ball and run with it yet? There’s clearly so much more to be done here, yet no one’s doing it. I think it’s time to change that, don’t you?
Comments are closed on this article
David Gerrold
July 14, 2010 at 6:00pm
Synchronicity. I was listening to that song two minutes before reading your column.From Wikipedia:I'd Do Anything for Love (But I Won't Do That) is a song composed and written by Jim Steinman, and recorded by Meat Loaf. The song was released in 1993 as the first single from the album Bat Out of Hell II: Back into Hell. The song was a commercial success, reaching number one in twenty-eight countries.[1] The single was certified platinum in the United States and became Meat Loaf's first number-one single on the Billboard Hot 100 chart and on the UK singles chart. The song earned Meat Loaf a Grammy Award for Best Rock Vocal Performance, Solo.Personally, I think that 'Life Is a Lemon and I Want My Money Back' (from the same album) is a much more brutally appropriate song for the era....
jrd417
July 14, 2010 at 5:21pm
If you actually play computer games and want a game that is truly open ended try X3 Terran Conflict. It is made by a small group called Egosoft in Germany and it is as open ended as you can get. You can ignore any or all the missions and just have fun.
Mark17
July 14, 2010 at 4:30pm
This may be a little extreme, but I think they should take a game like Grand Theft Auto and instead of allowing you to come back after you die, make it so that when you die it would be game over. One life. No redoing the mission after you die. The game would erase all progress, all saved games, and everything you have accomplished would be gone. It wouldn't matter if you invested 50 hours in the game, when you die, everything would be gone. I think something like that would definitely make it more like real life. One chance. Though, after investing 50 hours in a game to then die and lose everything, I think some people would probably kill themselves in real life...then it would be even more realistic.
It would be nice to see games with more non-linear gameplay. I think the reason we don't see more games like that is because there are almost an endless number of scenarios that could happen in a dynamically changing storyline. The game developer would not only have program a set of events and challenges in the game, but other events that could dynamically change the game's storyline based on things that the player has done in the game, and the events would still have to fit in, make sense, and avoid conflicting each other so that the the game will be more realistic and not feel gimmicky. It seems that the amount of programming would increase exponentially. Anyway, it would definitely be great to play a game that actually feels like your actions affect the ultimate outcome of the game.
lordmidnight
July 14, 2010 at 12:32pm
Have you not played Morrowind? Sure, in that game you can't destroy buildings, but you can undertake a quest however and whenever you like. You can kill anyone, including the "god" Vivec. You can completely mess up the main quest line and still complete the quest via an alternate route (that involves killing Vivec and looting his corpse). But you're under no pressure to complete the main quest anyway! Once you leave the character creation portion, you're on your own. It's a fantastic sandbox that was dissapointlingly dumbed-down a little in Oblivion. But we still have Morrowind! And its mod community is still going strong.
Arrowdodger
July 14, 2010 at 8:20pm
Morrowind is the ultimate sandbox. God i miss it. I'll have to fire it up soon. Know of any steller graphical improvements?
Jasker
July 14, 2010 at 11:46am
Never played Fable, but in Fable II you could kill just about anyone... maybe not all key story members.
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