Written by The TAG Team
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| While not really adventure games, the Grand Theft Auto series are sandbox games, which by definition is not linear. |
Continuing with our series of discussion questions, let's have a chat about game worlds.
In some adventure games, you have to complete area A before you can have access to area B. In other games, you have free rein to go nearly everywhere you want, exploring along the way.
Sometimes, it was done for logistical reasons. Leisure Suit Larry 2, for example, was specifically designed to avoid disk swaps, with each area fitting on a different floppy. When you advanced, you would change the floppy, and not have to flip disks back and forth.
In Maniac Mansion, you could explore nearly everywhere in the mansion from the beginning, although sometimes you might get caught by the Edisons and get to visit a special room in the basement.
Some games are a hybrid. In The Legend of Kyrandia, for example, you can explore a large area, and then when you solve a puzzle, you can explore the previous area as well as a new large area combined -- and you need to go back and forth to solve some puzzles.
Does a linear path make the game easier? Harder?
Is there a thrill in opening up new areas, or more joy in seeing things you can’t access yet?
Which games handled their choice well? And are there any games that handled it poorly?
There’s pros and cons to each approach, but what are your thoughts?
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| In Leisure Suit Larry 2, you can't access one area until you finish the previous one. |
This reminds me of an old discussion about text parser vs. hyperfiction interfaces in text adventure games. The fans of the text parser like the idea that any action can be attempted in any location, whereas in practical terms, as far as advancing the story goes, *most* actions in *most* locations will be basically invalid or unhelpful, *most* of the time. So the freedom that it offers you is basically illusory, and what it offers you is actually a linear game with lots and lots of pointless digressions. The hyperfiction "click on what you want to happen next" model, while more linear, is sometimes characterised as, well, being less of a waste of the player's time, only offering valid options while cutting out most of the dead ends and pointless filler possibilities. But you feel like you're on rails.
ReplyDeleteThe illusion of freedom is fragile and expensive. I think to some extent it is only attainable in conditions with sophisticated and well thought-through world models -- starting with eg. Melbourne House's "The Hobbit" and reaching its fullest fruition perhaps in NetHack (and only there because the devteam has had the luxury of refining its gameplay across literally decades.) But world model emergent narratives are rarely satisfying, like Elder Scrolls Radiant quests.
Well, in linear games it is more likely for the player to get stuck, either because there's always a single puzzle that has to be solved next (so you can't try for other puzzles first if you can't figure that one out), or because the player forgot an item in the previous area (and the game disallows backtracking).
ReplyDeleteLinear games are also easier to design because there's fewer item interactions to consider, and they require almost no consideration of "what if the player has done B and D but not A and C yet".
King's Quest I is a great example of nonlinearity, as is Maniac Mansion. Especially considering these are two of the earliest graphical adventure games.
Linear games are also easier to design because there's fewer item interactions to consider, and they require almost no consideration of "what if the player has done B and D but not A and C yet".
DeleteSomething that was failed a couple of times in my recent play of Sam & Max.
King's Quest I is a great example of nonlinearity, as is Maniac Mansion. Especially considering these are two of the earliest graphical adventure games.
For earlier games, KQ4 also was good in that regard, as well as Zak McCracken.
The whole point of parser vs point and click interface discussion wasn't freedom, but difficulty. If you have icons representing actions and pretty visible hotspots, the game is easier. Even if you don't know how to resolve puzzle, you can still force your way through obstacle by clicking on everything. If you have parser than you must know answer to the puzzle. If you don't, you can't force your way through. You must understand what you are doing, not clicking until something happens. That's why old text gamers were against point and click interface - they felt new interface dumbed down puzzles.
ReplyDeleteThe bigger difference for me was that the point-and-click interface bypassed vocabulary issues. With parsers you could easily see the object you wanted, or knew the action you had to take, yet you sat for hours trying different words or just giving up and assuming the object/action was not part of the game.
DeleteJust to add, I don't disagree with your statement either, just pointing out there were other implications.
DeleteIIRC, Broken Sword 1 has a big world to unlock as you make progress where you can go to different locations as you will (like Secret Files of Sherlock Holmes 1 & 2) but the sequel is more lineal. The same happens with Discworld 1 & 2). The linear ones were way more easier to me
ReplyDeleteI forgot to add: " The linear ones were way more easer to me....but the non linear were better games IMO"
DeleteWhile linearity makes sense for heavily plot-based games, gameplay-wise I prefer games like King's Quest 1 and The Colonel's Bequest which are centered more around exploration and unlocking new minor areas in a somewhat Metroidvania-esque manner. (The progressing time blocks in Colonel's Bequest add some linearity in the temporal rather than spatial dimension, though.) There is a special sense of reward in slowly mastering a whole environment compared to moving from one sequence/"level" to the next.
ReplyDeleteSome games with large explorable areas mostly available from the start however may have only an illusion of openness, with a long linear puzzle chain instead of true simultaneous goals. In that case the player could end up frustrated by too many puzzles that only can be solved later.
Efficient navigation for open areas is also one thing to consider. Many games have point-and-click maps, whereas several others have screen-to-screen navigation - which can cause one to get easily lost if the world is particularly large with similar-looking screens. In Day of the Tentacle (which is mapless) the mansion is structured so that you can get rather quickly from any place to another (it loops in most eras, and corridors make movement more conveniently hierarchical). Simon the Sorcerer has both a screen-to-screen world and a magic map that lets you teleport to some visited landmarks.
Some games with large explorable areas mostly available from the start however may have only an illusion of openness, with a long linear puzzle chain instead of true simultaneous goals. In that case the player could end up frustrated by too many puzzles that only can be solved later.
DeleteSometimes, it is handled very well. My favorite LSL game for example, LSL3, you can explore quite a lot of the game world, but some of the characters don't emerge until the story allows them to, and some of the businesses are closed at times.
Some other games, you see messages like "That's a good idea, maybe you should try that later." Ugh.
I like the ones with where you get some different tasks to try out, and then a bottle neck to sum up the part of the game until you move to the next area or event. Monkey island 1 is a good example of this, Its not overwhelming and but if you are stuck at one puzzle you could try out other things.
ReplyDeleteI think I land more on the side of linear games. I dislike being overwhelmed by choice. There's sometimes a moment in an adventure game where you get access to a new area and it can be huge with so much to explore, and I can feel put off by it. (I've not played it, but I recall reading the playthrough of Simon the Sorcerer here and how large the starting area is. That didn't appeal to me at all.)
ReplyDeleteBut it all depends on how well it's done, of course. Execution is everything. Going back to a previously explored area and finding new things or seeing it in a new light is probably more interesting to me.
I end up liking non-linear games more, but not exactly because of the nonlinearity per se. As others rightly point out, one of the big downfalls of non-linear games is this combinatoric explosion of "But what if the player has done X and Y but not Z when they reach point W?"
ReplyDeleteThere's one kind of plot structure where nonlinear structure is comparatively easy to get right, or at least where there's no big obvious advantage to imposing linearity. That's when the plot is composed of largely disconnected set pieces. The folks at Failbetter refer to these as "storylets". Each individual storylet may be linear, but the player can experience them in whatever order they like, and can put one on hold to go do another storylet.
And I could talk at length about the mechanics of this, but the reason my opinion comes down in favor of this kind of story is that those plot structures, the ones that work well for nonlinear game designs are basically the same ones that work well for nonlinear tradtional media - your interwoven episodic narratives like road movies. And that happens to be a genre I really like.
Not my own opinion, but I've noticed that a lot of non-adventure fans tend to view any roadblocks in adventure games as failures on the game's part, and if you have a big open space with lots of potential puzzles, that's not necessarily a plus for them.
ReplyDeleteMy own opinion is I like non-linear games, at least ones where it's not obvious that a game is linear. I.E., you're in a big area, but there's very little you can actually do straight off. Though that said, I have seen as many bad non-linear games as good ones, where everything seems unfocused, since rather than being done to imitate a location or provide a sense of exploration they merely didn't know what they were doing. Bad linear games really have an on-rails feeling though.
I think either is valid as long as it's well executed. Most adventure games necessarily have some degree of linearity, but open out at times - the Monkey Island series, for example generally works with fairly open areas for each act, but there's still a linear structure of act to act.
ReplyDeleteI find an open world that is too big just gets confusing, for the most part. Struggling to think off too many games that are that open.
Hmm. So, how do you feel about the first two King's Quest games? The first was 48 map screens (6x8), most of which were accessible early, and the second had 49 (7x7).
DeleteI find those games better in some ways than, say, the first Kyrandia, that had 19 screens in the first section, yet felt much tougher because it was more linear at that point in the game. (And I say this being a fan of the game and series).
Obviously, Quest for Glory is highly non-linear. We have a few linear sequences, such as escaping from the cave at the start of Quest for Glory: Shadows of Darkness.
ReplyDeleteLori's Mixed-Up Fairy Tales is open-ended in a different way. Players can wander around and explore, but they're generally on a quest that can only be solved in one place. So it's really linear with an illusion of freedom.
My Castle of Dr. Brain is almost purely linear. You have a series of puzzles that unlock the path to the next game area. You generally have a choice of which puzzle to solve first, but you need to complete all of them to advance. This seemed appropriate for an "edutainment" game that purports to teach some academic skills. (But is mostly for fun.)
Getting stuck on a puzzle in a linear game can be frustrating, but it's much better than becoming a "dead man walking" later in the game because you didn't finish an earlier puzzle.
I personally prefer a non linear approach, but I am also convinced that it potentially expose the developers to many more trappings and to a greater risk of completely destroying the game.
ReplyDeleteAs counter-intuitive as it may sounds, I think that, for working from a gameplay point of view, the non linear approach requires a much stronger plot and narrative...prowess than the linear one. Otherwise, the feeling for the player of being overwhelmed and lost prevails on the sense of wonder of being given free rein in the game world: think "Quest for Glory: Shadows of Darkness", where a sense of purpose is always present even during "What the hell should I do now?" moments, against "Ripley's Believe It or Not: The Riddle of Master Lu" (which I am playing right now) where what the non linear approach brings is the always lingering thought of "Have I just softlocked myself out of the game?". Another game that in my opinion botched the non-linear approach is Zak McKracken, the "vagueness" of the whole plot being exacerbated by the lack of the "look" command and consequently of any commentary from the main character (and by the very real possibility of getting locked out of the game!). It has to be said that the game failed by being overambitious, more than by the opposite, but a failure (albeit a specacular one) it remains in my book.
See, I'd argue the "botched" rating for Zak. First, the early Lucas games had the "What Is" verb which functioned as "Look" for many things, and as a result often eliminated pixel hunts. While not strictly non-linear, it felt it at times, and often, if one puzzle was stumping you, you could switch to another character and work on a different one instead.
DeleteA perfect game? Far from it. But certainly a lot better than some others that would come later.
I can think of a few examples, mostly in the late 90s, where non-linear plots were probably a cover for the underlying engine having dodgy-to-non-existent state tracking.
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