IRATE - I'm Rambling About Things, Eh?
Hi all!
Thanks to Olli for the hot Nintendo news. With TAG, FUUDGE, TAF-T, etc. articles being regularly delayed by up to months, who would have thought that GMG was the first source to bring this news to me! I'll be waiting eagerly to see how Nintendo Switch launches early next year. Too bad our dog is too disobedient to walk without constant supervision and tugging by the leash. If the dog gets triggered by something I will have trouble watching an InfoQ presentation on my phone which only takes one hand. If I tried to play Skyrim with two hands on Switch, I'd need to grow one or two more for the dog :-P.
Skyrim was mentioned, which I can't let pass without extensive rambling. To exaggerate for the sake of provocation, I love to hate Skyrim and also hate the fact that I love it :-). Skyrim was released on 2011-11-11 with a big ad campaign. I remember seeing that release date in the subway and I think even on TV, which is quite unusual for video games. Anyway, the fact is that Skyrim is soon 5 years old, and even though I bought the game at release (or soon after, can't recall), I still haven't finished its main quest line! I have promised myself already months ago that I will get to see the ending of Skyrim by 2016-11-11. Now I'm running out of time.
In fact I thought of writing this article two days ago mostly because I tried to launch Skyrim but Steam had problems connecting to their DRM Overlord Server and therefore I was denied access to the game that I have legally bought. Have I mentioned that I very much prefer GOG.com over Steam? I do :-).
Anyway, I just want to share a few random thoughts about Skyrim, what works and what doesn't. I know Skyrim is the epitome of immersive games at least for certain people but I won't let that cloud my judgment ;-).
What makes me still play this 5-year-old game? I do like the atmosphere. For me atmosphere is made of music and environments, and also of gameplay mechanics. Skyrim is blessed with the music of one of my favorite present-day video game composers, Jeremy Soule. (He's second perhaps only to Chris Christodoulou.) Sadly Skyrim's music consists partly of diluted versions of Jeremy's music for Oblivion, the previous installment in The Elder Scrolls series, which was instilled with emotion. Even diluted the music is very good.
The visual environments in Skyrim are also impressive even if the game is getting old. I haven't seen what the upcoming remastered Skyrim will look like, and I'm unlikely to even try it because I doubt the gameplay mechanics or essential parts of the content will change, and therefore it'd just be repeating the same old. The two environments that make Skyrim for me are the bleak winter scenery, found all over the province especially up in the north, and on the other hand the steaming hot pools of Eastmarch (logically located in the east of Skyrim) where mammoths and giants seem to like to bathe.
What doesn't work for me in Skyrim, like in most 3D adventure games, is that the gameplay mechanics is dogmatically rooted in the low-level paradigm that I shall now name "Lunar Rover". By Lunar Rover I mean the typical way players are made to interact with 3D game worlds; by moving their designated player character along the terrain as if they were an algorithm controlling a lunar rover that roams around seeking out points of interest. In short Lunar Rover tends to result in a contradiction; the world feels too small and crammed, and on the other hand the player ends up spending most of his time operating his lunar rover which isn't all that exciting. Some might argue that by always sticking to moving the player character is The Way to immerse the player in the game world. The character is the avatar of the player and therefore the player must endure the dire boredom of walking long distances. Thank goodness there's fast map travel (i.e. click on any visited location in world map and get transported there instantly). I'd very much like to see tighter gameplay that made use of different modes of movement depending on the situation. Older games (Ultimas I-V) did well to zoom out for large scale world travel and to zoom in for detailed combat and exploring of settlements.
Exploring is not bad, quite the opposite. In fact the first time I started playing Skyrim I refrained from using fast map travel. By doing so I wanted to maximize my chance of experiencing random events and finding curious locations. And those I did find, and it was good! But with good came also the burden of micro management. Every encounter and every explored location added items to my inventory. Of course I wanted to pick up the elven broadswords of crazy sneaking and the like because good loot is worth many a gold piece even if they are not of direct use to my character. But pick up too many and the player character becomes burdened under heavy load and movement becomes a painful crawl. With this mechanic Skyrim in effect cut my enjoyment of exploration and immersion to soothe some kind of worry that the game world's economy would collapse if I could gather a million wolf skins on one long trek through Hjaalmarch.
I remember one particular moment of playing Skyrim a couple of years ago. I was walking through Eastmarch (hot tubs again!) and found many creep clusters and dragon's tongues lying around. They are Skyrim's indigenous plants that can be used in alchemy to produce various magical potions. Picking the creep clusters and hopping between rocks and puddles I felt great joy! I think at the core I was satisfying my personal completionist trait. Being able to amass lots of alchemy ingredients in a short time was like winning a small lottery. Too quickly though I thought one step further; what can I do with creep clusters and dragon's tongues? Each ingredient holds four magical qualities, and those four kinds of potions are all that I can do with the ingredients. After realizing this my jackpot suffered inflation. I didn't really need any potions. They can add some bonuses to fighting, trading, and other adventuring skills, but the game doesn't quite hold a steady level of difficulty and is full of silly loopholes in its core systems, and that's why percentual bonuses to skills can too often be trumped by just abusing the systems.
Here's an example from the fighting system. Fighting a frost troll is difficult. It must be one of the most difficult monsters there are in Skyrim. Snow trolls deal a lot of damage, they take lots of hits to kill, and they are aggressive. You can find one on your way up the Throat of the World, a big mountain in the middle of Skyrim which hosts a handful of wise men that play a central role in the main plot line (well, not all of them are men). So, this particular frost troll is obviously set as a challenge to the player. To prove himself worth of advancing the main plot line the player must overcome the frost troll with skill. But the skill I ended up demonstrating was not that of fighting or sneaking or reasoning or anything else in the game world. For me the solution that really topped other attempts was to run past the troll. Trolled the troll, eh :D. Mind you, the troll guards a narrow passage in the mountainside and a smash of the troll's hand is likely to kill a fledgling player instantly. What I did was to lure the troll 50 meters out of its home and around a small rock. Running round the rock I was able to get behind the troll safely out of his reach. Then I just ran, and that was it. The violent beast's fearsome fighting capabilities were completely nullified by basic footwork around a boulder of modest size. The troll wasn't cunning enough to really guard his home cave or the narrow passage but followed me around the rock. So he was not an obstacle after all. Doing this didn't feel like an accomplishment, I felt like the game was broken. It wasn't my avatar in the game world overcoming this challenge that was so obviously set for him, it was me personally abusing the game's leaky fighting system.
I attribute this particular piece of leaky gameplay mechanic to the Lunar Rover paradigm. I think in general that modern games tend to try to simulate mechanics with too great detail. I believe it's mainly due to the imbalance of how 3D graphics systems have advanced in the past couple of decades while artificial intelligence, 3D physics, and emergent systems driven by algorithms are still in their infancy by comparison. For the developers to be able to utilize the great 3D graphics capabilities, the gameplay mechanics are forced to mimic the same level of detail. This seems to lead to failure.
This same problem manifests also in a much more recent game, Deus Ex: Mankind Divided. I can never reach high places by stacking three boxes on top of each other and climbing them. The physics engine just doesn't manage to keep the boxes stable. The stack topples over before I manage to jump on it. Two stacked boxes are most often stable. I bet the poor programmers had to hack their asses off to allow stacking even those two boxes :-P. This problem has existed unsolved already since 1998 when the game Trespasser tried to use complex 3D physics but failed: "We had originally intended to have much more interesting physical challenges for the player consisting of making stacks and bridges to cross gaps or reach high [places]. Due to the problems with the physics engine, we ended up cutting nearly every puzzle which depended on this behavior, as it was too difficult and unreliable to actually make stacks." [http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/131746/postmortem_dreamworks_.php]
This is lots of rambling, and I didn't even get to where I intended. For the sake of sometimes posting something, I'll cut this here. Maybe more later. And please note that even if I might be a bit critical towards Skyrim, I do like the game. There are more good things I didn't get to write about yet.
I am currently also writing another ramble about Bastion and that platformey game that Janne requested earlier, so all friends of aimless rambling, stay tuned!
-Ville
Thanks to Olli for the hot Nintendo news. With TAG, FUUDGE, TAF-T, etc. articles being regularly delayed by up to months, who would have thought that GMG was the first source to bring this news to me! I'll be waiting eagerly to see how Nintendo Switch launches early next year. Too bad our dog is too disobedient to walk without constant supervision and tugging by the leash. If the dog gets triggered by something I will have trouble watching an InfoQ presentation on my phone which only takes one hand. If I tried to play Skyrim with two hands on Switch, I'd need to grow one or two more for the dog :-P.
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Skyrim was mentioned, which I can't let pass without extensive rambling. To exaggerate for the sake of provocation, I love to hate Skyrim and also hate the fact that I love it :-). Skyrim was released on 2011-11-11 with a big ad campaign. I remember seeing that release date in the subway and I think even on TV, which is quite unusual for video games. Anyway, the fact is that Skyrim is soon 5 years old, and even though I bought the game at release (or soon after, can't recall), I still haven't finished its main quest line! I have promised myself already months ago that I will get to see the ending of Skyrim by 2016-11-11. Now I'm running out of time.
 |
| Yes, Skyrim. |
In fact I thought of writing this article two days ago mostly because I tried to launch Skyrim but Steam had problems connecting to their DRM Overlord Server and therefore I was denied access to the game that I have legally bought. Have I mentioned that I very much prefer GOG.com over Steam? I do :-).
Anyway, I just want to share a few random thoughts about Skyrim, what works and what doesn't. I know Skyrim is the epitome of immersive games at least for certain people but I won't let that cloud my judgment ;-).
What makes me still play this 5-year-old game? I do like the atmosphere. For me atmosphere is made of music and environments, and also of gameplay mechanics. Skyrim is blessed with the music of one of my favorite present-day video game composers, Jeremy Soule. (He's second perhaps only to Chris Christodoulou.) Sadly Skyrim's music consists partly of diluted versions of Jeremy's music for Oblivion, the previous installment in The Elder Scrolls series, which was instilled with emotion. Even diluted the music is very good.
The visual environments in Skyrim are also impressive even if the game is getting old. I haven't seen what the upcoming remastered Skyrim will look like, and I'm unlikely to even try it because I doubt the gameplay mechanics or essential parts of the content will change, and therefore it'd just be repeating the same old. The two environments that make Skyrim for me are the bleak winter scenery, found all over the province especially up in the north, and on the other hand the steaming hot pools of Eastmarch (logically located in the east of Skyrim) where mammoths and giants seem to like to bathe.
 |
| Bath time in Eastmarch. |
What doesn't work for me in Skyrim, like in most 3D adventure games, is that the gameplay mechanics is dogmatically rooted in the low-level paradigm that I shall now name "Lunar Rover". By Lunar Rover I mean the typical way players are made to interact with 3D game worlds; by moving their designated player character along the terrain as if they were an algorithm controlling a lunar rover that roams around seeking out points of interest. In short Lunar Rover tends to result in a contradiction; the world feels too small and crammed, and on the other hand the player ends up spending most of his time operating his lunar rover which isn't all that exciting. Some might argue that by always sticking to moving the player character is The Way to immerse the player in the game world. The character is the avatar of the player and therefore the player must endure the dire boredom of walking long distances. Thank goodness there's fast map travel (i.e. click on any visited location in world map and get transported there instantly). I'd very much like to see tighter gameplay that made use of different modes of movement depending on the situation. Older games (Ultimas I-V) did well to zoom out for large scale world travel and to zoom in for detailed combat and exploring of settlements.
Exploring is not bad, quite the opposite. In fact the first time I started playing Skyrim I refrained from using fast map travel. By doing so I wanted to maximize my chance of experiencing random events and finding curious locations. And those I did find, and it was good! But with good came also the burden of micro management. Every encounter and every explored location added items to my inventory. Of course I wanted to pick up the elven broadswords of crazy sneaking and the like because good loot is worth many a gold piece even if they are not of direct use to my character. But pick up too many and the player character becomes burdened under heavy load and movement becomes a painful crawl. With this mechanic Skyrim in effect cut my enjoyment of exploration and immersion to soothe some kind of worry that the game world's economy would collapse if I could gather a million wolf skins on one long trek through Hjaalmarch.
I remember one particular moment of playing Skyrim a couple of years ago. I was walking through Eastmarch (hot tubs again!) and found many creep clusters and dragon's tongues lying around. They are Skyrim's indigenous plants that can be used in alchemy to produce various magical potions. Picking the creep clusters and hopping between rocks and puddles I felt great joy! I think at the core I was satisfying my personal completionist trait. Being able to amass lots of alchemy ingredients in a short time was like winning a small lottery. Too quickly though I thought one step further; what can I do with creep clusters and dragon's tongues? Each ingredient holds four magical qualities, and those four kinds of potions are all that I can do with the ingredients. After realizing this my jackpot suffered inflation. I didn't really need any potions. They can add some bonuses to fighting, trading, and other adventuring skills, but the game doesn't quite hold a steady level of difficulty and is full of silly loopholes in its core systems, and that's why percentual bonuses to skills can too often be trumped by just abusing the systems.
 |
| Dragon's tongues. |
Here's an example from the fighting system. Fighting a frost troll is difficult. It must be one of the most difficult monsters there are in Skyrim. Snow trolls deal a lot of damage, they take lots of hits to kill, and they are aggressive. You can find one on your way up the Throat of the World, a big mountain in the middle of Skyrim which hosts a handful of wise men that play a central role in the main plot line (well, not all of them are men). So, this particular frost troll is obviously set as a challenge to the player. To prove himself worth of advancing the main plot line the player must overcome the frost troll with skill. But the skill I ended up demonstrating was not that of fighting or sneaking or reasoning or anything else in the game world. For me the solution that really topped other attempts was to run past the troll. Trolled the troll, eh :D. Mind you, the troll guards a narrow passage in the mountainside and a smash of the troll's hand is likely to kill a fledgling player instantly. What I did was to lure the troll 50 meters out of its home and around a small rock. Running round the rock I was able to get behind the troll safely out of his reach. Then I just ran, and that was it. The violent beast's fearsome fighting capabilities were completely nullified by basic footwork around a boulder of modest size. The troll wasn't cunning enough to really guard his home cave or the narrow passage but followed me around the rock. So he was not an obstacle after all. Doing this didn't feel like an accomplishment, I felt like the game was broken. It wasn't my avatar in the game world overcoming this challenge that was so obviously set for him, it was me personally abusing the game's leaky fighting system.
 |
| Frosty McTroll is mad because I'm just going to run past without proper hellos. |
I attribute this particular piece of leaky gameplay mechanic to the Lunar Rover paradigm. I think in general that modern games tend to try to simulate mechanics with too great detail. I believe it's mainly due to the imbalance of how 3D graphics systems have advanced in the past couple of decades while artificial intelligence, 3D physics, and emergent systems driven by algorithms are still in their infancy by comparison. For the developers to be able to utilize the great 3D graphics capabilities, the gameplay mechanics are forced to mimic the same level of detail. This seems to lead to failure.
This same problem manifests also in a much more recent game, Deus Ex: Mankind Divided. I can never reach high places by stacking three boxes on top of each other and climbing them. The physics engine just doesn't manage to keep the boxes stable. The stack topples over before I manage to jump on it. Two stacked boxes are most often stable. I bet the poor programmers had to hack their asses off to allow stacking even those two boxes :-P. This problem has existed unsolved already since 1998 when the game Trespasser tried to use complex 3D physics but failed: "We had originally intended to have much more interesting physical challenges for the player consisting of making stacks and bridges to cross gaps or reach high [places]. Due to the problems with the physics engine, we ended up cutting nearly every puzzle which depended on this behavior, as it was too difficult and unreliable to actually make stacks." [http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/131746/postmortem_dreamworks_.php]
 |
| Trespasser could be the hideously mutated older brother of Horizon Zero Dawn? |
This is lots of rambling, and I didn't even get to where I intended. For the sake of sometimes posting something, I'll cut this here. Maybe more later. And please note that even if I might be a bit critical towards Skyrim, I do like the game. There are more good things I didn't get to write about yet.
I am currently also writing another ramble about Bastion and that platformey game that Janne requested earlier, so all friends of aimless rambling, stay tuned!
-Ville
Apt and entertaining critique on the 'Lunar rover' mechanic. And this quote reminded me of a splendid RockPaperShotgun article that I've since misplaced (closed that particular tab in my browser - always a mistake):
ReplyDelete"Some might argue that by always sticking to moving the player character is The Way to immerse the player in the game world."
I will find the article and report back here - maybe with an article, even. It's a wonderful topic.
PS: I'm curious, what was the deal with date 2016-11-11 and completing Skyrim by then? And did you manage that? :o)
2016-11-11 was the fifth anniversary of Skyrim's release. I did make it and even had a small margin to spare. \o/
ReplyDeleteLooking forward to reading that RPS article!
Whoops, didn't proofread my comment. :) Meant to say:
ReplyDelete"... and report back here - maybe with an article of my own, even."
Anyhoo, I found it already! Please let me know what you think:
Journeys In Games: Let’s Talk About Fast Travel
https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2015/06/26/fast-travel-is-rubbish/
PS: Any way to make the links actually work in these comments? Html tags or some such?
What an excellent article, thanks for linking to it. It reminds me that one of my long-time wishes for games of lunar rover exploration is to have to genuinely worry if I wander into very dangerous areas. Sadly in many games I can always be pretty confident that I won't get myself into terrible trouble, and that I can always fight my way to victory or at least run like mad and still survive. I recall playing Assassin's Creed 2 and lamenting the fact that the closer I got to the end of the game, the more straightforward all fights became. It was such routine that it felt like completely missing the point. Somehow it was possible to mostly avoid proper swordfighting and just walk up to hostiles and stab them to death with a single move. I also recall being upset when playing World of Warcraft and seeing the recommended level markers on each area on the map. I knew that if the marker was 5 levels above mine I absolutely wouldn't have a chance to survive or to gain reasonable amounts of XP in a given time, and if it was 5 levels below mine it would provide no danger at all, and also virtually no XP to gain. These things spoil exploration just like fast travel does. I'm not on a quest when fights are trivial or if the game tells me in advance what level of challenges I'm going to find.
DeleteBtw, it seems that you can enter proper links using HTML in Blogger comments.
Just noticed that there's a five-hour long 10th anniversary postmortem of Oblivion on YouTube. The man talks about the game in depth and makes many comparisons to its sequel, Skyrim, and prequel, Morrowind, along with Fallout 3 and 4. The video is based on his 1000 hours of Oblivion playtime and contains many insights into the game itself and the developer. If you have five extra hours lying around and The Elder Scroll games are interesting then this video is likely to be time well spent.
ReplyDeleteWow, this sounds like something for Seppo!
DeleteUnfortunately, even though my favourite pastime during a weekday breakfast is watching game post-mortems, five hours is a lot. That's more than I could endure playing Oblivion... And I paid for it. :o)
There's now also a more modestly sized feature-length documentary of the whole Elder Scrolls series by Indigo Gaming. While the author doesn't dive as far into details like in the above mentioned 5-hour-long postmortem, the documentary does provide an insightful look through all the Elder Scrolls games and the key people behind them. The documentarist considers Daggerfall (1996) as something of a high peak in the series and explains his reasons well.
ReplyDelete