06.03.08
Tweaking Exploration
The indomitable Jim Rossignol just posted a love letter for exploration gameplay over at Rock Paper Shotgun, and I feel compelled to ruminate upon it here, largely inspired by some of the comments on that post. I’m in the same boat as Jim, I explore compulsively. It started with Deus Ex, which taught me great rewards could wait in the dark corners of a level, and now the activity has been granted additional weight by my aspirations to become a game designer, where attention to detail can only be considered a boon. Now adays I even explore mostly linear games such as Half-Life 2 as much as I can, just to see how they were put together.
But some of the commenters have a point: In many open games, there’s nothing there. STALKER has much exploration, but offers little in the way of gameplay. Maybe you’ll find another mutant enemy. Maybe you’ll find a randomly generated weapon stash. To me, it’s enough, I was there to satisfy my own curiosity and to check out the architecture anyway, but to most players this reward would not be adequate.
The two games Jim mention, Grand Theft Auto 4 and Oblivion, both stand as great examples of rewarding exploration in my mind. Oblivion rewards you with random dungeons, occasional side quests, and at the very least alchemical ingredients. GTA4 rewards you with hidden weapon packages, cool vehicles, scavenging-based achievements, and the occasional random mission. To me, that’s enough, but evidently a lot of people feel a bit cheated. I know that Nick isn’t really interested in exploration, so he simply doesn’t engage in it and is happy without it, but it seems like some people feel compelled to explore the world and are then disappointed when it yields no considerable result.
But how could this be solved? More side missions? Well they’d have to be better than STALKER’s then, beause STALKER generates random side missions for you all the time, which is very impressive but fast becomes samish because they all adhere to one of 4 particular types. To fill out a game like GTA4 or Oblivion you’d need hundreds if not thousands of unique characters and individually scripted side-missions, and I just can’t see that being humanly possible any time soon. Both games have far more side missions than anybody could reasonably expect, and yet they still manage to be spread thin because of the size of the worlds.
Crackdown was onto something with its agility skill bonuses distributed generously and visibly across the rooftops of the city, genuinely encouraging exploration and making it an important part of the core gameplay, but the way it was done seemed very arcadey and didn’t particularly care about your immersion. The rules of the game were too exposed, so to speak. Maybe something more like Deus Ex’s method would work well, just multiplied substantially to fit the magnitude of an open world game. Deus Ex has so many ways to reward the player: Augmentations, aug upgrades, weapon mods, ammunition, single-use tools and items, credits, and even explicit skill point awards for exploration. In that game you’re always guaranteed to find something useful off the beaten path, even if it’s just an NPC with a few quirky lines of dialogue.
I’m the sort of player for whom the discovery of a pretty waterfall or an abandoned shack in a forest will make hours of aimless wandering worth the trouble, but receiving a few skillpoints for my efforts, even if it’s just a symbolic sum, makes for really good positive enforcement. A little nod like that from the game, just to show it acknowledges that you’ve found something neat, makes a world of difference.
Felix said,
June 3, 2008 at 15:31
I’m very picky when it comes to exploration. If I’m forced to explore (IE, easter egg hunt) I lothe and begrudge it because I see it more of a chore than a curiosity driven exercise. And when I do explore, I must have some benefit result from it. To use STALKER for an example, I love the portion of the map where that helicopter is shot down, simply because you’ve got all those different things to find, plus artifacts to collect, plus a couple of ‘cool, didn’t know I could go here!’ moments. The fact that it then threw the same boring ‘kill the bandits’ mission on you every time you passed the area really pissed me off, more so because they were hard to avoid. It might have worked, if there was a variety of random missions, and the playing area was 10 times larger. Far far too concentrated.
The fact that you could have zipped to the end, and the quests were more of a distraction than a leg up also pissed me off. That game had so much potential.
Nicholas Van Sickle said,
June 3, 2008 at 15:46
I tended to explore a lot in DX, I liked finding datacubes and such and there was equipment everywhere so I guess my exploration is reward-driven.
Jonas said,
June 3, 2008 at 18:10
One good point that was made in the RPS comment thread is that while Oblivion has loads of stuff to find by exploring, most of it is pretty soulless - it’s just generic dungeons blatantly constructed of the same tiles in different configurations. Once in a while you’ll find something new, like the beached ship in the Panther’s Jaws (or whatever the name of that delta was) or the village where everybody has been turned invisible, but usually there’s just a bunch of hallways with traps and then some chests with randomly generated loot. That just doesn’t do it for me.
And Felix, I agree 100% with your point about STALKER’s side missions just being distractions - you wouldn’t even get any cool unique equipment or weaponry from them, and since there was no character progression, they couldn’t award you skillpoints or anything like that.
EER said,
June 4, 2008 at 10:07
I agree with your above comment about oblivion, I don’t even loot anymore. Last time I played it, I decided ‘what the hell, lets be a mage this time around’. Usually I am the (diablo 2) barbarian type of gamer who invests everything in strength and swords.
Unfortunately, I quickly discovered the ‘invisibility’ spell. While this prevents you from attacking anyone, you CAN get a critical attack bonus almost always even without sneaking. In fact, the fighter’s guild missions are easier as a mage than as a fighter. Just sneak past everyone, kill the boss, get out.
What does this have to do with exploration? I don’t know, I lost my train of thought. Anyway, exploration in Oblivion isn’t all that great, I read in some comments on the original article that Morrowind was better to explore. I don’t know, the landscapes are more diverse in Morrowind, so I can see where they’re coming from, BUT there is literally NOTHING to do. It’s just not “alive” enough to really be interesting.
Take DX for example, I like exploring there. First of all, if you diverge from the linear path set out for you, there are all kinds of sidequests (rescue Smugglers friend, get a discount on meds in the free clinic, save the hostages in the ‘ton, save Sandra Renton from that punk, talk to Jock in the tavern for info), there is really a LOT to do. Or you can just not do anything and go straight to the NSF warehouse, I love these freedoms
I am currently replaying DX:IW over the weekend, and this time I am trying to complete as much sidemissions as I can find. Unfortunately the fun is a bit limited due to the fact that for some sidemissions I need to go through 3 (way too slow) loading screens
Jonas said,
June 4, 2008 at 22:54
Some of my favourite exploration comes from Deus Ex or Thief 3. A few examples:
In Hong Kong in Deus Ex, idle exploration of the canals yields a bar where you can buy a set of blueprints from a man who knew your brother, a room with steam pipes which a man has made an apartment out of, a barge with weapon caches concealed in its poison gas-infested hold, a large boat with a hidden engine compartment, the apartment of your pilot(!), and a flooded section of an underground highway.
Straying off the beaten path in Paris yields a few specially creepy phone calls from evil AI Icarus and several different apartments - one of which turns out to belong to a weapons smuggler, another of which features an excellent overheard conversation.
In Thief 3, looking around reveals not only loot that goes towards your score and can be sold for money to buy equipment (which is mostly useless unless you really suck at the game), but also overheard conversations that reveal extra special loot locations as well as little story vignettes. I’ve posted before about how Thief 3’s exploration caters to my love of hidden spaces by encouraging you to trespass into apartments and taverns. GTA4 allows the same idle sort of trespassing, but the lack of details lessens the attraction. When I break into an apartment in Thief 3, I get an actual apartment with loot, text files, patrolling enemies, etc. It’s more actual gameplay, whereas walking into an apartment building in GTA4 gives me a set of stairs to the roof, and usually that’s it. There are a few notable exceptions though, such as your safehouses.