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[Spring-Loaded]

Piggybacking off of this thread by AgentOtaku

A few years back, 1UP did an interview about Uncharted 2 with Amy Hennig (creative director for UC2) and Evan Wells (co-president of Naughty Dog). Right off the bat, Thierry Ngyuen brings up the ludonarrative/cognitive dissonance that some player's react to in the game, in which the player controls an average everyman-type character who has to shoot hundreds of enemies while racing to find a lost city/treasure. Here's what Hennig responds with

Yeah, it's funny -- it's actually a dilemma that we're going to face more in this medium now that characters are getting more well-rendered -- I mean in all forms, not just visual rendering -- in characterization, in acting, the performances, and all that stuff. I've heard some people refer to this as a sort of "uncanny valley of characterization." I'm not sure how we deal with it in the industry. Because you don't want to constrain yourself to saying, "well, we can only tell certain kinds of stories and games, and it's all got to be soldiers; they've all got to be hard-bitten, and it's all going to be post-apocalyptic and grim; there can't be any humor or any romance or anything like that because it's still a game, and you want to be shooting things and having combat."

Now, if you made a game that matched a movie... Let's use a literal example -- let's say you made a game out of Raiders of the Lost Ark. It wouldn't be any fun. Because [gaming's] an active experience; you have to have that interaction of shooting and having combat. On one hand, I almost take it as a compliment, that we've done our characterization so well that people have that potential cognitive dissonance of, "I'm this character, yet I'm doing these things." On the other hand, [sigh] you almost have to take the gameplay as a metaphor. Maybe that's going to sound like a cop-out, but, we want the game to be fun at the end of the day. It's not to be taken seriously. Yes, it's maybe a little bit over-the-top in the sense that when you compare it to a film -- or in our case five or six films because of the length -- you wouldn't have that body count. But it's a different medium, and you almost have to take all of that and say, "we want to keep the tone of that genre that we're trying to match." But if we only had you fight three guys over the course of two hours, you'd say, "this sucks." So I think we need a little bit of slack in regards to that cognitive dissonance. Otherwise, the only kinds of games anybody's going to get are...

Evan Wells: Military.

Uncharted 2 is a shooter. From what I've seen played and played firsthand, the most recent Tomb Raider and Bioshock Infinite are, to a considerable degree, shooters as well. However, a lot of people went into these games expecting to play as treasure hunters, survivors or rescuers rather than killers.

The adventure elements of these games frequently take a backseat to the combat, rather than letting the combat compliment them. While these games may have been intended to have such heavy focus on shootouts from their outsets, it's still something to consider since these games have sold/shipped millions.

So, is making your action-adventure game revolve around combat unavoidable? How do you make the action engaging without such reliance on combat?

I always found Hennig's points to be reasonable. That doesn't excuse when UC2 or other games feel like they have a disproportionate amount of forced killing on the player's part, however. People say that giving the player options other than just rushing head-on into battle would help and I agree. But how feasible is that really?

How much balancing goes into designing a straight-forward enemy encounter, let alone an encounter that allows the player to sneak past, fake-surrender or bargain? Uncharted's combat itself isn't as punishing as in, say, Deus Ex: Human Revolution; you can quickly be killed in DE:HR, at least early on. There are immediate and latent consequences to choosing a lethal/head-on approach in that game which makes the option of having a stealth option actually matter. What could be done to give the player true choice when it comes to action.

And finally, how would games like Uncharted, Tomb Raider and Bioshock be able to retain player agency without the amount of attention the devs gave to combat? If there is a way, would this way result in the same game(s)?

 

[jayu26]

Batman the shit! I did not kill them, just broke all their limps and knocked'em out.

 

[baphomet]

They should just make the lead character an actual mass murderer. Then there's no suspension of disbelief when you're murdering 1000's of people for the "right" thing.

 

[HalfBakedProphet]

Endless waves of robots instead

 

[RoboPlato]

I've honestly never had an issue with this. I guess it's just a suspension of disbelief thing for me. I barely even notice until someone explicitly points out the huge body counts.

 

[SteeloDMZ]

If everybody and their mother were out to kill you, wouldn't you also become a mass murderer to stay alive?

 

[Mechazawa]

So, is making your action-adventure game revolve around combat unavoidable? How do you make the action engaging without such reliance on combat??

What do you consider action? I'm not really sure you can make an 8 hour "action" game that doesn't have continuous combat.

Anyways, you could theoretically just make a game about exploring a highly interactive environment. Maybe sprinkle in a few, but very tense firefights like I Am Alive. The question becomes whether or not the designers actually want to make that game and whether or not there are enough people willing to buy a version of that with the production values of something like Uncharted.

 

[NEOPARADIGM]

let's say you made a game out of Raiders of the Lost Ark. It wouldn't be any fun.

How do you know? What? I haven't even pitched you my ideas.

 

[SlowRevolution]

In games like Uncharted and Tomb Raider, make the environment the enemy.

 

[jtb]

Make each encounter much more unique and, perhaps difficult. So far fewer encounters, but make each their own little boss fight (think SOTC or something). I mean, look at Die Hard. McClane only kills 10 dudes, but each and every kill feels satisfying and hard earned. I think somewhere along the line, when an Indiana Jones or Nathan Drake kills 10 guys vs. 1000 guys, there's going to be a fundamental disconnect.

Also, offering more options such as non-lethal in combat will go a long way.

Plus, I think maybe the videogame industry should ween itself off of violence as a crutch. Why is movement + violence the only two mechanics that the majority of games focus on? Surely there are other elements that can be translated to gameplay in a fun way? Every single day I wake up and I do more things than just walk around and beat the shit out of random people. Why can't videogames be the same?

 

[PuppetMaster]

IIRC, in Tomb Raider 1, I think I only fought 2 human enemies.

 

[ChosenPredator]

survival games, against the elements...

 

[Yagharek]

MGS2 answered this conundrum 12 years ago.

Tranquiliser darts. And eventually they wake up. Unlike Batman where he functionally kills the guards, MGS2 had guards who could be woken by other guards or eventually come to after the effects wore off.

 

[Mikey Jr.]

I've honestly never had an issue with this. I guess it's just a suspension of disbelief thing for me. I honestly barely even notice until someone explicitly points out the huge body counts.

Me neither.

I agree with her point completely.

 

[RedSwirl]

Put more emphasis on adventure, less emphasis on action. They talk about Indiana Jones there, but look at all the older PC Indiana games -- they're graphic adventure games, not shooters. The problem is that adventure games aren't nearly as popular as action games.

 

[LiK]

LESS enemies who are smarter and hard to kill.

 

[saunderez]

I've honestly never had an issue with this. I guess it's just a suspension of disbelief thing for me. I barely even notice until someone explicitly points out the huge body counts.

Likewise. I also think it's a suspension of disbelief thing, all the game has to give me is a reason for my opponents to be hostile and I'll ignore the body count entirely. I'll fight for my life until they stop coming at me, pure and simple.

 

[jtb]

I know dialogue options are incredibly boring and people don't want to read in their games, blah blah blah, but the majority of our interactions with people on a daily basis are through speech. If someone is actually willing to invest the technology and time into writing a quality interactive story (and, no... I don't mean David Cage), then there's no reason why something like dialogue cannot be another main mechanic within the ludonarrative of videogames.

Something like... Alpha Protocol. If the actual gameplay mechanics weren't so terrible, that's something I would have loved to be the blueprint for action-y games in the future. Something where the choices you make are not merely how you approach each violent encounter.

 

[SolidSnakex]

I think what ND is doing with TLoU is a good compromise. It seems to be heavily based on player choice. So you can often choose whether or not you want to fight or simply find a way to get around the situation without mowing down everything in your line of sight. The problem for many games today is that they're constantly creating combat arena's that you have to clear before you can advance. So they force you into those situations instead of letting the player have the option to figure out how to get around it. That way you can be a mass murderer if that's what you enjoy as a player, or you can figure out ways to get around it. That would make the combat more interesting as well since you'd be designing more options for the player.

 

[Oersted]

LESS enemies who are smarter and hard to kill.

I have to add: The player should be more easily to kill. Make it even, strengthwise.

 

[staticneuron]

If everybody and their mother were out to kill you, wouldn't you also become a mass murderer to stay alive?

That is the thing. In alot of the games they spend enough time to point out that the characters are in life and death situations. Then they make sure to define the characters moral compass as well. Drake, unlike Indiana Jones, doesn't have a problem using guns and also they imply that he has always been involved in the darker side of treasure hunting (collecting for profit instead of preservation) in each game. So when you place the main characters in life or death situations such as on an island with pirates trying to kill you, in the middle of a warzone with mercenaries trying to kill you or globetrotting with a shadowy secret organization trying to kill you.... then you shouldn't have the reaction of pitying the army of trained killers trying to put you six feet under. It makes no sense why people would equate such blatant cases of self defense as murder.

 

[Jintor]

Contextualising it differently is a pretty easy solution, depending on your story of course.

 

[SlowRevolution]

That is the thing. In alot of the games they spend enough time to point out that the characters are in life and death situations. Then they make sure to define the characters moral compass as well. Drake, unlike Indiana Jones, doesn't have a problem using guns and also they imply that he has always been involved in the darker side of treasure hunting (collecting for profit instead of preservation) in each game. So when you place the main characters in life or death situations such as on an island with pirates trying to kill you, in the middle of a warzone with mercenaries trying to kill you or globetrotting with a shadowy secret organization trying to kill you.... then you shouldn't have the reaction of pitying the army of trained killers trying to put you six feet under. It makes no sense why people would equate such blatant cases of self defense as murder.

But having waves and waves and waves of guys gets ridiculous.

 

[PaulloDEC]

I honestly never considered the story implications of the body-count in games like Uncharted until I noticed people bringing it up online. It's like Hennig said, you have to take it as a metaphor for the struggles the character encounters rather than tallying up the number of corpses in every scene. A combat scenario in Uncharted is a battle to me, not a list of brave men taken too soon. If you think of it that way you'll have no fun at all.

It's a kind of big-picture thinking IMO. The more realistic the game gets, the more difficult it is to think of your enemies in the same was as you do when you're stomping Goombas into the ground as Mario, but it can be done.

 

[RoboPlato]

One thing that I think could be explored more is something like the major dialogue conversations in Deus Ex: Human Revolution. Those were tense, far more so than actual combat, and almost felt like boss fights in their own right. Just trying to convince someone to change their mind in a tight situation could make a whole lot of difference.

 

[Magnus]

I've honestly never had an issue with this. I guess it's just a suspension of disbelief thing for me. I barely even notice until someone explicitly points out the huge body counts.

Same here. I'm stuck wondering why UC2 is always the game cited as the apex of this problem. Is it just that things got so realistic and well-rendered around 2009 that the problem began to become especially vivid?

 

[RedSwirl]

One thing that I think could be explored more is something like the major dialogue conversations in Deus Ex: Human Revolution. Those were tense, far more so than actual combat, and almost felt like boss fights in their own right. Just trying to convince someone to change their mind in a tight situation could make a whole lot of difference.

I agree with this, but it's also basically an element of adventure games. Somebody needs to find a way to make those popular.

 

[Snowden's Secret]

Zelda answered this a long time ago: gameplay is centered around exploration and puzzles and not combat. The monsters you do fight are either also puzzles or sparingly placed as a pacing mechanism as you explore and solve puzzles. They don't have you fighting other humans except in rare instances, which drives home the impact of each one.

Obviously this solution wouldn't work for all games. I haven't played Infinite yet but my time with the original Bioshock left me wishing it was more exploration and puzzles and far less combat.

 

[bigmac996]

Even taking something like Tomb Raider and focusing on the Tomb Raiding would be amazing. The challenge could be in the puzzles or survival aspects. Just focus on Lara vs nature for the survival part. There are a million ways to do it, but I feel like developers are shoehorned into making shooters by the publishers because their statistics say that's what people want.

It sucks, because now that something like the Tomb Raider reboot, bioshock and uncharted have established themselves as shooters, I don't think they can make drastic changes (especially Tomb Raider, since it was just rebooted) for fear of fan backlash.

But yeah, like most people in this thread, I'm getting a bit numb from all these shooters. Starting to get stale. Luckily, RPGs and the like still exist!

 

[Sober]

Make each encounter much more unique and, perhaps difficult. So far fewer encounters, but make each their own little boss fight (think SOTC or something). I mean, look at Die Hard. McClane only kills 10 dudes, but each and every kill feels satisfying and hard earned. I think somewhere along the line, when an Indiana Jones or Nathan Drake kills 10 guys vs. 1000 guys, there's going to be a fundamental disconnect.

Also, offering more options such as non-lethal in combat will go a long way.

Plus, I think maybe the videogame industry should ween itself off of violence as a crutch. Why is movement + violence the only two mechanics that the majority of games focus on? Surely there are other elements that can be translated to gameplay in a fun way? Every single day I wake up and I do more things than just walk around and beat the shit out of random people. Why can't videogames be the same?

That and exploration/letting the player figure shit out for themselves. If the latter means light puzzle features, then fuck it, light puzzles in the vein of Telltale's TWD IMO are the best. Not crazy adventure logic or having to combine items until it works or anything.

Exploration could mean any number of things, it could just mean more actual terrain traversal, but maybe also something more in the vein of what Gone Home wants to do and create a more detailed environment (Warren Spector also wanted to do the one city-block game).

Gunplay that isn't straight up easy to control or used too often like in Die Hard sounds like the hardest part, if you still want to do guy with gun versus guys with guns though.

 

[Kleegamefan]

This is why zombie enemies are so popular......less than human

 

[RoboPlato]

Same here. I'm stuck wondering why UC2 is always the game cited as the apex of this problem. Is it just that things got so realistic and well-rendered around 2009 that the problem began to become especially vivid?

It's because Yahtzee said it and people think he's smart so they start regurgitating that point at every possible opportunity to make it seem like they had a complex opinion about something. I expect the same thing to happen with the "Bioshock Infinite Shouldn't Have Been A Shooter" thread from Evilore.

 

[Dion Blaster]

Make world traversal a bigger part of the gameplay, like Zelda's non combat segments.

 

[pixlexic]

By not caring and proclaiming it as entertainment just like movies do?

 

[Kintaro]

I'm with ND on this one. Cut them some slack. We've been playing mass murderers in games for over 25years+.

 

[SiteSeer]

more enemies bugging out and retreating, with a few psychos in the mix for the player to kill. or as above, fewer but more intense encounters. more stealth take downs that incapacitate than kill.

i like the retreating angle, could be as satisfying as a kill; watching a group of bandits (in uncharted's case) tuck tail and run or drive away.

 

[maniac-kun]

You can have combat that dosnt involve guns like fist fights. Action adventures should be fun not mass murder simulators.

 

[RedSwirl]

Also, look at the original shooters (first person shooters anyway): DOOM, Duke Nukem, Quake, etc. In those games you rarely, if ever kill humans. You're always fighting against monsters or aliens. Their storylines didn't even try to be dramatic or realistic. The stories were more ore less written around the gameplay. In today's shooters the story is in conflict with the gameplay.

Nathan Drake probably has murdered more people than Duke Nukem and the Doomguy put together. That's kind of disturbing when you think about it.

 

[saunderez]

Also, look at the original shooters (first person shooters anyway): DOOM, Duke Nukem, Quake, etc. In those games you rarely, if ever kill humans. You're always fighting against monsters or aliens. Their storylines didn't even try to be dramatic or realistic. The stories were more ore less written around the gameplay. In today's shooters the story is in conflict with the gameplay.

Bah BJ Blazkowicz killed thousands of Nazis and German Shepherds before Doom or Duke ever existed. Wolfenstein was my first ever FPS.

 

[Snowden's Secret]

Uncharted's problem isn't just who you are murdering, or how many murders you are committing. In Uncharted 3, on several occasions, the waves of enemies would stay in excessively dangerous environments (burning buildings, sinking shops, etc) just to have a firefight with Drake before death, instead of fleeing like any human would.

 

[Magnus]

It's because Yahtzee said it and people think he's smart so they start regurgitating that point at every possible opportunity to make it seem like they had a complex opinion about something. I expect the same thing to happen with the "Bioshock Infinite Shouldn't Have Been A Shooter" thread from Evilore.

Ice-cold. But I perfectly understand what you mean. Yahtzee is a poster here, I imagine?

 

[pargonta]

"Now, if you made a game that matched a movie... Let's use a literal example -- let's say you made a game out of Raiders of the Lost Ark. It wouldn't be any fun. Because [gaming's] an active experience; you have to have that interaction of shooting and having combat."

...no? you don't?

the aversion some developers have to exploring game mechanics in characters, dialogue, and story is just lame. raiders of the lost ark, for example... gamers do not need the combat... we need the dialogue and the movement, the human interaction... the winking of the girl in the classroom.... the comedic timing of the gun pull in the knife fight.

we need that.

developers just do not know how to create systems within those things. timing and characters, realistic visual storytelling. which is just lame right now. hopefully it changes though.
so, my answer is... stop making action games about combat, make action games about a story, and let the combat come organically.

 

[jtb]

It's because Yahtzee said it and people think he's smart so they start regurgitating that point at every possible opportunity to make it seem like they had a complex opinion about something. I expect the same thing to happen with the "Bioshock Infinite Shouldn't Have Been A Shooter" thread from Evilore.

Or maybe it's just because Uncharted is the clearest example where the story and, in particular, the character of Nathan Drake, are so at odds with the gameplay mechanics. It's a problem with the industry as a whole, how every game has devolved into a shooter—sure. But I don't think it's unwarranted to say that Uncharted is a really clear and easy example of this.

 

[RoboPlato]

Ice-cold. But I perfectly understand what you mean. Yahtzee is a poster here, I imagine?

No, he does the Zero Punctuation reviews for Escapist. He was funny for a while but his schtick got old fast for me.

 

[RagnarokX]

Piggybacking off of this thread by AgentOtaku

A few years back, 1UP did an interview about Uncharted 2 with Amy Hennig (creative director for UC2) and Evan Wells (co-president of Naughty Dog). Right off the bat, Thierry Ngyuen brings up the ludonarrative/cognitive dissonance that some player's react to in the game, in which the player controls an average everyman-type character who has to shoot hundreds of enemies while racing to find a lost city/treasure. Here's what Hennig responds with



Uncharted 2 is a shooter. From what I've seen played and played firsthand, the most recent Tomb Raider and Bioshock Infinite are, to a considerable degree, shooters as well. However, a lot of people went into these games expecting to play as treasure hunters, survivors or rescuers rather than killers.

The adventure elements of these games frequently take a backseat to the combat, rather than letting the combat compliment them. While these games may have been intended to have such heavy focus on shootouts from their outsets, it's still something to consider since these games have sold/shipped millions.

So, is making your action-adventure game revolve around combat unavoidable? How do you make the action engaging without such reliance on combat?

I always found Hennig's points to be reasonable. That doesn't excuse when UC2 or other games feel like they have a disproportionate amount of forced killing on the player's part, however. People say that giving the player options other than just rushing head-on into battle would help and I agree. But how feasible is that really?

How much balancing goes into designing a straight-forward enemy encounter, let alone an encounter that allows the player to sneak past, fake-surrender or bargain? Uncharted's combat itself isn't as punishing as in, say, Deus Ex: Human Revolution; you can quickly be killed in DE:HR, at least early on. There are immediate and latent consequences to choosing a lethal/head-on approach in that game which makes the option of having a stealth option actually matter. What could be done to give the player true choice when it comes to action.

And finally, how would games like Uncharted, Tomb Raider and Bioshock be able to retain player agency without the amount of attention the devs gave to combat? If there is a way, would this way result in the same game(s)?

You don't need shooting to have gameplay. Gameplay does not mean shooting. The idea that you need shooting is absurd. Before the latest game, Tomb Raider was not a shooter. It had guns and you shot enemies, but the game didn't devote level design or stretches of gameplay to the combat. It was primarily a platformer with puzzles and exploration Tomb Raider 1 had like 3 humans that you kill; it's sold 8 million copies. If anything the combat in Tomb Raider has always been a tiresome chore rather than an interesting gameplay feature, and in the latest game, though they improved the mechanics of it, the combat remains a chore because it takes up the majority of the gameplay and drags on and on and they reduced the truly unique elements of the franchise to nearly nothing.

It's like if Nintendo wanted to modernize Mario so they made the entire game revolve around Mario shooting fireballs at rival plumbers and got rid of the skillful platforming.

 

[RedSwirl]

This is ultimately why I like Gears of War. Everything you're killing is some kind of monster. Epic crafted a world where the gameplay mechanics don't look completely insane when you think about them for more than five seconds.

When talking about Judgment I think Cliffy B. even said that they wouldn't want to have human-on-human combat in the story because then it "wouldn't be Gears."

"Now, if you made a game that matched a movie... Let's use a literal example -- let's say you made a game out of Raiders of the Lost Ark. It wouldn't be any fun. Because [gaming's] an active experience; you have to have that interaction of shooting and having combat."

...no? you don't?

the aversion some developers have to exploring game mechanics in characters, dialogue, and story is just lame. raiders of the lost ark, for example... gamers do not need the combat... we need the dialogue and the movement, the human interaction... the winking of the girl in the classroom.... the comedic timing of the gun pull in the knife fight.

we need that.

developers just do not know how to create systems within those things. timing and characters, realistic visual storytelling. which is just lame right now. hopefully it changes though.
so, my answer is... stop making action games about combat, make action games about a story, and let the combat come organically.

Really the answer is: everything doesn't need to be an action game.

 

[saunderez]

No, he does the Zero Punctuation reviews for Escapist. He was funny for a while but his schtick got old fast for me.

Yeah I can only handle someone shitting on games I love for so long. Most of it was nitpicking and drove me nuts.

 

[Magnus]

It's like if Nintendo wanted to modernize Mario so they made the entire game revolve around Mario shooting fireballs at rival plumbers and got rid of the skillful platforming.

Why do I feel like this could actually happen

 

[Vire]

David Cage the thread.

I know it's easy to rag on him because he hasn't had the best track record of scriptwriting in his games, but the man means well. You can tell he genuinely and passionately cares about this industry.

I agree with him on a lot of his points, but not all.

Very interesting talk if you have the time. Listen with an open mind.

 

[RagnarokX]

Why do I feel like this could actually happen

With Wii-Cafe, is it time for Mario and classic Nintendo franchise to evolve?