Most people who read this regularly are aware of how much I love Role Playing Games. I love them for their emphasis on story and player interaction with the story through their mechanic. It is fun to play through these games and be truly immersed in a brand new world and its story. However, these games are far from flawless. Being video games, they can only do so much in terms of simulating a world. Since all games are just computer programs, they have to be represented in ways that a computer can easily process and display. In the old days, the limitations caused by the technology of the time inspired a number of RPG genre conventions. That was way back then. In the modern day, many of these technical limitations no longer exist because of the way technology constantly evolves. Developers are no longer bound by the technological limits of that past and are capable of doing much more with their games.

However, many of the old conventions and styles that were seen back then, once used to abstract many of the things that were (and sometimes still are) difficult to represent any other way, are still present in the RPGs being created in the here and now. A few days ago, I had a conversation on Twitter with escapistmagazine.comcontributor Grey Carterabout some of these mechanics that have withstood the test of time. Specifically, whether or not it is worth it to keep these mechanics around. In this week’s post, I will apply my analysis to the topic and see if video really did kill the radio star. Is it time we rethought RPGs and how they act in a mechanical sense?

As usual when writing an article like this, it helps to define what I am referring to so that we are all on the same page. When I refer to an RPG, I mean any story-focused game with a strong sense of character progression and/or customization. This can mean anything from the Final Fantasy games of old all the way to more modern games like Fallout: New Vegas or Mass Effect 3. I will be taking a look at how these games use old school mechanics and why they use them in the way that they do. Then, we will see if it is possible to do things differently now, either making the game either more immersive or improve them in terms of control, role-playing, or entertainment value.

One of the biggest conventions of the RPG genre is the use of skill points as a way to represent the player character’s proficiency with regards to certain disciplines, both in and out of combat. In a (semi-)turned based RPG, it makes sense for characters to have stats that represent their ability to perform certain actions successfully, be it firing a gun, casting a spell, swinging a sword, hacking a computer, or talking their way out a dangerous situation. Since it is difficult to have much in the way of player input in a turn-based game, skill levels are the only way to differentiate one player’s character and style from another player’s. The only way to show player progression in a turn based game is to increase their character’s stats and skills, which affect overall damage output and chance of success. Considering the technical and mechanical limitations of such games, implementing a system of stats and skills the determine how talented the player is makes total sense.

When we move into a three dimensional, action-oriented space, this quickly becomes irrelevant. In an action-RPG like the more recent installments in the Fallout franchise, shooting mechanics and player skill are now factors in the success of the player. However, in these games, there exists a system of stats and skills that influence the outcome of confrontations and events. Improving weapon skills increases the damage output and accuracy of weapons governed by it while doing the same to non-combat skills allows the player to do more with them via Speech checks and minigames. Sadly, I do not think any of this is necessary. Since we now have a fully realized world with combat comparable to (though not better than) many First Person Shooters and minigames that require player skill to execute properly, it makes less sense to abstract these elements. For RPGs like these, it may no longer make sense to even have skill levels and points for the character since the player’s own skill, which will improve over the course of the game, can be taken into account. This can even be extended to non-combat scenarios. Lockpicking and hacking can be done through minigames as demonstrated by recent titles like Fallout 3, whose lockpicking is widely regarded as one of the best infiltration minigames of all time, and Deus Ex: Human Revolution, which had a very interesting and enjoyable hacking minigame (sadly marred by a few questionable design decisions in the game) and the best conversation mechanic I have ever played with. Fallout 3 also had a hand in proving that skill points in these non-combat aspects of an RPG are completely arbitrary. In the game, it was impossible to even make an attempt to pick a lock unless the player had a high enough Lockpicking skill to do so. This makes even less sense upon realization that these higher level locks are genuinely tougher to pick. It is more logical either make the game more difficult, or a have a skill that governs what locks the player can pick. Having both is excessive. Though I understand that many would be wary of introducing player skill as an element of play, since it has the potential to leave some players out due to a lack of it, this is why modern games have adjustable difficulty as a way to equilize the imbalance between skilled and unskilled players. In the end, it is a design choice to be made by the creators of the game. I just believe it is worth thinking about this decision when going forward, since some games simply have no use for these mechanics.

The other common trope used in RPGs that I will be going over is the concept of vendor trash. By vendor trash, I mean items the take up inventory space, yet only serve the purpose of being sold to merchants for money. I can understand why developers do this even today. It makes no sense for the player to kill a wolf and have it drop five gold coins. To facilitate immersion, they would instead have a wolf drop a pelt that the player can then sell to vendors to make money. Though this concept is immersive and makes sense for a world, it is not exactly fun for the player to have to carry around tons of loot that takes up valuable inventory space which could be used to carry more useful items like weapons, armor, medical supplies and food. While I am a fan of forcing players to make meaningful choices, it is hardly meaningful to force players to choose between picking up a new sword or picking up a gold ingot that can be sold for money used to purchase a new sword.

In my opinion, vendor trash still has a place in RPGs, but it should be handled differently. Since vendor trash is effectively just gold waiting to be cashed out, it should be in a separate category and take up no space. While some may argue that it is not immersive to carry all sorts of vendor trash and not have it weigh the player down, I would argue contrary to that. When a designer forces the player to interact too much with the underlying systems of a game world, they start to lose their immersion. Thus, it is important to balance ease of use with simulation, which is far easier said than done. Also, by that logic, it would be unimmersive to allow the player to store tens of thousands of gold coins in their inventory without taking up space.

It is also possible to use vendor trash in other ways. For example, in Final Fantasy XII, which has the unlimited inventory space that many JRPGs do (as an interesting side note), did away with random animals dropping gold coins when they die (as an abstraction of taking their pelts) in favor of vendor trash. What they also did was introduce a new type of good in the vaious shops called Bazaar Goods. How it worked was that when the player sold cetain combinations of vendor trash to dealers, it would unlock certain items and item packs in the Bazaar. The game explained that selling vendor trash to various stores introduced these component items into the economy, allowing people to use those items in the construction of new ones to be put up for sale. This was an interesting way of making seemingly useless items have more purpose beyond just being gold in item form. After all, people would start making items with the goods that adventurers would gather and sell. Designers should put more thought into systems like this because RPG players will usually end up interacting with the economy very often. It is worth it to make this experience as painless, yet interesting, as possible.

To be fair, both of these mechanics were in place well before RPGs existed in video game form. Old RPGs, both from the West and from the East, take inspiration from Dungeons and Dragons and other tabletop games in that vein and are, as such, deeply entreched in the way people think about RPGs. Back then, they had use as a gameplay abstraction to otherwise realistic events. While a healthy respect for tradition is always a valuable thing to have, I feel like it is necessary to analyze old ways of thinking to see if they are still necessary in the modern era. When technology and game design evolve, some of the old ways of thinking no long apply. In the cases I outlined above, both mechanics still have merit in modern games, but they may need to be tweaked a little in order to make them more palatable. Though I am sure there are other examples of outdated mechanics presisting longer than they should have, I cannot think of any more that need discussion. Nonetheless, it is important to do an analysis like this if we want to improve this medium as a whole.

By now, people are well aware of the many failings of the third Mass Effect game: It had Day 1, On-Disc DLC that seemed far too integrated with the game to be anything but an obvious cash grab, most of the game failed to acknowledge the player’s choices from previous games and made them feel irrelevent, and the ending was a failure in more ways than one. However, there is one area of Mass Effect 3 that people tend to ignore, the cooperative multiplayer. I am not here to talk ill of the multiplayer mode in its entirety. In fact, I enjoyed my brief time with the mode. They used the core mechanics of the game in a very clever way to produce an enjoyable and coheasive experience. However, I have one big gripe with the cooperative mode. That would be its use of microtransactions and how they affect the overall experience.

Theoretically, I am not against the concept of microtransactions. It is fine for developers to charge for unlock codes to things players can get by just playing the game normally. From a business standpoint, it makes sense and is a good way to increase the income generated by the game. It also allows players with less free time to compete with players who play constantly by using money to gain the rewards normally obtained through gaining experience. Both parties, the creators and the consumers, stand to benefit from offering this option. Considering the state of the AAA industry, it makes sense for a publisher to try to make as much money as they can off an investment while maintaining the good will of the fanbase, and this is one of the best ways to do that.

It is not the fact that Mass Effect 3 had microtransactions that bothered me. What bothered me is the fact that they allowed microtransactions to negatively affect the design of how the game progresses in another obvious attempt and jarring cash grab. Allow me to explain. The way progression in Mass Effect 3’s cooperative mode works is that the when the player finishes a match, they gain experience towards the class they played as for that match as well as in-game credits which can be used to purchase weapons, characters, upgrades, and items. Here is where things get interesting. It is impossible to directly purchase the these items. Instead, the player must purchase packs which have a random chance of dropping the item wanted. As icing on the cake, the player does not need to use in-game credits to make these purchases. If they do not wish to go through match after match to build up credit to buy packs, they can always use real world money to purchase them. I can only assume that the reason they chose to handle microtransactions in this manner is to maximize profits. However, handling it in this manner ruined the player experience in a few ways.

The biggest way this ruins the experience is that it can potentially negate any advantage one might gain through microtransactions. The draw of using microtransactions, at least on the player’s end of the bargain, is that it allows a player to earn rewards for a small fee that would require time on their part to unlock normally. It is paying for expedience. This is lessened through the use of packs. The developer cannot guarentee that someone paying via microtransactions will receive the item they wish to buy, which defeats the purpose of having the option. (Again, from the consumer standpoint, not the standpoint of the publisher, whose goal is to make money.) Rather than give customers a guarenteed payoff for spending hard-earned money on the game, they give them the chance to waste their money by purchasing packs without getting anything of value out of it. The only reason I can see to use this model is to capitalize on people’s inability to gauge purcahsesand hope that they spend tons of money on the store before realizing exactly how much they spent. While part of me thinks that this is sheer genius on the part of EA, the other part sees nothing but a slimy and unrewarding business model surrounding an otherwise enjoyable game mode.

The other reason this negatively impacts the cooperative mode is the fact that it completely randomizes the reward system. A big problem with the system Mass Effect 3 has in place is that there is no way to reduce the pool from which you draw items from. The same list of items can drop from all of the packs in the game. The only difference between packs is the likelihood of obtaining rare items. Many players have bought hundreds of packs and only obtained a few items in the same category of equipment they will actually use. Countless stories on the internet exist where a player who mainly uses Generic Weapon Type X gets nothing but Type Y from the packs they are buying. This results in being unable to upgrade their equipment to more powerful weapons for several experience levels worth of matches, meaning that they are farther behind than other players who have been favored by the random number gods. When designing this system, they should have taken into account how it could and would affect the overall progression of the players of this cooperative mode.

Now, I have come down very harshly on the microtransaction system included in Mass Effect 3. However, I do believe it could have worked. There are alternatives the team at Bioware could have used to include microtransactions while preventing, or at least alleviating, the progression problem that belies the current method of inducing them. The first of my proposals involves scrapping the trading card game-like system we have now in favor of one of direct purchases using either in-game credits or cash. In this system, every weapon, character, and item is unlockable from the start. Each of them will be assigned a price in both cash and real world credits. To unlock an item, the player will need to either save up the credits through playing matches or by outright purchasing them with money. Upgrading weapons would also cost credits or money. Since we are no longer using random draw and are allowing people to pick out and save up for items, the prices would need to be elevated in order to compensate. I would advocate this system because it would place player progression more in their own control. This way, they do not feel like they are not getting anything out of playing the game or spending money because they know exactly what they are saving up for or buying. There is complete transparacy and no one will come out angry or disappointed. While I personally consider this to be the ideal, I can see why a publisher might not like it. It does reduce the ammount of money they can earn through microtransactions and it reduces the Skinner Box styleenjoyment a player might feel when buying packs.

With that in mind, I have another proposal. My next plan would be to shamelessly rip off the microtransaction/drop system for a very successful free-to-play game: Team Fortress 2. I am sure the vast majority of the ones reading this are already familiar with the system in place with Team Fortress 2, though I will do my best to explain it for those who are not familiar with it. In Team Fortress 2, the player is allowed to equip items that have positive and/or negative effects on the player character. These items are available for sale from the in-game store for real-world currency. However, players do not have to spend money to obtain these items. It is possible, through playing the game, to obtain these items through random item drops. They occur semi-randomly in the game and often enough that the player will obtain them at a steady rate. The positive of this system is that it keeps the Skinner Box manipulation of players, giving them the satisfaction of getting great items after enough tries, yet allows players who do not like this style of play to purchase the items they want directly. This provides an outlet for those who dislike random number generators while maintaining the option to just keep playing for a chance at getting the item. I would advocate more frequent drops then Team Fortress 2 has when going this route, as their drop rates are a little low for my tastes and doing so would make drop hunting less annoying. However, as an option in general, this style is very appealing.

But let us once again assume that EA is not sold on that style of handling microtransactions. Let us go further in our assumption by saying that they are insistant on using the trading card game-like booster pack system that takes both in-game credits and real world currency. It is possible to make a few minor tweaks to the system already in place in order to improve it. The biggest problem with the system is how it can give the player a really long run of bad luck by giving them weapons they have no desire to use. This is caused by the fact that every pack purchased draws from the collective pool of every item in the cooperative mode while only affecting the spawn rates of rarer items. What we can do to make this less luck-based is to divide packs into different categories. It should be possible to split up the weapons between packs so that there are dedicated packs for SMGs, Assasult Rifles, Sniper Rifles, Shotguns, and Pistols. Doing this gives the player the ability to control the general type of the items dropped while maintaining the random element inherent in the system. It is similarly possible to do this with new characters by giving them a dedicated pack. Of course prices for these packs would need to be adjusted. If they wanted to, they could still have the option to buy those packs that can contain anything, but they would need to be cheap to encourage that pack’s purcahse over others. By giving players a slight control over drops (by affecting which type of item drops), the possibility that the player is negatively impacted by random draw is minimized, if not outright eliminated. It also preserves the Skinner Box that can encourage players to continuously play the game or spend money on it.

This addition to the Mass Effect franchise, the cooperative mode, is a fun extra added to the game. It has all of the ingredients of a good time. To me, it is good verging on being great. The mode was marred, however, by the way it handled microtransactions. They could have been done well and served as more than just another cheap attempt to make more money. (Though that would have always been a motive, there is no avoiding it.) It could have added to the accessibility of the game, but it has to be done in a more intelligent way. The system in place with Mass Effect 3 feels sloppily done and hamfisted into the mode, giving players the impression that they are being exploited by corporate. Since it seems like free-to-play is becoming a bigger part of the industry, it will be even more important going forward to master the inclusion of microtransactions and their affect on the game. Hopefully, developers and publishers alike can learn from this game’s failures and move forward.

Before we get to that, we need to understand the process behind most reviews on major game review websites. More often than not, major review sites receive copies of the games they are to review a couple of days to a week prior to the scheduled release date. The reviewer in question then has to use their free time (I am not aware of a review outlet that actually allots time for its staff to play games on the job since they have other duties to attend to, though I am sure they exist.) to play far enough through the game to get a good understanding of it (since it is rare that they play through to the end) yet leave enough time to gather their thoughts and write a review about it. The pressure will be on them to finish the review as quickly as possible because the faster it gets uploaded to the site, the more page views it will get and more advertising money the site recieves.

Another serious issue, though one I suspect is blown out of proportion, is the fact that game reviews are supported by advertisers within the games industry. Everybody knows that major game publishers like Activision or EA buy ad space on review hubs like IGN or Gamespot. Because of this, there is a perception that these reviews are being bought by publishers in order to make their games look better. It is not that hard to suspect when sites like IGN release an article titled “Why Do People Hate EA?” and only ask Peter Moore, Chief Operating Officer of EA, the reasons behind it instead of asking the aforementioned people. Again, I do not believe this is as serious an issue as people make it out to be. I think that the people who write these reviews generally stand behind them. However, it is still a issue worth bringing up and discussing as it does have the potential to impact reviews and how the gaming press thinks with regards to the games they talk about. There are well-known cases of reviewers being forced into embargos as a result of receiving review copies of certain games, like how Konami forbid mention of the cut-scene length and install timesof Metal Gear Solid 4. It is not an easy problem to solve and there is no simple solution beyond not showing game advertisements, which would cut into profits.

One last problem that I am far from the first person to make note of is the over-inflation of review scores. A scale of 1 to 10 is often used to indicate the overall quality of a game in comparison to other games. On this kind of scale, 5 is often denoted as average simply because it is in the middle. Anything above a 5 is above average and below a 5 is below average. This makes sense and is intuitive for the most part. However, this is not necessarily how review scores (which are a terrible way to handle reviews, but have been accepted as commonplace simply because of the fast-paced nature of today’s society) work. If you were to go to review-aggregate site Metacritic, you would find that there are many more average or positively-reviewed games than there are negative ones. This is simply not possible mathematically. If there are more positive reviews than average or low reviews, then the praise becomes the new accepted standard for average and the review scores should be placed back in equilibrium. We are not seeing this and I think I know the reason why. The reason for this inflation of review scores (and resulting decrease in credibility and weight that reviews carry) is that the fans of franchises cannot tolerate reviews that are neither perfect nor near perfect. We saw this when fans of the Uncharted series lashedoutagainst reviewers for giving the upcomming-at-the-time (as in, they had not played it yet) third game an 8 out of 10, which is well-above average on a 1 to 10 scale. The game was not ever released, yet people claimed that the reviewers had “no clue what they are talking about.” It is a huge testament to the source of many of the problems with game reviews.

 Most of the people who play games agree that they are able to let us explore new and interesting worlds in ways that books or movies simply cannot, something I have discussed myself on several occasions. However, when we talk about this ability, the same word tends to crop up over and over again: This word is “immersion.” All gamers have at least a rough idea of what it is, but very rarely do we discuss the idea in any sort of meaningful way. This is my attempt to try and remedy that. My intention is to try to figure out how developers can increase the immersion of players in their games. First, let us define “immersion” for the purposes of this article. If we can nail down a definition, then it will be easier to have an informed discussion about it because we will all be one the same page. Immersion is the truest form of a willing suspension of disbelief. It is when the player feels like that he/she is an active participant of the video game despite knowing that he/she is not actually in the game. When someone is truly “immersed” in a game, they tend to think of the people and places depicted not as models and textures put together in a game engine with working physics and number-driven systems. Instead, they think of them as people who are in a world and doing what they do with a delibrate and driven purpose. Designers and developers usually strive to achieve this feeling of “immersion” for the end user. There are a number of tips and strategies that they use to make this happen.

One of the simplest thing people a developer can do to facilitate immersion is to maintain an internal logic and consistency in the setting, characters, and plotline. Please note that this is not a call for realism in games (I have already discussed that). It is simply saying that there should be a rationale behind every thing that is going on. The world must have its own rules and systems that it adheres to. As a general rule, if the world in question uses magic/technology and it adheres to a specific system, then it must never deviate from that system without some sort of contingencies set in place. For this example, let us say that we are talking about a fantasy world with magic that has a built in system of equivilent exchange (where every good thing that happens due to magic must be tempered with an equivilant negative side-effect and vice-versa). If in this world, a sorcerer successfully revived his dead wife free and clear with no downsides, then the player would (rightfully) call foul. Something that incongruous would need either adequate foreshadowing that alludes to the possibility of someone doing this (a skilled and powerful sorcerer can explain how that could theoretically happen sometime before the scene), hang a lampshade on it during the scene (someone points out in the middle of the resurrection that it should not be possible), or provide an explanation after the fact showing that the sorcerer technically did follow the rules and actually did sacrifice something dear to him in an equivilant exchange. These are all tools a skilled writer can use to explain away things incongruous to their internal systems and logic.

It is also worth noting that an designer does not need to worry about never breaking logic even once. It is bound to happen eventually. What they have to worry about is not breaking internal logic too often and not doing it with major plot events. Players can generally forgive a few minor errors and even justify them in their minds. However, take advantage of this fact too often, and the players will begin to lose immersion. This theshold at which the immersion is broken and disbelief is no longer suspended varies wildly from person to person. Therefore, a writer should be extremely careful when making major breaks with continuity. This internal logic also extends into characters and their motivations, so a writer needs to keep in mind what a character’s personality and goals are when determining what the character should do in the plot. If game developers want to maintain the feeling of immersion, they need to define a rationale behind how the world works and maintain it to the best of their abilities. We accept that real world logic does not always apply. The problem arises when a world’s own logic no longer applies to itself.

While the previous tip can be applied to any form of media in general, this next tip applies to games in particular. It is a very good idea to synergize story and gameplay as much as possible and avoid Gameplay and Story Segregation. One of the more immersion breaking things a game can do is give the player a situation that he/she could ordinarily overcome using conventional gameplay only for them to circumvent it somehow. One of most well-known examples of this in action is the death of Aeris/Aerith in Final Fantasy VII. In Final Fantasy VII, player characters are killed in battle quite often (depending on the player’s skill, obviously). To revive these characters, there is an item called a Pheonix Down which revives them so that they can keep fighting. However, when Sephiroth kills Aeris in a cutscene, there is no ability to revive her with similar means. Her death is required for the plot to advance. They never once lampshade, subvert, or acknowledge the possibility of using items or healing spells, which is weird because Final Fantasy has done permanent-death for a player character before. In the fifth game in the franchise, the player’s party is being attacked by the villain, ExDeath. To save the others, one of the party uses his crystal to gain powers well beyond what humans are capable of. He fights ExDeath and holds his own despite the fact that his HP is at 0 and he should be dead. After the fight, the others try to heal and revive him with common spells and items the player is quite likely to have. They find that he exhausted his power so throughly that he was beyond healing. He was a dead man. Furthermore, unlike Final Fantasy VII where Aeris dies and the player potentially loses a party member he/she trained at the expense of others, the designers of Final Fantasy V had the dead party member transfer his skills to his daughter, meaning that the player is not inconvienced by the plot’s insistence of killing off a party member.

Some people reading this might view this as an extension of my previous point about willing suspension of disbelief and internal logic. To that I say, I am glad you are paying attention, because you are correct. The problem is that many games simply do not take that into account. Developers have an irritating tendency to treat the plotline and setting of a game as separate to the gameplay when that is simply not the case. Gameplay is a natural extension to the events at hand. It informs the player as to how the world they are now exploring works. If those mechanics are incongruous with the story or the setting, it makes the world look disjointed and players will be more likely to see the cracks.

Another thing that games can do to increase the likelihood of player immersion is to avoid something I learned about from Chris Franklin, also known as Campster, of Errant Signal fame (which you should be watching): “ludonarrative dissonance.” In layman’s terms, ludonarrative dissonance is when themes and morals present in the game’s storyline are directly contradicted by the gameplay. This is not like the previous point, where internal logic is broken. When this concept is invoked, the game’s world can, not necessarily will, still be following its own rules, but it fails at upholding the underlying moral message throughout. It can even be presenting two opposing messages, one in the story and one in the gameplay, knowingly or not. This is often a problem in modern miltary-themed first person shooters. Many of them love to try to be serious commentaries on the harsh realities and reprecussions of war. However, at the same time, they appear to revel in the bloodshed and slaughter of hundreds of people that the player must defeat in order to advance. These two facts are in stark contrast with each other. Developers cannot talk about loss when directing the player to kill thousands of people, no matter how “evil” they are portrayed. The theme of the story is undercut by the morality presented in the gameplay where killing all the enemies is presented as a “good” action because they are terrorists and/or in the way of the player’s objective. Though it does not affect everyone, this kind of contradiction can be extremely jarring to some people, breaking their immersion and even their enjoyment of the game.

The last piece of advice I have for developers seeking to facilate immersion in games is to simply make games that play well. There is a lot to be said for a game that is fun to play. When a player enjoys a game and is having an engrossing and entertaining experience, they are much less likely to analyze the plot and look for plot holes and logical fallicies/inconsistencies. On the other hand, if the game is boring and uniteresting to play, then the player will more often than not examine the story of the game in greater detail since that will be the only thing keeping their attention. It is not always possible to plug every plot hole or account for every inconsistency, so the best solution is sometimes to just distract players with good gameplay (as loathe as I am to admit it). If it is of high enough quality, then we are more than able to forgive a few mistakes or missteps.

Immersion is a difficult thing to achieve. It requires so many interlocking systems and conditions to come together in complete synergy. Furthermore, it also depends on the player and his/her mindset, which is inherently fickle. It is not possible for a developer to create a game that is 100% immersive for everyone. All they can do is facilitate immersion by creating as coherent and interesting a game as possible. Focus on building and maintaining an internal logic with both the story and the gameplay and how they tie into each other. While this seems like a tall order, it is much simpler than one might think. All it requires is going in and thinking about the story. Writers should ask themselves if there is another, easier and more sensible way for events to unfold and ask other people on staff and with a critical eye to take a moment and look it over. Many series have loremasters and dedicated wikis for that serve this very purpose. There really is no excuse for not doing something so incredibly simple.

I have been playing games for almost my entire life. Games are very much a huge focus of mine, which is why I love to write about them. One thing you learn when being a part of this sub-culture is that the people who populate it tend to be very… tenaciously fanaticwhen comes to decisions they make. This causes gamers to debate a lot. One of the major debates that have cropped up more often of late than usual is whether PCs or dedicated gaming consoles are superior to the other. There are points to be made for either side. This week, I try to apply my analysis onto this debate and try to come up with a satisfactory answer. For this analysis, I will look at several factors and analyze them to see whether PCs or Consoles do better in that category. Once that is all said and done, I will render my final verdict. Since I am a console gamer who has only recently picked up PC gaming, there is a possibility for biases, just a forewarning.

The first category we will look into is Initial Investment. On the console side, the initial cost of investment is usually fairly low. Though consoles have had higher price points this generation (which is why $600 PS3 could not move units), most of them hover around the $250 price point. This is because console manufacturers, with the exception of Nintendo, do not make money on the initial sale. In fact, each sale results in a slight loss for the company. They rely on the sales of game software (and Blu-Ray movies in Sony’s case) to make up for the initial losses and eventually profit. In contrast, PCs tend to have a much higher initial investment. Even lower end gaming PCs take an initial investment of around $500 dollars nowadays. Higher end gaming PCs will be very costly. The consumer will likely be shelling out $1000 or more in order to play top of the line games. It makes sense. Unlike gaming consoles where the company has a reasonable idea of what the end user plans to do with it, PCs have a significantly higher degree of uncertainty. Because of this, PC manufacurers and distributors of their parts need to make a profit through the initial sale and they do not have propritary formats to liscense out for money (any PC will generally run any program from any CD/DVD if it has the power to do so). Naturally, this will drive up prices for the hardware and give consoles the advantage on that front.

The next thing to go over is the cost of games for the hardware. Most console gamers are aware of the ever-prevalant $60 price tag on most major console releases. As many of them are also aware, that cost tends to be quite prohibitive. It is simply not feasible, espcially in this economy, for a consumer to purchase all the games he/she wants. Even after a few years, prices rarely drop to a significant enough degree. There is the downloadable market which offers a more flexible pricing system, but by and large most games are subject to the $60 retail price. This is not the case for the PC. Most PC games are purchased from services like Steamand Good Old Games. Retail is by and large irrelevant for PC gamers. While AAA games still tend to release for $60, they are infinitely more suceptible to the market and tend to get marked down and put on sale and a higher frequency. A semi-patient PC gamers will always be able to buy games for a more reasonable price than a console gamer with the same level of patience. And even people who are not into PC games are aware of the massive sales that Steam throws semi-regularly. There is also the indie scene to make note of which is more prelavent on the PC, allowing for more variety in games at a lower coist. All this combined gives PC gamers a clear advantage when it comes to purchasing gaming software for their chosen device.

But purchasing a system and getting games for it are one thing. It is an entirely separate matter when it comes to making the games work on the player’s system. This is a trivial matter for the consoles. Since every Playstation 3/Xbox 360 has the same system specs as any other system, game developers can be reasonably assured as to what the end user for their games will have and can program the games and their development tools with that in mind. The results in nearly the exact same performance on every console. Players will not have to fuss over system settings and compatability. Any PS3 game will work on any PS3, for example (unless it’s buggy, in which case every PS3, on average, will encounter the same amount of bugs/glitches). This is not necessarily the case with PC games. Unlike consoles, every PC will have different specs from other PCs. The developers of these games have no idea what the end user will be capable of playing. This means that they have to release minimum specs required to play the game and ideal specs to get the most out of game, shifting the responsibility of compatability from the developers to the players. It is the player’s job to make sure that he/she has a rig capable of playing the game. It also means that PC games have the tendency to be more fussy than their console counterparts. This makes it necessary for users to go through settings and the occasion forum post if the game is not working. While developers are usually available for support (it affects their bottom dollar if you cannot play a game), the fans are ultimately the ones who are responsible for keeping their systems up to date and getting the game to function, giving consoles a clear advantage here.

Another crucial topic in a discussion like this is the control scheme behind each system. This in and of itself is a major topic of debate among gamers: The question of the console controller versus the keyboard and mouse. The controller is obviously a more accessable form of play for the common gamer. It is very easy to pick up a controller and play the desired game. There is also much to be said for continuity of controls between games. Games tend to have similar conventions regarding control schemes. While small adjustments between games will be necessary, more often than not games in the same genre will have very similar controls. Unfortunately, the simplicity can also become a downside. Certain genres simply cannot work with a controller. While controllers are much better for things like racing games, they make other genres like Real-Time Strategy nearly unplayable due the number of inputs and the degree on precision required. On the keyboard and mouse side of things, we have a different case. The KB&M style of control is very precise. Depending on mouse sensitivity, (which can usually be adjusted) it is much easier to make smaller and more accurate movements with a mouse than with a thumbstick. Furthermore, the keyboard and mouse is more malliable than a controller. It can used in a number of different ways simply because there are more keys and most PC games allow for custom controls and a greater variety of control schemes (at least more often than console games). This is both a blessing and a curse. While KB&M allow for more precise and customized controls, they do not have the pick up and play ability that controllers have. The end user will more than likely spend some time adjusting his/her controls and fine-tuning them while a controller user can spend more time playing the game. Going back to the PC versus console debate, PCs ultimately win out. Not because keyboard & mouse is inherently better (It depends entirely on what the end user wants from the control scheme), but because the PC has access to both because 360 controllers are compatable with PCs and there exists software to do the same with PS3 controllers. This means that consoles are restricted to one of the two while PC gamers have access to both.

And now to answer the ultimate question: Which is truly superior, PC or console? The answer is an extremely solid “What is your preference?” If you are a more technically minded gamer who is on lastest of the cutting edge, then PC is the right choice for you. For a more customized experience or one that offers a greater variety in games, then PC is again the right choice for you. However, the console is better for those who do not want to worry to much about technical stuff and want to just dive into a game. Price also needs to be a big consideration. PC is better for those who prefer to take a big initial hit and then take advantage of discounts and lower prices on the digital market while consoles have a lower barrier of entry, but have more expensive games. That is ultimately why this debate continues to rage on. People have different definitions of what is “best” and thus judge it on different criteria. This is what fuels all the various “best ever” fanboy arguments. It is impotant for us to take this into consideration. If there is a game or system you do not like, keep in mind that the odds are that other people like it for different reasons.

Lately I have getting on my soapbox and writing about a fairly diverse set of topics and the list of said topics is far from empty. However, this week I feel like doing something a bit more recreational. Since my first attempt at something like this was so popular (and is still getting hits to this day), and it has been a long time, another character analysis is in order. This time I will be discussing every Mass Effectfan’s favorite AI companion, Legion. Legion is one of the series most interesting characters in the franchise, in my honest opinion, and there are a couple of reasons I have for this.

But before I get into that, we need to learn about the story of Legion. Any character, even a synthetic one, is a product of their story. Due to the nature of the Gethin the Mass Effect franchise, Legion’s tale is the tale of Geth, and goes back to when the Geth gained sentience. Originally, the Geth were nothing more than a collection of AI constructs developed by the Quarianrace to serve them. They were programmed to always find the most efficient ways to complete tasks assigned to them. It was eventually realized that when Geth programs come together, they can “think” and perform tasks better than they could individually. Reaching its logical conclusion, these programs kept networking until they reached a point where they gained sentience and could communicate with their Quarian creators. This unsettled the Quarians to the point where they started attacking the Geth out of fear. (I suppose that Quarians are equally as aware of standard AI horror tropesas we are.) While some Quarians showed sympathy to the Geth, most of them displayed only fear. This fear only grew once a Geth platform asked its creator, “Does this unit have a soul?” Out of sheer terror was born a warbetween the two. Though the conflict was started by the Quarians, the Geth held their own and forced them off their own home world, leading the Quarians toward the path of a migrant species.

Shortly after this victory, the Geth embraced a policy of isolationism towards organic life. They had no desire to fight or even deal with other people and just wanted to be left alone, safeguarding the planet their creators called home. This does not mean that they were doing nothing. In fact, they were working towards their ultimate goal. They wished to build a system large enough to house every single Geth intelligence on one platform, becoming as smart and capable as they can possibly become. Striving towards their desire for a very long time, the Geth remained little more than bogeymen to the galactic races until the Reapersarrived on scene. When the Reapers approached the Geth, they made them a huge offer. In exchange for giving the Reapers aid in furthering their goals (which makes little sense when taken into context with Mass Effect 3), the Geth were promised to be elevated by the Reapers and have their goals fulfillled. When trying to reach consensus on this issue, a small collective of the Geth broke away to join the Reapers and were dubbed Hereticsby the many who rejected the Reapers. Then the events of the orignal Mass Effect game occurred, with Commander Shepard going against Saren, the Reaper Sovereign, and the Geth who defected. (You know the plot, if not from my prior articles, then from your own experiences.) This colored the preception of organic races towards the Geth and brought credence to the Quarian race’s belief that they were wronged by their synthetic creations.

The isotionist policy changed once the Normandycame under attack by a mysterious third partyand Commander Shepard was lost, presumed dead. Since the commander had experience with the Heretics and was instrumental in the defeat of Sovereign, the Geth decided that it would be prudent to make sure the Shepard was alive. To successfully traverse the systems that organic life inhabit, the Geth realized it would be best to send as few units as possible and lessen their mark on the world. They built a single platform capable of housing over one thousand individual Geth AI constructs all networked together. This platform traced Shepard’s footsteps, looking for clues as to where he/she went and what happened, eventually finding the Normandy’s crash site and salvaging a piece of Shepard’s N7 armor, using it to repair itself after a firefight. After concluding that Shepard died, it stayed around to investigate another problem it discovered.

The platform learned of a plan by the Heretics to use a virus, granted to them by the Reapers, to rewrite the true Geth, making them accept the Reapers as their leaders. This led the platform to a derilect Reaper in order to acquire knowledge on how to counteract this virus. It encounters Shepard and is surprised to find him/her alive and well. Seeing the commander in a tight situation, the platform takes aim at the hoards attacking Shepard, then retreats further in to hack a terminal and learn about the Reapers and their technology. Once Shepard and company arrive on scene, they see the platform attacked by a Reaper husk and disabled. They acquire a Reaper IFF for their own purposes, collect the platform and leave.

Once the crew make it back to the new Normandy, there is a debate as to whether the Commander should activate and interrogate the platform, sell it to Cerberus, or just leave it be. Since nobody in their right mind would sell it to Cerberus, the four Shepards I played all decided to activate and interrogate the platform. The platformed explained its purpose and why it was sent outside the Perseus Veil, where the Geth live. For the purpose of communicating with organic life, the platform accepted the name Legion to distinguish it from other Geth platforms and agreed to help Shepard fight against the Collectors. (This is part of Mass Effect 2‘s main plot, which I do not want to get into for various reasons.) Through several optional conversations, Legion tells Shepard, and the player by proxy, all about how the Geth work, their “society,” political beliefs, and the like. Eventually, it gives the player the optional objective to head to the base of the Herectic Geth and stop them from using the virus, with the choice to either destroy it, blowing up the Heretic Base and all the Heretics in it, or repurpose it to turn the Heretics back into true Geth and force them to retreat, then destroy it. Since the individual programs inside Legion were unable to form concensus, they trusted Sheppard to make the final decision.

If Legion both survives the events of Mass Effect 2 and was not sold to Cerberus, he will become a central figure in the events regarding the Geth/Quarian conflict in the third game. Since the Quarians attempted to erradicate them, the Geth decided to forge an alliance with the Reapers out of fear. The deal was that they would gain intelligence and fighting prowess in exchange for allowing the Reapers to completely control them. When Shepard arrives on scene to convince the Quarians to join the war efforts, he/she is briefed on the situation. The commander, his/her Quarian friend Tali, and one other person infiltrate a Geth ship sending a broadcast to all the others in order to figure out exactly why it seems like the Geth and the Reapers are working together. They encounter Legion, who tells them that the Reapers are using him to project a signal to all Geth, ordering them to attack. It asks the team to free it so that it is no longer a Reaper conduit and can begin aiding in a counterattack on the Reapers, which Shepard does. As a show of good faith towards Shepard and as a token of their friendship, Legion orders the ship’s engines and weaponry to be diabled, which the Quarians took as a queue to attack with full force (despite the fact they know Shepard is on board). Once everyone is safely back on the Normandy, gives Shepard an optional side-mission to enter the Geth Consensus and weaken the Reaper’s influence, allowing some of the Geth to join him/her. Afterwards, the Quarians, Shepard’s team, and Legion work together to destroy the Reaper signal to the Geth by destroying the source, later revealed to be an actual Reaper. Once Shepard defeats the Reaper, Legion tells him/her that it can use the Reaper’s code to make the Geth’s thought processes more organic in nature, giving them true individuality and conciousness, whether or not it succeeds is up to Shepard. It will die regardless and it’s story comes to an end either way (using the code, for some reason, kills Legion and if Shepard tries to stop it, Legion will fight back and Shepard will kill him). Should Sheppard allow it, Legion will call itself “I” instead of “We” in its final moments, showing that the process is working and demostrating true individuality before passing away.

One of the things that makes Legion so interesting is that it is the player’s window into Geth culture. While characters like Garrusand Tali partially serve to further the player’s knowledge regarding how their races work, there are many other people from those races to interact with to forge a deeper understanding than with those characters alone. Legion is unique in that it is the one and only way in which Shepard learns about the Geth because they are isolationists and they are so closely networked together that talking to one Geth platform is essentially talking to the Geth as a whole. This makes conversations with Legion facsinating because prior to Legion’s inclusion, the Geth were always at least somewhat enigmatic. The player fought against their forces (later revealed to be Heretics) in the first game, but never understood exactly what caused them to side with Sovereign. Legion gives the player an opportunity to learn about the Geth in an interesting and creative way. On the part of the writers, this was very cleaver.

The other intelligent decision the writing team made, which further raises the interest I have towards Legion, is to defy traditional genre conventions regarding Artificial Intelligence. As I aluded to earlier, most media that involves an AI growing sentience have it quickly decide that its creators are too inefficient and immediately start trying to murder everyone. As other people on the internethave already said, this makes very little sense. Why would the default stance for an AI be “murder the shit out of everyone” the moment it learns how to think for itself? Bioware knew about this genre convention and thoughfully decided to avert it. The choice to do that gave Legion (an other AI characters) the ability to be much more fleshed out and interesting than similar characters in other genres, leading into my final point.

Legion is one of the most interesting characters in the Mass Effect series because of what it represents: The moral quandary of whether or not sentient machines count as life in the same way that organics do. They explore every aspect of this question from their ability to feel emotions to whether or not they have civil rights. The ability of the Geth to feel emotions is intentionally left up for debate. When talking with Legion, it will insist that it does not have emotions and is unable to feel anything. According to it, logic and rational thinking allow the invividual Geth programs to come together and build a consensus as to what the next course of action should be. However, there are times where that can be called into question. For example, when Shepard sees the N7 armor on Legion and questions it about it, Legion explains that he used it because there was a hole and it needed to be prepared. When further pressed to answer why it used that in particular piece of armor over other parts more redily available, Legion finally admits that it has no data on that subject and cannot answer that question. In other words, it does not know for sure. This indicates that it was a decision influenced by something more than logic, possibly emotion. There are also other more subtle cues from Legion in other dialogue scenes in Mass Effect 2 and 3 that indicate possible sorrow, anger, and other emotions.

The other half of this huge moral dillema is the question of the civils rights of synthetic beings and their ability to integrate into society. It is a tough question that does not have a clear answer. Characters debate this throughout the entire series. Most organic races, particularly the Quarians, tend to fall on the side of no rights to synthetic beings. This makes sense since they believe that the Geth forced them off their world. They believe that it is either impossible or too impractical to arrange for peace, despite dissenting opinions. Legion on the other hand, tries its best to be as considerate as it can be. However, it does not always succeed. There are time where it says or does otherwise rational things that can be seen as strange or ruthless to organic beings. During its optional mission in Mass Effect 2, Legion talks about the possibility of destroying the Geth Heretics with cold callous, which the player’s other companion comments on with shock. It also states that Shepard and company should not feel bad about killing the Heretics because they “do not share your pity, remorse, or fear.” Legion also expresses a childlike inability to understand human customs, which Shepard can chose to explain to it, such as the concepts of cemetaries, religion, and drug use. Since it is an AI, it has trouble understanding how these things factor into our lives and the emotional (and physiological in the case of the last one) impact of these things, calling into question the ability of Legion and the geth to truly integrate with organics. Through Legion, the game presents all the relevant information and ultimately allows the player to decide for themselves the answer these question, adding depth to its character and making it much more impactful.

Overall the character of Legion is a great example of Bioware’s strength. They can write interesting and relatable characters and use them to raise interesting moral questions. Though they havemanyweaknessesin terms of how they tell stories, especially in recent games, characterization has always been a strength of their brand. This is why they were such a strong brand before the issues with Mass Effect 3. If you write good characters, then players will grow attachments to them and want to play through your game to deepen those bonds. Take this lesson to heart, game developers. 

I think it can be said that games are becoming more and more prominent as a valid form of speech and expression of ideas and beliefs. With that in mind, what games say regarding certain topics should reflect the dispositions of the people who both create and consume them. One particular topic springs up with a fair degree of regularity in video games, which I find quite interesting. That topic is religion. Religion is a very huge topic in modern society that permeates all of our lives, regardless of what each person thinks regarding the subject. It influences people and their opinions. That is why I find what games have to say on this topic to be worth discussing and why I have made this subject the topic of discussion.

But before I begin, I want to make one thing completely, totally, unequivocally clear. I have absolutely no problems with religion. This analysis of the subject is intended to be as unbiased and objective as I can possibly make it. I have no desire to offend anybody and I hope what follows is indicative of that. What I am going to do is look at the common themes surrounding well known takes on religion in video games and take a look at examples of them. Then I will try to look at the big picture surrounding this and put this all in context.

One of the most common themes that games touch on regarding religion is that it leads to war. Many games build major plot points around this concept. An example of this comes from the most recent game from The Elder Scrolls franchise, Skyrim. In the game, there is a Civil War tearing apart the nation of Skyrim. The central reason for this schism, at least on the surface, is that the Nordic people have been banned from publicly worshiping the god Talos, who is the ascended soul of the first emperor of the realm, by the Empirebecause of a recent treaty with a rival faction. The churches were all forced to disown Talos as a god and go from praising the Nineto praising the Eight. The outrage and religious fervor was so great that it lead to the birth of the StormcloakRebellion. This is far from the only example of this. The original Assassin’s Creedwas publicized beforehand as taking place during the Third Crusadeand using it as a backdrop for their story, one of the more famous/infamous Holy Wars in history (depending entirely on your viewpoint), and they milk that setting for all it is worth. The characters in the game often muse on the nature of war and the people who fuel it, pondering the causes behind and reasons for it. They constantly question the necessity of the Holy War and it is really fascinating, though Ubisoft was not the first company to question the nature of crusades in a video game.

In fact, the Haloseries did this well before Assassin’s Creed came out. One of the major threats to humans in the Halogames is an organization of religious alien races referred to as the Covenant. This group attacks humanity because they believe that their gods have condemned humanity and wish to have them eradicated. This is one of the series central conflicts and even gamers who are not fans of the franchise (like myself) have a passing familiarity with this plot point. Even Final Fantasy gets in on the action. In the franchise’s thirteenth main installment, there are two worlds, Cocoonand Pulse, that each have their own godsthat preside over them. These two worlds have been at war with each other for years. As the game’s main plot progresses, it is revealed that the gods themselves are orchestrating the war in order to get enough people to all die at once for the gate to the next life to be blown wide open so they can meet the deity who created everything. The gods themselves organized a war between two worlds. That sends a pretty powerful message as to the subconscious of the developers.

The other theme that tends to surround the portrayal of religion in video games is the theme of the church as a tool for political corruption. Going back to the Civil War plot line in Skyrim, the political intrigue surrounding it is relevant to this point. The founder of the Stormcloaksis revealed towards the end of the Civil War plotline (should the player choose to side with him), to not really care all too much about the Talos worship ban. It bothers him to be sure, but it is far from his main motive. All he truly cares about is political power. To that end, he stirred up a religious movement and used it in order to take over the land of Skyrim as High King. Political motivations for religious movements is also a trope which the Final Fantasyfranchise is very familiar with. At least two different Final Fantasy games that I know of (Final Fantasy Xand the spin-off Final Fantasy Tactics) use this trope to great effect in their stories.

In Final Fantasy X, the world of Spirais perpetually threatened by an entity referring to as Sin. According to the reigning religion, Sin was born because of humanity’s reliance on machines and weaponryand that it needs to be exorcised by following precepts and praying for humanity’s collective atonement. The game reveals later on that it was all a complete lie. Sin was created as a way to preserve the collective memories of a fallen cityand the religion was founded in order to gain political control through false hope that it could be defeated through strict adherence to it. The other example of this trope in this franchise comes from Final Fantasy Tactics. The game revolves around the political intrigue between severalnoblehouses, all of which practice the leading religion of the land. According to the tenants of the religion in question, the leading Saint, St. Ajora Glabados, and his 12 disciples wielded the fabled Zodiac Stonesto defeat a massive evil a long time ago. The modern church officials attempt to use the Zodiac Stones to consolidate power and maintain their influence on politics. While they are shown to be corrupt, even they do not know the truth and genuinely believe the stones will provide salvation. However, as the game goes on, a horrible truth is revealed. The Zodiac Stone are conduits for the Lucavi demonsto form contracts with humans. These human gain great powers, but are eventually turned into nothing more than avatars for the demons will. Saint Ajora used this long ago and merged with the demon Ultima, head of the Lucavi, and, with that power, gained Sainthood and massive influence on the people until well after his death. The protagonist of the story works behind the scenes to collect the Zodiac Stones and prevent another catastrophe from being unleashed on the world.

My final example comes from the Assassin’s Creedseries again, particularly the second installmentand its follow up, Brotherhood. A major plot point in the these games is that the main adversaries, the KnightsTemplar, have taken control of the Vaticanvia the papacy. They use their influence from this position to assert control over the area. They bribe officials, threaten the people into compliance, warping religious texts to their advantage, and many other things. They did not make up most of this either. The people involved, Rodrigo Borgiaand his family, were notoriously evil people who abused their positions in the church to better their own ends. The only thing Ubisoft made up was that they were a part of the Knights Templar. It is interesting to see a franchise comment on history the way that Assassin’s Creeddoes. It provides food for though and conversation.

To be fair to game developers, there are also plenty of examples of religions in games displayed in a more positive light as well, but these are typically left unexplored and exist superficially and/or as a way to give players a place to get healed and buy healing items/spells. More often than not, when a game explores the concept of religion intently, it is shown in a negative light. While this would indicate that gamer culture does not think highly of religion, I honestly do not think that is true. Many of the people I know who play games are highly devout in their chosen faith. Most of them are also very kind people on top of that. So then why do games tend to be so highly critical of the concept when compared to other media? Is it because of some subconscious reason that we are only superficially aware of? Is it because the medium itself allows more a higher degree of nuance and intrigue in this topic? Is it simply because corrupt churches make for interesting plots? I honestly do not know the answer to this question. My job is simply to highlight an aspect of games and get you to think more of the subject. I am no where near intelligent or unbiased enough to give a good explanation. I leave it up to you to think and debate with yourself and others to find an explanation behind this conundrum.

The concept of sequels and franchises is a very core part of our industry. Since the development and release of video games is primarily a business, it only makes sense that the head honchos of the field would look for concepts and ideas that could easily spawn sequels, continuations, spin-offs, and the like. Sometimes this leads to great gamesthat the audience grow to love for many reasons. Other times it leads to games that are obvious attempts to grab moneywithout any real concern for quality. Most often, the games released are somewhere in the middle. I say this because this weeks topic is largely about a game that, in my opinion (which I confess is not popular), suffered from continued sequels: God of War.

Before I go into detail as to why I think this, I want to make one thing perfectly clear: I do not consider God of War, or its sequels, to be bad games.This franchise demonstrates very solid game design principles. The combat is solid, fast-paced, visceral, and very fun to play. A smart decision was made to break up combat sections with platforming and puzzles (of debatable quality, but most people agree that most puzzles were not bad). They also did, in later installments, a very good job of increasing the sheer scale of each game in terms or both the enemies/bosses fought and what Kratos was doing in the story. From the perspective of a gamer looking for a good time, the God of War games are easily some of the best, but that is not the lens I look at games with. While I always want my games to be fun, I expect much more from them. Games need to have a high-quality plot and story to go along with stellar and interesting gameplay. The original God of War did this very well, the later installments falter on this front in a pretty interesting way. (I am only including the main series games in this article as I have not and probably will not play the side stories for the PSP and the new PS3 game, Ascension, slated for release.)

The sequellacked the same strength of storytelling. God of War 2 begins with Kratos learning nothing from his experience in the original games and losing all pretense of grief. He is rampaging across Greece, aiding Sparta (his home country from before his ascension) in its conquest of the other city-states. Athena, desperate to keep him from suffering retribution, warns him that any further transgressions in the mortal world would force Zeus to take action and deliver divine retribution. When Kratos disregards Athena and tells her to go screw herself, the god-king fulfills his promise. Kratos is stripped of his powers and cast into the Underworld. This is where the titan, Gaia, gives him the strength to crawl back out. She tells Kratos to get revenge for Zeus punishing him just like he threatened to do. In order to do this, Kratos must find and kill the three Sisters of Fate and take control of his own thread of fate, allowing him to go back in time and get his powers back. After succeeding in this, Kratos goes back, reclaims his power, and attacks Zeus like the petulant child that he is. The final shot is him riding the Titans to the top of Mount Olympus, preparing to assault the gods in a final showdown.

This plot is much weaker than the original’s for one huge reason: Kratos lacks the depth of character his first incarnation had. In the beginning, Kratos was more than just a perpetually angry war machine. The Ghost of Sparta was overcome with grief for killing his family and anger at the one who tricked him into doing it. His mind was constantly occupied with reliving and re-experiencing the memory of his greatest failure, giving him constant nightmares. Even the sex mini-game was appropriate as Kratos was trying to keep himself occupied. In the second game, he becamea war machine. The newly crowned God of War spent all his time taking his anger out on the world and taking control of nations. The grieving warrior was completely lost, replaced by this reckless and stupid asshole who is disregarding warnings in order to vent on poor defenseless people. They do not even mention his family or their loss at all in the second game, which is essential to his character and what makes him so fascinating. The whole plot is Kratos getting revenge on Zeus for doing what he said he would do all along. This interesting and nuanced character became so flat and one-dimensional that it was painful to watch, which to me is the ultimate tragedy of the franchise.

The third gamedid its best to remedy this, which was unfortunately too little too late. The whole plot of the third is that Kratos goes on a rampage at Mount Olympus, killing all of gods and causing an apocalypse. Though Kratos is well aware that his actions are damning the people at large, he does not care in the slightest. Slaughtering Poseidon caused the ocean to grow catastrophic with tidal waves, decimating the people of the coastal regions. Ripping off Helios’s head erased the sun and ushered in a literal Dark Age. The evidence was there and he saw the results, but refused to stop. Then, he learned via the ghost of the goddess Athena exactly how he needed to defeat Zeus. He needed to open up Pandora’s Box, like he did in the first game, and claim the weapon hidden inside. To reopen the box, he needs to find Pandora and get her to use her power on it. Meeting Pandora reminded him of his own daughter and the circumstances behind her death, bringing back the one thing that makes Kratos an interesting character. This aspect of his character humanizes him and gives him a relateable persona. They made the right decision in this regard and played with it very well.

The back and forth between Kratos and Pandora was interesting since Pandora believes in hope and has an optimistic look on life while Kratos has been beat down so much that he no longer believes in the concept of hope. This comes to a head when Pandora reveals that she has to sacrifice herself to open the box and help Kratos beat Zeus. Kratos is highly resistant to this as he does not want to feel like he lost his daughter a second time. When Zeus shows up to officially join the fight, it was heart-wrenching as the player had to force Kratos to let go and allow Pandora to do her thing. As the box opens and is completely empty, the audience could feel the sheer gravity of the situation that left Kratos and Athena dumbstruck. Athena flips out and describes how Hope should have been in the box. She then realizes that when Kratos opened the box the first time to gain the power to fight Ares, he took Hope instead of the elements of discord that were held in the box. With this knowledge in mind, Kratos goes to fight and defeat Zeus once and for all, destroying civilization while leaving Hope for the world, because Hope is all that matters when disease, famine, and death take their hold on the land.

In an oddly fitting way, the development of the God of War franchise follows the plot of a standard Greek Tragedy in which the protagonist is undone by the qualities that make him iconic and great in the eyes of many. People latched onto the violence and rage of Kratos when that was far from what made him an interesting character. This decision to focus on that aspect is what inevitably ruined the character. The writers did not realize what they were doing until it was far too late and the plot was not able to be fixed. It is an important lesson in game development. If you are handed a great and iconic game and asked to make a sequel, take the time to analyze the game on a deeper level and figure out what makes it so great. Look beyond the gameplay and into the plot, setting, and characters. All of this is crucial to game design.

            Recently, a certain individualhas been cropping up a lot in discussions about video games. There has been a bit of controversy surrounding her and what she says about female archetypes. Among that controversy, there has also been some legitimate criticism of her and her methods. Regardless of your opinion regarding that matter, it is hard to deny that she has started a discussion: A discussion as to why female characters are the way they are most of the time. Most gamers are all aware of the fact that finding a good female character in a game can be… difficult at times. But what is the real reason behind this? I am going to spend this week proposing a hypothesis as to why that is.

            The hypothesis is this: We see many bad female characters all the time simply because many of the characters in mainstream gaming are very poorly characterized period. We see the poor characterization of women more clearly because our culture has become far more attuned to bad female characters than male characters, due to all the baggage we have carried on from the past and the many issues regarding woman’s equality we still have to address in the modern day. This sensitivity is bolstered by the fact that the fairer sex tends to not be as represented in video games as men are, so any prominent female character, for better or worse, tends to stand out to the community.

            To prove the first point of this hypothesis, I will be looking at games that are praised for characterization and analyze the characters in them, both male and female, and then do the same with games that are notorious for poor characterization to show the difference between the two. I do not feel the need to go into the other points as they have more to do with culture, not video games, and I would hope that most people would who read this already know them well. Also, I admit that I feel painfully unequipped to tackle the subjects of women’s rights issues and perception of gaming culture as I do not have any experience studying culture or psychology.

            The first game that I want to analyze is one that I never tire of talking about: Mass Effect. One of the few things most of the people who play Mass Effectcan all agree on is that Bioware did a really good job with the characters of the series. So much so that most of the characters that the player can ally with have huge fanbases. Whether they are a smooth talking police officer that serves as both a close friend and rival like Garrus, a scientist who committed terrible war crimes but had good, logical reasons for doing so like Mordin, or the ace pilot with a snide sense of humor, a crippling disability, and a huge chip on his shoulder like Joker, all of the male characters are well-developed.

            And the exact same thing can be said of the female characters of the game. That is why one of the most endearing characters of the entire series happens to be female. I am, of course, referring to Tali. In the first game, Tali is the one who gives Sheppard evidence that Saren is a terrorist. She is shown to be smart, able to handle herself, and displaying a high degree of technical aptitude. When the player settles down to talk to her on the Normandy, she also shows that she is very relatable individual who has a crush on Sheppard, but is too shy to voice it. As the series goes on, she matures into an Admiral for her races fleet. The same can be said of Liara. Liara starts off as a shy, timid archeologist and evolves into the galaxy’s best information broker by the third game. The women in Mass Effect are as much characters as the men because Bioware took the time to write good characters.

            Another example of strong characterization is the Uncharted series. While people have mixed reactions to the series as a whole, the main characters are by far the strongest part of the franchise. The protagonist Nathan Drake has, over the course of the series, become much more fleshed out and interesting as a result of Naughty Dog’s writing. In the first game, he was just an everyman. By the third game, the audience knew enough to form a real connection with him. He was abandoned as a child and grew changed his name, making up a story about being related to Sir Francis Drake and changing his name to reflect that. He grew to love treasure hunting and danger to the point where he has a pathological need to do it despite the risks. There is also the character of Victor Sullivan, who serves as Nate’s mentor and main tie to the criminal world. He is also one of the most popular characters in the series due to his personality, which was why the third game focused so heavily on his relationship with Drake.

            The women in Drake’s life are also quite interesting. The most notable female from the Uncharted series is Elena Fisher, who serves as the love interest and foil to Nathan Drake. When the audience first meets her in the original game, she is a journalist looking for Sir Francis Drake’s coffin with Nathan’s aid. She is shown to be quite capable in a fight despite having no experience with weapons. Elena also displays great observational skills when listening paying close attention to what people around her are saying and by actively giving Nathan tips and advice on how to solve puzzles that he encounters. Though tough, she also has a genuine personality. Ms. Fisher is relentless in her pursuit of the truth and in coming to her allies’ aid in the first two games. She often puts herself in great danger until a grenade going off close to her puts her in mortal danger towards the end of the second game. Afterward, in the third game, she becomes more subdued and concerned for Nate and Sully, but still willing to help them out. When Sully get’s kidnapped and Nate disappears, she draws up detailed plans to stage a rescue. She is Drake’s conscience and foil to his optimistic side. To that end, she is similar, yet opposed, to Chloe Frazer, who represents the devil on his shoulder and his inner pessimist. Though Chloe lacked the screen time Elena did, being absent from the first game, her character was very fleshed out and she quickly became another fan favorite.

            Both of the above franchises created strong characters and built relationships with these characters. As a result, the females among them possess strong characterization and became real, believable people. When the writer knows how to build strong characters, the gender will not be something that needs to be written around. It will instead be a logical extension of the person in question, like race, sexuality, or religious affiliations, or other traits. It should inform, but not define a character. Not all games realize this, and we get really some really painful to watch characters, both male and female, in video games as a result.

            A very well publicized example of this would be Samus Aran from Metroid. Specifically, the Samus Aran from Metroid: Other M. Most fans of the franchise refuse to talk about this little piece and for good reason. They took one of the few respected female characters in games and made her a stupid, completely subservient slave to the orders of a man who once commanded her, but no longer has the legal power to order her around. While people cried foul at this portrayal of an established icon, the problem ran deeper than that. Almost every facet of the story was poorly conceived. The characters were not interesting. The plot was filled with awkward attempts to shoehorn in the obvious mother motif. (Samus receives a “Baby’s Cry” distress signal emanating from a “Bottle Ship”. Also, Other M is an anagram for Mother, if that was not obvious.) And Samus does not use lifesaving and otherwise perfectly fine gear until Officer Moron allows her to. (For example, she receives clearance to use a lava-shield after she crosses a lava pit.) This whole thing was poorly conceived. Every single person in this plot acts like a fool, result in a female character so horrible that some even go as far as to consider it sexist, though your opinion may vary.

            Another, quite egregious, example of bad writing being the central cause of horrible female characters is Tomb Raider: Underworld. I am limiting the discussion to just this game in the series not because I do not believe other games in the series have similar problems, but because it is the only game in Lara Croft’s more recent incarnations that I have had the displeasure of playing. Ms. Croft, throughout the adventure, demonstrates a “strong” personality. By that, I mean that she continuously acts like a complete jerk. She seems perpetually angry throughout the journey, which is not helped by the fact that revenge is the primary motive for her actions. The two villains in the game are both women who suffer similar fates, although one is more manipulative and able to hide her anger. The few male characters in the game are not much better. They are not angry, but they seem superfluous and have no depth because they are either mooks or Lara’s friends who show up in the start of the game and never again. I do not mind an all female cast, but I would prefer the protagonist to have a greater depth than “Grrrrrrrrrrr,” regardless of his/her gender. The main plot is pretty forgettable. All I remember is that it involved Norse mythology and there was a segment that had Lara kill tons of mooks with Thor’s Hammer. This game was a huge failure in terms of writing and the portrayal of its feminine lead reflects that.

            The problem is not that games portray women poorly, it is that they portray people poorly. It is a symptom of a broader problem than you may have been lead to believe. Fortunately, this issue is not a difficult one to remedy. If the problem with women in games stems from bad writing in general, then the solution is simple: All we need to do is improve the quality of the writing teams in modern gaming. Take a page from the staff at Obsidian, Naughty Dog, and the part of Bioware that writes character and character interaction. Focus on making strong characters and believable relationships and alliances between them. If we can begin to make stronger characters, these issues will start to fade. This can apply equally to all genres and types of stories one could find. Strong characters are free to exist in any story, whether a dark and serious or light-hearted and goofy. To that end, I encourage discussions between gamers, developers, and anyone else who loves games to talk to each other about what works and what we need to change. This is the only way we can better the medium. So I say let the likes of Anita Sarkeesian speak. If they are wrong, let us tell them why and how they are wrong and correct them. We would be capable of much better in terms of storytelling in this medium through this type of discourse.

There are many different people working in this industry. They all bring their own perspectives and biases regarding video games and what make them good. This is no less true for the designers of video games. Each design team and each person on those teams brings different ideas and different viewpoints to the table. This week’s article is about how these differences can lead to radically different games. Fortunately for me, there are two games that are perfect for this article as a way to compare/contrast design philosophies. They are very similar, yet fundamentally different due to the teams who created them and the circumstances behind their development. These games are the recent Fallout games: Fallout 3 and Fallout: New Vegas.

I want to start off with a disclaimer: This is not a debate as to which one these games is better. This is just as analysis of different design philosophies resulting in fundamentally different games.These games are ideal for an analysis like this. Both of these games were developed with the same engine and are in the same “Open-World RPG” genre, meaning that they look and play very similarly. New Vegas improved on Fallout 3‘s mechanics, but did not significantly change them, so they are close enough that it does not impact the comparison to a significant degree. They are part of the same series, which means they are using the same lore and building on the same world. On most levels, these games are the exact same. The only differences between these two games are the result of design decisions, which puts them in the perfect position to compare and contrast on a purely design level.

Fallout 3is made using Bethesda Softworks’s standard rulebook for RPG design. They applied the same philosophies that governed the creation of hit titles like Oblivionor Skyrimwhen developing the third installment of the Fallout franchise. They favor building open sandboxes that the player is free to explore at will, which is reflected in the choices they made. The layout of the Capital Wasteland is wide-open and generally flat terrain, allowing players to see many of the world’s set-pieces from a distance and encouraging them to travel around and explore each of them. When the player first exits the vault, he/she gets an amazing viewof the nearby town Megaton, a school building to explore, and the image of the DC ruins in the distance, establishing several possible destinations that the player go choose to go to.

Another strength of typical Bethesda design is that they are very good at telling small, self-contained stories within their games through careful design of the environment and the people in them. I have talked about this briefly in the past in a previous article, but it cannot hurt repeat. Bethesda puts enough detail into the places and set-pieces that they all tell their own stories. It is hard to describe this in any way put through example. In the DC ruins, there is a nuclear shelter that takes $0.10 to open. In this shelter there is a male skeleton, a female mannequin, a bottle of wine, and a clothing item called “Sexy Sleepware”. I do not think I have to spell out what all of that means. You can figure the story out without any guidance. Another example comes from a scene I once came across. When exploring the Capital Wasteland, I came across a group of wanders who were selling an item called “Strange Meat”. They claimed that it was some of the best meat in the Wasteland. Those who are familiar with either Fallout 3 or my earlier worksknow that “Strange Meat” is actually human flesh. Since I knew this, I killed every single one of them and gained good karma for it. I like how Bethesda just leaves details in the game and allows the player to use common sense to infer what happened. It gives the player a motivation to explore and see what else is out there.

The final strength of Bethesda’s style is that they are very good at using the RPG mechanics to bolster the spirit of exploration. One of the most noticeable and well-known parts aspects of this is the level scaling mechanic they used in Fallout 3, which most people agree is vastly superior to the one they used in The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. In Fallout 3, every location has a level associated with it. As the player’s character level rises, the levels of these locations also rise. However, when a player first visits an area, that area’s level is locked, which prevents it from rising any further. The way this works gives the player freedom to explore where ever they want without fear of being completely overwhelmed (with some exceptions).

Another good way they use RPG elements is that they give the player a clear sense of progression and a feeling that they are growing stronger as the adventure goes on. The player gains experience for doing most of the things an adventurer would do like killing enemies, completing quests, hacking terminals, picking locks, etc. As with most RPGs, getting enough experience will cause the player to level up. As Bethesda explained it in the interviews leading up to the release of the game, they wanted every level up to be a special moment that players look forward to. On that count, they succeed. Each level gives the player skill points based on his/her Intelligence stat and a perk. Perks are little bonuses that give the player a diverse and interesting set of advantages. Players will crave experience, hoping to level up and gain skill points and perks and making them want to explore the world even more. Beyond that, the perk system and the skill point system give the player a clear sense of progression. A player can feel the difference a single level in make in the character’s stats.

As good at Bethesda style games are in terms of exploration, they do have downsides. For one, while they give a lot of attention to the smaller environmental details, they are not very good at looking at the big picture in terms of environment. For example, in the whole Capital Wasteland, there is no farm land anywhere. The game explains that most of the food is from two-hundred years ago and scavenged from the DC ruins. This makes no sense. Food that old, even if it was stuffed with preservatives, could not possibly be edible. They have animals and creatures around that drop meat when killed, but there is no explanation as to how they live in an area with no vegetation. Water is also a huge problem. According to the game, since DC was hit the hardest in the nuclear apocalypse, all of the water has a lot of radiation and is somewhat toxic to humans. There is a explanation for this since a major plot point in the game is providing fresh water to the Wasteland, but it still poses a significant problem. With the fact that basic resources cannot be found overlooked/omitted, the Capital Wasteland realistically could not possibly sustain life. There is no notable way to provide food or water to the people of the Wastes. Another crucial environmental detail that was overlooked was in a place called Tenpenny Tower. In this tower, located in the Southern half of the Capital Wasteland, there is a group of people who live in the tap of luxury… only there is no reason for them to be rich. As far as I am aware, the residents of Tenpenny do not engage in any sort of trade and have no real way to profit. They are only rich simply because the game needed stereotypical rich people to serve as evil-aligned characters for a few side quests. All three of the details here are crucial details about the world that Bethesda failed to take into account, either because of constraints or through focusing too much on the exploration aspects of the game, when creating the DC area in Fallout 3.

The other problem with Bethesda design is that while they excel at the use of environmental storytelling, but the storytelling of their main plots are not up to the same quality. Fallout 3in particular had several moments in the story where either what was happening or what the player is expected to do does not make sense. For example, there is a scene in the game where the player is going into a old vault to look for his/her father. On arrival, the player is greeted by a robot and told to get into a “Tranquility Pod”. The quest objective updates to tell the player to comply. The problem with that is that there is no motivation for him/her to do that. The player is looking for his/her father. Looking around at exploring the vault seems like a better idea than resting in a pod.

There are a couple of other problem spots similar to that one. Later in the game, the player needs to go into a separate vault to retrieve an artifact called a GECK (Garden of Eden Creation Kit) to make the giant water purifier that everyone wants work. The problem is that the entrance is covered in so much radiation that it would instantly kill the player if he/she got close. The player needs to sneak around through another entrance hidden in Lamplight Cavern. The problem with thatis that Lamplight Cavern is home to a group of children who formed their own kid society. They will not open the little, indestructible plywood dooruntil the player speech checks them or goes to save their friends from slavers who kidnapped them to sell off to the highest bidder. Let me repeat that for you so that you fully understand it: Infiltrating a compound filled with trained, murderous slavers is easierthan infiltrating the town of a group of little kids. This is stupid. There is no reason that a group of kids should pose any sort of obstacle to the player. These are just a few examples of the problems with Fallout 3‘s plot. There are more than that. This is the consequence of Bethesda’s design philosophy. They build fantastic worlds to explore, but tend to forget the details that help it to be a coherent and believable place with believable people.

New Vegas, on the other hand, was made with Bethesda’s engine, but not their philosophies on RPG design. Rather, it was created by Obsidian Entertainment and using their design style. Obsidian’s style has emphasizes creating a believable and having the player impact that world through choice. To that end, they are very detail oriented. The first strength of this design style is that the world is much more plausible and fleshed out. The player can look around and see how people might live in a world like the one in New Vegas. Small towns are seen to have farmland and sources of fresh water. Wandering around the first settlement the player encounters, Goodsprings, he/she can look around and see farmers cultivating their harvest of fruits and vegetables. The player can travel to the springs and water pumps to take a swig of fresh, clean water. The saloon in town is a great place for the player to rest. Talking with the owner reveals that they trade with other settlements in order to get meat and other forms of protein and that she keeps caravan drivers happy by providing drinks and entertainment (for a small fee). It is more than a set-piece, it is a town. Other towns have different ways of maintaining their economy. One town, Novac, scavenges technology from a local rocket base and trading with other places for their resources.

Beyond the towns, the inhabitants of the Mojave Wasteland are equally fleshed out. The owner of Novac’s general store and gift shop has a collection of dinosaur toys from before the war that he tries to peddle off to every person who comes around because they simply take up so much space. In Goodsprings, the local doctor mentions that he grew up in a vault and learned medicine there. Later, he found a woman that he grew to love and later marry, but she died later on. There is a farmer, located on the outskirts of the Vegas strip. He is a part of the New California Republic’s sharecropping program. As he goes about his daily tasks, the player can strike up a chat and learn that the NCR is bad at resource management and that the farmer might be under quota because of it. These people are not at all vital to the plot of New Vegas. They are background decorations, but they all have stories and personalities of their own. They are people inhabiting this world that the player has also chosen to inhabit. This is a reflection of Obsidian’s ability to make a believable place with interesting locals.

The second strength of this philosophy is that they are very good at guiding the player in the direction that they want him/her to go while keeping the plot consistent. One of the best examples of this is in the beginning of the game. The very first scene of the game involving the player character has him/her being shot in order to secure the package he/she was supposed to deliver to the New Vegas strip. Naturally, the player will want to seek revenge on the guy who did it and his obnoxiously loud checkered suit. This whole scene sets up the plot in a way that when the quest objective says “Find the man who shot you,” the player goes “I thought you’d never ask.” It hooks the player into the world without creating any of the inconsistencies that plagued the plot of Fallout 3. While some parts of plot are weaker than others, most of the things that the player is asked to do make sense. The player naturally goes from town to town in order to track the shooter down. Though the people often make requests of the player in exchange for the information necessary to keep going. It is an easy enough motivation for people to understand (though it does relies on the player having a tolerance for revenge stories).

Obsidian’s third strength lies in its ability to use choice in its narrative and have those choices produce realistic consequences. The second half of the game is almost completely dedicated to this principal. Once the player tracks down the shooter and extracts revenge, he/she learns that his motive for trying to kill the player was to attempt to take control over New Vegas. From this point on, as I have gone over before in olderposts, the player can choose which faction of the big three to side with in the war for New Vegas. Alternatively, the choice can be made to screw all of them over in a bid to maintain New Vegas’s independence. This choice radically affects the route which the player will take to get to the end of the game. However, each faction will ask the player to deal with the various side-factions of the game (as does going Independent). The final battle and the ending changes radically depending on which faction the player sided with and how he/she dealt with all of the side-factions (or, sometimes, if they were even dealt with at all). This system is great because it encourages the player to think about what they are going to do and how it will affect the citizens of New Vegas and the Mojave.

The choice of which faction to side with has real, lasting consequences after the story is over, but the player is never locked into a choice until the quest line they are on is near completion. At any time they can switch to a different faction (provided their reputation with that faction is not too low) if they feel that the story will not go the way they want it to go. The player can convince most of the side-factions to align with the major factions and turn the tides of the war one way or another. The player feels like they are playing an active role in determining the future of New Vegas through the choices they make in the plot, which increases his/her immersion and involvement with it.

The theme of choice extends to day-to-day operations in New Vegas. Obsidian has a style that focuses as much on customization as Bethesda focuses on exploration. Many of the weapons the player can use have weapon mods that the player is allowed (and encouraged) to find/buy and install, increasing the weapons effectiveness and physically changing its appearance. Another change that reflects choice is the crafting system. While Fallout 3had crafting, it was nowhere near as robust as what is seen in New Vegas. The former only allowed for the creation of specific weapons through crafting, the latter does much more. New Vegas allows for the creation of new weapons and armors, custom ammunition, medical supplies, healthier and more nutritious food and drinks, narcotics, poisons, and repair kits. The player is completely free to skip crafting entirely, but taking advantage of it will give him/her an edge over those who neglect it. It can even be enjoyable to gather ingredients and create custom stuff for some people, letting them build their own fun.

The next place where Obsidian’s preference for choice shines is in the changes they made to the leveling system. The reduced the number of skill points accrued at level up and reduced the perk gain rate to every other level. Plus, they changed a few skills around, added a new Survival skill and many more perks than Bethesda did. This means that every point the player allocates and every perk they choose become much more crucial choices than they were in Fallout 3. In Fallout 3, the player was guaranteed to be incredibly strong by the end and able to take on most threats. In New Vegas, the player’s power is more limited. The player has to choose which skills they will specialize in and which perks to select over the others (unless the player install the DLCs, which raise the level cap by twenty).

The way skills interact with the world also reflect choice. Obsidian made each quest in the game so that there are several ways to approach a given situation. For example, when a military doctor asks the player to find out who has been stealing his supplies, the player can has a choice between different solutions. He/she can just sit in the tent and watch for somebody to come around. Another option is to sneak around the base and look for clues. Lastly, the choice exists (provided the player has enough Medicine skill) to learn the symptoms of addiction to the particular stolen drugs and catch the thief by going around and looking for somebody with the symptoms and diagnose them. These are all viable options and all of them solve the quest in a good way. Other quests will need high skills to get good resolutions and/or to skip objectives. It allows for players to see their skills having an impact on their experience, encouraging experimentation with different character build and propagating a notion of choice.

But while this style has its strengths regarding story and choice, it has its own, critical weaknesses. The most damaging of these weaknesses is that while the world is very rich and detailed, it is simply not fun to explore. Several choices made that help to promote verisimilitude are detrimental to exploration. The biggest example of this is the topography of the area. Where Fallout 3was a vast, open area, New Vegas is much filled with much more hills and valleys. This in itself, while it makes the world feel smaller and discourages exploration, is not inherently detrimental. What is detrimental is the fact that there are several mountains and hills that the player should be able to climb thanks to the games engine, but are blocked off from the player by invisible walls which Obsidian put in. This makes the world less fun to explore because it feels like the game designer actively discourages players from doing so.

Another way exploration is discouraged is in the placement of enemies. In a Bethesda game, the enemies scale to the player’s level. In New Vegas, enemies have predetermined spawn locations and minimum levels. This means that if the player decides to make a trek directly to New Vegas (because the fact that the shooter is from New Vegas is fairly obvious if the player is familiar at all with the region), then the going will be difficult because of creature tens of levels higher than they are. It is not impossible, but it is difficult enough to dissuade even the most determined of gamers. The game uses these spawns, coupled with the layout of the Mojave, to funnel the player through a decidedly linear path during the course of the first act. It also inadvertently makes wandering, even on at higher levels, an annoyance instead of a pleasant excursion.

The interiors areas of the game are no better in this regard. In fact, more often than not, they are far worse. Many of the locations are incomprehensible rat mazes with several different paths that all look incredibly similar, yet lead to different locations in the building and the map often does not help. Several times when I gave up and decided to use the map, I ended up slightly less lost, but still so lost that I had to rely on luck to get through the area. This is nearly every interior space large enough to take multiple floors. While all of the above criticisms of this style essentially come to “The world is simply not fun to explore,” this is a critical problem. After all, the player will be spending hoursexploring in order to get from location to location and dealing with the trials on the way. For this part to be boring is almost akin to intentionally sabotaging the game.

While this is not immediately noticeable in Fallout: New Vegas, there is another problem with this plot and choice focused style. All of these choices and branching paths take time and money to create, especially since it requires voice acting and other assets. In the AAA gaming industry we have right now, this kind of commitment is incredibly difficult to pull off. This often results in Obsidian releasing products that are either unfinishedor lacking of a degree of polishthat other games have. This was a first noticeable in New Vegas with all the bugs and glitches (many game breaking ones) that it had upon release. Since then it has mostly been patched out, but there is one feature that was left on the cutting room floor, one many fans were angry about, because of time and budget constraints. The team at Obsidian was originally going to allow post-ending play so that the player could see the aftermath of the game much more visibly than through the slideshow they used and continue to explore the Mojave. The reason they avoided this was because lacked the time, money, and processing power to make alternate versions of the places that would be visible affected by the ending (notably New Vegas and Hoover Dam). New Vegas got off easy, usually this kind of concern ruins Obsidian games in other ways.

As for which design philosophy or which game is better, it is completely subjective and dependent on what you are looking for in a video game. And these two styles are far from the only ones. There are tons of different design styles that developers use and they each have their own pros and cons. This is just to show how much the design has an impact on the final product. Thought these two games have the same engine, the same gameplay, the same lore, and the same genre, they are radically different and showcase two totally separate ways of thinking about games and game design. Keep this in mind when playing your next video game. Think about the design and the intent behind each choice the developers made. Think about how it affected the experience. You might be surprised at how much you learn.