When I replayed RE1 remake earlier this year one thing that struck me was how the essential appeal of the game (at least, for me) was the player’s gradual sense of mastery over a very narrow and obtuse game space. The mansion at the game’s outset is a bewildering labyrinth of linkages that constantly stymies you and demands you bend to its logic in order to progress; your reward for engaging the mansion on its own terms, with your own lateral thinking, is developing a mental map of it while unlocking all of its secrets, gaining access to every room, and the facile traversal of what were once difficult and dangerous routes. Even the fixed camera angles assert the primacy of the level design over the player; you are just some obscure warm body worming your way through the real star of the show.
For me there is a deep sense of satisfaction in a game rewarding you this way, and I never once felt this in Code Veronica. I thought my problems with remembering where to go in the Military Training Facility were because I’d given the lighter to Rodrigo and spent most of the game in the dark, only to read later that the facility being discombobulating is one of the most common complaints about the game. Within that, any sense of “uncovering the good stuff” is taken away from the player because you see previously inaccessible rooms from Chris’ perspective instead of Claire’s, with rooms that were once accessible now cordoned off. And so on, and so on.
Reading this makes me wonder to what extent the deep philosophical aspects of the field of architecture can be translated into ludological elements. This seems important both literally, in the sense that games have buildings in them, and metaphorically, in the sense that architecture is also a philosophy of use, of the meaning of use, and of the intentional organization of the meaning of use.
It was actually pretty common in the early days of sb to say that games as an art had more in common with architecture than more traditionally narrative forms.
Yeah my biggest complaint moment to moment was there were not loops in the level design, you had to constantly return to choke points you had to traverse. Reminded this also annoyed me in RE3 and why I abandoned my playthrough of that.
my job talk was literally titled “dancing about architecture”
me and charles pratt have been slowly forming some semblance of a Thought about games having more in common with music and performance arts than film, which seems obvious when typing it out but wow you’d be surprised how much convincing needs to be done
I tend to think that it can be dance or theatrical performance, depending on the game, but it’s so much easier to include the “play" aspect of games if you examine them from the perspective of a performer than that of the audience.
i’ve always found it kind of neat that FFXIV raids are effectively just choreography & recital? almost every boss fight is 100% scripted in that bosses will always do the same movies in the same order and completing them doesn’t require puzzle solving, tactics, or strategy in so much as all eight people being in the right spot of the map or attacking the right thing in the exact moment the developer expects them to be. this is reinforced by i.e. incoming damage that you can’t split-second react to and have to learn is coming up in the performance. groups spend hours and days basically in recital until all 8 of them can do the same steps at the same time almost without even thinking about it.
This might explain why sport has ever eluded me, because I am allergic to socially confected fake drama. Acknowledging that sport is an actual drama might be the mental gateway I’ve been needing for so long …
… Anyway, couldn’t it be said that art itself is the loneliest game of them all?
FFXVI continues, it really, really, really doubles down on being a FFXIV expandalone with simplified devil may cry combat. Nearly every positive and negative thing about it at this point is damn near identical to XIV except the cursing blood and extremely mild sex stuff.
I do find parts of it kind of annoying, but I also find other parts of it so compelling I can’t stop playing it. It’s totally unique and totally derivative at the same time.
it’s a great ride still though, I’m sorry I called it The Witcher because it’s clearly Berzerk. Traumatized buff guy tries to rebuild a good life in a nightmare world is something I’m a sucker for. It’s weird how at one moment it is pure game of thrones grim dark, and the next it’s All the Friends we Made Along the Way shonen anime.
I guess there’s plenty of grim dark in that stuff too though, I am a Hunter X Hunter fan so I should know.
Anyway I think I like it? I’d rather this than Sony’s prestige shit. It’s way more endearing.
ff16 is so diametrically opposed to everything i care about in rpgs in every possible respect that it would almost make me optimistic about future installments given the series’ historical variety mandate and 16’s lack of impact if i wasn’t sure that ff17 will be an AI slop post-roguelite loot shooter forever game with battlepasses and gacha elements where everyone is dressed like a vtuber