We look at other ways in which games can resolve conflicts.
By James Pinnell on April 9, 2013 at 9:29 am
Bioshock Infinite changed a lot of mainstream perspectives when it popped the cherry on 2013′s Game of the Year contenders because — outside of featuring an undisputed display of gorgeous visuals alongside a riveting story — it took great strides to slow down the pace of exposition. Most shooters make it their intention for you to be barrelling along at 600km/hour, constantly pointing out this new threat and that old threat, lobbing both physical and metaphorical grenades at you and praying that the player won’t quit out based squarely on the sheer exhaustion from sensory overload.
This is, primarily, why we have those awful turret/chase levels, dreadful QTEs and the plethora of world exploding possibilities that only you, dear player, can prevent. Lazy game design is also arguably successful game design — if you look at the sales figures for the large majority of the modern military shooter staple that we’ve been playing for the last ten plus years.
There have been plenty of other titles that have taken strides to steady the pace of play and allow proceedings to continue without combat. 1999′s Metal Gear Solid on the PSOne is a stellar example of creative pacing and combat avoidance, allowing for the actual development of non-player characters rather than simply blowing them up, while sparking the synapses of the player to develop non-violent or stealthy solutions to avoid certain situations. Sure, there were boss fights, but even those were quirky and clever and were woven into the story in a manner that invited their inclusion. Hell, you didn’t even have to kill them if you didn’t want to. For many people it was the PSN cult favourite Journey which demonstrated that experiences didn’t need to involve violence in order to be clever, interesting or fun.
But lets face it – BioShock Infinite still has combat. It has quite a lot of it actually, and most of it is extraordinarily violent and confronting. This isn’t a bad thing at all, since much of the game’s central themes revolve around protection, courage and redemption thus making violent confrontation an important element of Booker and Elizabeths’ story. A recent Kotaku interview with BioShock Infinite‘s lead man Ken Levine has him calling it “a limitation of the medium”, where people expect to have their existing skill-sets (shooting people in the face) stretched and exploited because, well, it’s easy. Why put together risky, complex, alternatives when the status quo for the last 20 or so years has worked so well, and reliably for everyone? Please take careful note to realize that I’m not being in any way sarcastic or ridiculing what Ken said, because he’s right. The status quo is working.
But are gamers already pre-wired to accept nothing but shooting mechanics in order to test their mettle in first person environments?
Why can’t we change up the dynamic? Instead of creating arbitrary firefights, especially in areas when they aren’t necessary (a good example is that “empty” section between one objective and the next – the long path of death), just allow the player to explore their environment and appreciate it. Create more in-game cut-scenes, more conversations between the protagonists, or locations where players can explore the story outside of the main direction.
The Fallout series does well here, in particular making certain combat situations so difficult or downright awful that the best way out is to avoid them altogether, or allow the player to use previously acquired intelligence or charisma to simply talk their way out of a confrontation — as most people would in real life! Some of my most revered victories have not been when I shot some dudes a bunch of times, but when I outsmarted them, snuck around their obvious traps and overwhelming army, or simply used my wits to present a more appropriate outcome for both parties.
Life or death combat tends to present a very one-dimensional ending to a situation. Your nemesis generally hates you, so he wants you dead, or vice-versa. You kill them and things go on. Much of the now-famous dribble that was Far Cry 3‘s campaign was a victim of this dilemma, where the protagonist is being shown as an innocent with their back against the wall, but their actions — your actions — tell a completely different story. I’m sure if everyone on the island in Lost thought the same way as the protagonists in Far Cry 3, there probably wouldn’t have been more than a single season.
Here’s the thing: why not make combat, which is actually a very real and very final part of life, a rare and special event? Design the game around these eventual events, building actual anticipation and stress, actually allowing us to think that the avatar we are controlling actually has a conscience, can feel fear and regret about bloodshed, and isn’t just another mindless killing machine desperate to blow holes in everything that moves. Build us a climax.
When we get there, do we have to kill or physically disarm our foe? Does this person not have any weaknesses that can be exploited, where we can simply capture, bribe or manipulate? Why not develop a system or puzzles or build a set of social dynamic skills that allow us to work through a confrontation – we’re all used to having long, winding conversations with NPCs thanks to BioWare, so why not leave a bullet to the head the worst possible outcome? You can do it, but it’s like winning via a kick to the crotch. It’s a coward’s win.
There are consequences to killing people outside a game, and as games become more dynamic, realistic, and gritty — why are those consequences not reflected? Why don’t the family or friends, or hell, even your companions, care when you maim or kill another person? Shouldn’t that affect how the entire world thinks of you, since after all, you’re now a murderer. Take Dishonored as another brilliant example of alternatives; You have intrinsic choices on how you deal with people, and those choices effect the outcome of not only the major events of the city, but how people deal with you and how your public image is developed.
I’m sure I’ve lost many of you after the last few paragraphs, and I’m sure most of those people were yelling at their screen about the fact that, well, shooting things is fun. I’d agree – it is. I adore playing Battlefield, Call of Duty and other mainstream military shooters because, well, killing virtual soldiers is a blast. But when we’re expected to believe that Nathan Drake’s only course of action — especially when he has such a smart mouth on him — is murdering the entire henchmen population of the various locales he visits has zero consequences outside of his love interest getting ‘a little lippy’, is ridiculous.
My point is that it’s getting a little old wondering when developers will stop using combat as a crutch to connect various aspects of their game together, to relieve boring or “filler” elements, or simply get players excited. There are numerous other ways to get people going — hell, a good score and some passionate conversation is enough to get me riled up. At one point in BioShock Infinite, I spent an entire section walking through a meticulously well designed scene with my gun pointed down, as a massive story arc made itself known. But I couldn’t enjoy it. Because, like in every other game of its kind, eventually my gun would need to be used again, and it would be time to thoughtlessly kill even more people.
Sadly, I didn’t have to wait that long. But hopefully one day, I won’t have to see that gun on-screen at all — unless there really was no other choice.