There's something about crappy Chinese restaurants that is incredibly endearing to me. They're always good for hanging around with friends, and generally pretty cheap. I usually find that I get my money's worth when I go to a Chinese buffet, until about two or three hours later when I feel an insatiable hunger. Then, all of those feel good vibes from the Chinese buffet turn to mournful regret. I remember that the food wasn't all that great, and wasn't all that fulfilling. This is my experience with most open world video games.
All right, so that was a long way to go to bring the discussion around to video games, but hear me out. I don't much care for sand box and open world video games. To me, they never feel that fleshed out, and I never feel all that satisfied with them when I'm through. Reason being: sand box games are designed to never end. The focus of the game is just to jam around with the gameplay rather than the experience of the story and characters that the game has to offer.
If we take the two games that I've been playing lately: Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag and Metro: Last Light. These games are completely different from one another, so it's rather pointless to compare them, but there are somethings that can be explored. For example: structure.
First let's take a look at Assassin's Creed IV...
AC IV is a game about pirates taking to the high seas and fighting against the Navies of both Spain and England in the Caribbean. A majority of the entertainment value comes from exploring the waters in your ship, attacking random vessels and raiding them for goods. It's fun, it's fast, it's exciting, yet there is no real point to it other than resource gathering. These resources are important, yes, and it does make for a good time to be had. However, this creates a vicious cycle of raiding, and upgrading to raid and upgrade. The game just loops and loops, all for the somewhat frivolous task of upgrading your ship. The ship is extremely essential to the game, but a majority of the unlocks come after going through a particular story mission. AC IV gives players the runaround something fierce, with forcing them to go through tutorial mission after tutorial mission just so that they can accomplish the most basic of tasks. This is where Black Flag falls flat on its face.
In addition to having a large amount of tutorial missions, AC IV is lacking in story and character. The timeline of Assassin's Creed IV is completely out of wack as it jumps ahead several years at random times, and characters that should be important show up for only a few moments and are immediately gone without a word. I found it very difficult to become motivated to continue on with the story filled with characters that are unappealing or barely there. Characters and story are very important to how a game moves forward. If the player has little motivation to continue through the story, other than the reason that it is necessary to progress in the game, then it isn't enjoyable.
Which brings us to Metro: Last Light....
Metro: Last Light is a game that is completely different from Assassin's Creed IV in story, tone, gameplay, and structure. However, Metro: Last Light is a linear game, everything that is meant to happen to the player happens. The game is laid out before the player in a manner so that everything can be experienced at the right time. This creates pacing, which is important to inflect the tones and the characters that the game has to offer.
I really enjoyed Metro: Last Light because of how well the pacing was done. Nothing felt rushed, and there was a lot of thought and care put into how the game progressed. While I didn't exactly have the freedom to roam around and do as I pleased, I moved forward through the game with purpose and I was motivated to move forward. However, all around me was a world that was filled with personality and color. What Metro: Last Light has that makes it a thoroughly enjoyable experience is verisimilitude in a completely fictional universe. The story of Metro: Last Light has humanity relegated underground to the subway systems, where they are forced to build their societies.
Assassin's Creed IV had some realistic portrayals of sailing and the like, but the towns all felt too video game-y. Towns had shops where players could purchase upgrades, there were random NPCs standing around, inexplicably flashing, waiting to give the player a mission. Assassin's Creed IV feels like a video game, whereas Metro: Last Light tells a story.
My issue with most sandbox games is this: everything feels mediocre. I suppose that it would be too much if each mission, area, and character were to be portrayed with the utmost of quality, but why not? What if every single mission in a sandbox game had something that was memorable to it, other than a piece of loot that you got, or the fact that it was a main story mission rather than a side mission. I know that there would be an insane amount of work from the studio that was developing it, and it would take a lot of time and money. However, with the kind of money that a development studio such as Ubisoft makes, why not take a year off of releasing a new Assassin's Creed game and spend time developing one?
While both games are completely different, I think that there can be a take away from comparing them. Letting players take control in how they go about playing the game is fine, but don't keep things locked away until they fulfill some fruitless task. Give players full access to your game. Who cares if they don't get around to completing the main questline until the very end? If you're going to make a linear game where the player is taken along a tight track, make sure that you create a world that players want to spend time in and one that they can understand from just going through it. Give your game good game mechanics that teach the player without having to put text up on the screen that describes exactly what to do. Have your linear game have a good story with characters that stand out, and can be remembered.
P.S.
I'm sorry for the delay in posting. For the past few weeks my job has had me working a crazy amount of hours and my body decided that it also needed a crazy amount of sleep to compensate. It was very difficult to take the time to write with only one night off a week, and little to no free time during the day. Thank you for being patient, and I plan to get back to a more regular writing schedule again.
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