If you want to produce the sensation of being trapped you have to use the feeling of power and loss. It stems from the sense of ‘If I could just…’ If I could just get out there, I could defeat that henchman for him. If I could just get out there, I could solve that riddle for him. If I could just escape this box, all would be fixed.
Now, the trick is, because this is a video game, players have a reduced sense of agency. The player’s sense of capacity is ‘what happens when you hit the button.’ Mario, before more modern adaptations, had a capacity to move left and right, jump, run, and ‘use ability.’ The player never had the ability to do anything else, so it never feels like a limitation. No one ever said, ‘playing Mario makes me feel trapped because I could beat Bowser if I could just access the cannon that’s right over there.’
So, to produce the feeling of confinement, one must create the sense of power, and then take it away. Give the player enough power that they could even defeat the dragon, but then take it from them so they feel limited. If you can find a way to make it feel like it’s not even forced, as in they feel like they could have won the game in Act 1, Scene 1, but their lack of skills as a player were what made them lose, all the better.
Would that be your classic ‘meant to lose’ fight, usually against the big bad, which is technically winnable but the vast majority of players will lose and progress the story as planned? The example that comes to mind is Ghost of Tsushima, but it crops up in plenty of games.
It can be that. Never played Ghosts so I don’t know about that one in particular. Some games do other things with it, but that sort of thing is absolutely usable to create that ‘trapped’ feeling.
Abiotic Factor, survival in a facility like Half-Life with crafting, survival and exploration. Really great game and it’s pretty hard understanding where to go
I get past the first dungeon no problems, and find the heart container, but as soon as I meet that old guy with his kite in the tree I’m lost. I think I need to craft a slingshot or something but I’ve no idea where to get the rubber for an elastic band.
I was playing Star Wars: Bounty Hunter on Switch today because of the current free trial. At first, running around as Jango Fett in the Gamecube era was fun, but then shortly after getting my jet pack, I get completely turned around while chasing the bounty guy and spent over a half hour being lost. Called it quits after that.
Shiet, I’m still having this problem with more recent Naughty Dog games. Getting the hint option that pops up when you’ve been stuck somewhere for a while in The Last of Us Part 2 Remastered embarrasses me. Though I am thankful that it’s there.
I’ve probably played a bunch, but the one that most comes to mind is Antechamber. Super weird FPS puzzle game ala portal but with a lot of mindbending illusions, non-Euclidean geometry, etc.
It’s got a metroidvania structure but without much guidance and a lot of stuff will just loop you back to where you’ve been if you’re not getting things right. At some point I was just completely lost. I couldn’t possibly think of where I haven’t tried to go or do. Worst part if I tried to look up a guide I don’t even know where I’d begin to look.
True to some extent, but I think there are limits to how enjoyable it can be to not even be able to find the puzzles in the first place. It also makes coming back to it super confusing.
It tests your ability to remember and navigate routes, in an environment that's explicitly non-Euclidean. And you have to think out of the box sometimes to solve things.
...damn I need to play again. I think it's been long enough now.
Uhg, I’m pretty sure I got 90% of the way through that game and then I took a break for some reason or another. Came back and was just completely lost. And just like you, cant even look up a guide because I don’t know where I’d begin to look.
I am not really seeing it. I did finish it without a guide back then. It was the Windows 9x port, but I don’t think it changes much.
Really in my case a guide would not help for the hardest parts, which were mostly the crazy moves needed to push those floating things to break rocks and to swim against currents with boulders.
So I’m coming at this as a MASSIVE Destiny nerd. I was in the original’s Alpha, I own the first six lore books, and over the series have a bit shy of 4,000 hours (granted I imagine a few hundred hours of that is just chilling in orbit waiting on/chatting to my fireteam. It has been a very important game to me as I still game with my clan mates from D1 to this day.
Bungie gunplay has always been my favourite in the industry, the encounters are satisfying when you have a competent fireteam, and the gameplay loop kept me going for a long while. For me personally though; my friends and the overarching story were key.
After a decade, things are going to get stale. So I would take breaks here and there and come back when I actually wanted to play. Then the studio became an absolute nightmare to be invested in. The Skeletor Destiny videos are an extremely hilarious but accurate depiction of my feelings towards it all.
I was one of the handful of players that actually enjoyed playing CoD’s extraction variant, and was willing to give Bungie a chance to the extent that I participated in the ARG when Marathon was first announced. Everything since then has been negative in my personal view; from the internal drama of job cuts and accusations of poor workplace conditions to the actual game mechanics and story.
Marathon has great lore and it jogged so Halo could run. Now they’re saying there really won’t be a story right away. I actually like the character and map designs, and the gunplay is basically just Destiny 2’s with some small modifications, that’s just how the Tiger engine looks. With all that I’m just not excited.
TL;DR: I’m not going to pay 40$ so I can be a beta tester for a game that isn’t really promising me anything. I’ve done that for the last decade and largely it’s worked. Bungie has lost the prestige it really needs to make this the ‘next big thing’ IMHO
Yeah the lore of marathon is really something else - more at the end.
So yeah the reputation plays a big role here it seems, huh…
I feel the same, just already through all stages of grief, since they I was very into Halo and even loved Reach. But then D1 didnt catch me at all, since I valued mainly the gameplay and story but also just the whole package way more.
The gunplay felt like in another league in older bungie games and is still top contender across all games. That alone though is not nearly enough to me
Off-topic:You mentioned lore books and hours in destiny. Have you seen the lore series on the marathon trilogy or know the trilogys’ lore and universe? Apperantly there is a rabbithole theory that all bungie games are one big shared universe with a coherent underlying lore or something. This blew my mind and made me interested in playing marathon’s trilogy one day for the lore. Also how intricate and layered the whole story was. Great series heres a youtube link to it
bin.pol.social
Aktywne