It occurs to me lately, speaking of Sega and other acts of failure, how wondrous games are when they are happy accidents. If you look towards the best works of a particular studio, it is the result of happy accidents. Final Fantasy was named as such because of how doomed Square felt at the time. Mario’s body the result of the limitations of the Donkey Kong consoles. Masterchief was created to demo an overhead game. Somewhere, somebody thought the notion of a dance pad in front of notes moving up a screen would be a very keen idea.
Games thrive on creativity, and they also thrive on accidents. This article is about something that may, at one point, been an accident, but now I’m fairly convinced is a company policy.
Being sick will do odd things. The first thing is that I spent half the day sleeping, the other half reading books and playing video games. It would be relaxing if it wasn’t for the nausea, sidesplitting pain, and the inadequate bodily temperature control.
Today I played several games I am very fond of, and enjoy greatly. They are
-Super Smash Bros Melee
-Mario Galaxy
-Halo
And I was beating Super Mario Galaxy again, when the ending struck. The ending of the game feature’s an infant’s cry. What a unique choice for a video game, I thought. It strikes an optimistic tone, a vulnerable one, not something you see very often.
And then I thought some more, and I realized that Nintendo consistently has an open skies policy. If this is a happy accident, it speaks to their ideas.
Open skies refers to the ability to have large expanses of … well, sky. You can pepper the background a bit, but you get a near three-dimensional feeling. It makes things feel brighter, and it lends scope. The larger the scope, the greater the immersion. It’s this emphasis on scale that makes early Final Fantasy games with their overhead map so much more daunting than the most impressive CG render.
But if you look at Nintendo games, they almost always feature open areas. Sometimes there’s stuff, many times there is not.
This is not exclusive to Nintendo games, of course, but I believe they spend a greater deal thinking about how to expand the world with what amounts to very little.
When I play non-Nintendo games like Banjo-Kazooie or Sonic, or racing games like Gran Turismo, there is often sky and plenty of it. But there’s a sense that everything is cluttered and overly busy. Buildings on the left, cut off from the world and forced into a decidedly smaller area, there is a much more “on the rails” approach. Nintendo avoids this.
I think I first realized Nintendo cared about how to make a world seem larger when Ocarina of Time came out. How many games reward you with different noises, hues, and emotions as the sun sets over a lake? In a game where it has nothing to do with the main goal, the presence of such a beautiful mechanic only makes it seem more real.
When you look at Mario Kart, the worlds are open and free. Other racers, including other titles, their view doesn’t take into account scope. Everything is cluttered.
I realized this must be a policy because it’s so damn consistent. In games where scope is tightened considerably, such as in Metroid Prime 2, the world doesn’t feel as immersive, and it’s much more unpleasant. That half the game features unattractive color palates in both the Light and Dark world doesn’t help, but the point remains. There isn’t the sense of grandeur that was evident in the original Prime. With sky cities, and tunnels with useless amounts of room, Prime 3 pulled back. The sky appeared.
And then I get to Halo, which is a game series I like. Once again, there is a sense of scale in the large, open air world. When the game pulls in to a series of corridors, it feels more intense after having so much room before. I can honestly say I have no interest in Doom as a series. Too many damn corridors.
MMORPG’s can show this too. The wide open world of World of Warcraft is commendable in how well it handles the near and the far. The detail, the scale, it’s a world of decided beauty that feels rather realistic.
Obviously core gameplay, shrewd marketing, and overall quality help, but I can’t help but notice how many hit games feature scale so handily, and how many games that come close in quality (but never quite hit it) feel so stunted and restricted. Skies bring scale, and in an age of tremendous 3D capabilities, it’s amazing how few designers have succeeded at it, and how consistent certain companies are at showing it.
No comments:
Post a Comment