New podcast format time! 10 of our listeners’ biggest gripes with games get litigated in a Room 101-style format (except legally distinct), from tailing missions in open world games to mandatory stealth sections in non-stealth games.
Joining us once again is designer Jamie Smith!
The very last entry was provided by SAFC_Jack91, which Samuel forgot to write down in the original episode plan.
Ian
Game Design Crime
Dialogue options which don’t match what your character then actually says or does.
Example games
- Bioware have a lot of form for this, with Veilguard recently and Dragon Age / Mass Effect games generally
- Witchers 2 and 3
- Fallout 4
- Football Manager used to have this, weirdly, with player interactions and team talks, etc.
- The Walking Dead
- (Probably most games with dialogue choices which change anything will have some of these.)
My case
I understand that you can’t always write out the full line of dialogue or set of actions your character is going to say or do, or that many/most players might not want that slowing them down. Sometimes though the option you choose is so removed from what you were expecting it makes you regret the choice you made for the wrong reasons because you feel misled. One notable example from a game I adore is in Witcher 3, when you get an option to “shove” a character aside and end up beating them to the ground and breaking their leg. Even now in Baldur’s Gate 3 some very innocuous dialogue choices can lead to unexpected bonking with a character you didn’t even realise you were romancing, and Bioware games are riddled with times where you think you’re merely choosing a snarky option but instead end up saying something borderline psychopathic. I just want to be reasonably confident that even if I don’t know the outcome of a decision I’ll at least roughly know what my character is going to do.
Verdict
L.A. Noire and Cole Phelps are guilty.
sheeldz
Game Design Crime
A boss or enemies health bar, that once depleted, refills after a fake out boss completion, leading to a secret harder phase.
Example games
- Zelda bosses have this a few times, with one being “off the screen” big
- Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 where one of the harder bosses out of know where has a second phase, that is harder, with no check point between and no replenishing of health/items
My case
This is a cheap trick to make you feel accomplishment, but penalises graft. If a boss is tough and a grind, and it is a check point of sorts - a skill or power check - they are inherently hard, and pushing yourself to defeat it after, say, a few defeats during the boss fight, makes for the sweet relief of the successful completion so strong. Having that textually undone by a cut scene and gameplay reversal is one thing, but to have no check point at this point between the two phases, and to even carry over dead party members or health item use between the phases, just unfairly makes the second phase deeply jhard and punishing, and only serves as a way to extend the encounter arbitrarily. I cannot think of a moment where a boss coming back to life, with more health and being harder, could ever be seen as a good thing.
Verdict
Not Guilty
coyg
Game Design Crime
Forced stealth sections in non-stealth games
Example games
- Marvel’s Spider-Man (the MJ bits)
- Resident Evil 4 (the Ashley bits)
- Yiga hideout (Breath of the Wild)
My case
Variety in mission design is of course welcome but these sections usually feel out of place and are almost always frustrating to play.
These sections often expose mechanics that were never designed for stealth gameplay, making controls feel clunky. They also often rely on instant fail states if spotted by enemies - having to replay already annoying or boring sections is doubly irritating. The best stealth games emphasise player choice, but forced stealth sections remove that. Disempowering the player can of course be an effective tool to create challenge and tension but forced stealth sections rarely deliver on that.
An egregious example are the MJ sections in Marvel’s Spider-Man. For a game with such fun traversal mechanics to ground you like it did with those rubbish sections was criminal!
Verdict
Guilty
Emily
Game design crime
The hidden item behind the start of the level
Example
I first noticed this as a trope in PS2 era God of War, I’m sure it’s in the majority of major releases with a 3rd person camera, it’s still incredibly prevalent in modern games and likely older than my first example.
My case
It’s the Wilhelm scream of video games, when you first notice it there’s a sense of satisfaction, but seeing it for the hundredth time it’s devoid of any sense of wonder or accomplishment. We’re now conditioned to immediately backtrack the start of a new level in case they’ve done it again. Not a heinous crime, but if we could nuke this in exchange for more interesting ways to hide a collectable, that’d be great.
Verdict
Not Guilty
RyanPlugs
Game Design Crime
‘Hear dialogue again’ option being the default choice.
Example
Zelda games are particularly guilty of this. I’ll be skipping through some giant owl giving me a bunch of lore I don’t care about, only to press A on an option to hear it all again.
My Case
it doesn’t respect the time of the player and makes already boring and often lengthy dumps of dialogue frustrating. It’s made even worse as the more impatient you get, the more likely you are to trigger the dialogue again and land yourself right back at the beginning of a 30 text boxes. Finding yourself in the third loop of this horrid nightmare is something I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemies.
Verdict
Guilty
Growler17
Game Design Crime
The tailing mission
Examples
Basically any open world game of the last 25 years but specifically for this; Grand Theft Auto, Yakuza/Judgement and Shenmue
My case
You’ve all seen the films where someone is being followed, well how about we do it in games? Except in pretty much every game I’ve played they’re absolutely rubbish and you end up accidentally filling up some unseen suspicion meter because you took a wrong turn or weren’t looking at the screen at the specific moment the car in front slams on so you ram the car straight up their arse.
Exhibit A
Grand Theft Auto - You’re driving along following your tail, all of a sudden they stop at traffic lights. You’re given no indication how close you should or shouldn’t be before the mission so you go maybe a couple of cars back. The meter starts to rise so you hit reverse and go maybe 4 or 5 car lengths back. Only difference now is that there are no cars between you and the tail beside a massive gap of said 4-5 car lengths. IRL this would surely be more suspicious than innocently following as if it was normal traffic!?
Exhibit B
Yakuza/Judgement/Shenmue - This time you’re following the tail on foot. Walking through the streets of a lovely Japanese town, keeping your distance. Then without warning they turn around and shoot a look like its a western and they’re firing from 10 paces. The meter rises and you have to run around like an idiot before jumping behind a hotdog stand for 10 seconds until they turn back around and carry on with their day. You then do a loop back to about 200m from when you started the mission and you’ve been led on a wild goose chase for 15 minutes. Infuriating!
Verdict
Guilty
thehalloubikimi
Game Design Crime
NPCs that walk faster than your walk speed but slower than your sprint speed
Examples
A Plague Tale: Requiem, Assassins Creed (some of them), I am sure there are more
My Case
It is deeply infuriating doing a little run then a walk and then stop and wait and then walk and then run and then have a look at something dull on this path and then run and then walk and then stop, run, walk, argggghhhhhh
Verdict
Not Guilty
thehalloubikimi
Game Design Crime
Game designers thinking that not having difficulty/accessibility options makes your game somehow superior and better than just being adaptably fun
Examples
Dark Souls (the original sin) and its descendants, Nioh 1-3, Chinese Game Name Colon Subheading, Remnant
My Case
If difficulty and accessibility options wreck the balance of your game, git gud at designing. Those who wish to see the purity of your artistic offering can with the default difficulty. (This purity argument was vaguely compelling before you hit the mainstream a decade ago). Simply, nothing is removed with addition, it only serves to increase the richness of your offering. Let those with worse reflexes, patience, actual disabilities, or even someone suffering from all 3 - a person with kids - enjoy your creation on different, less infuriating terms. Star Wars: Jedi Survivor, Hades and Lies of P have proved this is possible.
Just make it easier for people to enjoy things!
(Shout out to Star Wars Outlaws for having the best difficulty/accessibility options of the recent games I’ve played.)
The two three major trends in gaming are player choice (for playstyle/build, character, etc), being so fucking hard without offering any choice at all, and having roguelike elements - for once not the problem to talk about. It’s an infuriating dichotomy.
Oh, I can choose how I play the game can I, Elden Ring? Why do I have to trawl through unofficial guides and spend hours grinding some nonsense, opposite of actual fun, build to experience your world and story rather than just choosing to make bosses hit less hard and having a bigger parry window, eh? …. eh?!
There is an argument that as genres become more mature they learn this lesson, the evolution of Mario being a prime example. Even so, you’re making games in 2020+ not 1985, the lessons of the past are very available to you. Stop being auteurs and take them on board.
Thank you for coming to my TED Talk.
Verdict
Not Guilty
Pete
Game design crime
Hub bases that are difficul to navigate
Examples
Citadel in Mass Effect, The Orchard in 1000x Resist, the Clubhouse in The Lost and the Damned.
My Case
These hubs are supposed to be your home or your home from home. They matter to you, and you matter to them. You are someone of status and import (usually) and these hubs are your playground as you plan and plot, learn and direct. it’s frankly embarrassing to be sprinting to and fro, hunting for that one staircase, to be rounding a corner and confidently slamming into a dead end. What do the rest of the minor players make of you, their commander, their leader, running up and down stairs and doing circuits of the building and trying to interact with lightswitches? These places should be a pleasure to navigate, with coloured lines and signs, or at least more visual distinction & clues.
Verdict
Guilty
SAFC_Jack91
Game design crime
Illogical adventure game puzzles
Examples
Goat puzzle - Broken Sword 1, Discworld 1 & 2 (basically all of it), Cat Hair Mustache - Gabriel Knight 3, Mystery Vortex - Sam & Max Hit the Road
My Case
It’s up for debate sometimes whether an adventure game puzzle is illogical or obtuse, but there are some games that are so egregious that it cannot be ignored.
It’s fine where the game uses “unusual” logic, provided it fits within the universe it lives and this is somehow explained to the player, so you have a chance of solving it.
Take the Broken Sword example, the infamous goat puzzle. Our protagonist, George Stobbart, is knocked over by a goat at a Templar dig site, and he needs to get past said goat to progress. Naturally, you would expect some sort of usual puzzle e.g. distract the goat. However, the option to introduce a gameplay variant not present anywhere else in the game, a timing puzzle that you would have no idea how to do, other than the cursor being present whilst George is on the floor. No other visual or audios cues are provided, leaving the player helpless.
It’s logic in this way that expects the player to have done their work experience at the developer to have understood the rationale. Puzzles in adventure games can definitely be hard, but you have to give the player some sort of idea otherwise it is a needle in a haystack.
Verdict
Not Guilty