Hello and welcome, this is the fourth in a series of opinion pieces that I'm doing on the action genre of video games. If you haven't read any of these before, I recommend starting with the first one on the basics and continuing from there. Here, I will be picking up where the last one left off and discussing how the genre overall could be improved.
In my time researching game's development, game design, pacing, structure, and flow, one thing that gets tossed around a lot, especially among critics and "game journalists" is repetition versus variety. A lot of reviewers of video games will criticize a game for having "high repetition" and will praise games with "a lot of things to do." And while this isn't necessarily a bad thing for games with a large focus on narrative and a single playthrough, it has huge knock-on effects for games that are intended to be replayed over and over and over again.
VashTheShellBullet stated this pretty well in his selling point on The Legend of Korra, so I'm just going to paraphrase it right here:
Breaking up the pace a bit with some variety is fine, if the combat is bad or not that great.
Variety in games can be detrimental to replay value in a number of ways, if you're not careful. It can prevent you from replaying your game altogether because you don't want to go through the hassle of suffering through certain sections just to get to the good stuff, which is one reason a number of people hate DMC4: great combat, just not enough of it.
Certain types of variety in a game can also be tiresome to go through if you want to, for example, reattempt a boss to get a better score and having to suffer through something like a set-piece mission first, which can get in the way of practicing and getting better.
It diverts resources of the game's development away from what really matters, making the game as a whole worse because you decided to take those extra dollars you were going to put into the combat or level design, and instead spend it on a bunch of hacking sections that take the form of just holding a button to complete it.
And finally, because variety is more often than not padding or filler, the variety itself will usually go under-developed as well because it's only there to break up the pace and therefore "doesn't need much focus."
But, as I said in the previous post, if a mechanic or piece of your game is not going to get the attention it needs to be fully fleshed out, it should be axed before you spend any resources on it in the first place.
The counter argument to this is going to be that "Well, variety is important so the player doesn't get sick of the game" or to put it in terms that make it seem like less of a strawman "No matter how good your combat system is, it will get tiresome if it's just a straight gauntlet of enemies."
And to that I say, if the player is exhausted with the game's mechanics, what's stopping them from putting it down and coming back later? That's something that a lot of games discussion does not really address in detail: player agency and what the person at the controller wants to do and when.
A lot of developers, particularly developers of so called "Cinematic experiences" and narrative-focused games, are looking only at the short term, that one playthrough that the player gets when you receive their money. But, I'm going to offer a proposition, and it's going to sound crazy, but bear with me:
What if, you just make a game that consists of the mechanics that you want at the level of polish that players are paying for? Spend less of your resources on cutscenes, cinematics, padding, set-pieces, and all that stuff, and just focus on the core gameplay and the gameplay additions that the player is going to be dealing with most often? That way, you get a game that has much better gameplay that has less money wasted, and will probably be received better by your core audience.
I don't even think this proposition is so extreme, considering that Tetris, a game created over twenty years ago, is still being replayed by people to this very day and is a game that is nothing but gameplay. On top of that, when I look at games like Devil May Cry, Ninja Gaiden, Jak and Daxter, Dragon Ball Z: Budokai 3, these games that I can go to decades after I first played them and still derive joy out of them today, am I replaying them for their cinematics, story-telling, or visuals?
Ninja Gaiden Sigma looks great, especially considering the HD stuff added to it since NG Black, but its visuals have aged quite a bit. Same can be said for DMC and Jak and Daxter. Budokai 3 has aged pretty well, but that's more so down to the cell-shaded art-style than the effort put into the graphics themselves.
Budokai 3 also had cutscenes in the form of non-animated still images on screen that may or may not come with voice overs. So, clearly the presentation of the story isn't doing anything for me. DMC, Ninja Gaiden, and Jak and Daxter all feature well-animated cutscenes but, generally, if I want to play the game, I'll just skip them.
DMC3 has the best structured narrative but it's only worth as much as it gives context to why you're fighting the demons you're going up against. Same can be said of Ninja Gaiden. Jak and Daxter, at least the first one, is pretty light on story in general, and DBZ: Budokai 3 is DBZ, take that however you like.
No, I replay these games over and over again because their gameplay is so great, with minimal distractions to get in the way of the gameplay that I'm here for.
Of course, everyone's going to have their own favorites, and it's entirely possible that the games I replay to this day are games that you may have never even touched before. But, I'm willing to bet that the games you replay you do so because you enjoy the gameplay. And if your favorites are the ones that have stories that clique with you, can you honestly say that you can go back and replay those after having found out how those stories only function in a first time viewing?
Games like Heavy Rain, BioShock: Infinite, The Last of Us, and pretty much anything else by David Cage or Telltale are games that get worse the more you replay them because the more you replay them, the more you find out how certain things that looked good on a first viewing, make no sense in the context of the larger picture, or how your choices may not have as much impact as you were led to believe.
People who endlessly replay your game throughout the ages are going to do so because of the gameplay, not the story, or cinematics, or not even really so much the characters either. Metal Gear Solid has been criticized for not having enough gameplay but that gameplay is fantastic and, save for MGS4 and 5, the story has enough attention paid to it that you can either enjoy it for what it is, or skip it in some cases to get to the real gameplay.
Hell, even Metal Gear Solid 2, which featured Raiden, the, at the time, weakest protagonist in Metal Gear's history, still has the same solid gameplay and attention to detail that makes it worth going back to, even if only to find the extra touches that you didn't see before.
Some things that hamper replay value when it comes to "variety" are walking sections, quick time events, swimming sections, set-piece sections, and escort missions. Swimming sections, in particular, are a big example of the go to "I want to vary my gameplay but don't know how" solution, which not only makes it padding, but it also makes it a copout.
That said, some of these things can be good if you put all your attention on them. Quick Time Events, obviously you're gonna love them or hate them, regardless of where they appear. But games that are entirely focused around swimming are generally better than games that have swimming but don't focus on it. Ico, just as well, is a game that is an Escort Mission done well.
Hell, we can even take it a step further. If you want to make your entire game nothing but set-pieces, then go ahead and just do that. Do so at your own risk, obviously, but that is an option if you would much rather have set-pieces than core gameplay mechanics.
Walking Simulators can also be good, as long as you balance them properly to focus on their strengths.
But I'm not here to talk about any of those types of games, I'm here to talk about Action games, so to get back on topic, if you have a gameplay mechanic you want to add to your game that's not going to get the time it needs to be fully fleshed out and good, it's better left out entirely.
Games that are strictly good gameplay, the core of what makes the game good, accessible at any time, are endlessly replayable, which is something that the industry, particularly the AAA industry is lacking in. True, the first time playthrough is important for getting the awards from irrelevant gaming sites but those people are not the ones giving you their money: the players are. If the player can replay your game endlessly, they may want to buy a sequel or something else from you later down the line. This is why good gameplay is important over everything else.
So, what I propose instead is this: instead of focusing your time on variety in the form of the things I already mentioned, use that time to add a new gameplay element that interacts well with the others, and can be used to extend the depth and replay value of a given title. Or, if you don't want to do that, then save that money for a future title's budget so you have more money to work with overall.
Wow, two posts in one day. Sorry about that. I just found writing this particular post to be really easy, to the point that I just couldn't stop. So I'll end it here.
Next time I'll be discussing enemy design and how to make good enemies, so I hope you'll join me then, thanks for reading.
Addendum: The following has been added after-the fact so that I can expand upon the point I intended to make.
One argument that has come to my attention in favor of variety over repetition is "While variety can cheapen the core mechanics, the core mechanics can also prevent replay value if they're too repetitive."
And for this, I'd like to make a comparison, Devil May Cry 1 and The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword.
Some have complained that Skyward Sword has a lot of repetition, in particular that you fight the most boring boss in the game four times. And, indeed, of the bosses in Skyward Sword, you fight Girahim and The Imprisoned around three or four times each.
Devil May Cry also has its fair share of repetition, namely that of the bosses in the game, each one is fought more than once. Phantom, Griffon, Nightmare, and Nelo Angelo are each fought three to four times a piece, and Mundus is fought twice in a row.
However, the same person who said Skyward Sword's repetition got in the way of enjoyment also said that they didn't care how Devil May Cry reused all of its bosses multiple times. But, why is that?
Well, one argument is the depth each game's combat system has. Devil May Cry has a large amount of depth, especially for the time it released, while Skyward Sword is superficial in almost every way, namely that everything functions but there's no depth, all of it is just gimmicks.
This lends some credence to the idea that repetition is not necessarily bad as long as the gameplay can stand on its own.
That's all. Thanks for reading.
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