31st May 2005, 9:19 PM
Well once in a warehouse there were like a LOT of crates, but for what reason can they come up with for you to be in a warehouse?
As far as "do I HAVE to blow the thing up?" that is a great question!
I think one game has really brought that point forward more than most, at least for me.
Xenosaga (I still don't have episode 2) has a "feature" introduced at the start. There is an item called a... well it doesn't really matter what it's called. It's an arm mounted sonic cannon that blows stuff up. Basically, the idea is environmental interaction. Remember, this is an RPG with towns and NPCs. However, an ENTIRE button and a major interaction feature amounts to blowing up random garbage. From cars to boxes to, yes, crates, you just blow stuff up when the cursor highlights them saying "you can blow THIS up too!". It's really pretty... stupid. Give me item interaction, but yeesh, an ENTIRE game feature dedicated to my character just blowing stuff up? Perhaps you should play it to really see just how out of place it seems. It's not an action game for the most part, but when you are walking around a populated space station just talking to people and you BLOW UP a CAR right NEXT to a guy and he doesn't even flinch, and you BLEW IT UP just to get the item inside, well, there's a problem. Couldn't she just OPEN THE DOOR or something? I'm all for random looting in my RPGs, but yeesh at least give me SOME credit. I'd rather my interaction with stuff be a little... item specific at the very least. If there is a door in my path, I COULD just open it instead of EXPLODING it. If it can't be opened, maybe a bash command? I don't see why I need to cause everything to literally explode Monolith! Boxes? I could just OPEN those, as ABF pointed out. All in all, it's a very stupid feature that more or less kills a chunk of immersion.
Oh, that brings up the point about power scales being a little, contrived.
In Zelda, for example, about midway through the game Link is strong enough to hurl around 50 ton bolders and literally smash them against a nearby wall. He's strong enough to cut a giant beast to ribbons, and powerful enough to run INTO a wall and break it down. Why then does he have to find a key to open a wooden door just because it's locked? I could go on and talk about how his sword of the ancients that is sharpened to a quark's edge is deflected by TREES but I won't because I understand the myriad of glitches that would have to be dealt with if total environmental destruction was designed into it (and from experience I can tell you that IS very doable on current hardware, VERY, it's just that it is VERY easy to get a character stuck beyond all reason and glitch up pretty much everything, and also there's the RAM that has to keep track of all that). Instead I'll just focus on stuff like that. If I'm wearing mitts that give me the strength of a titan and just RIPPED the STONE entrance to the thief's den off a statue, don't tell me I can't just break down that wooden door on my own. I'll take deus ex-planations aplenty mind you, like "the door is magical" or "the door is actually a force field", but not that stuff.
As far as "do I HAVE to blow the thing up?" that is a great question!
I think one game has really brought that point forward more than most, at least for me.
Xenosaga (I still don't have episode 2) has a "feature" introduced at the start. There is an item called a... well it doesn't really matter what it's called. It's an arm mounted sonic cannon that blows stuff up. Basically, the idea is environmental interaction. Remember, this is an RPG with towns and NPCs. However, an ENTIRE button and a major interaction feature amounts to blowing up random garbage. From cars to boxes to, yes, crates, you just blow stuff up when the cursor highlights them saying "you can blow THIS up too!". It's really pretty... stupid. Give me item interaction, but yeesh, an ENTIRE game feature dedicated to my character just blowing stuff up? Perhaps you should play it to really see just how out of place it seems. It's not an action game for the most part, but when you are walking around a populated space station just talking to people and you BLOW UP a CAR right NEXT to a guy and he doesn't even flinch, and you BLEW IT UP just to get the item inside, well, there's a problem. Couldn't she just OPEN THE DOOR or something? I'm all for random looting in my RPGs, but yeesh at least give me SOME credit. I'd rather my interaction with stuff be a little... item specific at the very least. If there is a door in my path, I COULD just open it instead of EXPLODING it. If it can't be opened, maybe a bash command? I don't see why I need to cause everything to literally explode Monolith! Boxes? I could just OPEN those, as ABF pointed out. All in all, it's a very stupid feature that more or less kills a chunk of immersion.
Oh, that brings up the point about power scales being a little, contrived.
In Zelda, for example, about midway through the game Link is strong enough to hurl around 50 ton bolders and literally smash them against a nearby wall. He's strong enough to cut a giant beast to ribbons, and powerful enough to run INTO a wall and break it down. Why then does he have to find a key to open a wooden door just because it's locked? I could go on and talk about how his sword of the ancients that is sharpened to a quark's edge is deflected by TREES but I won't because I understand the myriad of glitches that would have to be dealt with if total environmental destruction was designed into it (and from experience I can tell you that IS very doable on current hardware, VERY, it's just that it is VERY easy to get a character stuck beyond all reason and glitch up pretty much everything, and also there's the RAM that has to keep track of all that). Instead I'll just focus on stuff like that. If I'm wearing mitts that give me the strength of a titan and just RIPPED the STONE entrance to the thief's den off a statue, don't tell me I can't just break down that wooden door on my own. I'll take deus ex-planations aplenty mind you, like "the door is magical" or "the door is actually a force field", but not that stuff.
"On two occasions, I have been asked [by members of Parliament], 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?' I am not able to rightly apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question." ~ Charles Babbage (1791-1871)