| Killergran said: I believe you have missed the point entirely. The problem here is the difference between the character and the player. If the characters action on screen does not coincide with what the player wants to be doing immersion flies out the window. In Half-Life the player never loses control. All the actions and inactions of the character is the result of the player. There is never any distance between the character and the player. The world around the player is limited, yes. It will always be, no matter how 'open' it is, there are always boundaries. No matter how well NPC's react to you they will always be scripted. You can always find ways to behave that are not tolerated or recognised by the game. The question is how tight to make the restrictions given the experience you want to produce. In giving the player complete control over the character you set a different tone. It is no longer a character moving around in the world. It's YOU, moving around.There is never any break with this. You act like you want to, within the possibilities of the game. Never are you forced to watch your character doing something that you would not do. I find Portal is the perfect example of this type of storytelling. Because it has no NPC's, the character has no reason to speak and the road is supposed to be completely linear anyways. It even gives you the illusion of free will wihtin this setting. |
I'll keep this simple:
The only difference between say HL2 and Killzone 2 (ignoring the gameplay) is that in HL2 the main charater says nothing, and there are no 3rd person perspective cut scenes. That is it.
If we now compare Gordon to GTA3 guy, other than how the game is seen (1st person vs 3rd person) there is no difference in storytelling mechanics. So why is HL2 prasied so much?
You say the Half-Life player never loses control. That's because he is never given any. It's hardly a pro saying you have full control of a car when it's on bricks in the drive-way. In all honesty, you are never given any actual control in HL2. First thing I did when I saw an NPC I emptied a magazine into them, which they pleasently ignored and carried on chatting away, making them seem more like robots than humans.
The HL2 world is as limiting as every other generic FPS - go here, kill X, Y and Z. Congratualtions, move onwards. There is no room for invidiual choices what so ever. As I said, my experience of HL2 will be identical to yours, little jimmys etc.
Saying it's you moving around falls short when you can't do anything other than go along with what the NPCs/Valve want you to do. Just the same as every other generic FPS. Not to mention, very withdrawing from the game experience when you can only go where you want when the monologues have stopped. Granted I understand you never have to watch Gordon do something you wouldn't, but it's a moot point as you can't do what you may wish to do.
In portal granted it works well as there are no NPC's etc, but in a game where there are NPC's, either give the mian character, well, a character, or give the player at least some ounce of freedom, otherwise it's a waste of time aysing "Be yourself....but you have to play the game exactly as we want you to."
