| Scoobes said: Do you actually enjoy the single player campaign in the CoD games because a lot of the narrative ideas they used have their basis in Half-Life and Half-Life 2. Take CoD4 as an example, everything is hugely scripted and I could bounce around as much as I wanted when Captain Price is talking to me and giving me orders. I'm not sure why you think the linearity is such a big problem. As Reasonable has already posted, every game has restraints and in Half-Life 2 its telling you a story that you get to interact with. You only have a set amount of freedom in any game. And in many games, having choices actually detracts from intensity of certain events. When scripted, the developers can control the experience and devote more time to intense and emotional events. I'm going to use CoD4 as an example as the best scene from the Half-Life series are in ep2 and I've already mentioned that previously. But take the scene in CoD4 after the nuke has gone off. Its completely scripted, but it still offers you control of your character, almost giving an illusion of control. Half-Life does this and does it well. |
I do see what you are getting at and I do appreciate the angle that Valve took. However, with CoD 4, you feel like you are a soldier, part of a war, whereas in HL2 you are just an old-school Rambo. As I said, when I play the game I feel like I'm just a charactless entity running-and-gunning my way around a different world, rather than being part of a bigger picture. Take for example Quake 4, where you felt part of an actual invasion fleet, taking on an alien race, rather than a super-charged Rambo.
I just feel that if Valve really wanted the game to be truly immersive, giving the character some interaction, which seems a much better word than freedom, with the world, would make the game more immersive instead of having 100% one-way conversations.
