"Linearity": Why all the fuss?

[mirgro]

I don't think it's the linearity that's a problem in games. It's about how a game is "narrated."

Movies and books are "linear" and there has been no game ever made that has come even to the halfway up to the best movies made when it comes to character development, thought provocation, or really just about anything you think of that applies to a movie or a book.

If you look at Half-Life, especially the second one, the game is extremely linear. However the way it is narrated, by taking what makes a video game a video game, changes everything. It feels open, it feels different every time you play it. On the other spectrum of linearity is MGS4 which is basically just a movie. Many people, anyone who would call themselves more serious about art, thought the game was bad as a game because of its narration. Many of those same people will praise Half-Life 2 narration as amazing and brilliant. I tend to agree with those people, since video games have to stick with what the medium is strong at, and that's the ability to give a person the ability to act. Provoking thought in games must be different than other media because movies and books have those in trumping aces and makes any video game that attempts it just laughable (again, I will bring up MGS4) to outside people.

As an example, any time Freeman was powerless and unable to move in HL2 felt more disconcerting than any tribulation good ol' Snake went through. Watching any Snake struggle felt like watching a movie, or reading a descriptive book, that is I was rooting for the guy, but was not all too concerned about him. With Freeman, I got the feeling of helplessness any time his movement was restricted.

I have started to digress so I will keep this short. It's not linearity that people have started to complain, I believe the recent gamers have begun to realize that there is more to this medium than just copying movies. It's not the linearity, it's the narration of the game. You can have the most linear game ever, but still be praised as long as it has a narrative where the player has something invested, and is not just a movie shoehorned into video game medium.



tl;dr version: It's not linearity, but the way a game is presented with which people are having problems.