As many
of you know, I am a very big fan of choices in games. I love it when
a game allows me a degree of agency over the story and the way things
unfold. To me, this is a major part of what helps gaming separate
itself from other mediums, like books or movies. However, this does
not mean that I am against the notion of linearity in video games.
There is nothing wrong with games having players follow a path that
is decided by the designers well before they gets their hands on it.
Many of the better games and stories in this medium are of
high-quality because of their linear nature. The key for developers
to have well-executed plots that railroad players into one path is to
carefully mask those rails as much as they possibly can. This can be
done in a number of ways and with many different approaches. Today's
article will be dedicated to outlining a couple of possible methods
with which railroad-y plots can work.
The
first of these methods is simply to create a large world and build
the perception that there are many places and locations for the
player to explore, while at the same blocking off areas until they
have completed a significant enough portion of the story. Final
Fantasy games, especially the earlier games in the franchise, are
some of the most well known practitioners of this strategy. In many
of this franchise's games, players start off in one town, but see
that all around them there is a fairly large and expansive world map
to explore when they depart that town. Most sections of the map are
blocked off simply because the player requires certain means of
transportation to get passed obstacles like mountains, rivers,
oceans, and so on. After making significant enough progress in the
story, the player is given some method with which to bypass the
obstacle like a teleporter or some kind of vehicle (most famously the
Airship). This tactic comes with its own strengths and weaknesses. On
the positive side, it gives off the illusion of a massive world which
the player can explore. Earlier Final Fantasy games always had the
feeling of world-sprawling adventures that took players to varied,
exotic locals. It also allows for strategic placement of locations
and towns to give off the impression that players are exploring an
actual place with people. Taken further, designers can also use this
world to place side quests in deliberate locations that make them
feel like natural extensions to the game and its lore. This can best
be shown by contrasting early Final Fantasy games with a later game
in the franchise that did not utilize such a mask, Final Fantasy
XIII. That particular game is notorious for presenting the
majority of itself as a long, linear corridor. Without the illusion
of a large world, the game feels like a straight line and there is
very little room for side content. On the other hand, there are
downsides as well to this particular illusion. For one, it is fairly
difficult to scale up. This worked well on small scale pixelated
games because we accepted a degree of abstraction. We did not need to
see other people using airships or traveling around, gathering
resources and trading, to assume that it was happening. When we
scaled up to high-fidelity 3D, this was no longer sufficient. For
games to employ this tactic in modern AAA gaming, it requires a great
deal of effort. The place has to look almost exactly like a living
breathing world in the vein of an Elder Scrolls or Assassin's Creed
game, especially an Assassin's Creed game, in order to maintain the
illusion. Because of this, the blocks that prevent players from
proceeding further into unexplored territory before advancing the
story can seem increasingly artificial. In particular, the Assassin's
Creed series is extremely bad at this. The barriers that determine
how far players can explore are literal force fields that appear when
they are going too far out of the designated free area. It justifies
them by saying that the ancestor of the day did not explore those
locations during the memory segment that the player is currently
reliving via the Animus. While crafting natural blocks that make
sense in the world can be difficult at times, Ubisoft did not even
try and many games in the series feel decidedly linear because of it.
That is not to say that this is a bad tactic to use, but we have to
consider the weaknesses of doing things this way.
Another
good way to disguise linearity in games is to plan the player's
actions and the level design so that the correct path to take feels
like the one they are most likely to take anyway. This is easier said
than done as it takes a fair amount of work, play testing, and
knowledge to get right. One of the biggest problems with games and
plots that railroad the player into doing certain things is that
often the player is forced to take actions that are obviously stupid
even without knowing what they will lead to later on. A good example
of this is the start of Mass Effect 2, where Shepard decides
to work with the organization Cerberus despite knowing already that
they are a terrorist organization that is responsible for completely
reprehensible crimes against humanity. Most players who are familiar
with the events in the first game would NEVER want to join up with
Cerberus, but are forced to anyway because the writers have already
made that decision. Assassin's Creed 2 is also responsible for
this by forcing Ezio to spare Rodrigo Borgia at the end of the game
despite the fact that he is and will be responsible for thousands of
deaths. These kinds of moments make it seem like the protagonist or
designer of the game is attempting to troll the player, both acting
illogically and placing the player in situations that could have
easily been avoided. Simply put, neither the player nor the player
character should ever be forced to take actions that are obviously
stupid in service to a plot. If that does happen, then the players
will often mark the game down for being overly-linear and
“railroad-y.” Hiding a game's linear nature is easiest to pull
off by reading and re-reading the script of the game with a critical
eye. Designers need to think about logical actions that the player or
protagonist might consider taking and either finding a way to explain
why it would not work or rearranging the plot element or set piece in
question around that. Play testing and bringing in fresh eyes can
also help as watching what others do and asking why they make those
choices can greatly help in planning scenarios in a way that they
seem less linear. It is hard to point to games that do this
particularly well because those are the kinds of games that are so
well done that it is hard to notice that designers are funneling
their audience towards one end. While I am an advocate of doing
things this way, again one has to acknowledge that it is not easy and
requires quite a bit of forethought and adaptability.
Lastly,
one of the more ambitious ways to create a linear game is to actually
enable players the ability to make choices as the plot goes on, but
weave those choices into the story in a way where the player feels
like they were making significant choices, when in actuality they
were just being funneled into the tale that the designers wanted to
tell. Out of all the possible tactics to employ, this is the most
risky. Done well, it can give players a strong feeling of authorship
over the narrative until playing through the game again. When poorly
executed, players can feel like the game is invalidating their choice
and forcing them into situations they would rather avoid. One example
of the former is Telltale's The Walking Dead. While there are
moments where it seems like the game is conveniently sweeping
decisions players have made in the past under the rug (particularly
in Episode 3), for the most part the game is pretty good about
guiding players towards their intended paths while acknowledging and
respecting the choices they made along the way. But of course, for
every good example of a game doing something right there is a
counter-example that demonstrates the worst way to implement the same
thing. In this case, Mass Effect 3 serves as that
counter-example. There were several moments in Mass Effect 3
where the script seemed to do what it wanted despite the choices
players have made. In order to avoid spoilers in this article, I will
instead point to my previous works that detail this phenomenon. This
is something hard to talk about because in order to do it justice, I
would have to prepared to go into massive spoiler territory and I am
trying to keep this spoiler free for once. Nonetheless, such a
skillful weaving is something that takes genuine effort. Players will
notice and appreciate it.
Again,
there is absolutely nothing wrong with games being linear. Done well,
a good linear story can make for quite an enjoyable game. It is worth
noting that none of these strategies have to be done in isolation. In
fact, it is ideal if a few of them overlap. This is also by no means
a comprehensive article on the subject. I am sure that other tactics
exist to help facilitate linear storytelling in video games. Lastly,
my final disclaimer is that sometimes not hiding the rails can be a
legitimate tactic if the game's story calls for it, as seen in games
like Spec Ops: The Line or the first two-thirds of Bioshock.
By no means is game design an exact science with hard and fast rules.
The medium is still very much in its youth. Designers should feel
free to experiment with and test other ways to improve how we tell
stories.
