I've been trying to play No More Heroes, which has very fun writing and a great sense of style. Unfortunately, I find it unplayable.
I suspected I would when I saw my friend playing it, and I definitely do.
It has the same flaws that many other modern games seem to be developing. It's that style of play that's very flat, with the only interesting bits being the writing. Occasionally the play changes, but it simply changes from one very flat style to another very flat style, often with some arbitrary and really irritating limitation.
I think this style of play became really popular with the Grand Theft Auto imitators. No More Heroes is just one example - many games have it to some level or another.
To describe it: in No More Heroes, you play a guy with a beam sword. Kind of a Tonka-toy light saber. The play consists largely of sabering people to death and an occasional throw.
There's nothing inherently wrong with this kind of limitation. The play in Sonic games consists largely of running and jumping.
The thing about this "flat play" system is that, instead of making the system itself interesting, they try to add in a thousand side rules to make the system interesting. Because sabering is inherently pretty boring, they add in finishing strikes, throws, high vs low sabering, "killing spree" power ups, BLOOD, time limits, box-smashing, and ten-million-HP bosses.
This is still quite shallow, so they add in completely unrelated games (even more shallow) to give you breaks in which you can forget the shallowness of the basic play. Things like coconut-collecting missions, driving around, buying clothes, playing with your cat, cell-phone conversations, and the ever-popular cut-scene.
The basic approach is that you have a core gameplay mechanic and, instead of making it interesting, you simply add on more and more features until nobody can say it's boring and still feel sane. "How could something with so many different things to do be boring? My general malaise while playing this game must have some other cause..."
AKA, the "Hey look! A distraction!" method of game design.
Let's look at a sliding scale of depth.
At the zero-depth side is No More Heroes. When you cut away all the silly add-ons, the core gameplay mechanic is one of simple timing and choosing one of three buttons to press. Block is the default, stay in that state if necessary, then when you see an opening either hit A, A (vertical), or B. Hit until you need to go back to default blocking.
Your position on the level is only of the most limited interest - you simply need to be close enough to attack. Against bosses it is a tiny bit more interesting, since you usually want to dodge and that means dodging AWAY from pillars or walls.
That's not exactly deep, though.
At the mid-depth side is Dynasty Warriors (let's say, 5). Again, the basic play of the game consists mostly of stabbing things with your sword (or fans, or magic deck of cards).
At its core, Dynasty Warriors is pretty similar. There are three attack buttons, but they can be somewhat mixed up to vary the path and sweep of the attack. The special button isn't a generic kick, but a charged supermove.
In addition, there is no lock-on and no passive block, and the tide of enemies frequently makes maneuvering important. This means that there are more tradeoffs and more complex need to navigate a level. You can also jump to help navigate, which is a huge improvement over No More Heroes.
However, the play is still fairly shallow. To make up for this, Dynasty Warriors 5 allows you to alter the level, situation, weapons, and items by controlling your nation. While these are technically add-ons, their results pipe back into the main play style: killing things with swords. New clothes, playing with the cat, and driving around don't really pipe back into No More Heroes' combat system in any kind of significant way.
As a side note, Assassin's Creed has about the same level of complexity in combat, but instead of a nation mode, it has a running-around-tall-buildings mode that more closely intertwines with moment-to-moment combat but doesn't intertwine with long-term combat at all. IE, you won't get a better sword by jumping to the top of that roof there, although you may be able to avoid or engage an enemy as you choose.
I can't think of any real-time melee combat games that have a really deep play mode, because melee is inherently a crowded, messy situation without much room to maneuver. However, we can compare this to a game that uses long-ranged combat.
Now, what if we compare these games to, say, Half Life Two, Episode Two.
Episode two focuses primarily on running around and killing stuff, pretty much the same as our earlier examples. Except that it has almost no side-games or mini-games. Yet it's pretty good.
It's not simply the writing - No More Heroes has great writing, Bioshock has great writing, they still have terrible gameplay.
Although there are only two buttons and no block in episode two, shooting someone isn't simply a matter of clicking as in No More Heroes. It's more exacting than the "face the right general direction" in Dynasty Warriors and Assassin's Creed. You have to have it pretty exactly.
Similarly, movement is many times more critical. Since it's no longer simply a matter of getting close enough to kill, you find yourself maneuvering to get behind good cover, to remain unshootable while you do your shooting.
Even without the addition of many different weapons, life, and ammo, you already have deeper gameplay than the earlier examples.
...
Of course, you can go deeper. A lot deeper.
Portal is a first-person-shooter, except that shooting something directly alters your level navigation. How you can walk is directly tied to what you shoot. This tightens the interplay between the two halves of the main system. It also tightens the level design requirements...
The point is, playing a game doesn't have to be flat.
The most proven method of deepening play is to give the player more control over how he approaches a situation. In a shooter, make it matter how good his cover is, how good their cover is, whether he shoots the lights out... make it matter whether he comes in from the left or the right, whether he outpaces his allies or waits for them.
A melee game will have a harder time of it, because how you approach melee combat is always pretty similar: you rush at it headlong in order to get in range. Many melee games include either a stealth or strategic element specifically to allow the player some amount of control over their "approach". However, the actual melee combat is typically very simple, consisting mostly of button-mashing.
There might be some solutions. One solution is to use the "million mook" approach, like Dynasty Warriors. Instead of melee combat being against an enemy, it's against a faceless horde of enemies, and optimizing your approach consists mostly of which direction you face and the area-of-effect hit pattern you choose to use. This seems like it might "max out" pretty quickly, only improving your play a bit.
Another solution is to really, really slow the melee combat down. If you closed to melee combat and then the game slowed down, it would allow you to actually perceive the nuances of the melee attacks. This would allow you to choose a reaction - is it best to dodge to the side, or to parry? If I parry, would my sword be out of position to parry the man to my right? If I dodge, will I be too off-balance to parry?
Please note, I'm not advocating a button-matching system. I'm advocating a deeper system where the combat is a terrain - swords here and there moving like this and that, you trying to navigate them, deflect them, protect your various squishy bits. Armor could slow you down, but it could also allow you to deflect strikes that hit metal rather than flesh.
Basically, all the things we've abstracted - armor values, attack values, critical hits - can be UNabstracted if you're willing to slow things down.
Anyhow, just thinking.
...
"That's all well and good, but how do you know if gameplay is shallow?"
Here are some hints:
If you want to put a time limit on a mission, your gameplay is probably shallow.
If at any point you think about doubling a boss' HP, your gameplay is probably shallow.
If you think adding lives will make it better, your gameplay is probably shallow.
If you want to add random games such as driving or playing with kittens, your gameplay is probably shallow.
What about you? Any "probably shallows" you can think of? Comments on the nature of of things?
Thursday, January 31, 2008
Monday, January 28, 2008
Nature of Rules, Response and Stuff
Ryan wrote a good, long reply to my last post that needs commenting. This probably won't make any sense unless you read the other post first.
Critters have DNA, but that doesn't mean that a critter is DNA, or even that it should be thought of in terms of its DNA. The rules are one part of the DNA of a game: what grows from them can be delightful and complex.
Freeform play is a bit like a virii: it has no particular protection, no particular ability to reproduce without killing something, but it crops up everywhere and is definitely notable.
Like I said: rules (and the rest) exist to protect the experience of the play from the vagaries of... well, life in general. They try to keep the experience similar from "generation to generation."
I hope this is clear...
Please remember that many games are played with private or obstinate goals on the part of the player. For example, whenever I play Bang! (a card game with hidden roles), I play with the assumption that a specific other player is on my side. It's certainly not something that is agreed on, but at the same time it's a potent method of shaping the game. It definitely changes the experience - mostly for me, but also for others, indirectly.
You could say that I am playing INSIDE the game rather than GAMING, if you see what I mean.
That distinction is not a terribly smart one to trivialize: you have to take it into account in the same way that you can't write off various other-sized organisms when you're performing surgery.
This comparison implies that playing inside a game (sideplay?) is bad, like an infection, but I don't think that's the case. I think it's vital to keeping a game fresh and interesting - I think many boring games are boring largely because they don't have any of this sideplay adding new elements and spice.
Some games are almost entirely sideplay, like the Sims or Secondlife.
Yes, rules (and content, and aesthetic, and social context, and and and) protect the experience. They protect it from new players, players with different visions of how the experience should go, from the weathering of time, and even from the effects of other rules, content, aesthetics, etc.
Anyone who is being honest should! The difference is simply one of scope or scale. That's kind of what made me go this route.
I mean, "A fireball spell costs 50 gold and causes 15 damage when cast". Sounds an awful lot like a rule to me! But it's also content, and suggests strongly an aesthetic.
So... it's obvious that it's not quite as nicely divided up as MDA suggests, in the same way that a cell isn't neatly divided up into "goo" and "DNA".
Yes! Right now, it's all done by trial and error. This is a lot like having a creature's DNA handed to you. "What will this creature be like?"
Well, you can try to simulate it in your head... "AGCFCF? That's... um... feathers?" More likely, you attempt to grow it and look at what it's characteristics are when it's alive. Of course, that takes time.
Once you see what the critter looks like, you can look back over the DNA and say, "OH! It meant spines!" and try to tweak it to be more to your liking. In theory, at least.
Fortunately, games are not critters. I think it might be possible to extrapolate rules (and so forth) from a dynamic. I haven't posted about it, yet, because I haven't figured it out yet. As you say:
That's the core problem, you see. The rules and content impose themselves without much regard to the player's preferences and mindset. If we pursue a dynamic, however, then we can pursue a... by the way, it's fuzzy because I don't have it nailed down myself... we can pursue a specific superset of interactions? We can tweak the rules and content because we know the dynamics the player should be experiencing.
Yeah, me too.
Challenge still stands: tell me about your DYNAMIC-centered Star Wars game design. No, I really don't have a clear definition of what that means.
Yet.
I think there's a difference between 'games' and 'play' and one of the main differences is that 'games' have rules... the key is that the rules provide the framework for the game.
Critters have DNA, but that doesn't mean that a critter is DNA, or even that it should be thought of in terms of its DNA. The rules are one part of the DNA of a game: what grows from them can be delightful and complex.
Freeform play is a bit like a virii: it has no particular protection, no particular ability to reproduce without killing something, but it crops up everywhere and is definitely notable.
Like I said: rules (and the rest) exist to protect the experience of the play from the vagaries of... well, life in general. They try to keep the experience similar from "generation to generation."
I hope this is clear...
generally [house rules] need to be agreed upon by all players.
Please remember that many games are played with private or obstinate goals on the part of the player. For example, whenever I play Bang! (a card game with hidden roles), I play with the assumption that a specific other player is on my side. It's certainly not something that is agreed on, but at the same time it's a potent method of shaping the game. It definitely changes the experience - mostly for me, but also for others, indirectly.
You could say that I am playing INSIDE the game rather than GAMING, if you see what I mean.
That distinction is not a terribly smart one to trivialize: you have to take it into account in the same way that you can't write off various other-sized organisms when you're performing surgery.
This comparison implies that playing inside a game (sideplay?) is bad, like an infection, but I don't think that's the case. I think it's vital to keeping a game fresh and interesting - I think many boring games are boring largely because they don't have any of this sideplay adding new elements and spice.
Some games are almost entirely sideplay, like the Sims or Secondlife.
You start needing rules, or a social contract between the players or you end up with the "Bang! Bang! Your Dead!.... No I'm not you missed!" syndrome.
Yes, rules (and content, and aesthetic, and social context, and and and) protect the experience. They protect it from new players, players with different visions of how the experience should go, from the weathering of time, and even from the effects of other rules, content, aesthetics, etc.
I find it hard sometimes to differentiate between rules and general parameters or environment.
Anyone who is being honest should! The difference is simply one of scope or scale. That's kind of what made me go this route.
I mean, "A fireball spell costs 50 gold and causes 15 damage when cast". Sounds an awful lot like a rule to me! But it's also content, and suggests strongly an aesthetic.
So... it's obvious that it's not quite as nicely divided up as MDA suggests, in the same way that a cell isn't neatly divided up into "goo" and "DNA".
I love 'sandbox' games and emergent gameplay. I love games that let me play with all the settings and do things that aren't explicitly spelled out. But in my experience this doesn't happen until the game is played for a period with 'vanilla' rules/settings. You need to understand the game to be able to effectively tweak the rules.
Yes! Right now, it's all done by trial and error. This is a lot like having a creature's DNA handed to you. "What will this creature be like?"
Well, you can try to simulate it in your head... "AGCFCF? That's... um... feathers?" More likely, you attempt to grow it and look at what it's characteristics are when it's alive. Of course, that takes time.
Once you see what the critter looks like, you can look back over the DNA and say, "OH! It meant spines!" and try to tweak it to be more to your liking. In theory, at least.
Fortunately, games are not critters. I think it might be possible to extrapolate rules (and so forth) from a dynamic. I haven't posted about it, yet, because I haven't figured it out yet. As you say:
You can never guarantee that 2 players will feel the same way about a game given taste and how they experience it. One person might find it simple and boring the next might be challenged and find it stressful... by what you describe - what do you want to experience - its sounds more emotional and based on feeling.
That's the core problem, you see. The rules and content impose themselves without much regard to the player's preferences and mindset. If we pursue a dynamic, however, then we can pursue a... by the way, it's fuzzy because I don't have it nailed down myself... we can pursue a specific superset of interactions? We can tweak the rules and content because we know the dynamics the player should be experiencing.
With Star Trek...
Yeah, me too.
Challenge still stands: tell me about your DYNAMIC-centered Star Wars game design. No, I really don't have a clear definition of what that means.
Yet.
The Nature of Rules
Ivory Tower Alert!
I've been thinking about rules.
I don't think games should be made up of rules.
Think about the games you played as a kid. Most of the games didn't have mandatory rules - you played with tons of house rules, whatever made the game fun. Free Parking in Monopoly being the most common example, but it's also common to change the rules to various games to give specific inept players an advantage.
This lets the game be fun for the inept players and keeps it from being terribly boring for the ept ones.
You'll see this kind of thing even in deathmatch computer games: if your friend is pretty bad, you're likely to go easy on him, or refuse to use the rocket launcher, etc.
There's an innate compulsion among gamers to make games always somewhat challenging: to tweak the rules so that it's never boring. Frequently, this involves giving advantages to the weak players, but just as often it simply involves setting unlikely goals for yourself. How fast can you beat the level, how far can you toss his corpse...
Obviously, there's something more than simple rules to a game. The experience of a game is almost independent from the rules, in that a lot of people will change the rules to try to keep the experience intact.
Take poker. At it's heart, poker has only a few simple rules that define a game of skill, chance, and psychology. However, to preserve that game, more rules are made, usually ones of fairness. No tabletalk, no missing or marked cards, no this, no that. These rules aren't really poker rules, they're rules protecting poker.
Similarly, in a complex RPG, there are a thousand little rules and limits - how you gain gold, what you can spend it on, how powerful that spell is, what the chances of an enemy encounter are. These rules (which border on "content" in many cases) are not there to define the game. They're around to keep the experience of the game sailing true. With a broken system, the way the game is played changes, usually for the worse.
The aesthetics of a game are the same: the game's aesthetics aren't the game proper, they're a way to frame the experience and keep it in the right zone.
This can be taken to extremes. For an extreme version of this, every rule and aesthetic exist to either protect or teach the experience of the game. The actual feel of the game isn't something that is contained in the rules or in the aesthetics, although it is a result of them (along with some other things like social context).
Now, we can easily describe aesthetics. We can say "oh, steampunky" or "make sure it's rated G" or "this is a castle in the clouds, waterfalls pouring off the sides."
We can describe rules as well, less easily but more clearly. "Roll 2d6 for damage", "move 3 spaces", "start to the right of the dealer and go counterclockwise..."
But we really don't have any language for talking about the dynamics of a game, the actual play experience. Every time we want to describe it, we say things like "oh, make it like Grand Theft Auto, but a MMORPG!"
This seems a bit lopsided, since the dynamics are really the important part. I mean, we describe mechanics and aesthetics in these same ways, but only if we're giving a ridiculously wide overview. When we actually talk in more detail, we don't stick to describing them in terms of what other games they're like. We describe them using well-anchored words that other people in the industry can turn into a working product. Sometimes we're very specific, sometimes we're vague and leave the specifics up to them.
Why can't we describe dynamics in that way?
Why can't we say, "this game is ticky-wicky, with an undercurrent of pressure pelting" the same way we say "the game is turn-based, and has a lot of gore"?
No, "ticky-wicky" and "pressure pelting" don't actually mean anything. But they sound like they could, I think. They sound almost like they describe a specific kind of play experience, although what it might be is kind of vague.
"Grinding", "griefing" and a few others are sort of a beginning, but their focus is kind of off. After all, there are a lot of different kinds of grinding, and they feel very different. Not every rule set that involves repeating similar situations over and over has the same feeling.
...
Even now, I think in terms of the play experience rather than the rules or the aesthetic. I think this is the case for most game designers. There's sort of a feeling that the equation is a+b=c, and we can solve for whichever we really want to solve for.
Think back to Star Wars, before it died. Before the new movies, before KotOR. Back to the old movies and the fan books and when knowing what a bantha was meant you were a terrible, terrible geek.
If you were asked to make a Star Wars game, what would you make? "Can't be a space shooter" says George. "Too many of those on my conscience. Make it anything else."
What do you go with?
The aesthetics are pre-made, although you do get to choose a scale. You know Star Wars aesthetics inside and out, since you're a terrible, terrible geek.
But the actual game? You could argue it in any direction. The universe... is it ripe for an RPG? Sure! It's also a really great universe for an RTS! And an FPS sure wouldn't be out of line, would it?
Okay, forget that crap. Seriously, forget it.
Instead of thinking rules, think dynamic. Sure, genre is kind of a mixed bag of rules and dynamic, but forget about it!
What do you want to experience? What part of the Star Wars universe makes you want to play? What's the feeling you're going for?
I'm eager to hear your ideas for a game revolving around a dynamic.
As a fun contrast, think about a Star Trek game using the same methodology. Which dynamic would you pursue in the Trek universe? What kind of game would it build?
I've been thinking about rules.
I don't think games should be made up of rules.
Think about the games you played as a kid. Most of the games didn't have mandatory rules - you played with tons of house rules, whatever made the game fun. Free Parking in Monopoly being the most common example, but it's also common to change the rules to various games to give specific inept players an advantage.
This lets the game be fun for the inept players and keeps it from being terribly boring for the ept ones.
You'll see this kind of thing even in deathmatch computer games: if your friend is pretty bad, you're likely to go easy on him, or refuse to use the rocket launcher, etc.
There's an innate compulsion among gamers to make games always somewhat challenging: to tweak the rules so that it's never boring. Frequently, this involves giving advantages to the weak players, but just as often it simply involves setting unlikely goals for yourself. How fast can you beat the level, how far can you toss his corpse...
Obviously, there's something more than simple rules to a game. The experience of a game is almost independent from the rules, in that a lot of people will change the rules to try to keep the experience intact.
Take poker. At it's heart, poker has only a few simple rules that define a game of skill, chance, and psychology. However, to preserve that game, more rules are made, usually ones of fairness. No tabletalk, no missing or marked cards, no this, no that. These rules aren't really poker rules, they're rules protecting poker.
Similarly, in a complex RPG, there are a thousand little rules and limits - how you gain gold, what you can spend it on, how powerful that spell is, what the chances of an enemy encounter are. These rules (which border on "content" in many cases) are not there to define the game. They're around to keep the experience of the game sailing true. With a broken system, the way the game is played changes, usually for the worse.
The aesthetics of a game are the same: the game's aesthetics aren't the game proper, they're a way to frame the experience and keep it in the right zone.
This can be taken to extremes. For an extreme version of this, every rule and aesthetic exist to either protect or teach the experience of the game. The actual feel of the game isn't something that is contained in the rules or in the aesthetics, although it is a result of them (along with some other things like social context).
Now, we can easily describe aesthetics. We can say "oh, steampunky" or "make sure it's rated G" or "this is a castle in the clouds, waterfalls pouring off the sides."
We can describe rules as well, less easily but more clearly. "Roll 2d6 for damage", "move 3 spaces", "start to the right of the dealer and go counterclockwise..."
But we really don't have any language for talking about the dynamics of a game, the actual play experience. Every time we want to describe it, we say things like "oh, make it like Grand Theft Auto, but a MMORPG!"
This seems a bit lopsided, since the dynamics are really the important part. I mean, we describe mechanics and aesthetics in these same ways, but only if we're giving a ridiculously wide overview. When we actually talk in more detail, we don't stick to describing them in terms of what other games they're like. We describe them using well-anchored words that other people in the industry can turn into a working product. Sometimes we're very specific, sometimes we're vague and leave the specifics up to them.
Why can't we describe dynamics in that way?
Why can't we say, "this game is ticky-wicky, with an undercurrent of pressure pelting" the same way we say "the game is turn-based, and has a lot of gore"?
No, "ticky-wicky" and "pressure pelting" don't actually mean anything. But they sound like they could, I think. They sound almost like they describe a specific kind of play experience, although what it might be is kind of vague.
"Grinding", "griefing" and a few others are sort of a beginning, but their focus is kind of off. After all, there are a lot of different kinds of grinding, and they feel very different. Not every rule set that involves repeating similar situations over and over has the same feeling.
...
Even now, I think in terms of the play experience rather than the rules or the aesthetic. I think this is the case for most game designers. There's sort of a feeling that the equation is a+b=c, and we can solve for whichever we really want to solve for.
Think back to Star Wars, before it died. Before the new movies, before KotOR. Back to the old movies and the fan books and when knowing what a bantha was meant you were a terrible, terrible geek.
If you were asked to make a Star Wars game, what would you make? "Can't be a space shooter" says George. "Too many of those on my conscience. Make it anything else."
What do you go with?
The aesthetics are pre-made, although you do get to choose a scale. You know Star Wars aesthetics inside and out, since you're a terrible, terrible geek.
But the actual game? You could argue it in any direction. The universe... is it ripe for an RPG? Sure! It's also a really great universe for an RTS! And an FPS sure wouldn't be out of line, would it?
Okay, forget that crap. Seriously, forget it.
Instead of thinking rules, think dynamic. Sure, genre is kind of a mixed bag of rules and dynamic, but forget about it!
What do you want to experience? What part of the Star Wars universe makes you want to play? What's the feeling you're going for?
I'm eager to hear your ideas for a game revolving around a dynamic.
As a fun contrast, think about a Star Trek game using the same methodology. Which dynamic would you pursue in the Trek universe? What kind of game would it build?
Sunday, January 27, 2008
TMNT: Shock!
In which I disagree with everyone.
I picked up a bunch of budget-priced titles for the 360 a few days back: all the games that got lackluster reviews when they came out. Among them was the TMNT game, imaginatively titled "TMNT". What a pleasant surprise!
The game is kind of short. This seems to be one of the major complaints of other reviewers, which is just one example of infuriating cluelessness. There's no such thing as a long beat-em-up, because it would be insanely irritating and boring! Beat-em-ups are short, have always been short, will always be short, and if that bothers you, don't review them!
The usual method of making a beat-em-up interesting is lots of great extras and replay value.
This game doesn't have any.
So, yes, even for a beat-em-up, I guess it's kind of short. But not in the way the reviewers talk about.
However, aside from some iffy ledge-grabbing sections, that's pretty much the game's only flaw.
The game plays a lot like a Prince of Persia game, if the Prince was replaced with a blue hedgehog. There's running through levels and fighting (not so much with the puzzles), but instead of the rather deliberate, railroad way the prince does things, the turtles sprint along willy-nilly.
Also, when you die there isn't a pop-up asking whether you want to reload or whatever. It just respawns you back at a nearby waypoint and gives you another go. Very smooth, very fast.
The core play is pretty fun, but what really makes the game are all those additional elements.
In example, each turtle has a unique way of fighting and moving. Raphael was basically a death machine in my hands, but all the turtles had a good, unique feel without actually being hard to control or master. Each turtle has a special way of moving, which I actually thought was not really done as well as it could have been.
Raph could climb walls with his sai, but only if they're the glowing red walls. And when he does climb, it's soooo slow. All the special moves are painfully slow, which I don't much understand, given that the game is definitely about speed. Also, not all movements are created equal: Don's staff lets him pole-vault (very slowly), but I only used it once.
I would have preferred if their special movement were more actively useful in a normal level, but that's not a terribly huge concern.
You only control one turtle at a time, but you can switch between them whenever you need. The same button that switches between them also allows you to do a team-jump (a triple-jump, basically) if you're in the air or, when held, a combo attack (again, unique to each turtle). This was occasionally a bit finicky, but overall it was quite good.
The last gameplay element is that there is frequently a "family meter". In this game, the turtles aren't really a thorough team until near the end of the game. In the middle of the game, you have to earn your brother's trust by not being a total screw-up. This added a lot for me, because it was always the same progression: Raph is the last to join and the first to leave, so it gives a lot of personality to it. Also, obviously, you can only switch to the turtles you have earned. It's not cumbersome at all: it's very nice, very fluid.
Again, like movement, the weakness to me is that they didn't really take it very far. Only a few levels had this mechanic. Also, if there were some meta-game method to make your brothers like you more or less, it could have been a lot of fun to, say, choose to help Don instead of Mikey. Obviously, this was way outside their scope, but it's something to keep in mind...
The game's narrative was really, really great. Like most games these days, the story is actually a story. In this case, the turtles are telling Splinter about that time they did that thing, you know, then. I hear now that they're telling the story of the movie? I don't know, I didn't see it.
Unlike every other game, this conceit isn't used to explain the save/load stuff (there's nothing to explain). Instead, it is used to provide running commentary. "I went outside to avoid the security systems, but I didn't know the rainstorm was turning into a thunderstorm..." "So I investigated, I didn't know it was a gang hideout..." "Wait, they attacked you, so you kept going?"
This running commentary is very powerful, very immersive. It's a brilliant way to do things.
I know it's sort of been done before, but never to this level.
An interesting choice was to make the game entirely about the turtles. Aside from some very, very minor mentions, there is no Shredder, no Casey, no April, no Krangg... just turtles and some new bad guys you don't spend too terribly much time on.
This lets you focus the story, which is something most turtle-related things fail at. The game was focused on the idea of family, which makes sense for the IP, and they managed to do it without being smarmy or irritating.
I'm not saying this game will leave you gaping in awe. I'm not even saying it's without flaw. I'm just saying this game is really good. Despite clueless reviewers, despite a rather slimy link to what is evidently not a very good movie.
This review is weird, because everyone else seems to have either hated the game or at least felt deeply ambivalent. I think that's largely because (A) they saw the movie and (B) they paid full price. For a budget title, and considered separate from the movie, this is quite a good game.
Some reviewers think the game was boring, which I can't really see. They compare it strongly to Prince of Persia, which implies to me that they're playing it like Prince of Persia: creeping up to the edge of the ledge, looking down, looking left, trying to figure out what the next move is...
RUN, damn it!
I picked up a bunch of budget-priced titles for the 360 a few days back: all the games that got lackluster reviews when they came out. Among them was the TMNT game, imaginatively titled "TMNT". What a pleasant surprise!
The game is kind of short. This seems to be one of the major complaints of other reviewers, which is just one example of infuriating cluelessness. There's no such thing as a long beat-em-up, because it would be insanely irritating and boring! Beat-em-ups are short, have always been short, will always be short, and if that bothers you, don't review them!
The usual method of making a beat-em-up interesting is lots of great extras and replay value.
This game doesn't have any.
So, yes, even for a beat-em-up, I guess it's kind of short. But not in the way the reviewers talk about.
However, aside from some iffy ledge-grabbing sections, that's pretty much the game's only flaw.
The game plays a lot like a Prince of Persia game, if the Prince was replaced with a blue hedgehog. There's running through levels and fighting (not so much with the puzzles), but instead of the rather deliberate, railroad way the prince does things, the turtles sprint along willy-nilly.
Also, when you die there isn't a pop-up asking whether you want to reload or whatever. It just respawns you back at a nearby waypoint and gives you another go. Very smooth, very fast.
The core play is pretty fun, but what really makes the game are all those additional elements.
In example, each turtle has a unique way of fighting and moving. Raphael was basically a death machine in my hands, but all the turtles had a good, unique feel without actually being hard to control or master. Each turtle has a special way of moving, which I actually thought was not really done as well as it could have been.
Raph could climb walls with his sai, but only if they're the glowing red walls. And when he does climb, it's soooo slow. All the special moves are painfully slow, which I don't much understand, given that the game is definitely about speed. Also, not all movements are created equal: Don's staff lets him pole-vault (very slowly), but I only used it once.
I would have preferred if their special movement were more actively useful in a normal level, but that's not a terribly huge concern.
You only control one turtle at a time, but you can switch between them whenever you need. The same button that switches between them also allows you to do a team-jump (a triple-jump, basically) if you're in the air or, when held, a combo attack (again, unique to each turtle). This was occasionally a bit finicky, but overall it was quite good.
The last gameplay element is that there is frequently a "family meter". In this game, the turtles aren't really a thorough team until near the end of the game. In the middle of the game, you have to earn your brother's trust by not being a total screw-up. This added a lot for me, because it was always the same progression: Raph is the last to join and the first to leave, so it gives a lot of personality to it. Also, obviously, you can only switch to the turtles you have earned. It's not cumbersome at all: it's very nice, very fluid.
Again, like movement, the weakness to me is that they didn't really take it very far. Only a few levels had this mechanic. Also, if there were some meta-game method to make your brothers like you more or less, it could have been a lot of fun to, say, choose to help Don instead of Mikey. Obviously, this was way outside their scope, but it's something to keep in mind...
The game's narrative was really, really great. Like most games these days, the story is actually a story. In this case, the turtles are telling Splinter about that time they did that thing, you know, then. I hear now that they're telling the story of the movie? I don't know, I didn't see it.
Unlike every other game, this conceit isn't used to explain the save/load stuff (there's nothing to explain). Instead, it is used to provide running commentary. "I went outside to avoid the security systems, but I didn't know the rainstorm was turning into a thunderstorm..." "So I investigated, I didn't know it was a gang hideout..." "Wait, they attacked you, so you kept going?"
This running commentary is very powerful, very immersive. It's a brilliant way to do things.
I know it's sort of been done before, but never to this level.
An interesting choice was to make the game entirely about the turtles. Aside from some very, very minor mentions, there is no Shredder, no Casey, no April, no Krangg... just turtles and some new bad guys you don't spend too terribly much time on.
This lets you focus the story, which is something most turtle-related things fail at. The game was focused on the idea of family, which makes sense for the IP, and they managed to do it without being smarmy or irritating.
I'm not saying this game will leave you gaping in awe. I'm not even saying it's without flaw. I'm just saying this game is really good. Despite clueless reviewers, despite a rather slimy link to what is evidently not a very good movie.
This review is weird, because everyone else seems to have either hated the game or at least felt deeply ambivalent. I think that's largely because (A) they saw the movie and (B) they paid full price. For a budget title, and considered separate from the movie, this is quite a good game.
Some reviewers think the game was boring, which I can't really see. They compare it strongly to Prince of Persia, which implies to me that they're playing it like Prince of Persia: creeping up to the edge of the ledge, looking down, looking left, trying to figure out what the next move is...
RUN, damn it!
Saturday, January 26, 2008
Advanced CRPG Design!
It's probably more useful to do rules of basic CRPG design, but maybe later, because these are what's irking me now.
Rule 1: The first two hours of your game should be infinitely replayable. This means I should be able to skip your cut scenes. Seriously, are you retarded?
It also means that the first two hours of your game should be mostly NOT running around someplace talking to people. That's fine and dandy the first time, but upon replay it's shitty.
Rule 2: Your ending should leave a fuzzy feeling. The best ways to do this are to 1) actually resolve plot threads and 2) give the player a lot of information about what happens to the characters/places in the future (a playable post-level is best).
Endings which don't resolve the plot's errant threads and don't actually let you know what lies in store are pretty shitty, especially for an RPG.
Rule 3: Don't punish players for not reading your mind. Too many RPGs let you choose your upgrade path, only to later reveal that the path you chose is really bad, at least for you. This is a very serious issue that is mostly a problem for the games that let you upgrade each level. Because you cannot take back a level and because each level is more difficult than the previous one to achieve, a mis-step will make your character suck. Especially in games that scale your encounters to your level.
This is not a problem in games that let you work to gain skill points. For example, instead of giving you a skill point per level, a new level simply unlocks the next tier of a skill. Actually buying the skills is done with some kind of skill mark that you get for killing shit or something. These are not strictly limited, they're just expensive to obtain in terms of time. You have to use N skill marks to increase your skill from N to N+1.
Now if a player mis-steps, it's not crippling, it's just going to cost him time.
I guess that might be a basic design rule, actually...
Rule 1: The first two hours of your game should be infinitely replayable. This means I should be able to skip your cut scenes. Seriously, are you retarded?
It also means that the first two hours of your game should be mostly NOT running around someplace talking to people. That's fine and dandy the first time, but upon replay it's shitty.
Rule 2: Your ending should leave a fuzzy feeling. The best ways to do this are to 1) actually resolve plot threads and 2) give the player a lot of information about what happens to the characters/places in the future (a playable post-level is best).
Endings which don't resolve the plot's errant threads and don't actually let you know what lies in store are pretty shitty, especially for an RPG.
Rule 3: Don't punish players for not reading your mind. Too many RPGs let you choose your upgrade path, only to later reveal that the path you chose is really bad, at least for you. This is a very serious issue that is mostly a problem for the games that let you upgrade each level. Because you cannot take back a level and because each level is more difficult than the previous one to achieve, a mis-step will make your character suck. Especially in games that scale your encounters to your level.
This is not a problem in games that let you work to gain skill points. For example, instead of giving you a skill point per level, a new level simply unlocks the next tier of a skill. Actually buying the skills is done with some kind of skill mark that you get for killing shit or something. These are not strictly limited, they're just expensive to obtain in terms of time. You have to use N skill marks to increase your skill from N to N+1.
Now if a player mis-steps, it's not crippling, it's just going to cost him time.
I guess that might be a basic design rule, actually...
Wednesday, January 23, 2008
Mass Effect
I know I'm behind the times - Mass Effect has been out almost TWO MONTHS, and here I am just starting to play it! The horror of a slow reviewer!
The game seems okay, save for the fact that I spend half my time on elevators. It's definitely KotOR in space... I mean, KotOR in... um... other space... but at least the combat doesn't suck as bad.
My big problem with KotOR wasn't the combat, but the dialog. As I mentioned before, your choices are to talk like a spoiled fourteen year old boy or a naive fourteen year old girl, with an occasional "go away" tossed in for kicks.
In Mass Effect, the dialog is a bit (a tiny bit) less idiotic, and I've discovered something. Because the dialog is better, I actually suffer from an uncanny valley problem with dialog. In KotOR, the conversational dialog was SO BAD that it didn't really come off as inhuman, it just came off as bad. But in Mass Effect, the dialog is unsettling in its failure to be human.
Because it's a static dialog tree, a given line of questioning will result in a given sound bite. Unfortunately, while this sound byte is always in character, it doesn't often follow conversationally. I frequently find myself giving a curt goodbye to people I was having a fun conversation with, or taking freakishly wide tangents at random moments. If you talked like that in real life, people would definitely think you were a bit... off the meds, yeah?
I understand the limitations, of course. I'm not saying they could have done a better job on any kind of reasonable budget. But it's an interesting side effect: improve the quality of the dialog, and suddenly it's uncanny.
The graphics, too, suffer from the uncanny valley.
Hmmmm.
The game seems okay, save for the fact that I spend half my time on elevators. It's definitely KotOR in space... I mean, KotOR in... um... other space... but at least the combat doesn't suck as bad.
My big problem with KotOR wasn't the combat, but the dialog. As I mentioned before, your choices are to talk like a spoiled fourteen year old boy or a naive fourteen year old girl, with an occasional "go away" tossed in for kicks.
In Mass Effect, the dialog is a bit (a tiny bit) less idiotic, and I've discovered something. Because the dialog is better, I actually suffer from an uncanny valley problem with dialog. In KotOR, the conversational dialog was SO BAD that it didn't really come off as inhuman, it just came off as bad. But in Mass Effect, the dialog is unsettling in its failure to be human.
Because it's a static dialog tree, a given line of questioning will result in a given sound bite. Unfortunately, while this sound byte is always in character, it doesn't often follow conversationally. I frequently find myself giving a curt goodbye to people I was having a fun conversation with, or taking freakishly wide tangents at random moments. If you talked like that in real life, people would definitely think you were a bit... off the meds, yeah?
I understand the limitations, of course. I'm not saying they could have done a better job on any kind of reasonable budget. But it's an interesting side effect: improve the quality of the dialog, and suddenly it's uncanny.
The graphics, too, suffer from the uncanny valley.
Hmmmm.
Monday, January 21, 2008
The Nature of Text
I've been thinking about text. Text instead of graphics, text supporting graphics, text from characters... you know, text.
The problem with generating text has never been getting the point across. It's not at all hard to make a situation generate text.
I remember that I briefly played a weird little mail-based text game where my fantasy character would do all sorts of things and I would send back a little sheet marked up with what I would do next week.
The game would print up a long, rambling, but marginally entertaining account of what I did (sort of like this blog, I guess). The fights would be things like "Throkdar swings his mace, but you duck nimbly... you stab Throkdar in the knee and he goes down like a sack of drowned kittens!"
Generating text isn't really the issue. It's not hard to generate text: you can just have a bunch of sentence fragments and staple them together like a sack of drowned kittens. The difficulty instead lies with what text to generate.
Communication is always communication, whether it's textual or graphic or audio. Every communique has a purpose. In games, there are three purposes to communicating. Let's go over them.
The first purpose is to communicate a changing gameplay context. Graphically, this is done by different graphics. A green palette swap means this wolf is a werewolf. The fact that the bullet is coming towards you means it's a threat. The fact that you're on a narrow bridge means you can't dodge side to side. This is also done nongraphically. 200/900 HP means you're in danger. That red sixty means you just dealt a fair amount of damage. That you have a sack of drowned kittens equipped in your weapons slot rather than a bow means short range rather than long range.
The second purpose is to communicate a changing nongameplay context. For example, you walk to Newvilletonburgh, and along the path you see..... Verdant farmlands. Blasted wastelands. A river of refugees. Snow.
While these aren't directly linked to gameplay, they are critical for giving the player a sense of place and immersion. Often this is inextricably linked with gameplay changes. That is due to a designer linking them, not to any fundamental link between telling you about snow and making you fight yetis. The designer could just as easily tell you about snow and then program an encounter with Helios, god of the desert sun. It wouldn't make much sense, but there's nothing fundamentally stopping him.
The third and final purpose is to avoid repetition like a sack of drowned kittens.
Repetition is a complicated topic. A lot of really great games use a lot of repetition. Not just old games like Pac-Man, but new games, too. There's a fine line between repetition and patterned play.
For example, your favorite FPS. Featured an awful lot of running around shooting people. In fact, it didn't feature a whole lot else. But it didn't feel terribly repetitious, did it?
Contrast and compare: Bioshock. Featured a lot of running around and shooting, and actually a fair amount of other things. But it felt extremely repetitious.
Repetition is what happens when the context doesn't change. Exactly how sensitive a player is varies: some players probably didn't find Bioshock repetitive. Some players probably felt that getting a +2 to their plumbing rolls changed the game's context. I felt that if they had given me a rocket launcher it wouldn't have changed the game's context.
In many ways, repetition is a function of the game's grain. The deeper the gameplay, the more subtle your communications can get without feeling repetitious. Bioshock's gameplay was about as deep as a high school cheerleader, so it hardly mattered to me that their communications were constantly shouting new things - the new things were not meaningfully different. On the other hand, a game of go is not exactly full of amazing new vistas, being that it consists entirely of putting stones down on a flat board. But the gameplay is very deep, and if you can see that depth, every tiny little stone changes the context completely. (If you can't see that depth, every tiny little stone is an excruciating exercise in repetition. Like a sack full of drowned kayakers.)
Anyhow, those are the three basic things communication in a game has to cover. It's actually more two things, since repetition is more a rule of how quickly and slowly the two other things need to change.
Now, text communications. And I don't mean "WEAPON: SPEAR + 2". I mean natural language text.
For most text-centric games, all of the non-gameplay context communications are written up, whereas all the gameplay communications are generated. Example:
West of House
You are standing in an open field west of a white house, with a boarded front door.
There is a small mailbox here.
The layout is carefully scripted: everywhere you go it's TITLE then SCRIPTED TEXT DESCRIPTION then LIST OF STUFF. The list of stuff is generated automatically, as are many of the responses to what you type.
Some really old text games print the full description of a room every time you enter it, which gets really repetitive. Newer text games have a verbose description that they print when you first enter it and after that they just print the title of the room, perhaps with a short blurb. At any time, you can call up that long description again, if you've forgotten the context of the room and need a refresher course. If you haven't forgotten, don't call it up, because it has nothing new to say to you.
Graphical games are largely similar in structure. The graphics themselves are carefully scripted, but their positions and various numerical values are generated. While a full description of an enemy or character would get distracting if you saw it all the time, many games allow you to access some kind of status page for a close-up pic and the full statistical readout.
Fundamentally the same.
Except that graphics, numbers, and slots have a much finer grain than full-text descriptions. 60 is different from 55, and if you see them pop up above someone's head, you know which you prefer. An enemy five tiles away is preferable to an enemy four tiles away. Equipping a spear + 2 is better than equipping a spear + 1.
Putting these in text won't work. In fact, it would backfire. Anyone remember the old Dragon Warrior? "Thou has gained 2 gold. Thou hast gained 3 XP. Congratulations, thou has persevered and gained a level."
What do they do now? "Gold: 2. XP: 3. LEVEL UP!" (fanfare)
They've chopped all the fat out of the descriptions, because the fat didn't actually communicate anything. The game state is numeric, and the only communications which are relevant are ones that specify numbers (Gold: 2) or packs of numbers (Fireball spell). Nothing else changes the gameplay context.
You have to remember that the gameplay context is not simply a list of numbers, oh no. It's the topological layout of the situation. In the most obvious sense, where you are in the level as compared to the enemies, powerups, obstacles, and so forth. In less obvious examples, the variety of weapons you've got equipped, the node map of cities you can travel to, the array of equipment available for purchase, the likelyhood of stumbling across more ammo for a particular weapon in this particular area...
So popping up "Gold: 2" is kind of a minimally effective communication. Gold is a very simple gameplay value - a simple scoring mechanism. Far more complex mechanisms are usually at play. "LEVEL UP!" used to be followed by: "+1 str, +1 dex, +3 HP". Now it's followed by a complex list of choices, often displayed graphically so that you can see what lies further down the paths you can choose.
As we've gotten better at displaying graphical information, the topological density has increased dramatically. But although this is technically graphics, it is not of the sort that is expensive to produce.
The complex level-up system in KotOR, for example. It's all either text or tiny icons that show text when you click them. Which stats improve? Which skills improve? Which feats will you buy? It's an incredibly complicated situation, but all the details are clearly shown without resorting to advanced graphical wizardry.
When we think "text game", we think "Zork". But a linear, one-dimensional stream of data simply cannot represent the level of complexity we're interested in. They're great at nongameplay context, but poor at gameplay context. Rogue-likes, with their ascii-maps, reverse the situation: they cut out the ability to represent non-gameplay context easily with text, but don't switch over to actually using graphics to represent non-gamplay... so they're stuck pretty solidly in only representing gameplay context.
...
The question isn't whether text can represent complex states. It certainly can. The question isn't even whether you can generate interesting text for your game rather than writing it. The answer is yes, so long as it's based on content that is actually in your game.
The question is how to represent enough complexity without turning into a game entirely consisting of menus.
The problem with generating text has never been getting the point across. It's not at all hard to make a situation generate text.
I remember that I briefly played a weird little mail-based text game where my fantasy character would do all sorts of things and I would send back a little sheet marked up with what I would do next week.
The game would print up a long, rambling, but marginally entertaining account of what I did (sort of like this blog, I guess). The fights would be things like "Throkdar swings his mace, but you duck nimbly... you stab Throkdar in the knee and he goes down like a sack of drowned kittens!"
Generating text isn't really the issue. It's not hard to generate text: you can just have a bunch of sentence fragments and staple them together like a sack of drowned kittens. The difficulty instead lies with what text to generate.
Communication is always communication, whether it's textual or graphic or audio. Every communique has a purpose. In games, there are three purposes to communicating. Let's go over them.
The first purpose is to communicate a changing gameplay context. Graphically, this is done by different graphics. A green palette swap means this wolf is a werewolf. The fact that the bullet is coming towards you means it's a threat. The fact that you're on a narrow bridge means you can't dodge side to side. This is also done nongraphically. 200/900 HP means you're in danger. That red sixty means you just dealt a fair amount of damage. That you have a sack of drowned kittens equipped in your weapons slot rather than a bow means short range rather than long range.
The second purpose is to communicate a changing nongameplay context. For example, you walk to Newvilletonburgh, and along the path you see..... Verdant farmlands. Blasted wastelands. A river of refugees. Snow.
While these aren't directly linked to gameplay, they are critical for giving the player a sense of place and immersion. Often this is inextricably linked with gameplay changes. That is due to a designer linking them, not to any fundamental link between telling you about snow and making you fight yetis. The designer could just as easily tell you about snow and then program an encounter with Helios, god of the desert sun. It wouldn't make much sense, but there's nothing fundamentally stopping him.
The third and final purpose is to avoid repetition like a sack of drowned kittens.
Repetition is a complicated topic. A lot of really great games use a lot of repetition. Not just old games like Pac-Man, but new games, too. There's a fine line between repetition and patterned play.
For example, your favorite FPS. Featured an awful lot of running around shooting people. In fact, it didn't feature a whole lot else. But it didn't feel terribly repetitious, did it?
Contrast and compare: Bioshock. Featured a lot of running around and shooting, and actually a fair amount of other things. But it felt extremely repetitious.
Repetition is what happens when the context doesn't change. Exactly how sensitive a player is varies: some players probably didn't find Bioshock repetitive. Some players probably felt that getting a +2 to their plumbing rolls changed the game's context. I felt that if they had given me a rocket launcher it wouldn't have changed the game's context.
In many ways, repetition is a function of the game's grain. The deeper the gameplay, the more subtle your communications can get without feeling repetitious. Bioshock's gameplay was about as deep as a high school cheerleader, so it hardly mattered to me that their communications were constantly shouting new things - the new things were not meaningfully different. On the other hand, a game of go is not exactly full of amazing new vistas, being that it consists entirely of putting stones down on a flat board. But the gameplay is very deep, and if you can see that depth, every tiny little stone changes the context completely. (If you can't see that depth, every tiny little stone is an excruciating exercise in repetition. Like a sack full of drowned kayakers.)
Anyhow, those are the three basic things communication in a game has to cover. It's actually more two things, since repetition is more a rule of how quickly and slowly the two other things need to change.
Now, text communications. And I don't mean "WEAPON: SPEAR + 2". I mean natural language text.
For most text-centric games, all of the non-gameplay context communications are written up, whereas all the gameplay communications are generated. Example:
West of House
You are standing in an open field west of a white house, with a boarded front door.
There is a small mailbox here.
The layout is carefully scripted: everywhere you go it's TITLE then SCRIPTED TEXT DESCRIPTION then LIST OF STUFF. The list of stuff is generated automatically, as are many of the responses to what you type.
Some really old text games print the full description of a room every time you enter it, which gets really repetitive. Newer text games have a verbose description that they print when you first enter it and after that they just print the title of the room, perhaps with a short blurb. At any time, you can call up that long description again, if you've forgotten the context of the room and need a refresher course. If you haven't forgotten, don't call it up, because it has nothing new to say to you.
Graphical games are largely similar in structure. The graphics themselves are carefully scripted, but their positions and various numerical values are generated. While a full description of an enemy or character would get distracting if you saw it all the time, many games allow you to access some kind of status page for a close-up pic and the full statistical readout.
Fundamentally the same.
Except that graphics, numbers, and slots have a much finer grain than full-text descriptions. 60 is different from 55, and if you see them pop up above someone's head, you know which you prefer. An enemy five tiles away is preferable to an enemy four tiles away. Equipping a spear + 2 is better than equipping a spear + 1.
Putting these in text won't work. In fact, it would backfire. Anyone remember the old Dragon Warrior? "Thou has gained 2 gold. Thou hast gained 3 XP. Congratulations, thou has persevered and gained a level."
What do they do now? "Gold: 2. XP: 3. LEVEL UP!" (fanfare)
They've chopped all the fat out of the descriptions, because the fat didn't actually communicate anything. The game state is numeric, and the only communications which are relevant are ones that specify numbers (Gold: 2) or packs of numbers (Fireball spell). Nothing else changes the gameplay context.
You have to remember that the gameplay context is not simply a list of numbers, oh no. It's the topological layout of the situation. In the most obvious sense, where you are in the level as compared to the enemies, powerups, obstacles, and so forth. In less obvious examples, the variety of weapons you've got equipped, the node map of cities you can travel to, the array of equipment available for purchase, the likelyhood of stumbling across more ammo for a particular weapon in this particular area...
So popping up "Gold: 2" is kind of a minimally effective communication. Gold is a very simple gameplay value - a simple scoring mechanism. Far more complex mechanisms are usually at play. "LEVEL UP!" used to be followed by: "+1 str, +1 dex, +3 HP". Now it's followed by a complex list of choices, often displayed graphically so that you can see what lies further down the paths you can choose.
As we've gotten better at displaying graphical information, the topological density has increased dramatically. But although this is technically graphics, it is not of the sort that is expensive to produce.
The complex level-up system in KotOR, for example. It's all either text or tiny icons that show text when you click them. Which stats improve? Which skills improve? Which feats will you buy? It's an incredibly complicated situation, but all the details are clearly shown without resorting to advanced graphical wizardry.
When we think "text game", we think "Zork". But a linear, one-dimensional stream of data simply cannot represent the level of complexity we're interested in. They're great at nongameplay context, but poor at gameplay context. Rogue-likes, with their ascii-maps, reverse the situation: they cut out the ability to represent non-gameplay context easily with text, but don't switch over to actually using graphics to represent non-gamplay... so they're stuck pretty solidly in only representing gameplay context.
...
The question isn't whether text can represent complex states. It certainly can. The question isn't even whether you can generate interesting text for your game rather than writing it. The answer is yes, so long as it's based on content that is actually in your game.
The question is how to represent enough complexity without turning into a game entirely consisting of menus.
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