Game Design 2 Journal #3: "It's like an interactive movie?"

So "Heavy Rain" came out yesterday, and I got my copy naturally.
I expected something, I had a clear thought as to what I was getting into.
More "Indigo Prophecy," I said.
"Quick Time Event: The Game," I said.

Well I was right.
Mostly.

"Heavy Rain" is very engaging. An adventurous camera aside, I found myself engrossed in otherwise menial tasks at the beginning of the game. Feed myself, do work, be a dad. For an hour I slogged through a painstakingly slow section of the game, getting familiar with the controls and the flow of the game. I drank some orange juice, twice. I checked the clock, and sat watching my kid watch TV. Brought him some cold medicine. It was benign. It was "boring."

But sitting within me was a tremendous fear of every action. I wanted to make sure I did things right. What is right? Right in this case means most favorable outcome. I subconsciously do this every day, but when forced to focus on the life of another person I suddenly worry about every thing. Especially when that interaction is limited to very specific actions. I felt compelled to do specific things. If I worked in the garden, but not on my artwork, would that affect me later in the game? I was tense and ready for anything to happen, any symbol to appear on the screen.

Somehow even the most basic actions became interesting when presented by "Heavy Rain," and this made more complex actions into roller coasters. There was a fight scene I played out, crashing through an apartment. It was ungraceful and ugly. I sat, quite literally, on the edge of my seat during it. My roommates cheered me on, calling for me to "Watch out!" or "Press the button! Press it!" They were just as engaged as me, humor aside, despite not playing the easy to play game.

By presenting the story as a straight shot, with no "lives" and no re-doing certain scenes to do them better, "Heavy Rain" feels pertinent at all times. Even when I was doing the menial actions, I felt like every decision had weight to it. It was exhausting, and addicting. I wanted to start over ten times and try different a combination of actions, different failures. I purposefully put in minor failures into part of the game, worried about characters reactions to certain actions. Example: There's a scene where you have a play fight with your son, with foam swords. I didn't want to soundly thrash him, so I let him get some shots in. But I wondered if that meant I'd get a lower score over all, or was the goal to always win? It was intense.

I can't really knock "Heavy Rain"'s model here. The QTEs work. A little janky, sure. But it works just fine. "Indigo Prophecy" may have missed the mark for me, but so far I get the sense that Quantic Dream has more to say and do with "Heavy Rain." It's really got me interested in where it is going.

Game Design 2 Journal #2: Don't fix what isn't broken

Bioshock 2. 2k Marin had a chance to take a ball and run with it.

Some say they didn't.

Some say they did.

Why the disparity? Bioshock 2 looks great, plays great. What's the problem?

Some would quote it lacks the twisty plot of the first game, some would argue the underpowered main character. We're playing as a Big Daddy so..ergo...shouldn't we be BADASSES? I agree. The depiction of every other Big Daddy is, despite their lack of plasmids, terrifyingly violent and destructive. Not even the end of the first game conveyed the true presence of these behemoths and Bioshock 2 fails as well. Louder footsteps. Sure. The drill? Perfect. But my health is impossibly low, I don't have a sense of weight...there's some inconsistencies. It feels like they got close enough.

Those criticisms were the cake. The icing is this argument: It was bad that the game play was too much like the first game.

I call mega bullshit on this. Let's look at a VERY recent example of an excellent sequel. Mass Effect 2.

Mass Effect 2 had a glaring flaw. The world and story was excellent, perfect even. But the battle system had some major hiccups in it, as well as the elevators, inventory and the powers you could rank up in. These problems had a souring effect on an otherwise perfect game. The sequel addressed those issues expertly, and left the rest of the game alone. It played out like a Bioware symphony. The stories, the lore and the world was consistent and beautiful once again, and the issues were smoothed. Bioshock 2 did the exact same thing. There was nothing to really "fix" with most of the combat. It was fluid, adapting, challenging and fun in the first game, despite the lack of dual-wielding plasmids and weapons. They fixed the hacking, the harvesting, the...aha...they messed with the story.

Bioshock 2 has a far more linear feeling than Bioshock 1. The story is less about twists and turns, or shadows. You see the plot glaring at you like a bright light and you wonder why they're telling you this now. Why aren't they hiding this for later? But the world of Rapture is so rich with lore (the audio logs, the locations themselves and their inhabitants) that the main story starts to fade away. I found myself not really caring what new Rapture dictator Sophia Lamb had to say. I could predict it, see it coming. It didn't feel like the story of Andrew Ryan's Rapture. And that was a little saddening. I felt like I was playing a game that wasn't Bioshock: System Shock 2 in the Sea anymore.

Did that afford Bioshock 2 a sneer? A little bit. But no less a stellar score. The game delivered what I wanted, exactly what I wanted in most cases. When a good sequel comes out, the good changes are visible right away. They're big. However, the most important thing to remember is consistency of experience. If the player launches into a sequel and the experience feels...off...it's going to hurt the stride of the franchise big time. Mass Effect 2 did just that half step better than Bioshock 2. Mass Effect 2 COMMANDED my attention. Bioshock 2 I have a desire to play.

Sequels. Fuckin' tough.