No Mutants Allowed

Brother None · Posted: Sun May 25, 2008 19:13 Post subject: History of open-world games #2

The second part of this piece - dealing primarily with GTA - is up. Here's Todd Howard on the problems of openworld design.

Ed del Castillo believes that improving AI is one of the most important areas for enhancing open-world gaming.

"The industry is talent-starved - we really need great coders and multi-dimensional people, as in order to have great AI, you need a person who can create systems that simulate life.

"That person needs to be someone introspective, philosophical, and a viewer of people - working out how to fake salient features in people."

Bethesda's Howard agrees: "I think it's become common for developers to be able to put lush scenery together, but creating other characters that can react to what you do in a believable and compelling way, is still very difficult. We have a long way to go."

Link: The complete history of open-world games (part 2).

Tagaziel · Posted: Sun May 25, 2008 19:23 Post subject:

Bad_Karma · Posted: Mon May 26, 2008 9:00 Post subject:

I love the Quote from the idiotic GTA-guy... hillarious. As if they invented gaming. I would really love to see Sid Meier, Will Wright, Peter Molyneux, Richard Garriot and the other 'Oldtimers' to team up and beat the crap out of him *laughs manically*...

The author could have done a lot better by only quoting Ed del Castillo and ignoring the others he quoted....

By the way, somewhat interesting how they seem to concentrate on the NPC's while forgetting to thing about the gaming world. Like Garriot once said, when he first saw a asian MMORPG he was surprised nearly all items he saw were just decoration and weren't 'useable'...
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sarfa · Posted: Mon May 26, 2008 11:19 Post subject:

I get the feeling PCzone aren't looking at the same gaming industry that I am.

Yes, more linear series/genres are becoming more non linear (Usually by just allowing customisation of the main characters abilities), but they are still linear games (Merely with one or two non linear features that are, ultimatly, inconsequential).

Meanwhile, traditionally non linear games are becoming more linear. Look at GTA. GTA and GTA2 had 3 levels, the goal in each one was to amount a number of points (However you like) and then you can move on. In GTA2 each level had 3 gangs you could for, in any combination, or not at all to complete the game.

In GTA3, Vice City, San Andreas and GTA4 you start up working for A. Doing a few missions for A lets you work for B. Doing a few for B lets you work for C, D and E. doing a few for E lets you work for F- C and E are completly optional, etc, etc until you reach the last mission, at which point you end the story. Getting to new areas fo the map depends on doing certain missions, where it used to depend simply on points count. How to progress in the game is much more linear than it was in the first two GTA games.

Even comparing Oblivion to Morrowind you find the same thing. In Morrowind to rise in a given faction you had to X Quests for that faction- you didn't have to do them all and could usually quite happily ignore one quest giver for the faction completly. In Oblivion, when you get promoted, etc, depends entirely where you are in a (very) linear series of quests.