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[PogueSquadron]

(Please forgive any typos, as I'm on my phone at the moment)

I recently posted in a "what games give you inspiration" thread about the Super Nintendo Action-RPG Illusion of Gaia. As a kid, it was the most epic of epic games to me. You felt like you traveled SO far across the world, and you had creepy/ethereal moments that almost made the game feel like a dream.

I still love the game, but looking back, the game doesn't make a lock of sense. Perhaps it's due to a bad translation, or maybe the game really just doesn't connect all of its dots. What is this character's relation to this town? Why did this character randomly turn into a sea monster?

In the end, IoG is really nothing more than a vehicle to use some heavy subject matter in a game. Slave labor, child neglect, troubled marriages, starvation, etc. When I was a kid though, and even to this day, I actually love how vague the game is. I like knowing that there's just magical, eerie stuff going on, even if I don't understand it fully.

It leads me to ask - how vague is too vague? How much do you have to explain to the player to keep them engaged, without either a.) Giving them TOO much to the point where the game has no mystery, or B.) Not giving them enough to the point where they have lost any appreciation for the story or game world?

This doesn't necessarily just pertain to games, but I think it's a very important topic for a game because I think a game can tackle things differently. Maybe a game has you doing something that isn't necessarily a good thing. I mean, when you're playing Link's Awakening, the game literally tells you that you shouldn't wake the Wind Fish. There's a weird feeling of dread that starts to envelope the game (and I still truly think that the original black and white version actually helps this gsme's melancholy atmosphere a lot). You really don't know what to believe, or whether or not the world was real. And by the end of the game, you still don't EXACTLY know. It's vague/specific enough so that it really doesn't matter.

Is the right answer to this question basically that the journey is more important than the destination? If a player truly enjoys the journey, will they be more satisfied if the destination doesn't deliver the questions that the game presents?

[Evan Balster]

I've got a weird little text file full of passages by myself and others which describe my philosophy for approaching a specific game project of mine.  Here are two relevant ones:


"Part of the attraction of the L.R. is, I think, due to the glimpses of a large history in the background:
an attraction like that of viewing far off an unvisited island, or seeing the towers of a distant city gleaming in a sunlit mist.
To go there is to destroy the magic, unless new unattainable vistas are again revealed."
— J. R. R. Tolkien


Exploration's joy is the discovery of secrets.
It turns meaningless movement into a compelling mystery.

To rephrase: the optional is valued.  A choice to explore or witness richens the result.
(me)


The meaning I find in these words is this:

Regarding the first, horizons are important; the unknown is what gives us a sense of wonder when we set foot in the artificial world.  Creating things which the player cannot experience intimately (including things they never will) makes them curious and makes them feel small in a large world.  These are facets of a sense of wonder.

Regarding the second, games can (and should?) approach the question of why differently from linear media.  The reader may well seek explanations, but the process of explaining something is not always an interesting one, especially when uninvited.  Even when it is, they tend to constitute the destruction of a mystery; the death of a wonder which would otherwise sit on your horizon.  As an author I should put up some resistance to this, but I shouldn't ignore the reader's curiosity either.  As a developer of games, I can find a happy medium: tucking clues away in elusive places, that the player might be compelled to act on the mystery.  Letting curiosity drive play.  That, I believe, is the key to exploration in games.

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

i think the reason illusion of gaia worked was like this: it was a coming of age tale and just sort of had a bunch of random episodes representing different ways in which the main character matured. the story doesn't make sense on the surface level but it makes sense if you understand how it was organized; a bunch of adventure tales each relating to a different part of growing up. so no it doesn't quite make sense when you add up the *events*, but it makes sense if you add up the themes and treat it as an episodic sequence of unrelated events rather than trying to figure out how all the events connect or relate (because they don't, except on the subsurface)

[Graham-]

You want people to care. If you mislead them that can hurt you.

Plot helps connect ideas in a story together. If plot is central then its inconsistencies can be a problem. But plot doesn't have to be consistent for the game that contains it to be good.

If plot is the reason people enjoy your game then it's important to have it make sense, otherwise make the important elements make sense.