Rev Rant: Exploration

[Technophile]

http://www.destructoid.com/rev-rant-...n-151941.phtml

[Dead Movie Star]

When I think of exploring, I think of the original Legend of Zelda and having no idea where to go. Though, this rant seemed to be a continued ramble on grinding (lookan for itams for powar) so, uh, whatever.

[Intruder]

I love exploring places on my own accord. I hate it when I'm forced to explore.

[Sonic9jct]

I don't want to explore anything expansive.
I just want to explore something interesting.

[ScottyG]

http://www.destructoid.com/rev-rant-...n-151941.phtml

Boy Techno, its sure is nice of you to put these up each time. <3

I honestly don't know where he was going with this. He talked about SotC, which does exploration very well, then mentions Bioshock which is about as linear a FPS as you can get. I suppose it has a nice world, but exploring it is like admiring the scenery in any FPS. :\

[HerosPlayDumb]

This rant was good but I don't understand how he could just skip over games like Oblivion and Fallout 3 in a rant about exploration. I was watching it just waiting for one of those games or a similar to come up and it never did.

[umberhulk]

Sometimes finding stuff in games is for satisfaction in finding it, not the materialistic value of what your finding. And in Metroid or other games, a lot the locales are beautiful (and sometimes the items are part of the reason). Also, Metroid is largely about having a sense of loneliness and dread, and fact that the items boosts the character's ability to defend herself meshes with the atmosphere.

And while anthony never really contradicts this, there were a lot of subtle easter eggs and shortcuts in Halflife 2.

I agree with Myst. Dont really agree on SotC, though. I mean I felt similar emotions but not for the whole duration of the trips; boredom won.

[Django Reinhardt]

Anthony is obviously a brilliant person, but this rant was disjointed and messy. Show us that you care! Spend a little more time on these.

[Serge.EXE]

When I think of exploring, I think of the original Legend of Zelda and having no idea where to go. Though, this rant seemed to be a continued ramble on grinding (lookan for itams for powar) so, uh, whatever.

I aimlessly wander and explore in Zelda as well. Unless I have a map by me, I ALWAYS get lost in that game.

I rather enjoyed exploring the landscape in Twilight Princess once you've beaten all the Twilight stages. For a Wii/Gamecube game, it was very beautiful, plus it was fun trying to find all the Poes and stuff. I know they give you a map, but it was still fun just going through the fields and killing baddies.

I have not played either Fallout 3 or Oblivion, so I can't comment about those.

[ReverendAnthony]

He talked about SotC, which does exploration very well, then mentions Bioshock which is about as linear a FPS as you can get. I suppose it has a nice world, but exploring it is like admiring the scenery in any FPS. :\

I mean that you explore it in the same way you explore many parts of Portal; the world is really linear, but you can walk around rapture looking at the environment and trying to get contextual clues from what's going on. Even without the little audio logs, you can mentally put together a great deal of the story just because the world itself tells so much without using actual words. I found myself walking around Rapture a lot trying to find new areas -- not because I needed upgrades, but because I wanted to see what the world could tell me.

I actually cut a part out of the rant where I talked about that little machine you find in the little sister's orphanage with two buttons on it -- one with a picture of a woman, one with a picture of a big daddy. Press the big daddy button, you get chips. Press the woman, you get an electric shock. It's got nothing to do with progressing the narrative or gameplay, but it's just a part of the environment that makes logical sense within that world. The process of figuring out exactly what that machine did, just by using it of my own volition, really appealed to me.

[dkowalewski]

I liked this rant, because it's true, video games should have more non plot progressing/reward based features in the world. Sometimes you just want to see some random things in the world that add to its depth. Portal does this sorta in some of the back rooms where you can see writing on the walls from previous test subjects. There aren't really that many examples of games that try to go above and beyond the expectations to make their universe seem more organic and believable.

I've agreed with pretty much every rant you've made, and I can't help thinking that if you were to be in charge of big budget games, things might be a little bit different.

[Intruder]

I mean that you explore it in the same way you explore many parts of Portal; the world is really linear, but you can walk around rapture looking at the environment and trying to get contextual clues from what's going on. Even without the little audio logs, you can mentally put together a great deal of the story just because the world itself tells so much without using actual words. I found myself walking around Rapture a lot trying to find new areas -- not because I needed upgrades, but because I wanted to see what the world could tell me.

I thought Half-Life 2 handled this very well. Every little piece of the environment was a clue to what had been going on. It might not've been as grand as Bioshock's offering, but I really liked it.

One specific thing that comes to mind is the article on the bulliton board in Black Mesa East. The headline basically read "7 HOUR WAR OVER! BREEN TO NEGOTIATE WITH COMBINE" or something like that. You couldn't read the article, but it made you wonder what was really going on.

I actually cut a part out of the rant where I talked about that little machine you find in the little sister's orphanage with two buttons on it -- one with a picture of a woman, one with a picture of a big daddy. Press the big daddy button, you get chips. Press the woman, you get an electric shock. It's got nothing to do with progressing the narrative or gameplay, but it's just a part of the environment that makes logical sense within that world. The process of figuring out exactly what that machine did, just by using it of my own volition, really appealed to me.

Wow, I totally missed that.

[umberhulk]

I actually just got Bioshock, but my DVD drive wont work and now its pissing me off more.

[protomark]

I actually cut a part out of the rant where I talked about that little machine you find in the little sister's orphanage with two buttons on it -- one with a picture of a woman, one with a picture of a big daddy. Press the big daddy button, you get chips. Press the woman, you get an electric shock. It's got nothing to do with progressing the narrative or gameplay, but it's just a part of the environment that makes logical sense within that world. The process of figuring out exactly what that machine did, just by using it of my own volition, really appealed to me.

Um, Isn't that narrative by itself?

[munnyman5]

I don't know about exploration.

I'm a huge sucker for story (I read all the Halo books... that must mean SOMETHING), and maybe I'm not getting as much as I could by not exploring.

For example, I did like maybe 3 side quests in ALL of Fallout 3. I also bought Broken Steel. I blew through all the story for that game (minus any DLC I don't have, which is a lot), and I think that means that out of the roughly 80 Canadian Dollars I've spent on it so far, I've only got like 30 dollars worth.

I found this huge semi-city of bandits with a super giant super mutant in a super big cage, and I took some shots at some of the dudes and kept walking. Know what made me give up? The shooting.

If my L4Z0R B33M rifle had just shot a laser where I was pointing the reticle, I would've smoked them bitches in 5 minutes tops, but waiting for VATS and missing perfectly aimed shots at non-moving targets because of some dice-roll RPG shit? I was having none of it. That pretty much turned me off exploration for that whole game.

[Dexter345]

I have actually had a game idea in my head focused entirely on exploration and flight. It came to me after being frustrated with flower's version of invisible walls. You can see way off into the distance, but the actual play area is pretty small.

I imagine a procedurally generated world, with mountains, valleys, and caves, to keep things interesting. I don't quite have a good idea for how to get the player to want to explore. Will they do it just to see what they can find, or would I have to have the game hide trinkets around the world to keep them looking?

[Hector Garfria]

I have actually had a game idea in my head focused entirely on exploration and flight. It came to me after being frustrated with flower's version of invisible walls. You can see way off into the distance, but the actual play area is pretty small.

I imagine a procedurally generated world, with mountains, valleys, and caves, to keep things interesting. I don't quite have a good idea for how to get the player to want to explore. Will they do it just to see what they can find, or would I have to have the game hide trinkets around the world to keep them looking?

That depends yo. Will the trinkets be needed to, say, level up or go to the next level?

That might put people off while playing it.

[Kpax]

Exploration is my JAMMMMMM, yo! I generally try to explore every part of a game world. I just love the feeling of satisfaction I get when I travel to some remote, forgotten area in a game and I find something really cool and yet unrelated to the main game. That's one of the reasons I loved the skulls and terminals in the Halo games.

[leox001]

Sometimes I enjoy to explore a great detailed overworld, like in Oblivion, rich enviroments and beautiful graphics, though some FPS drops on the PC version make it chunky, but in SOTC, a game I don't like much to be honest, the overworld is really bland, and the frames per second don't help,

Yeah it LOOKS good but there's nothing out there, and it has massive post processing effects to cover pop up and many bugs, if they wanted to make such a big world and use so much graphic effects, why not releasing this game on PC or Xbox?, yeah it's team ICO after all and their first game was on PS2... so who knows they may have had their reasons, but I can't stand a game with low frames per second...... anyways thats offtopic.

I guess I played SOTC a bit late to enjoy it like it was meant to be, but for me, exploration must be rewarding with at least something, not just throw you there.

[IcarusKills]

It wouldn't be released for PC or Xbox because Team Ico is working under Sony's software development umbrella.