What pisses me off is how people are willing to excuse things like this too, as if they "don't matter". They do. If they aren't paying attention to the details then they are showing that they clearly don't give a shit.
I've followed the argument on the last couple of pages with some interest but it failed to properly develop, even this sentiment while correct doesn't cut it either. Obviously Roguey is wrong again as usual even if the things people post in response leave me wanting. Let's remedy this, shall we?
First Principles of Gaming and Why They Matter: Or Why Avoided is Shit
One of the absolutely
basic and fundamental assumptions that are core to the entire world of gaming, not just digital video games, but all forms of games, is that the input of the player
matters. The player makes a move or performs an in-game action according to predetermined rules and this has consequences to the game. I think we can all agree that this is the case, that if there is no activity on the account of the player it isn't a game at all.
This established we can move on to examine precisely what Obsidian has done that is so very bad in relation to this core idea. When it is pointed out that Obsidian has less dynamic interactivity this is hand-waved by Roguey with the answer that such things were never aimed for and it is wrong to judge a game for what it doesn't do, rather than what it aims to do and what it actually does. But what isn't being said by anyone in this thread so far is that not only has Obsidian moved into this genre niche with particular conventions and expectations, but also that there is a difference between not doing something at all, and letting the player do something to no effect.
Gaben's immortal wisdom applies here.
When a game allows you to shoot arrows all over the place, or swing your sword in any direction, or emphasize narrative choice and player freedom, it disrespects the player when doing these things yields no results. Be it in the sense of simulation that jumping into a water puddle doesn't make splashes, or throwing a grenade in a lake doesn't cause an even bigger splash, or that shooting a wall with a gun doesn't even produce bullet holes. Or simply that attacking an enemy doesn't do damage, or enough damage. These things are worse than doing nothing at all. In terms of the pure RPG genre we can compare it to skills or abilities not being properly or implemented at all but still letting the player pick them.
These sort of locked down cinematic games that don't allow you to hack away at anyone with a sword, or cause a mess in the cities by demolishing clutter, usually deal with this problem of not wanting to depict destruction or deal with the player's agency by simply
removing it altogether. The typical AAA on-rails game in first person forces you to lower your gun when you aim at a friendly NPC, or removes your ability entirely to use weapons within certain zones. Avoided doesn't do this, instead letting you ineffectively pelt annoying characters with arrows or swing your sword right through them, which is even worse than not being able to do this at all.
If you think about it like this you'll notice that these things are not separate issues, being able to kill other characters, being able to move around objects, physics simulation, and general player agency. It's all one thing and Avoided tramples over all of it. Baldur's Gate 1, as bad as it was, allowed you to attack anyone, anywhere, because that was one of the ways you could interact with the game, one of the
moves or
actions. If there was some very annoying fight after a dialogue and you wanted to set things up better you could often just ignore the dialogue entirely and attack the enemy if initially not hostile on your own terms. Nobody complained about a lack of physics simulation because it wasn't one of the ways you interacted with the game, it doesn't matter if arrows get stuck in say a wooden sign or not if that's
not within the possibility space to begin with and you can only fire them when you target enemies.
When it comes to first person action games environmental dynamism is fairly important since the realm of possibility here is that you can click the attack button and see what happens. Even back in 1996 Duke Nukem 3D understood this conceptually and allowed you to shoot objects to destroy or move them about, explode weak parts of walls to create passageways, and shoot innocent bystanders. In the phrasing of Roguey, Apogee didn't set out to make a game about murdering strippers, but that the game had to allow them to get shot even if not encouraged was a big part of respecting player agency. The less the environment and objects and entities within it react to the act of shooting, the less it feels like shooting.
It all goes back to Tim Cain's philosophy that if the player wants to do something within the scope of the game, she should be able to to do so, and have that decision respected. The only thing that has changed from his Black Isle days is that scope of the games have considerably shrunk, and even that is no longer fulfilled, giving you IOUs instead. It goes beyond developers showing that they don't care, or incompetency, lack of technical skill, choice of engine, lack of physics. It's much more fundamental than that.
