Benny's Blogs

Linearity has been a big part of games ever since the medium began. It's guided us by the hand through many, many, many titles. Whether you were chasing the right-hand side of your television in Sonic the Hedgehog, being led by the cinematic genius of Hideo Kojima in Metal Gear Solid or scrolling through text in Final Fantasy VIII - the idea of a well designed game taking you through its world put your mind at ease. But now that sandbox games have become more popular than farting, people seem to have forgotten about the benefits that linear stories bring, and subsequently see it as a bad thing.

There's no shortage of games that offer ‘freedom' as there main selling point. Beginning with Grand Theft Auto III, a landslide of games from different genres have tumbled into the sandbox bandwagon, even when it hasn't been necessary. Far Cry 2, Assassin's Creed, Infamous, Wolfenstein (the new one), Brutal Legend, Prototype, Mercenaries, Fable, Saints Row; these are all games that drop you into a world and tell you to have ‘a customised and uniquely fun experience'. There's definitely fun to be had in this kind of gameplay, roaming free and faffing about. The problem however, is that they simply can't compete with the story and pacing of a linear game. I don't want to be driving around from one end of the world to another just to get to my next story point, even if I do get to run people over; people who look suspiciously similar. It all gets really boring really fast. So it makes me wonder why developers try to have a cohesive story on top of it. The player can be outside man-handling windows for hours (see Infamous) only to watch a one minute cutscene and continue man-handling. Admittedly, this is a thing of choice. The player could head straight into the story elements, but that would defeat the purpose of a sandbox game. Tighter stories that want to carry considerable depth should take the linear approach.

My gripe isn't with the sandbox genre though; it's more with the arrogance that people have about them - reviewers in particular. Every so often I'll read a review that will list the game's linearity as one of the negatives. And this happened with Uncharted: Drake's Fortune. Was that not one of Drake's strengths? The ability to play through a tightly woven action game/movie that comprised some interesting personalities and situations. In response, I've decided that such people deserve to have their tongue put through a sowing machine. Final Fantasy XIII was recently accused of the same thing. The game's director, Motomu Toriyama, had to explain why the first half of it was so restrictive, because some were saying ‘it's too linear for an RPG'. I don't believe he needs to explain himself. User-created experiences are expected because if your game has them, it's considered new and innovative. But if it doesn't, people shun the game for being too retro. Non-linearity should be a design choice, not something that's tacked because the developers want to play it safe. Giving the player an open-world is not always the best way to go about things, and in Final Fantasy's case, it certainly isn't. Its going for a character focused narrative, and it can't do that in a map with a 500km radius and super mutants running around getting stuck in the scenery.

So...please, the next time you find yourself playing a game with a never ending corridor, just remember that it beats doing an escort mission.