Video Game Action

[thessalian]

theferrett has posted a fairly interesting rant about the unrealistic actions of his Elder Scrolls: Oblivion NPCs. Specifically, he speaks of why this kind of behaviour from video game NPCs and props didn't bother him on the 256-bit systems but gets irritating on modern tech.

Ref: Silent Hill.

Yes, I do love the game. Well, I love watching people play the game (I still haven't picked up my abortive attempt to play Silent Hill 2 myself). But seriously, particularly since I've used that sort of setting in a tabletop RP, I do see theferrett's point; the PC's interactions with the things around him/her are just. Plain. Stupid.

You encounter a door. It will not open. Perhaps you need a key, or perhaps it's just stuck. If you need a key, your PC apparently thinks, "Shit. I'm going to have to go beat the living shit out of monsters to find the key to this door so I can get whatever other stupid thing is in this room that I'm going to need later on." He does not, apparently, think, "Hey, waitaminit. I have a gun. I could just blow the lock out and not have to run around and possibly get eaten to death by monsters while looking for the key." The door's stuck? In replay games, you have a chainsaw. Chainsaws are sucky weapons but work great if you're going to, I don't know, cut through wood. Like doors. Like the one that's currently right in your way.

There's an item that you apparently need stuck in a garbage chute. You can't quite reach it, so apparently the logical thing to do is go find something heavy and chuck it down the garbage chute to force the item down. Never mind the fact that you have a plank with a nail in and a bit of iron pipe, and brute strength (you've been beating monsters to death for the last hour or so) and could probably push that sucker loose. No, you have to go running around the building for a tin of peaches or something, chased all the while by zombie nurses. Hiro Survival Horror Protagonist is deeply, deeply stupid. (Then again, I guess we know that, given that my first reaction to receiving a note from the woman I killed three years ago would be, "Great. My life just became I Know What You Did Last Summer" and not, "Must ... go ... meet ... dead wife...".)

Maria. Dragging Maria along on the monster-dodging adventures. And she does nothing. At least Eileen can be given weapons and fights back a bit. Frankly, were I James, I'd have handed her the iron bar and said, "Look, if anything comes to eat you, use this; you may look like my dead wife and be a fine piece of ass generally, but the ass I save at this point has to be my own, so I'll be ignoring you and shooting at things with the longbore so stay out of my way." That would probably keep her from turning up directly in front of you looking creepy in a flashlight beam. And the whole thing where she's always there waiting in whatever room you just walked into despite the fact that you entered first? Lazy coders. Yes, there's a certain symbolism there, assuming Maria might not be a real person, but the first time she did that, James would be so keyed up by the whole ordeal that he'd just scream, "AHHH! NOT HUMAN!" and shoot her in the face. Good riddance.

I understand that there has to be suspension of disbelief in these things. There are conditions to fulfil before you can reach the next level of the game; otherwise, it'd just be another platform game. But it'd be so nice if you had other options with which to meet those conditions. There are some locks in the game that you can't just shoot; try a few more of those if you desperately need to go looking for keys. Metal doors are probably a little less chainsaw-friendly. And theferrett's right; it totally wouldn't bug me that I couldn't blow that briefcase wide open if it was just a bunch of shitty pixels, or that Maria was following me around if she was just a bunch of shitty pixels. But it's supposed to look creepy and realistic, and it does, and it's bothersome.

Here endeth the rant.

In other news: NEW ROB ZOMBIE ALBUM. Want. Want. Want...

Comments

[fearmeforiampink]

Very much my feeling, as I commented on the post you mention. It's one of the reasons why I'm interested in games like Black where scenery is destroyable. However from what I've heard of Black, it uses that for fun in big combats, not for alternate ways of achieving objectives.

I think the realism issue was one of the reasons Half Life 2 got lots of people going "Wow". Sure you still can't blast through doors, but hey, you can actually pick stuff up!