IJBM: Sequence in videogames is much harder to break than in the old days

glennmagusharvey

And as a result, while that learning has brought the design now known as "metroidvania" to light, they're also less good at designing truly open-ended games that allow lots of sequence-breaking.

Metroid 1 had the barebones of sequence.  It had almost no sequence enforcement.  Players quite literally designed (or stumbled through) their own sequence.  The design was almost an experiment: Let's make a maze for the players to figure out.  Turned out the players did in fact figure it out but also started contemplating turning this into a speedrunning thing.

Super Metroid had some sequence.  The designers started to understand sequence and design it intentionally.  And I think there are a few intentionally-designed sequence breaks (correct me if I'm wrong).  But the route-planning, sequence-breaking, and getting-around come from the many open areas and the way there's just so much you can do with the controls.  Am I right about this?

But nowadays we have a much clearer conception of what a metroidvania is.  But unfortunately the metroidvania concept acquired a lot more sequence definition than the early games did.  Nowadays it's about using powerups (or other unlocking devices) to enforce sequence, and players who want to sequence-break are increasingly relegated to glitches and highly unintended behavior.

 

Y'know, one of the odd things is that, just a few years ago, I wouldn't have found anything wrong with this.  But then I recently studied the sequence design of Castlevania: Harmony of Dissonance, and I realized just how well it was enforced.  I could skip the first boss (which seemed intentionally possible), and I could muddle my way through the dark hallway in the Sky Walkway to skip another boss, but even something as huge as the Ice Fist Glitch letting me go to the very last area of the game after the halfway point doesn't get me much anywhere.  If I do it right, (1) it only skips a little bit of the game (specifically doing all the block puzzles in the Skeleton Den and having to go there first then backtrack to the Luminous Caverns) and (2) I still need to play a little past the midpoint of the game (at least) in order to make best use of this SB.

I'm starting to realize why Metroid fans were so annoyed at Fusion's sequence enforcement, compared to what they'd been expecting and looking forward to, after a whole decade without Metroid games.

(FYI: Metroid Fusion enforces sequence very tightly.  First, getting weapon upgrades early means nothing because you need to separately unlock the weapon first; this makes sense in the plot but was novel to the series as previously you could get any upgrade and it'd be immediately usable.  Second, sequence unlock stations are enforced in order, meaning that getting to an upgrade (not even an unlock) station early might cause it to instead unlock security level 2 doors rather than give you a ice missiles, something like that.)

Unknown_Entity

Metroid games past the first prime enforce sequence a lot more (3 moreso because separate planets).  Also worth noting, there is this in Fusion. View it as a developer troll to sequence breakers or you just had too much fun with shinespark/ice missiles.

glennmagusharvey

And someone sequence-broke that anyway, at least in one of the versions.

Here's what I've seen:

* Fusion was roundly criticized for being linear and lacking SBing opportunities.  (Gotta acknowledge this despite my praise for its narrative and atmosphere.)

* Zero Mission, on the other hand, was criticized for explicitly catering to SBing fans.

These days, all sorts of metroidvania designers see the genre as something governed by sequence (even if sequence breaking is a thing), rather than something governed by freedom to explore.  Granted, sequence makes it possible to deliver narrative coherently, but is there a more subtle way to do this than clearly broken bridges?  Or was it just the sheer size of Super Metroid that made the numerous broken bridges hard to think of gameplay mechanics?

Maybe Terraria might be a more recent example of a game that has an underlying sequence but doesn't really care very much about enforcement -- you can pretty much do whatever you want, whenever you want, but it's just gonna be annoying and/or tough to accomplish it.  But if you really want to, you can.  Generally.

glennmagusharvey

Come to think of it, La-Mulana also has another "sheer size" phenomenon where there's just so much going on that it no longer becomes obvious even what is required and what is optional, a bit like Super Metroid but on steroids.