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Comments
You know, I think I've realized the core problem with Skyward Sword.
The way the directions/axes work mean that there are two ways to play it that might seem obvious, but one of them is basically just wrong and there isn't really any indication that it's wrong beyond the game sucking if you use it.
Expectations of the gameplay may also have something to do with it.
I've heard people say that they expected to control the sword the way they would a regular sword, with the sword following the movement of the controllers, and people that say that they tried to incorporate footwork into their combat and ended up screwing it up.
I went into it expecting to chop things like in the Wii Sports Resort minigame, which I knew it was based on, so I was fine there.
Absolutely, because movement and positioning are critical to good real-time combat systems. Everything from other 3D Zelda titles, Dark Souls, Monster Hunter, Metal Gear Solid, Soul Calibur, Devil May Cry and more use relative positioning and its nature as a swiftly changing entity to add strategy and skillfulness to their combat. It's usually games that lack mobility that fall flat when it comes to real-time combat, like Elder Scrolls games. Relative positioning and the manipulation of such is one of the fundamental elements of both real and virtual combat, and without it, there's a whole dimension of gameplay missing.
Usually, good combat systems that lack a significant element of mobility are turn-based rather than real-time, which pretty much says it all. Turn-based systems are usually about manipulating a group of characters into performing mutually-supportive actions, where the strategy and engagement comes from how well the player can impose synchronicity between them. Single-character, real-time systems benefit hugely from the considerations of elevation, angle of approach, speed, weapon length, weapon speed and all that stuff.
Consider Dark Souls alone, which only has two basic attack types for each weapon, much like a lot of other action RPGs. But where other ARPGs fail is in the use of mobility, whereas Dark Souls demands the use of terrain such as chokepoints, stairs, slopes, cliffs and so on and so forth, as well as encouraging flanking, outreaching your adversaries and imposing staggering effects (which are a consideration of time, and therefore also a consideration of distance). On a superficial level, Elder Scrolls games have all the same elements -- stamina, HP, medieval arms and armour, light attacks, heavy attacks, special shield actions and so on and so forth. The biggest difference in their respective implementations is the element of mobility, the lack of which usually reduces battles in Oblivion or Skyrim to clicking contests and stat comparisons. In Dark Souls, however, the additional mobility afforded by the system means that a wide variety of strategies can be used, and they don't hinge on being more powerful than your adversary to begin with.
Mobility is absolutely key from a gameplay perspective -- and it's more dramatic to boot.
nova
nova nova nova
i don't count as "some people"
Well, I skimmed down and saw Dark Souls. Saw that coming.
Anyway, tl;dring the rest.
Alright, let me put it this way.
Dark Souls has awesome combat. The Elder Scrolls has really bad combat. Both are superficially similar, with the use of stuff like stamina limitations, light and heavy attacks, medieval weaponry and so on. But Dark Souls has a great sense of mobility, and it makes all the difference.
I agree with this, but I would argue that the root problem with TES combat (which leads to several issues, of which lack of movement is one) is the first-person perspective.
I have never seen a first-person game with good melee combat. Mount and Blade it's serviceable, but the game makes absolutely clear that if you want good melee combat, you should use third-person..
The first-person perspective usually does suck for close combat, that much is true. Although I feel the root reason for TES being first-person in the first place might be because the developers didn't understand the importance of mobility. The timeline of TES releases sometimes reads like a comedy of game design errors, after all.
Man, I remember spending five minutes in Dark Souls just circling one of the bosses, trying to get behind him while he was trying to keep me in sight. That sucked.
Anyway, I don't think that mobility is at all the only concern. The Elder Scrolls has bad combat, I will readily acknowledge that. That's not because of the lack of mobility, though; at the most, that is a contributing factor, but it is not the determinate factor.
Mobility provides an aspect of strategic gameplay, and thus engaging gameplay. It is not at all the only factor in it, though.
Something as simple as the attacks along the four axis in Skyward Sword added a level of depth to the combat that was not there in Ocarina of Time, for example. Ocarina of Time did have levels of depth that Skyward Sword lacked; the lack of a breakable shield led to the option of a defensive style of play that was not viable in Skyward Sword, and the option to roll and run around helped.
But then, those features occasionally made the game a lot more annoying. Fighting Lizalfos as a child in Dodongo's Cavern, for instance, was annoying as hell because of the way they could dodge out of the way of your attacks, and fled when you injured them, forcing you to chase them. The werewolf enemies in Ocarina of Time had this really fucking annoying thing where you could only attack them after you countered their attacks with your shield or went to attack you, or else they'd cover their heads and be immune to your sword or backflip away.
Then there's the fight with that... that dude whose name I forget in Skyward Sword, who shoots several darts at you along an axis, and you can either dodge the attack or counter by hitting along the same axis as the attack flies along.
They probably could have done better with making the gameplay strategic, yes. However, I feel that mobility is not the only aspect to it.
Uh... no?
TES is first-person because it helps the player's character feel like the player. It's to do with immersion, not combat.
Alright, I have to admit to being a little annoyed; if you're going to do this, could you not longpost in return, like above? I mean, I get that not everyone wants to read large posts all the time, so I'm fine with people skimming, skipping or just reading the first and last bits, but I feel pretty cheated that you longpost replied to my summary after invoking tl;dr on my proper post.
Anyway, I'll get around to a response to your elaboration shortly.
Yeah, I actually realized that when I posted.
Originally I was just going to say "Mobility is not the only factor in strategic gameplay; directional attacks, the lack of true defensive options, and the like can lead to strategic gameplay in turn, leading to more strategic gameplay in turn, and thus making the gameplay more emergent".
That sounded silly without elaboration, though, so I typed out the four axes and the lack of a breakable shield. Then I realized that even that sounded empty, so I added an example for each (although I still didn't cover how the breakable shield adds to gameplay, but it was already way too long).
And... the rest of it is just me not knowing how to type concisely. Like, all this probably could have been summarized in a sentence somehow.
Gotcha. No hard feelings, then. And response incoming.
Ah, my Draconian finally died.
Though at a full three levels higher than my previous character. So I suppose I'm getting better, especially considering that Elementalists are apparently among the harder characters to play.
Time to roll up a new Dragon-man.
That's another consideration. When your circle, you move around your adversary more quickly the closer you are because you're travelling along the circumference of a smaller circle. So you have to think about whether you want to keep out of distance and allow your enemy to maintain a "lock" on you, or whether you want to risk getting struck for the possibility of flanking them. That's one of the great things about mobility in combat systems; it carries the inherent principle of speed against relative distance and facing, where you (and your adversary) can more easily move around one-another the closer you are.
I disagree with the directional combat adding depth in this case, because the game didn't encourage you to use it to manipulate combat in a sort of emergent system. Instead, it kind of went "Here! Here! An opening! Attack here!" and we had to wait for that to happen. If anything, it made the combat pretty obvious and more of a rote process than anything else.
That's part of the fun, though, from my perspective. If you don't anticipate mobility, then enemies that use it will no doubt break your expectations and provide more of a challenge. The challenge there is to find a solution to their mobility and abilities. As you said, the Wolfos enemies tested your capacity to counter and to apply patience to combat, whereas the Lizardfos and Dinofos enemies tested your capacity to deal with enemies that could relocate quickly. I remember loving fights with the latter two enemies in particular, even as a kid, because they were more mobile and dramatic than almost any other battles in the game.
Certainly, it takes more than mobility to make a good combat system, but from what I can observe, all the best combat-oriented games use mobility to full advantage. It's part of what makes them the best at what they do.
While the first-person perspective is certainly a good choice for immersion, there are also other ways to achieve it. And even if that's why they chose the first-person perspective, I stand by the supposition that Bethesda didn't think very hard or deeply about how it would influence combat.
Ugh, I hated Skyward Sword. Fi was one of the worst parts. I mean goddamn, do people really need that much handholding Nintendo? And fuck motion controls forever. No I didn't swing my arm that way, I swung it the other way! Buttons are much less of a hassle, I swear.
Beat Paper Mario: Sticker Star. Thought I wouldn't enjoy the game, but I did. I'd say it's worse than Thousand Year Door (Then again, that game is really hard to top.), better than Super Paper Mario, and tied with the original Paper Mario.
Bear in mind that when the decision was made, third-person 3D wasn't actually a thing you could do.
> mfw no games use a control stick-based attack angle selector combined with a lock-on system and a pre-strike attack marker showing the direction your attack will travel in before you confirm it, thereby solving all the problems with all multi-directional attack systems.
That's a good point.
I still rather liked Skyward Sword. I didn't really pay much attention to the mobility part of the combat, but I thought it could be better.
I still need to finish it.
Currently, the only combat in the game I can remember off the top of my head is the pig-men with the electrified sword in the desert area of the game. There were two ways you could approach the enemy, here; you could either attack it when it went to attack, as your attack was slightly quicker than its', or you could attack over its guard, keeping in mind the directional axis.
Alternately, you could run away and whip out the slingshot, or one of the game's various other tools which were always handy in combat.
The game treated its combat with each enemy like yet another puzzle. 'How do I defeat this enemy? Which of my tools can overcome this attack, and which of those tools puts me in an advantageous situation in this particular case?' Which, I felt, reflected much of the game quite well; everything was a puzzle, from the puzzles within the dungeon, to the overlands, to combat, even to boss fights. The directional attacks were another tool.
In this case, I guess I am saying that combat was treated more as a puzzle to overcome to progress rather than as an end of its own.
Well... All the best combat-oriented games tend to use everything they have to their full advantage. That's kind of what makes them the best combat-oriented games.
I think it's wrong to refer to Skyward Sword as a 'combat-oriented game' though.
I would be surprised to learn that Bethesda thought anything about their games through.
fuckin... longpost again.
In my defence, it would be much shorter without the quotes.
This is the problem, because if you look at puzzles, they don't have variable solutions. Puzzles are designed to have singular solutions rather than being something that can be solved in a variety of different ways. This is true from traditional puzzles (like using six straight sticks to make four triangles) to the puzzles in Zelda itself, where you often have to work out how to move an object from point A to point B, or where you have to arrange a certain set of objects in the correct placement.
When you engage an enemy that blocks, there's one solution: hit along an axis where their weapon won't intercept. It's sort of like a puzzle, yes, but once you know the solution, you have to repeat this puzzle hundreds of times throughout the game and the solution never changes. Some enemies give you less options for where you can strike, but once you have the principle down, all solutions are very obvious.
So the game continues to throw combat scenarios at you where the solution is mostly set in stone rather than solutions occurring as a natural part of the gameplay mechanics. That's why I suggested those changes a few posts back; with an increased emphasis on mobility, single-time combat and a clear definition of the way cut angles work, the developers could provide a system that leans towards emergence rather than puzzles. In that case, the game would be testing your understanding of an entire system rather than mastery of the principle "strike the axis where your enemy won't intercept".
Zelda games have four primary elements, though:
So combat makes roughly 25% of the experience, at least, meaning that the way the combat system is handled is exceedingly important. Not to mention that the climax of each section of the game, and the game itself, is a boss battle. So while Zelda games in general are less combat-oriented than, say Mount & Blade or Soul Calibur, combat is important enough as an element to necessitate a good system.
That was what I got out of it. It was basically reduced to an extended quicktime, but instead of ABXY it used sketchy motion controls. It wasn't quite as mud-puddle shallow as Other M did it, but it was still like...shot glass.
That's wrong, though. Puzzles are designed to have an end, but there can be multiple ways to achieve that end.
For example, there is a survival horror game out there called Penumbra: Overture.
One of the puzzles in the game is how to get across a lake. The lake is frozen over, but you have to get to the other side to get an item.
There are multiple ways you can do this, and none of them are wrong. You can bunny-hop your way over the ice; you can go along the edge of the lake, where the ice won't break; or you can smash a nearby shed, and use the pieces of its walls as stepping stones across the lake.
Puzzles have only one solution, but there can be many means used to achieve that solution. This is especially true in video games.
It's worth mentioning here that many boss battles are, themselves, puzzles. They have a weak point, and you have to figure out how to exploit that in order to defeat them.
Not all of the boss battles in Zelda follow that, but enough do that it's worth noting.
I think I might have to learn Japanese and get a PS Vita just for this. Good god that's pretty.
VNs count as Vidya, right?
It's not wrong -- it's the actual, technical definition of a puzzle. In fact, it's what separates a puzzle from a game. When solving a puzzle, you act against a set of preset conditions that have a singular, intended solution. Any similar set of obstacles where there is an active force working against you is a game instead, as a game involves a conflict of objectives between at least two parties.
The definition of a solution is something along the lines of a methodology used to solve a problem. If a solution is a methodology meant to solve a problem, then there can't be multiple methods of coming to the same solution, as the solution itself is the method. So any scenario that includes various methods of coming to the same solution doesn't actually involve the same solution at all -- it is, in fact, various solutions.
Consider getting from point A to point B in a game, where point B is on elevated terrain above the position of point A. Here we have our problem -- reach the elevated point B despite the lack of obvious means with which to achieve this. Needing to think about this and construct a solution doesn't make this a puzzle unless there is a single intended solution. It's a puzzle if the environment provides the material to construct a ladder or build a ramp, but it's not a puzzle if the environment provides the material to construct a ladder and build a ramp. When you introduce multiple solutions to the same problem (and thereby multiple methods of success), the experience becomes more and more emergent, more like a mini-game.
This is because puzzles are about reconstructing a sequence of logic, whereas games (and mini-games) are about mastering a consistent system of variable obstacles and solutions. Or, in short, a puzzle is defined by its complete and utter linearity, so a non-linear puzzle is in fact a game. Chess is a game; a pre-set chess scenario where you have to move a specific piece without it being taken, after which you "win" the scenario, is a puzzle.
It depends on how obvious the logic is, which begs the question of how puzzling Zelda bosses actually are when one discovers the formula wherein a dungeon item is usually the boss' weakness. For instance, in Ocarina of Time's Water Temple, you get the longshot. The boss, Amorpha, can only be targeted by its weak point and core, which makes it the obvious target for a system of logic that has become obvious itself, so everything falls into place very quickly. In that case, the boss battle becomes more a test of technical skill with the game's controls and the items in play.
A puzzle has to be puzzling, after all, on top of being a linear problem-solving exercise based on the reconstruction of a logical sequence. The best and most obvious examples would be the boss key puzzles in Skyward Sword, since they satisfy every requirement of a puzzle.
It's actually not. The technical definition of a puzzle is "Something, such as a game, toy, or problem, that requires ingenuity and often persistence in solving or assembling."
No, they're a separate medium entirely. Some things are both, though, like Ace Attorney.
legionnaire you poor bastard what have you done
I played through the first Black Ops over the course of yesterday and today, since I was bored and didn't want to write an essay.
I had a lot of fun, but honestly I always do when I play a CoD game. And I totally saw the twists coming a mile away.
A dictionary definition doesn't suffice here, because a dictionary doesn't comment on the differences between two or more similar things -- such as a toy, puzzle and game, for instance. It's not very helpful when it comes to distinguishing between these things from a perspective of game design, so my definition is drawn from game design sources. And that's how it's used -- in games, a puzzle is understood to have a single solution. That's the way they're designed.
Just because most of them are like that doesn't mean they all have to be.
What I'm saying is that the single solution is very much part of their definition. When you introduce a second solution, a puzzle ceases to be a puzzle, and this is the way puzzles are understood in terms of design.
But...it's not.
There's no reason why a puzzle has to have a single solution, beyond you saying "most of them do, therefore something that doesn't isn't one."