The Craft of Games: Open World vs. Linear Storytelling

With the dawn of the new century came the dawn of a new console, the Playstation 2. A significant upgrade over its earlier iteration, the system provided developers with the power they needed to develop more involving and expansive games.

Released in 2001, Grand Theft Auto III was the first game to truly harness the power the system had to offer, and create something unique for the time. Leaving behind the 2D boundaries of its earlier brethren, GTA III took the series into 3D, and gave gamers their first true taste of an Open World Sandbox. With the arrival of the new console generation, the idea has been pushed further and further, and more and more classic franchises are taking up the mantle of “Open World Games.” The question is, are Open World Games really the future, or will they forever be hindered by their reduced ability to tell a potent story?

Lately, games like Grand Theft Auto 4 have made a good case for the genre. GTA IV managed to keep players involved in the story, while still allowing them the freedom to run amuck in the giant sandbox that is Liberty City. However, for every gem that is GTA IV, there are thirty of the story-telling turds that are the Crackdowns of the gaming world. Games like this forego story-telling in favor of saying, “Hey, look, I bet that’ll blow up.” It’s this focus on gung-ho gun-play and big explosions, over the finer-arts of story-telling and immersion, that inevitably leaves most open world games feeling disjointed and, ultimately, unfulfilling. Sure, they play out like every player’s favorite power-fantasy, but I like to believe that gaming has, as a form of entertainment, moved past that for the most part.

On the other side of the fence, however, is linear-town, populated by games such as Bioshock, Call of Duty, and Cryostasis. Bioshock told one of the most compelling, chilling, and human stories ever told in a video game. It was a story superior to that of most movies and, more importantly, one that was only possible to tell in video games, due to the sheer depth of the narrative.

Call of Duty 4, on the other hand, was more akin to Michael Bay’s latest blockbuster, populated by over-confident marines and morally-ambiguous special-forces operatives. However, it too took cues from the rules of good story-telling. It was the very arrogance of the marines that led to the deaths of so many, and as the player advanced further along the story-line, he was drawn more and more into the shady world that “Soap” McTavish inhabited, watching as men were beaten and killed without remorse by men he trusted like brothers. The game left players to decide how they would feel about the characters, and pushed the involvement and immersion even further with flashback missions, action-packed set-pieces, and one incredibly effective bit of narrative where the player crawls among the ruins of a destroyed city, dragging his useless legs behind him, and observing the destruction he helped caused.

Both of these are examples of games that used their linear natures to put the players in situations that simply are not possible in an open-world sandbox. The great games manage to overcome the genre’s limitations, but even GTA IV could not achieve the cinematic quality of Call of Duty 4, or the narrative depth of Bioshock. This is not to say there aren’t shallow, mindless games of the linear nature, as Painkiller will attest to, but the amount of open-world games that have managed to create a unified, fluid narrative is disturbingly small.

However, there is also a third group of games, games that straddle the fence-post, unwilling to put both feet in either camp. These are the games like Assassin’s Creed and Prince of Persia, games that dictate what the player’s next task will be, while still allowing them the freedom to move through the story at their own pace. It is possible that this is the track games will take, as Splinter Cell and Alan Wake move in that direction, but until developers find the right balance of open-endedness and linearity, it will be impossible to know.

In the end, the question is one primarily of preference. Do players prefer a game that guides them along a set track, where the developers can craft the experience for them, controlling pacing and narrative exposure, or would they rather have the choice to advance the narrative at their own pace, creating their own pacing.

What Do You Think?

Do you prefer open-playgrounds for your games, or would you rather follow the path laid out by developers?

Is the idea of Open-World Games a passing “fad,” or is it the future of games?

What direction will games move in? Will they move towards being more open, or linear in nature? Or will it be a combination of the two?

Tags: assassin's creed Bioshock Call of duty Grand Theft Auto 4 GTA 4 The Craft of Games