Lazy thought: Metroid should learn something from BotW

[Sheikah]

5 hours ago, Dcubed said:

The whole point of Metroid is the lock n' key structure.  If you take that away and give the player every ability at the start, why wouldn't you just go straight to the end and ignore the entierty of the rest of the game?

Don't give the player every ability at the start but allow them to go straight to the end boss, with a severe disadvantage. Similar to BoTW.

Let people tackle areas in whatever order they choose, similar to Link Between Worlds and BoTW.

Remove the shooting doors for connected up areas that still have puzzles to solve for various reasons. Think how they removed shifting screens from the new Link's Awakening game.

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If you take away Metroid's basic structure, there's nothing left there anymore.  Metroid IS its lock n' key structure; it's the glue that brings everything together.

Zelda was going from dungeon to dungeon in a set manner, getting the keys and boss keys. And then it wasn't, following release of BoTW.

IMO this is a case where people can't necessarily see how it could be improved and so they are a bit fearful of it. But without these leaps every now and then we wouldn't get some of the best games.

Edited September 24, 2019 by Sheikah

[Happenstance]

23 minutes ago, Sheikah said:

Zelda was going from dungeon to dungeon in a set manner, getting the keys and boss keys. And then it wasn't, following release of BoTW.

Didnt A Link Between Worlds start this?

[Dcubed]

5 hours ago, LazyBoy said:

Before I get into this, I must say I'm enjoying this debate enormously.

Likewise! Am much enjoying this debate!  

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Even if you take that as a truth, which it is not (and again I am for the staggered introduction of mechanics and tools), its does not matter if all the tools are there at the beginning. It only matters if all the mechanics are so simple that you can understand and master them all at the beginning, which - again putting your superb skill with game aside - is unlikely. The environmental systems in BotW are nuanced and ripe for exploitation, but require time with the game to understand. Is a game with  impressive mechanical depth which sets it apart from Assasins Creed which is an open but shallow game.

You have all the tools you need at your disposal at the beginning of a game of chess. Is Chess fundamentally boring?

The mechanics of a game do not merely cover a player's moveset, but rather the entierty of a game's interactivity.  From the environment, to the enemies, to the myriad of puzzles you encounter, to the different forms of level design, to... well, literally everything you interact with and use for interaction!

Plenty of games, even linear ones, give you access to the full playable moveset from the beginning.  Take Super Mario Bros for example, all of Mario's powerups that he'll ever get are right there in world 1-1.  But world 1-1 absolutely does not contain everything that the game has to offer from the outset; it steadily introduces new enemy types, new types of platforms, new obstacles and more challenging level design as the game progresses.  If you could select any level from the outset, you wouldn't be able to have that progression; you'd have to design every level to have a flat difficulty curve, or else you'd just end up frustrating the player by having them accidentally select what would be World 8-3 as their first level and repeatedly die immediately.

And a flat difficulty curve, is uninteresting (so too is a perfectly progressive difficulty curve BTW; Retro Studios purposely designed the Metroid Prime games with unpredictable difficulty spikes in order to make certain parts of their games more memorable and interesting for that very reason).

Game mechanics with no context make for a great toy, but a lowsy game.  Games are made fun by having solid rules and structure that make use of those deep mechanics in interesting and meaningful ways; without that structure? There's nothing to really drive the player to make use of them in any meaningful way.  Great! You can create a floating boat that allows you to fly over mountains; that's fab.  Why would I bother to do that? How is it rewarding in any way apart from a neat video that you get to make and promote yourself/the game on Youtube?

 

Chess, BTW, is a disingenuous example because it is a VS multiplayer game.  Its complexity lies in its player interaction and is different every time you play, even if the mechanics never change.

 

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No its not. In fact not being able to sequence break is fundamentally immersion breaking. Like in RE4 how you couldn't vault a low fence - the moment you experience those kind of restrictions it reminds you you are not in a living world with rules but instead in a corridor decorated by a developer (I love RE4 by the way, nothing against it).

Again, who cares about realism and immersion? What matters is if a game is fun! And I don't think that anyone would say that RE4 was less fun for not being able to jump over any fence or for not being able to climb over every wall/mountain (indeed, the latter example would completely break the game's design and actually strip away its fun factor).

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Again, that breaking a game is fun is my point. I like how you can exploit BotW by running straight for Ganon, and skipping all the content the developers have created for you. I want Metroid to have that, where they have designed a whole world to explore, but if you want to exploit levels and enemy design to get straight to Dark Samus then great!

Great! I want to be able to sequence break in Metroid Prime 4 too; just like how you can in Metroid Zero Mission, Super Metroid and Metroid Prime 1.  NOT like how it works in BOTW though; it would mean sacrificing everything that makes Metroid enjoyable to make that happen.

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Movie and Films are fundamentally different mediums and I'm not going to go into why here. But replaying games - are you telling me you replay games the same way every time? In SMB1, do you make all the same mistakes you made the first time you played it? No, you improve, increase running speed, and go for jumps that you would have first time around. Im only asking that you increase the options on the table.

The same could be said of literally any (non walking simulator/non interactive movie) game.  Same is true of Metroid games too.  Not sure where you're going with this line of argument to be honest... Great games should be infinitely replayable and just as enjoyable on a replay as the first time around.  I can still play SMB or Metroid Zero Mission and enjoy it just as much the 20th time as I did the first.

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Im not in disagreement with you here, balance is of course tantamount, and at no point have I argued in the above post that you have the 'most open game possible'. But the Korok seeds in BotW are not subtracting anything from the game experience, just because there is the possibility that you will miss them entirely. In fact they are adding something because not only is it a puzzle, as expected from any Zelda game, but there is an additional challenge in recognizing that it is a puzzle at all. In going "oh, thats strange", and following your curiosity.

Metroid has this already, in the form of suspiciously cracked walls that when bombed reveal missile expansions. Not necessary, very much structured, but not mandated. Same with bigger upgrades like the wavebeam in Prime. So these elements of choice already exist. So the question becomes how far do you extend that choice? Do you only do it for minor items, or do you expand it out to the entirety of the game? Why would you not?

Comparing the Korok seeds to classic Zelda puzzles is an insult to classic Zelda puzzles.  They're literal throwaway spot-the-difference tasks that (fittingly) reward you with a literal pile of poo.  They are the equivilent of the token Collect 100 Hidden Packages/200 Hidden Pigeons from your average GTA/GTA knockoff game and are there to waste your time; to the point where even the developers make a meta commentary on this typical kind of unsatisfying open-world mechanic in-game when you collect the final seed and are rewarded with a pile of Korok Shite and a fitting message.  Even the game's designers never wanted you to actually collect them all!

 

As you said, Metroid already has a fine structure for rewarding exploration in the form of expansion items.  They already have a great solution, but they require levels to be hand crafted and designed to encourage and reward experimentation with Samus' ever expanding moveset.  They would not work with a fully open world, they would feel empty and meaningless; like finding a stray single coin in a badly made Super Mario Maker level.

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Say someone is teaching me chess. They suggest that I start by playing with each of the pieces individually first, learning their movement and tactical importance. As I progress I start using pieces together, and the opponent does the same, scaling both the strategic complexity bu also the difficulty and thus reward. I learn and enjoy the game in an effort-reward cycle. But what if I have played chess before? Why can't we just go straight into a game of chess? If I lose I can always go back and progress the learning curve. But why force it on me? What is the benefit?

Single player game /= VS multiplayer game.  Two entierly different branches of game design.

Edited September 24, 2019 by Dcubed

[Ronnie]

1 hour ago, Dcubed said:

Comparing the Korok seeds to classic Zelda puzzles is an insult to classic Zelda puzzles.  They're literal throwaway spot-the-difference tasks that (fittingly) reward you with a literal pile of poo.

They reward you with inventory upgrades first off, which were very useful. The devs never meant for you to collect them all but they are there to stumble on from time to time. I collected a couple of hundred of them, and I enjoyed them as a nice little distraction.

[Sheikah]

1 hour ago, Dcubed said:

Game mechanics with no context make for a great toy, but a lowsy game.  Games are made fun by having solid rules and structure that make use of those deep mechanics in interesting and meaningful ways; without that structure? There's nothing to really drive the player to make use of them in any meaningful way.  Great! You can create a floating boat that allows you to fly over mountains; that's fab.  Why would I bother to do that? How is it rewarding in any way apart from a neat video that you get to make and promote yourself/the game on Youtube?

See I think this is where your argument falls flat, at least in the sense of you trying to convince most people of your points. I say this because, contrary to what you said, the vast majority of people actually really loved BoTW, and found it immensely fun. It didn't sell like it did and win all those awards because it wasn't generally perceived as a fun game - and this is a game that didn't adhere to the strict structure of what went before. Stating a game which many people found to be immensely fun, actually wasn't fun, is a bit like telling people who ate a delicious slice of apple pie that actually, it wasn't delicious. It just makes for a very strange post to read. [emoji14]

It's fine that it didn't align with what you personally find to be enjoyable, but in this case I think you have to chalk that up to your own unique personal tastes rather than providing some pseudo-analysis of why it fails. It sounds like you do not like the idea of creative play in doing things like building platforms, rather than this actually being an inherent fault of the game. Many loved the sense of wonder and exploration in the game, and tinkering with the engine purely to answer "what if...", but perhaps you didn't.

I totally get that you are expressing your opinion, but when you bluntly say things like "games are fun by having solid rules" you ignore so many great, creative games that tore up your rulebook and were all the better for it. There have been great games that have observed the rules and great games that haven't. It's not so black and white.

Edited September 24, 2019 by Sheikah

[Glen-i]

Holy crap, that's a lot of posts for someone who can only check here once a day!

Yeah, I can't keep up with this debate. Have fun!

Although I can attest to being a witness of @Dcubed's insane first run of BOTW.

[LazyBoy]

This has been a really interesting discussion, and i think both sides have put up some good points as to why the CotiYTHHE principle (I'm sticking with it) can and can't work. In particular there are two points made by Dcubed that I think are real problem points for that approach.

First is to do with difficulty, and in particular how do you scale difficulty when you give the player so much freedom over what order they approach the game in. In the Elder scrolls series we saw this issue play out in the move from Oblivion to Skyrim, and is an something developers are still trying to solve.

The second one is creating sufficient content - specifically that when you lower of remove barriers to certain parts of your game you lose the ability to control context, and thus face difficulty in deepening the experience. So Korok seeds are representative of the freedom BotW offers, but are a bit shallow and week as puzzles. You compare that to a puzzle you may encounter in Day of the Tentacles, where you need to have processed the entire narrative and understood all the items you have, and you can see the benefit context has on the complexity a puzzle or challenge can possess.

One further point of disagreement I have before I wrap up is this:

On 9/24/2019 at 10:19 PM, Dcubed said:

Again, who cares about realism and immersion? What matters is if a game is fun! And I don't think that anyone would say that RE4 was less fun for not being able to jump over any fence or for not being able to climb over every wall/mountain (indeed, the latter example would completely break the game's design and actually strip away its fun factor).

Now at no point did I user the word realistic, and you should know that I like games to be as abstract and as weird as possible (give me Mario Galaxy's planets over Odyssey's cities every time). I referred to the rules of the game world - as in do the restrictions/freedoms make sense in the context of the game world that the developer has presented to you. Katamari Damacy is not realistic, but it teaches you the realism of its world - namely that if you're big enough you can take it with you. It never betrays this rule, so the game feel fair and the player is free to explore the world/levels within the rules it understands.

This is where BotW excels. Its not perfect, but it does so much right. Take lightening - the game will demonstrate to you at least once in the game (if explored) that equipping metal items will cause you to be struck by lightening. What it will never tell you, and is completely up to the player to discover, is that if a metal sword is being held or is even just need a explosive barrel, the lightening will still strike the sword and blow up the barrel, which can be an incredible gambit against enemies. The player has been taught a rule of the world, but is given the freedom to turn it to their advantage. Quite simply, it makes sense that you would be able to use lightening in that way according to the reality of the world that you have been taught. 

To bring this back to my main point, the open structure demands this kind of rule creation. If this is a Link to the Past style Zelda, then you could still have a puzzle that similarly explores lightening and conductivity. It would probably be in the sky temple or something like that. And because this is a tightly directed game, the game will have probably ensured that you get the 'metal rod' or something like that first before you can solve the puzzle. But in an open structure like BotW you cannot ensure that the player has a metal rod - maybe they skipped that bit. So instead lightening needs to have a universal rule, not a contextual one - it applies regardless of where you are in the game, both in terms of location and progress. And wonderfully BotW manages to have its cake and it eat too - there is a shrine that is unlocked by having it be struck by lightening. But you can attack this puzzle when you want, if you recognize it, and then take those learning and apply them to the rest of the game as you see fit. Player agency at its finest.

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I think I'm spent on this topic, but I have the feeling that I will devise another controversial topic soon. Keep an eye out. 

[Ronnie]

37 minutes ago, LazyBoy said:

I think I'm spent on this topic, but I have the feeling that I will devise another controversial topic soon. Keep an eye out

Hopefully with an equally impressive abbreviation 

[Jonnas]

I've been some time away, so please forgive my late reply... But I do think this is an interesting thread.

I think a lot of good points have already been made regarding world/level design, and how Metroid could shake up the way it's structured. The one thing I didn't see addressed is the fact that Zelda has always strived for an open field, as well as explorable nooks and crannies, so BOTW does feel like a shake up that's in line with what the series has always wanted. By comparison, Metroid has always been labyrinthian and/or claustrophobic to some degree (them Alien inspirations), so the BOTW path is not necessarily an evolution of what Metroid is about. Sure, you can do away with the doors, but you still need those ceilings and cramped labyrinths to oppress you.

(By the way, a door-less Metroid already exists. It's called "Metroid II". It's for the Gameboy. Y'all should play it. The original, not just the remake(s). I'm serious about this, imagine if lava wasn't a thing in that game, and you start to have a picture that what @LazyBoy suggested isn't that unfeasible)

Another point is setting/aesthetic, and how it complements the game's mechanics. For example, BOTW has a scavenger-based economy, most of your equipment is temporary. Link is figuratively (and almost literally) naked, so lack of a set path or significant power-ups makes a degree of sense. Compare to Samus, who's got a suit as part of her base design. How is she to scavenge? Her arm is a gun, it makes no sense for her to steal weapons from enemies. Is she going to have limited ammo? What to do if you run out? Does this planet have oxygen? If you play as Zero Suit Samus most of the time, is it even a proper Metroid? Can any of this be done believably?

I think one could think outside of the box for that. Samus already absorbed power-ups in Metroid Fusion, so they could go one step further and say "Due to her Metroid DNA, Samus has learned how to absorb energy from other creatures". That way, instead of finding Chozo statues in the Nth planet they colonised, you could only use her usual powers (morph ball, screw attack, etc.) to specific enemies: you absorb that enemy, you can use that power a limited amount of times (not unlike Kirby, now that I think of it). Used cleverly, you could create "easy" obstacles ("morph ball" enemy next to a hole), "hard" obstacles (you need morph ball, grapple beam, and double jump to reach a certain ledge, but those enemies aren't nearby) and natural traps (obstacles with a one-way ticket. Like a chasm you can only feasibly cross once). It could even encourage having more bosses that can potentially be defeated more than one way (like Draygon or the Metroid Queen), encouraging experimentation further. None of this is incompatible with the Metroidvania formula, in fact, one could slowly make the world less claustrophobic by unlocking shortcuts, and still have collectibles like health tanks and missile expansions (as long as they're not tied to progression)

Finally, the question of how one would structure the ultimate "goal" of the game can vary. Maybe Samus needs to genocide Metroids again. Maybe it's the four bosses from Super Metroid all over again, except you can kill them on any order. Maybe there are several major objectives to fulfill (find your crashed ship, find the animals, meet the Federation Force, etc.), but you can still face the final boss at any time, which means you'll get endings depending on which objectives you fulfilled (imagine an ending where Samus refuses to explode the planet because she hasn't found her ship yet).

I don't think a Metroid game should be as open-ended as BOTW, but there are ways to make it more freeform without sacrificing the soul of the series. Which reminds me, I should really play Toki Tori 2, I hear that game's super open-ended (basically, it starts you with all the skills/upgrades, but it doesn't tell a first-time player what they are or how to use them. Meaning you could easily rush to the ending on a second playthrough).