We began with the latter. These types of games are based on players writing prompts into a command line style screen, such as 'Go east', 'Open cave' etc. Doing so presents the players with a description of their surroundings and the options they have, which may be to travel in a certain direction, inspect elements of their surroundings and attack monsters. We were given a list of games to choose from, i chose to try my hand at the text-based game based on The Hobbit, which came out in 1982. The first notable thing about this game was that it left less to the imagination than other text-based games of around the same time which had no pictures and left literally everything to the players imagination. The next thing i noticed was how difficult it was, you can leave the house, and go through one more screen before being faced with a pair of trolls that eat you if you spend more than one command/input on their screen, at which point you die and have to start all over again. While it was fun once you started figuring things out, the brutality made it hard to get into, and i cant imagine what it must've been like for someone dying nearer the end of the game. On the other hand, it makes completing it that much more of an achievement! (Or an obvious indication that you had too much free time/a walkthrough)
We were then introduced to the 'Choose Your Own Adventure' books, which worked in a similar way to their text-based counterparts, with less of the freedom as the options presented to the player were all pre-defined. Choosing an option in a CYOA book means looking through the book to find the designated passage to see what happens next. We were each given our own book to read through and play, and then after being shown our lecturers own attempt, asked to plot out the progression through our books.
On the left here you can see the book on which my map is based. "The Forest Of Doom" tells the tale of a mighty adventurer who undertakes a quest to find the two missing pieces of a dwarven warhammer in - you guessed it - the 'Forest of Doom'. As you can see there are many many options in the book i chose, and from looking at the lower-left part, you can see just how complex mapping them out can get. On the map you can see some of the passage numbers are circled, these represent the passages i went through during the few times i played through the book.
While the general concencus was that the majority of these books lacked a very impressive story, we all agreed that they were great fun to play. I particularly enjoyed the fact that you could try and fight the very first (and friendly) person you meet, even if it did mean the player got turned into a frog and it meant an end to the game! It seemed to me like a very early example of the freedom open world RPGs can offer. For me it evoked many memories of getting fatigued by playing The Elder Scrolls IV seriously and ending up saving the game where i was before going on a killing spree until i got killed myself or got bored of that!
This session taught me that whilst creating a narrative on its own is a challenge in itself, allowing a certain amount of freedom to the reader increases the challenge by a significant margin. I've been left with a greater appreciation for open world games which allow a HUGE amount of freedom to the player. I've also learnt how some of these challenges are overcome, such as how a branching narrative will often draw the player back to a single part of the main story line.
No comments:
Post a Comment