Outside, Dungeon, Town: Integrating the Three Places in Videogames (2024)
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Re: Outside, Dungeon, Town: Integrating the Three Places in Videogames (2024)
#2Town, outside, and dungeon represent decreasing levels of safety. In most games, players want a clear indication of how much danger they are in just walking around. Some games, like Dark Souls, do blur these lines. I think it would be easy to go overboard.
This strikes me as one of those things that sounds better on paper than in practice.
Re: Outside, Dungeon, Town: Integrating the Three Places in Videogames (2024)
#3Town, outside, and dungeon represent decreasing levels of safety. In most games, players want a clear indication of how much danger they are in just walking around. Some games, like Dark Souls, do blur these lines. I think it would be easy to go overboard. This strikes me as one of those things that sounds better on paper than in practice.
I think Dark Souls is not a fluke, it shows that when executed well (which very may be hard), it is additive. It makes things feel more organic.
From article : "Maybe one cave system has a place where it connects to a dungeon, which connects also to a basement in some guy’s house in the middle of nowhere."
This just sounds better than having the black and white delineations between spaces. Yes!
Re: Outside, Dungeon, Town: Integrating the Three Places in Videogames (2024)
#4I believe the grand vision for Tarkov was for basically the whole world to be outside/dungeon. Kinda sad they didn't have the technical skill to pull off open world. That would have been an interesting gaming experience.
Re: Outside, Dungeon, Town: Integrating the Three Places in Videogames (2024)
#5Town, outside, and dungeon represent decreasing levels of safety. In most games, players want a clear indication of how much danger they are in just walking around. Some games, like Dark Souls, do blur these lines. I think it would be easy to go overboard. This strikes me as one of those things that sounds better on paper than in practice.
I think Dark Souls is not a fluke, it shows that when executed well (which very may be hard), it is additive. It makes things feel more organic. From article : "Maybe one cave system has a place where it connects to a dungeon, which connects also to a basement in some guy’s house in the middle of nowhere." This just sounds better than having the black and white delineations between spaces. Yes!
> Maybe one cave system has a place where it connects to a dungeon, which connects also to a basement in some guy’s house in the middle of nowhere
To an extent, tears of the kingdom really does do this a few places, but not enough. It really is fun finding new holes into the underworld from a cave, and using the caves to get into the shed in that one village or to the tower etc
Re: Outside, Dungeon, Town: Integrating the Three Places in Videogames (2024)
#6I want events to occur while I'm down in the dungeon. Maybe a neighboring village got attacked and now it's in ashes and down trodden. Maybe a castle is being besieged. I want a "play your own adventure" where the story just kind of happens. No main plot other than maybe certain events happening at a specific time. Games today are too linear. Even "open world" games. They zone it out so there's a progression, go to this area to xp, then go to this area, then this area.
For once I would like a Skyrim experience but where you're given free roam to unfold the story as you see fit. Crafting your unique story in the process.
I also don't think games should cater to safety or make towns "safe" from other players. I think the games should allow crime but also have punishment for it if caught by the NPC police or Players. Some of my best memories are from a public execution of a murderer on Ultima Online back in 1999. We had like 100 people gather (on a server that supported maybe 2000 tops).
Re: Outside, Dungeon, Town: Integrating the Three Places in Videogames (2024)
#7Town, outside, and dungeon represent decreasing levels of safety. In most games, players want a clear indication of how much danger they are in just walking around. Some games, like Dark Souls, do blur these lines. I think it would be easy to go overboard. This strikes me as one of those things that sounds better on paper than in practice.
Safety can come from control over the world though. Consider Minecraft and Terraria (especially older MC), where monsters can spawn in most areas outside some minimum radius from the player. Neither is particularly "scary" because they give the player straightforward ways to control the situation. In fact, monster spawning leads to a lot of emergent gameplay in them.
Re: Outside, Dungeon, Town: Integrating the Three Places in Videogames (2024)
#8I want events to occur while I'm down in the dungeon. Maybe a neighboring village got attacked and now it's in ashes and down trodden. Maybe a castle is being besieged. I want a "play your own adventure" where the story just kind of happens. No main plot other than maybe certain events happening at a specific time. Games today are too linear. Even "open world" games. They zone it out so there's a progression, go to t…
You might want to check out "Depth of Peril".
kind of a cluncky diablo 1 like game. I liked it because of that dynamism.
Graphics and gameplay are now dated, but if you talk fondly about ultima, you might enjoy it.
Re: Outside, Dungeon, Town: Integrating the Three Places in Videogames (2024)
#9I want events to occur while I'm down in the dungeon. Maybe a neighboring village got attacked and now it's in ashes and down trodden. Maybe a castle is being besieged. I want a "play your own adventure" where the story just kind of happens. No main plot other than maybe certain events happening at a specific time. Games today are too linear. Even "open world" games. They zone it out so there's a progression, go to t…
I haven’t played it, but my understanding is that Kingdom Come Deliverance 2 works this way. Meet a person who tells you something’s happening tonight, and you better get there tonight if you want to see/do it. Maybe someone who’s played the game can chime in.
Re: Outside, Dungeon, Town: Integrating the Three Places in Videogames (2024)
#10I'm surprised the Elder Scrolls and Fallout games aren't mentioned at all here. They're pretty well known for not always having these boundaries, sometimes very effectively (getting ambushed in town in Oblivion by a secret cultist) and sometimes comically (like some of the nonsense that happens with raiders and settlements in Fallout 4).