Wherein travelling inevitably leads to thinking about Zelda, the nature of game linearity and unskippable passive sequences in games.
Five men in their late 20s are heading south on route 80 through New Jersey in a white Dodge Caravan. They listen to loud music and discuss plans for the weekend ahead of them. Before too long, they pass signs for a town called Hibernia. As they are a group raised on far, far too many videogames, the fanciful name of what is likely a small, simple town full of good, honest folk quickly transforms it into a land of adventure, intrigue and obnoxious obligation.
“Ho stranger! You have stopped for gasoline in Hibernia? I would love to give you some, but first you must travel beyond the woods and acquire a ruffled dragoon feather. I need them to make gasoline!”
“Hey! Hey! Have you tried pressing Z to look at signs? Press A to read signs! Hey!”
“You must equip a sword and a shield before you can leave the car. Who would leave the car without a sword and a shield?”
Yes, even something as an innocuous as a roadtrip leads to making fun of Zelda, and by proxy, every other videogame that makes you engage in a string of needless bullshit before letting you actually play. After we got the jokes out of our systems, we did start talking about how, when the itch arises, we all love going back and replaying past Zeldas, but have almost no desire to replay any of the 3D games any time soon. Everyone in the van has affection for Ocarina and Wind Waker – Opinions on Majora’s Mask vary. Personally, I find it to be a freaking chore to play, no matter how creative. Twilight Princess, we agreed, feels like actually doing chores when you play it. – but the prospect of wading through a never ending stream of unskippable conversations makes returning to these games unsavory. The constant handholding is bad enough, even without taking five minutes to listen to some owl made of triangles rant about a mountain, finally getting through the diatribe, and accidentally asking him to repeat himself.
The conversation was oddly prescient. I started playing the DS remake of Final Fantasy IV for the first time shortly after everyone settled into the drive. I enjoyed the Final Fantasy III remake two years back, and was ready to see what IV had to offer. After the ever-familiar Red Wings assault on Mysidia, Cecil’s sad departure from Baron, his introduction to Rydia and sad exile, I noticed that the shift from Final Fantasy III to IV was significant. Between 1990 and 1991, Hirnobu Sakaguchi made two RPGs, one that offered a great deal of exploratory freedom at the game’s outset and then another that led the player largely by the nose throughout its initial hours. Final Fantasy IV, in any of its incarnations, is nowhere near as coddling as Ocarina of Time, but it is representative of games, specifically adventure and role-playing games, becoming increasingly linear following the 8-bit era. What caused the shift? Why did adventure in games start to become as directed as it is in the mediums that inspired it?
Yesterday, on our return trip, we passed by Hibernia a second time and chuckled again. It occurred to me that the trip made a good model for adventure design. We couldn’t avoid passing Hibernia. It was inevitable that our route would bring us past it multiple times. But we didn’t know it ahead of time, we were left to find it on our own. Shouldn’t every adventure be that way?
Related links:
Whatcha Playing: Tale of Symphonia: Dawn of the New World
Whatcha Playing: The Palette Cleanser
Whatcha Playing: de Blob
Whatcha Playing: Weight of the Stone
Know Your Final Fantasy IV Trivia. It Could Save Your Life.
Gaming on a Train: Final Fantasy IV