So my friend Corvus has started his round table for June and I’m going to chime in on it. Unfortunately it would be too easy to just discuss how great ICO was at character relationships, so I’m going to go in another direction. When a game designer forces a relationship onto the player otherwise known as *drum roll* the poorly designed escort mission.
The escort mission which is primarily seen in action titles (although I’ve seen a few in RTS games) goes as follow. You must protect a person or group of people until an objective is met, sounds easy right? Some times we’re given the suicidal warrior who loves to charge into groups ahead of everyone else. The only positive is that he/she can hold their own in a fight for a short time which is more then I can say about option two.
Next we have the complete weakling who cannot fight at all and their only discernible talent is opening a door and sometimes no talent at all . Some games your required to carry him/her while enemies are tearing into your expose side, other times they just move really slowly towards the goal as you play the role of body guard. Bonus points to game designers when they make the weakling as suicidal as the warrior minus any and all combat prowess. Extra points to designers when the partner can be harmed by your weapons as nothing says “Doh!” more as killing the person while trying to defend them.
Recently in God of War 2 you needed to guide someone to an altar, and after he gets there you need to protect him while he performs some task. The problems arise when you realize that his health does not regenerate meaning any lucky hits before you reach the goal could leave you screwed, and his presence spawns enemies so no going ahead and clearing the path first. Of course this person has no combat abilities whatsoever and I don’t think he even had a name. For those that viewed my entry on the action genre and remember when I talked about God of War 1, yes this already annoying section in 2 features enemies that can spawn new enemies just to make life worse for you Finding a game that did escort missions right is a challenge but there is one that always comes to my mind.
One game did escort missions right (ironic as the entire game was an escort mission) was ICO. A good reason why it worked so well was that combat in ICO was toned down compared to other titles with escort missions. No need to worry about long range attacks or cheap shots, and a lack of any health bars means I don’t have to worry about not having enough health to reach a checkpoint. Also the game does an excellent job of making Yorda (your partner in crime ) more then just a stupid suicidal AI follower as seen in other titles. While your required to guide Yorda across the length of the castle , you can still leave her alone for a period of time before she is automatically snatched by the monsters after her which allows you to go on your own and not worry about her There are a lot of emotional scenes and mannerisms in ICO but I think someone else can do a much better job of talking about them .The game does an admirable job of providing the player with new environments (and at the same time new puzzles) to explore. Sometimes however you need a partner who can do more then just stand there when things go south.
Resident Evil 4 has the player guiding the president’s daughter (Ashley) all across a zombie plagued village. Unlike Yorda she doesn’t really serve a purpose in progression but she does have a few more brain cells. Firing into crowds of zombies is a frantic affair and it’s nice to have a partner smart enough to duck when a shotgun is pointed at her face. The real revolutionary game mechanic is the ability to stash her in a storage chest while the fighting is being done, and then call her out when the coast is clear. I can’t tell you how many games with escort missions I wish would have that feature. Still it’s not perfect, while fighting waves of enemies Ashley will just stand around waiting for someone to snatch her and I love having to use various switches and objects while defending myself and defending her, and all she does is stand there waiting for the work to be done. Now it’s time for doctor Josh to open up the heads of these idiotic partners and take a look in there to figure out a solution.
There are many easy solutions to the problem of bad escort missions, first just stop making them… ok I’ll come up with a few more. Giving me some form of control over my follower is helpful, such as ordering them to run away or head straight for the exit. Next is providing them with some way of avoiding combat, either the RE 4 stash technique or having the AI just avoid enemies while I’m busy. One mechanic that needs to die is the old spawn enemies around the player and AI at certain sections. Recently playing a TBS game called Rondo of Swords gave me an idea. Provide some kind of way of attracting aggro (MMO term for enemy attention) away from the weaker partner and have them focus on me. Another step in the right direction is giving the AI some usefulness by either helping with whatever I’m doing or actively avoiding the enemies. I think another problem with escort missions (or games that copy ICO) is that it’s hard to create original missions and puzzles for escort levels. Every game with an escort mission is obligated to have a puzzle where both characters need to stand on a switch at the same time or pull 2 different levers to open a door, so as designers what can we do?
This is a harder problem to fix, with advances in AI technology perhaps we could move onto games where the AI partner is a worthwhile ally. Smart enough to go on their own to solve puzzles and can still hold up in a fight next to the player. One way of cultivating relationships could be to have the player and AI perform actions together, such as advance combat attacks or having them both perform different tasks together. I just had an idea, the AI could coax the player into an impromptu race through sections of the level for no purpose but to build this sense of friendly competition between them. Imagine for a second a game like the Prince of Persia series where the player is being helped at all times by a partner as smart and agile as him, I think that could produce camaraderie between the player and the partner and provide gamers with challenges above stepping on two switches at the same time.
With next gen technology in place I think the time of the old school escort missions is about finished, I want to deal with intelligent realistic partners that follow me into deadly situations instead of brain dead lack luster idiots who follow me into deadly situations 🙂
Josh
