For as big of a Metro fan as I've been, I never got to Sam's Story. I was gonna until I learned of the upcoming Stalker release this coming spring. I had to go back and play those first.
It's a great time, if you're a fan. It has some bugs and it starts off slow. The boss fights are lame. Sorry. Once you know the trick it's like beating that first boss of the Zelda game on your 5th playthrough. You know the whole dance routine, so you basically can't lose. I got it on the first fight, and they never got harder. It's not quite a full level and is more linear than ME was overall. Satisfying amount of exploration but it's obvious there's only one main focal point. The actual missions you find yourself on are typical for the game at this point. For someone into the mechanics of this game, they're really enjoyable. I felt right at home. I did enjoy the story and the little world they built. I want more stuff like this. These tight little journeys. Several hour romps with some meat to em.
One thing I will say... and I've been thinking this over for a bit. At some point in ME, Anna points out everyone being on this journey together only to further allude, with this almost spiritual certainty, that everyone will eventually go their own way to their own destinations. If I am media literate at all, this suggests to me that these are stories the creators of this series will try to tell us at some point. It made me think, a game that is say... 5-8 "Sam's Story" style adventures with the different characters would be cool. Most games seem to go for one big story with a couple of side ones. What if the big story was just the premise for an anthology of several smaller ones that would actually be the focal point? Spend personal time with a character, or different characters in different places and try to join it within the otherwise isolated story experiences. Have it still be a 40-60 hour open-world game, but just break it into levels. A little bit like how some shooter campaigns used to be done, but with bigger, less linear levels, and a bit fewer of them. Each one maybe the size of say... a couple classic Halo flood levels or something. Something where you could spend a whole evening on each chunk.
Basically what I'm describing is a play on the open-world concept. Your typical open world has regions that you 'unlock' as you play, right? That's the de-facto way to scale the game with character progression. As you grow, you get to go to the tougher places without getting your shit run up on. And you usually go there by literally going there in the open world. What I'm saying is to forget about the 'going there' part and make each smaller region that would normally be on a shared map, a level all on its own. Focus on packing those tight as fully discreet elements, like fully games with the game. Give me a more focused look at the different parts of this world you are trying to convince me of by giving me a clearer more definitive experience in each part of it. Cut the fat that appears for the sake of having that typical open world and channel a steady stream of substance to the gameplay experience. Might even leave room for detail otherwise taken up by other game elements.
Hell, wanna talk player choice? Choices in one chunk might totally alter another chunk. Maybe determining whether you go back to a chunk later to see it changed by what you did both when you were in it and after, or end up passing it completely for something else. With this basic containment comes a lot more creative control over the experiences. It simplifies things on a technical... or really just mechanical level. I'm thinking of the overworlds of games like Super Mario World or Star Fox 64, but more modern and involved. You can change a lot more and have it be more manageable this way, have that complex plot that wiggles with the player. The player gets freedom/choice, but not enough to hang their own suspension of disbelief and sense of pacing with - it can be a truly interactive world unfolding across something more akin to loose chapters.
I'm just thinking about different angles to the 'everything drawer' problem. Open world games can be like that... just that one box that every kind of thing goes into at once. It needs better compartments, but also can't be too closed-off. Most of them, I would say are more open than they need to be, to the point where they can't even make use of the space meaningfully. At that point, why do it? Because everybody does?
Cowboy Bebop, sorta. Each chunk could be a smaller, tighter experience while technically giving more range with regards to what the whole experience of the game can be. It can be different things at different times and you can still tie each 'block' together thematically. Much easier to write, too. Easier to go all-in on something smaller in scope, right? Glueing smaller cores together seemed to work out okay in microprocessor technology, yanno?
I think this would actually work better than what a lot of open world games now try to do to accommodate for the stories they wanna tell in those games... y'know all of the stuff that frequently leaves people these days wondering where the genre is even going, or why these games are becoming less engaging. It goes back to conversations a few of us have had here many times before. It's the age old problem of how to get a coherent story with definitive characters in a big open world with a ton of different gameplay elements and heavy emphasis on player freedom/choice. How it is not yet obvious to people how incompatible these things tend to be kind of surprises me sometimes.
I dunno. Just a thought that always hits me when I play DLC's like this one.
I'm still waiting for the tide!
