interface

i mentioned it in my last post about heavy rain (which is currently consuming all my love): whatever game i make just to get my toes in the water, this is the kind of interface that i want. ambitious? yeahh. which is probably a bad thing. but i want the controls to be simple, minimalist, intuitive. if it's not immediately obvious, i want text to hover around wherever the player's eyes are focussed at that time.

i played a little browser game which had one button that made your character jump. he ran across building tops, and the game got faster and faster - the goal was to see how long you could run for, jumping at the right moment, before you hit something and died awfully.

what makes this game work? well, you don't need a help screen, really. there is no unknown world, it's all pretty obvious, it's all very basic. the instructions don't even tell you what to do, it's just intuitive - you don't want to fall to your death. when you die, the game restarts quickly; the game starting and finishing itself is fast paced, not just the gameplay.

fahrenheit doesn't have any real instructions. there's an optional introduction thing, introducing you to this new kind of interface, giving you a chance to get used to it before they drop you right in the story. from then on it's all intuitive - i need to hide this body, get rid of the knife, get out of the diner. yeah fine, it's frustrating for some at the start. as a frequent game player it's frustrating to "get things wrong" like trying to leave the diner without paying - something you probably didn't think of before, your mind simply focussed on getting out. it's frustrating enough to stop playing. but once you get over this, and think less on working around the limitations of a video game and more on how you would really react in real life (in trusting that the game will have thought of whatever you can think of), it becomes a real joy.

compared to GTA4, the textbook sandbox game, fahrenheit feels free-er. with GTA you're still thinking in terms of a game limitations; you just assume things without the game telling you. fahrenheit on the other hand, has more limitations, but only lets you think through a narrow tunnel. that narrow tunnel is exactly where the designer's want you to go, you just don't realise it.

i had a point. uh. yes! interface. i want a game where that interface between your character and you is blurred enough that you forget it's there. fahrenheit really tries at this, and once i've got my paws on heavy rain i'll be able to comment on if david cage has fully achieved it yet. at any rate, minimizing the controls between a player and his character has to be the first step in minimizing this distance between them.