OK, in the spirit of 2016 the final post for the year - which is why this is up now rather than Sunday - will be a review of zombie apocalypse title Telltale Games' The Walking Dead Season 3, aka A New Frontier. This title is available on current generation consoles and PC as well as iPad; I played the iPad version of episodes one and two. Spoilers, especially for The Walking Dead Season Two, so bear that in mind in three, two, one ...
Meh.
Telltale creates brilliant plots. You forgive its on-rails story beats because the characters and situations are interesting and the story's good. However Telltale has gone to the well once too often with Season Three, and no matter how good the story is veterans of the title will feel cheated.
Bear in mind: I loved Telltale's previous efforts. Like everyone else I fell in a big way for Clementine and Lee in Season One. When Clementine became the main character in Season Two I was on board, and enjoyed it from start to finish. However that was because in Season Two the story branched off; your decisions really mattered, because your decisions determined where Clementine would end up.
At the end of the last Season I went with Jane and ended up in Carver's old base. I could have gone to Wellington to live with other survivors, or gone with Kenny, or struck out on my own. This was a huge difference from Season One, where no matter what I did everyone's fates were set in stone and my decisions changed nothing.
Except my decisions in Season Two really changed nothing, because at the beginning of Season Three no matter what I decided Clementine's story is reset to zero again. No Kenny, no Jane, and no matter where I thought I left Clementine she's not there any more. Moreover there's no chance of either Kenny or Jane coming back in future episodes. All the work I put into Clementine's story counts for nothing.
Now she's second fiddle again, this time to series newcomer Javier, or Javi, a former pro baseball player who got booted for cheating and has deep-seated family issues. The story starts with Javi guiding part of his extended family away from the developing zombie madness, while his older brother David takes their bitten mother to the hospital. So far so Walking Dead, and to the game's credit Javi and his family are interesting, developed characters with distinct voices and personalities.
Frankly, if the game had concentrated on them and left Clementine out of it, I'd have enjoyed it more than I did. But Clementine's become an icon of the series now, not unlike Rick in The Walking Dead comic book and TV show, so nothing in Telltale's drama can happen unless Clementine is involved.
Her plot role is blurry. In the first Season, as Lee, you guided and protected Clementine, and she became the moral center of the story. In the second Season Clementine grew up and began taking charge of her own life, assuming a leadership role. In the third Season you don't really know if she's some kind of mentor to Javi, a millstone around his neck, or something else. Is Javi supposed to be another Lee? Is this a partnership of equals? Is she just here because Telltale couldn't write this thing without her?
Season Three reminds me, now I think on it, of 400 Days, the filler episode between Season One and Season Two. I wasn't expecting much from 400 Days, and I didn't get much. It was bite sized entertainment. Great storytelling - again, telling the tale is not Telltale's problem - but zero impact on the ongoing plot. You might or might not rescue X, Y or Z, and that means X, Y or Z might or might not show up for a very brief cameo moment in Season Two. In that cameo moment the character delivers one or two lines. Then the character vanishes, never to be seen again. Presumably they get eaten. Who knows? Who cares?
Mechanically this is the Telltale you remember, with the usual screen pokes and swipes to get you from A to B. If you've never played one of these before the system is so simple anyone can pick it up. If you're a series regular there's nothing new here.
Graphically I think iPad users were cheated. The resolution's not nearly as good as other platforms. Example: early on in the first episode Jane gives Clementine a small tattoo on her hand. I had no idea what that thing was. At first I thought Clem'd been bitten. It was only after I saw the same sequence in a YouTube video that I realized it was a tattoo. This isn't a huge problem, but it is annoying.
Sound effects are sparse. Big moments have their big bangs and zombie groans, but frequently the protagonists are moving through areas where there ought to be background noises - birds, wind in the trees - and it's just silent. The music's decent, but no standout moments so far.
Will I keep playing?
Ehhhhh ...
I'm not buying into the season pack deal, that's for certain. I might pick up the other episodes if they go on sale in a year's time. But I can't help thinking that no matter what I do, what I decide, this video game doesn't want me involved. My decisions don't matter. My input's irrelevant.
It's like a work meeting. You're expected to attend, perhaps even encouraged to contribute. But this is the kind of workplace that doesn't want to hear your ideas. Management has already decided what's going to happen. You're just window dressing in someone else's pretty picture.
Pass.
Showing posts with label Telltale Games. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Telltale Games. Show all posts
Monday, 26 December 2016
Sunday, 25 September 2016
Not Quite Review Corner: Batman (Telltale, iPad)
Batman took off as a video game property back in 2009, with the release of Batman: Arkham Asylum. There had been Batman games before, but no company before Rocksteady succeeded so thoroughly in making the player feel like the Dark Knight, in an adventure exactly like one of the Caped Crusader's grimmer tales. Not quite Alan Moore, but a passable Alan Grant. It spawned a succession of solid sequels, most of which - even the bad ones - were well received commercially.
Back in 2012 Telltale Games, a company that made a decent living but no significant reputation with episodic adventure games, confounded all expectations with The Walking Dead, an adaptation of the comic series by Robert Kirkman. Like Arkham Asylum, The Walking Dead shot to everybody's Top Ten or Game of the Year lists on release. It also spawned a ton of sequels, most of which were solidly put together even when they didn't match the emotional pull of the first game. Since then Telltale parlayed its newfound glory into a string of impressive hits, not least of which was The Wolf Among Us, an adaptation of a hit DC Vertigo series, Fables.
It was only a matter of time before Telltale gave Batman the episodic game treatment, and once it did it was bound to come out for iPad just as its other titles have. It just did, and these last few days I've been giving the first episode, Realm of Shadows, a shot on my iPad Air.
There are two questions to answer here:
Does it work as a Batman title?
Does it work as an iPad game?
The short answers are Not Entirely, and Absolutely Not.
As a Batman title it flows well. It suffers from Too Many Characters syndrome, probably because it's trying to pump as much Batman cred as it can in a short play time. I finished the title in a little under two hours, in which time we met Harvey Dent aka Two Face - before his unfortunate accident - the Penguin, Catwoman, Carmine Falcone, Detective (not yet Commissioner) Gordon, Vicky Vale, and probably Scarecrow, though that last awaits confirmation. Fewer references would have made for a better plot. But there's a decent balance between action and thoughtful crime-solving, and it really benefits from focusing on Bruce Wayne rather than his caped alter ego.
As a brief aside: it's a mature title, but all that really means is occasionally Selina Kyle says 'shit.' Because maturity is all about the swearwords.
That said, the big problem is that if you know the series at all, any tension is immediately lost. Telltale has a habit of making you feel as though every choice you make in-game is important - even though it often isn't so - yet knowing who these people are and what happens to them robs all the decisions of any impact. You know that Harvey Dent will become Two Face, so you don't care whether or not you make nice with him; whatever you do he's still going to get his face melted and become a villain. Equally you know it doesn't matter whether you choose to help Commissioner Gordon or Vicky Vale, since both of them will be your ally. There's no chance that Gordon or Vale will turn on you, and it won't matter too much if you upset one by helping the other.
Spoiler territory: the best example of this is the Wayne problem. In the first episode it's revealed that Thomas and Martha Wayne may have been in cahoots with the crime bosses that run Gotham, Falcone in particular. As a plot twist it seems powerful: Batman gets his whole motivation, and the money he needs to fight crime, from his parents, and if they turn out to have feet of bloodstained clay then the whole thing's upended. But you know full well Telltale will never stick to that, and even if it was tempted DC would pull the plug. No; the Waynes will turn out to be the sainted martyrs they've always been. My money's on the Wayne Corporation executive who turns up briefly at the Dent fundraiser, and later at the Arkham Asylum ceremony.
Personally as far as long-term plot goes I predict something like this: Penguin set Falcone up for the fall, using Catwoman to do it. Either Penguin or Falcone brought Scarecrow on board - hence the peculiar psycho gas that turns up in the crime scene - for reasons as yet unknown, but probably unpleasant. Penguin seems to be the long-term opponent, but things could change.
Moreover there are very few opportunities to be Batman. There are moments when you leap into action, but the game's rigged so that you never really fail. In only one instance does a bad button press result in Game Over; usually it just means you're not quite as cool as the real thing. Telltale's strength is in emotional strife, not combat, and it shows.
Which is why it doesn't work as an iPad game either.
The iPad touchscreen controls just aren't precise enough to make for a really compelling combat sim. More often than not the button prompt will come up for the quicktime event, you'll stab the screen like a chimp on a caffeine high, and your response will be off or mistimed or whatever it may be. End result: just not as cool as the real thing, just not as cool as the real thing, just not as cool as the real thing. Again and again and again. I don't doubt this worked like magic on consoles, but the iPad doesn't respond well to the chimp stab treatment.
Dishearteningly, it doesn't matter what you do. You'll still win. Granted you'll feel like an idiot and the little Bat-meter at the bottom of the screen, which does nothing except shatter your ego, will not fill up. But you'll still win. For a game all about power wish fulfillment, it robs you of power while at the same time fulfilling no wishes.
Is it worth getting? Ehhh ... if you're a Batman completest, sure. If you're just looking for some iPad fun, pass. I'd recommend The Walking Dead or The Wolf Among Us over this any day of the week.
See you next Sunday!
Back in 2012 Telltale Games, a company that made a decent living but no significant reputation with episodic adventure games, confounded all expectations with The Walking Dead, an adaptation of the comic series by Robert Kirkman. Like Arkham Asylum, The Walking Dead shot to everybody's Top Ten or Game of the Year lists on release. It also spawned a ton of sequels, most of which were solidly put together even when they didn't match the emotional pull of the first game. Since then Telltale parlayed its newfound glory into a string of impressive hits, not least of which was The Wolf Among Us, an adaptation of a hit DC Vertigo series, Fables.
It was only a matter of time before Telltale gave Batman the episodic game treatment, and once it did it was bound to come out for iPad just as its other titles have. It just did, and these last few days I've been giving the first episode, Realm of Shadows, a shot on my iPad Air.
There are two questions to answer here:
Does it work as a Batman title?
Does it work as an iPad game?
The short answers are Not Entirely, and Absolutely Not.
As a Batman title it flows well. It suffers from Too Many Characters syndrome, probably because it's trying to pump as much Batman cred as it can in a short play time. I finished the title in a little under two hours, in which time we met Harvey Dent aka Two Face - before his unfortunate accident - the Penguin, Catwoman, Carmine Falcone, Detective (not yet Commissioner) Gordon, Vicky Vale, and probably Scarecrow, though that last awaits confirmation. Fewer references would have made for a better plot. But there's a decent balance between action and thoughtful crime-solving, and it really benefits from focusing on Bruce Wayne rather than his caped alter ego.
As a brief aside: it's a mature title, but all that really means is occasionally Selina Kyle says 'shit.' Because maturity is all about the swearwords.
That said, the big problem is that if you know the series at all, any tension is immediately lost. Telltale has a habit of making you feel as though every choice you make in-game is important - even though it often isn't so - yet knowing who these people are and what happens to them robs all the decisions of any impact. You know that Harvey Dent will become Two Face, so you don't care whether or not you make nice with him; whatever you do he's still going to get his face melted and become a villain. Equally you know it doesn't matter whether you choose to help Commissioner Gordon or Vicky Vale, since both of them will be your ally. There's no chance that Gordon or Vale will turn on you, and it won't matter too much if you upset one by helping the other.
Spoiler territory: the best example of this is the Wayne problem. In the first episode it's revealed that Thomas and Martha Wayne may have been in cahoots with the crime bosses that run Gotham, Falcone in particular. As a plot twist it seems powerful: Batman gets his whole motivation, and the money he needs to fight crime, from his parents, and if they turn out to have feet of bloodstained clay then the whole thing's upended. But you know full well Telltale will never stick to that, and even if it was tempted DC would pull the plug. No; the Waynes will turn out to be the sainted martyrs they've always been. My money's on the Wayne Corporation executive who turns up briefly at the Dent fundraiser, and later at the Arkham Asylum ceremony.
Personally as far as long-term plot goes I predict something like this: Penguin set Falcone up for the fall, using Catwoman to do it. Either Penguin or Falcone brought Scarecrow on board - hence the peculiar psycho gas that turns up in the crime scene - for reasons as yet unknown, but probably unpleasant. Penguin seems to be the long-term opponent, but things could change.
Moreover there are very few opportunities to be Batman. There are moments when you leap into action, but the game's rigged so that you never really fail. In only one instance does a bad button press result in Game Over; usually it just means you're not quite as cool as the real thing. Telltale's strength is in emotional strife, not combat, and it shows.
Which is why it doesn't work as an iPad game either.
The iPad touchscreen controls just aren't precise enough to make for a really compelling combat sim. More often than not the button prompt will come up for the quicktime event, you'll stab the screen like a chimp on a caffeine high, and your response will be off or mistimed or whatever it may be. End result: just not as cool as the real thing, just not as cool as the real thing, just not as cool as the real thing. Again and again and again. I don't doubt this worked like magic on consoles, but the iPad doesn't respond well to the chimp stab treatment.
Dishearteningly, it doesn't matter what you do. You'll still win. Granted you'll feel like an idiot and the little Bat-meter at the bottom of the screen, which does nothing except shatter your ego, will not fill up. But you'll still win. For a game all about power wish fulfillment, it robs you of power while at the same time fulfilling no wishes.
Is it worth getting? Ehhh ... if you're a Batman completest, sure. If you're just looking for some iPad fun, pass. I'd recommend The Walking Dead or The Wolf Among Us over this any day of the week.
See you next Sunday!
Thursday, 26 December 2013
Not Quite Review Corner: Telltale's Walking Dead, Season 2
This is going to be as spoiler free as I can make it. This title has been released on PC, console and iTunes; I played the iTunes version.
Telltale Games' point-and-click Walking Dead series came out of nowhere a few years back and stole gamers' hearts, the world over. A large part of that is thanks to series mainstay Clementine, the young girl that main character Lee adopts and tries to protect, in a journey across the zombie-infested South. After the first series ended, Telltale released 400 Days, a not-quite-standalone adventure with different characters, but what everyone wanted was a return to the main story. Now, in the second series, we get our wish, and Clementine is in the starring role. The opening episode of this five part series is All That Remains.
To get the boring bits out of the way first, let's talk mechanics. Anyone who played the first season will have little problem here. There have been some minor improvements but, broadly speaking, the game's QTE sequences and puzzle solving are unchanged. Swipe the screen thus to avoid a zombie, click and swipe to complete an event, combine the right puzzle objects in the right order, and so on. Most of the time it works, and when it doesn't it's easy to go back a step and try again. I did notice an annoying crash bug early on, and it took over half a dozen log-on attempts to start the game. I attribute this to wireless internet signal strength; if I went into a room where the strength was 3 bar, no problem. If it was 2 bar, it crashed on start up. However once the game began, it could cope with a 2 bar signal.
Story is where this series shines. Again, I shall try my best to avoid spoilers here. You start the game a few months after the conclusion of the previous series, and Clementine seems to be in safe hands. This brief moment of comfort soon vanishes, and Clem has to struggle through without a safety net. In fact, one of the two highlight moments of the first episode happens in the first few minutes; I don't even think the credits had finished rolling.
The second highlight moment, at least for me, takes place about half-way through. I shall say no more than that.
Story structure branches off at several pre-determined points in the narrative, and this is Telltale's big selling point: choices matter. All the decisions you made up to now, in Season 1 and 400 Days, factor into Season 2, for instance; though if you haven't played those games, Telltale can invent a backstory for you. All future decisions count, shaping the story towards whatever nebulous conclusion awaits in the final episode, No Going Back. While intriguing, one of the chief complaints aimed at the series so far is that decisions don't seem to matter as much as Telltale would have you believe.The opening episode of Season 2 does little to allay those suspicions. If anything, from a story structure perspective the Telltale team played it very safe; there's little to differentiate it from Season 1's opening episode, A New Day.
That might be for the best. Series veterans may prefer a little change, but an opening episode is as much for the new players as it is the old lags. Newbies need a little tender loving care, if they're to keep on playing. Here's hoping things will get more complex, as the series develops.
I'd recommend this entire series to anyone who likes horror, and good storytelling. I find the iPad version ($4.99 on iTunes) particularly handy, despite some of the annoying start-up quirks. The QTEs are much less tedious to deal with; somehow the process makes more sense with a touchscreen.
Enjoy!
Telltale Games' point-and-click Walking Dead series came out of nowhere a few years back and stole gamers' hearts, the world over. A large part of that is thanks to series mainstay Clementine, the young girl that main character Lee adopts and tries to protect, in a journey across the zombie-infested South. After the first series ended, Telltale released 400 Days, a not-quite-standalone adventure with different characters, but what everyone wanted was a return to the main story. Now, in the second series, we get our wish, and Clementine is in the starring role. The opening episode of this five part series is All That Remains.
To get the boring bits out of the way first, let's talk mechanics. Anyone who played the first season will have little problem here. There have been some minor improvements but, broadly speaking, the game's QTE sequences and puzzle solving are unchanged. Swipe the screen thus to avoid a zombie, click and swipe to complete an event, combine the right puzzle objects in the right order, and so on. Most of the time it works, and when it doesn't it's easy to go back a step and try again. I did notice an annoying crash bug early on, and it took over half a dozen log-on attempts to start the game. I attribute this to wireless internet signal strength; if I went into a room where the strength was 3 bar, no problem. If it was 2 bar, it crashed on start up. However once the game began, it could cope with a 2 bar signal.
Story is where this series shines. Again, I shall try my best to avoid spoilers here. You start the game a few months after the conclusion of the previous series, and Clementine seems to be in safe hands. This brief moment of comfort soon vanishes, and Clem has to struggle through without a safety net. In fact, one of the two highlight moments of the first episode happens in the first few minutes; I don't even think the credits had finished rolling.
The second highlight moment, at least for me, takes place about half-way through. I shall say no more than that.
Story structure branches off at several pre-determined points in the narrative, and this is Telltale's big selling point: choices matter. All the decisions you made up to now, in Season 1 and 400 Days, factor into Season 2, for instance; though if you haven't played those games, Telltale can invent a backstory for you. All future decisions count, shaping the story towards whatever nebulous conclusion awaits in the final episode, No Going Back. While intriguing, one of the chief complaints aimed at the series so far is that decisions don't seem to matter as much as Telltale would have you believe.The opening episode of Season 2 does little to allay those suspicions. If anything, from a story structure perspective the Telltale team played it very safe; there's little to differentiate it from Season 1's opening episode, A New Day.
That might be for the best. Series veterans may prefer a little change, but an opening episode is as much for the new players as it is the old lags. Newbies need a little tender loving care, if they're to keep on playing. Here's hoping things will get more complex, as the series develops.
I'd recommend this entire series to anyone who likes horror, and good storytelling. I find the iPad version ($4.99 on iTunes) particularly handy, despite some of the annoying start-up quirks. The QTEs are much less tedious to deal with; somehow the process makes more sense with a touchscreen.
Enjoy!
Sunday, 11 November 2012
Between Two Points
Linearity in scenario design is meant to be one of the bigger no-nos. I can see why. Player participation is key, and if the players don't feel that they have a role to play then any interest they may have had in the adventure quickly dies. This is a problem that affects not just tabletop but also video game design; this week's Zero Punctuation takes Medal of Honor; Warfighter to task for, among other things, carefully scripting the game so that player input is almost nil.
Scenario playtest feedback for my work often contains the complaint, "feels too linear". I particularly liked one report for a short piece due to appear in print soon, that started with the feels-too-linear statement only to say, once the players had become involved, that it didn't shake out in a linear fashion at all. In fact, the players floundered around a bit before finally working their way to the McGuffin; according to the report some of them liked the sensation of not being in control, while others said they could have used more pointers.
I'm not going to downplay linearity. It's definitely a script problem, and it gets all the worse in an environment like a video game, where the player literally cannot escape the boundaries of the plot, whether because invisible walls are blocking off all escape routes or for some other in-game reason. However I don't think it's as much of a issue as people seem to think, particularly in tabletop, and this is why:
Players are kittens.
I mean that. Anyone who's ever actually dealt with a kitten knows that they can be psychotic one minute, biting the hand that feeds it, and docile the next. Kittens wander off into any kind of disaster, wide-eyed and innocent, because they don't see any boundaries even if boundaries are there. They'll cheerfully walk off a table edge, given half a chance; but there's just as much likelihood that they'll find someplace they like the look of and put their heads down for a nap. Kittens do as they please ... and so do players.
The Keeper, knowing this, has to structure the scenario environment to withstand sudden flights of player fancy. The basic premise has to be strong, and supported by useful scenes that support the basic premise. That's the only way to prevent accidents. You wouldn't leave a kitten unattended on a table; why leave players without a safety net?
Say for the sake of discussion the scenario revolves around a murder, a good old-fashioned locked-room body-in-the-library situation. Once the body is discovered, there are certain things it is reasonable for the players, as the detective heroes of the hour, to do. They will want to inspect the body, the room, and the lock. They will want to talk to anyone who might have known the victim, or anyone else who happened to be in the house at the time. They will want to know how the victim died, and if it was something relatively unusual, like a poisoning, they're going to want to find out how easy it is to get hold of the poison and where it might have come from. Each of these issues can be a scene in itself, and each scene can contain clues that lead to the next logical scene. So if the players talk to the victim's lover, and get nothing, but talk to the maid and discover that the victim and the lover quarreled, they're going to want to go back to the lover again. None of this is brain surgery; anyone who's ever seen or read a murder mystery, ever, knows - at least in broad terms - how a murder investigation works.
Now, the Keeper could easily come close to linearity in plotting this situation out. Discovering the body leads to finding out how the murder was done, and from there to who might have done it, and from there to who did, in fact, do the deed. It seems so straightforward, when written out like that. There are variations on the theme, of course; many murder mysteries focus almost exclusively on motive, with an eye to a dramatic confession in the final chapter, while other investigations worry less about that and more about the mechanics of the crime. "That's How," Lord Peter Wimsey might say, "and now we know How, we also know Who."
However linear a scenario of this type might read on paper, it probably isn't going to be linear in practice. That's because you can't rely on the players to be perfect detectives. They're kittens, remember; they'll poke their heads where they please, and hope for the best. Some of them may not try to work out how the victim died, or content themselves with superficial seemings. Some of them may even invent wholly implausible theories and wed themselves to those theories beyond any hope of amicable divorce. The least likely NPC, having wandered into view, suddenly becomes Number One Suspect without even the smallest shred of evidence to convict them. Some will spend all their time chasing up exotic poisons without once confirming the actual cause of death. Some will convince themselves that, against all appearances, the person whose head was bashed in with a shovel actually was eaten by a lion - and this despite there being no lions in the scenario whatsoever.
The only thing a Keeper can do is write a fairly solid plot, and cover all the most reasonable bases. Anything beyond that is up to luck. Linearity in tabletop is, all too often, an illusion, and the Keeper believes in illusions at the Keeper's peril.
There is one other point to make here, and that is that even if a plot is completely on-rails, it doesn't have to be a problem. In fact, it might be the most enjoyable part of the experience. As evidence, I direct you to Telltale Games' survival horror puzzler, The Walking Dead.
If you haven't already played this, I highly recommend it, particularly if you enjoy zombie apocalypse settings. The game is based on the comic - not the TV series - of the same name. You play as Lee Everett, a man on the way to the penitentiary who manages somehow to struggle out of a car wreck into a world gone mad. Along the way he picks up a fellow survivor, an eight-year-old named Clementine, and together they do their best to pick their way through a very hostile Georgia.
It's grabbed a lot of people's attention this year, particularly for its excellent writing, but if there's one criticism that stands out above all the rest, it's aggressive railroading. You, as the player, have very little choice in what happens next. Scene follows scene like soldiers on parade, and if there is a puzzle in the way before you can get to the next scene, it usually isn't that much of an obstacle. Before you know it you're back on the train again, chugging away towards the next plot point.
Yet I, as player, don't have a problem with that; I've been enthralled by The Walking Dead since I learned I could pick it up on iPad, and just finished episode 4 this weekend. I'm on the edge of my seat waiting for 5; at least two major plot points reaaaaaally need resolving, and I won't be happy until they are. I suspect most fans of the game feel the same way.
It wouldn't have nearly the same kind of impact if it wasn't masterfully written, and that's the key issue here. Even if you are marching from scene to scene without deviation, it's your interaction with the world and the characters in it that makes the experience so enjoyable. What happens next to Ken, to Carly, to Lilly or Doug, how Clementine reacts, how you react to her, whether your morals are strong - or flexible - enough to withstand what's coming next, is what makes this game a stand-out.
The straight line between two points isn't an issue, and while linearity can be an easy plot criticism I'm not sure it's entirely valid. To my mind, using "linear" as a scenario descriptor is actually a cover for something else, and that something else is "badly written." We know bad writing when we see it; flat characters, unbelievable plot points, disjointed or facile settings, are all issues that fiction has had to deal with over the years.
But those issues are the problem, not the linearity - or otherwise - of the plot. A straight-line plot with excellent writing can work brilliantly; a badly written sandbox will often fail and, where it does succeed, anything good it manages to pull off is a matter of luck, not design.
Scenario playtest feedback for my work often contains the complaint, "feels too linear". I particularly liked one report for a short piece due to appear in print soon, that started with the feels-too-linear statement only to say, once the players had become involved, that it didn't shake out in a linear fashion at all. In fact, the players floundered around a bit before finally working their way to the McGuffin; according to the report some of them liked the sensation of not being in control, while others said they could have used more pointers.
I'm not going to downplay linearity. It's definitely a script problem, and it gets all the worse in an environment like a video game, where the player literally cannot escape the boundaries of the plot, whether because invisible walls are blocking off all escape routes or for some other in-game reason. However I don't think it's as much of a issue as people seem to think, particularly in tabletop, and this is why:
Players are kittens.
I mean that. Anyone who's ever actually dealt with a kitten knows that they can be psychotic one minute, biting the hand that feeds it, and docile the next. Kittens wander off into any kind of disaster, wide-eyed and innocent, because they don't see any boundaries even if boundaries are there. They'll cheerfully walk off a table edge, given half a chance; but there's just as much likelihood that they'll find someplace they like the look of and put their heads down for a nap. Kittens do as they please ... and so do players.
The Keeper, knowing this, has to structure the scenario environment to withstand sudden flights of player fancy. The basic premise has to be strong, and supported by useful scenes that support the basic premise. That's the only way to prevent accidents. You wouldn't leave a kitten unattended on a table; why leave players without a safety net?
Say for the sake of discussion the scenario revolves around a murder, a good old-fashioned locked-room body-in-the-library situation. Once the body is discovered, there are certain things it is reasonable for the players, as the detective heroes of the hour, to do. They will want to inspect the body, the room, and the lock. They will want to talk to anyone who might have known the victim, or anyone else who happened to be in the house at the time. They will want to know how the victim died, and if it was something relatively unusual, like a poisoning, they're going to want to find out how easy it is to get hold of the poison and where it might have come from. Each of these issues can be a scene in itself, and each scene can contain clues that lead to the next logical scene. So if the players talk to the victim's lover, and get nothing, but talk to the maid and discover that the victim and the lover quarreled, they're going to want to go back to the lover again. None of this is brain surgery; anyone who's ever seen or read a murder mystery, ever, knows - at least in broad terms - how a murder investigation works.
Now, the Keeper could easily come close to linearity in plotting this situation out. Discovering the body leads to finding out how the murder was done, and from there to who might have done it, and from there to who did, in fact, do the deed. It seems so straightforward, when written out like that. There are variations on the theme, of course; many murder mysteries focus almost exclusively on motive, with an eye to a dramatic confession in the final chapter, while other investigations worry less about that and more about the mechanics of the crime. "That's How," Lord Peter Wimsey might say, "and now we know How, we also know Who."
However linear a scenario of this type might read on paper, it probably isn't going to be linear in practice. That's because you can't rely on the players to be perfect detectives. They're kittens, remember; they'll poke their heads where they please, and hope for the best. Some of them may not try to work out how the victim died, or content themselves with superficial seemings. Some of them may even invent wholly implausible theories and wed themselves to those theories beyond any hope of amicable divorce. The least likely NPC, having wandered into view, suddenly becomes Number One Suspect without even the smallest shred of evidence to convict them. Some will spend all their time chasing up exotic poisons without once confirming the actual cause of death. Some will convince themselves that, against all appearances, the person whose head was bashed in with a shovel actually was eaten by a lion - and this despite there being no lions in the scenario whatsoever.
The only thing a Keeper can do is write a fairly solid plot, and cover all the most reasonable bases. Anything beyond that is up to luck. Linearity in tabletop is, all too often, an illusion, and the Keeper believes in illusions at the Keeper's peril.
There is one other point to make here, and that is that even if a plot is completely on-rails, it doesn't have to be a problem. In fact, it might be the most enjoyable part of the experience. As evidence, I direct you to Telltale Games' survival horror puzzler, The Walking Dead.
If you haven't already played this, I highly recommend it, particularly if you enjoy zombie apocalypse settings. The game is based on the comic - not the TV series - of the same name. You play as Lee Everett, a man on the way to the penitentiary who manages somehow to struggle out of a car wreck into a world gone mad. Along the way he picks up a fellow survivor, an eight-year-old named Clementine, and together they do their best to pick their way through a very hostile Georgia.
It's grabbed a lot of people's attention this year, particularly for its excellent writing, but if there's one criticism that stands out above all the rest, it's aggressive railroading. You, as the player, have very little choice in what happens next. Scene follows scene like soldiers on parade, and if there is a puzzle in the way before you can get to the next scene, it usually isn't that much of an obstacle. Before you know it you're back on the train again, chugging away towards the next plot point.
Yet I, as player, don't have a problem with that; I've been enthralled by The Walking Dead since I learned I could pick it up on iPad, and just finished episode 4 this weekend. I'm on the edge of my seat waiting for 5; at least two major plot points reaaaaaally need resolving, and I won't be happy until they are. I suspect most fans of the game feel the same way.
It wouldn't have nearly the same kind of impact if it wasn't masterfully written, and that's the key issue here. Even if you are marching from scene to scene without deviation, it's your interaction with the world and the characters in it that makes the experience so enjoyable. What happens next to Ken, to Carly, to Lilly or Doug, how Clementine reacts, how you react to her, whether your morals are strong - or flexible - enough to withstand what's coming next, is what makes this game a stand-out.
The straight line between two points isn't an issue, and while linearity can be an easy plot criticism I'm not sure it's entirely valid. To my mind, using "linear" as a scenario descriptor is actually a cover for something else, and that something else is "badly written." We know bad writing when we see it; flat characters, unbelievable plot points, disjointed or facile settings, are all issues that fiction has had to deal with over the years.
But those issues are the problem, not the linearity - or otherwise - of the plot. A straight-line plot with excellent writing can work brilliantly; a badly written sandbox will often fail and, where it does succeed, anything good it manages to pull off is a matter of luck, not design.
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