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Assassin's Creed And the Future of Sandbox Games
Wired's Game|Life blog, and the site of gaming academic Henry Jenkins, discuss sandbox games and the impact of Assassin's Creed . The relevant discussion on Jenkins' site is actually written by GAMBIT lab supervisor Matthew Weise. He argues that open-ended worlds, by their very nature, require some restraints on the player's avatar. Otherwise, the game's meaning is diluted. Likewise, if you're going for a 'sandbox' world, allow that limited character unlimited opportunities. "When I think of open-ended world design I tend to think of worlds that don't involve such limitations. Call it the result of a childhood playing Ultima. I think of worlds in which, if you need to kill the dragon in the cave and you happen to have a drill, there's no reason you can't just drill straight down, bypassing all his little traps, and kill the bastard. That's open-ended to me. That's sandbox. The pleasure of such incredible agency is much more satisfying than any forced narrative structure."
I find open ended games to bore me more than structured ones. I mean sure I get the new sword and the new shield and now I can goto another area, but I have no sense of progress. Instead I'll get bored and just give up, where as a game with a focus or several paths I can follow happily feeling I'm achieving stuff rather than just wandering blindly grinding to level up stuff.
I like muppets.
Recently got Crysis for Jesusmas and I am thoroughly enjoying playing through it. I would classify it as a "sandbox" game in the same way Jenkins says MGS is a sandbox game. It gives you objectives (direction) but lets you determine the path with which you want to complete those objectives.
Do you want to stealth in close and take them by surprise?
Perhaps snipe the gas pump and make a distraction before blowing them away?
Maybe guns blazing is your style.
On top of the many combat approaches, there are multiple ways to arrive at a destination (walking, Route A, Route B, vehicles). All in all, I'd call Crysis a "sandbox" game where you're subtly led through a scripted storyline.
To me, the Thief series by Looking Glass is the best of the exploration-based sandbox games to date. It is not open, but the sandbox is sufficiently large and the options sufficiently varied to make for excellent gameplay. Want to try entering from the front door? Go for it. Dash for it, kill, knockout, hide, distract, creep, wait, retreat, provoke AI to attack each other, or climb in a *fully utilized and mostly unscripted* 3D environment. Although later games were more sandbox-like, none I've played since have been as good as Thief. Indeed, stealth based games since suffer from the lack of sandbox play. Metal Gear is too movement-constricted and linear, and Splinter Cell is even more so.
I plan to get Assassin's Creed at some point, and expect it to be a decent successor to Thief's great exploration aspect. I also expect it, like Thief, to be best enjoyed in small doses of at most 2 hours daily, 8 hours weekly.
On a related note, Deus Ex 2 has already showed us that too much sandbox can be bad. It is great fun to load up a level and experiment, the perfect sandbox, but it fails as a game. It was nice however to play this through to the end without firing a single shot or killing a single enemy, a rare moment for any FPS.
I always envisioned Thief being much more like a first person Assassins Creed in a huge city (I've only watched 20 minutes of Creed before I left). Something where you can wander the city and do whatever and take jobs to raise funds to work towards getting intel, bribing folk, getting better equipment/skills, or snagging a disguise for more prospective work.
The only limits would be funding to get the intel - in theory you could go into this badass place right at the beginning but you might not be able to open a lock or you can't figure out where the item is without spending 3+ hours to get it. Or it might take 2 hours to cross the map unless you had a sewers key that provides a more direct route.
Eventually, you'd need things to lead to some overarching story/objective. You could have all sorts of buildings that one could break into with both day and night cycles and the like. I always thought a game like this would be awesome - something like Creed meets Morrowind.
The problem with Assassin's Creed is that the civilians and guards don't really behave sensibly, which is essential for the illusion of a realistic, open environment to be explored. To give two examples: in every city there are numerous guys on soapboxes speaking about the crusades and such: "South comes the English King and his infidel army!" etc. Go up to one of these guys and put your hidden blade in his back. What happens? Nothing. Nobody screams, the crowd just wanders off as if he's gone to sleep. Second example: if someone sees you kill someone, he might run off shouting "that man is a murderer!" yet guards who are in a position to hear this don't seem to take any notice. Guards only react to what they see with their own eyes, as far as I can make out. These sorts of problems make me suspect that making plausible and realistic AI is going to be THE major problem in games that feature open environments.
Grr! Arg!
Speaking of when the targets killed someone before you could kill them... my main gripe was that (unlike the rest of the crowds in Creed) I couldn't push through the crowds just in time to step in and assassinate the target right before he was able to plunge a dagger into the guy he was killing. I mean, what's the point of being an assassin-hero if you can't make a bold, heroic gesture and save someone's life at the critical moment?
My 229 is all the Sig I need http://thegunwiki.com/