Blog: "Why Trial and Error will Doom Games"

[Setlec]

I think the holy grail of gaming is a interactive story that has no back tracking, each decision leading to the next and so on.. but the shear complexity of trying to predict and build gameplay for all the possible outcomes of any given situation is not, I believe, possible.

A terrific example of trail and error gameplay that works.. to a point. Is that ps3 title, Hard Rain. During the first playthough it is like watching a engaging film.. though after some restarts and save points and then trying to get the "best" results, the game turns into something more like guitar hero.. just button pressing and memorization.

all possible solution are quite too much asking... But the trick would be to have the story writing with multiple solutions for the same puzzle, but the Ending remains the same... It makes the game more flexible than pure "trial and error".

There are other ways besides death and multi-paths to give a continual feeling of immersion though and discourage restarts. One that I believe is very good and works perfectly for heavily story driven games is a evolution of the character you play. A simple example is the character evolving to be a "evil" or "good".

So you are saying that a multiple ending, one would be the Good way and the other one the Evil way (like on "Dark Force 2: Jedi Knight"), would be the best way to go?

As with out changing the core gameplay of the entire title you can modify the reactions and abilities (options) the gamer has during the game to get past zone blocks. This can give the player a real feeling that his actions have physically changed the gameworld.

So like in a RPG, you would set the Int, Strength, Charisma, etc and then the class skill, right?

Unlike "good solution" and "bad solution" witch as stated in this thread can be as frustrating as player death and encourages restarts.

I don't recall reading good or bad solution, though!

This method of changing the way the character can interact with the world bases on previous game choices can create a continual momentum of story, witch the player wants to continue though even though they might believe there was a "better" way to play said given part of the game.

The point of multi solutions offers much more immersion and have an impact in the gameplay and gameworld but remember you are in a situation that you don't control "your environment", actually you are controlled by your environment! Like most single player games... If you try to control your environment in such game then the immersion is pointless as well as the story line...