Disappointed with AAMFP

[bobbo]

they fully support The Chinese Room vision (which is a good thing since they produce the game),
just look at this FG dev blog entry on interactive story telling:
http://frictionalgames.blogspot.fr/2013/...ctive.html
I may not agree with everything but it's really coherent with what's in A Machine for Pigs

That's really interesting because I linked to that blog post earlier with the opposite opinion: I think A:AMFP doesn't meet essential parts of that post.

1) Focus on Storytelling"

Well, that's obviously done.

2) Most of the time is spent playing
[...]My view is that the main point of interaction in storytelling is to create a sense of presence, the feeling of being inside the game's world. In order to achieve this, there needs to be a steady flow of active play. If the player remains inactive for longer periods, they will distance themselves from the experience. This is especially true during sections when players feel they ought to be in control. The game must always strive to maintain and strengthen experience of "being there".

I think this would be a part about which players are highly divided over. To me, there was definitely not enough playing. For me, there was too much walking to get to a very short area of playing to then walk again to the next area of playing etc. Every time I got to a set of wheels or buttons it stood out so much just because it happened not often enough. For me, there always was a very noticable "break" between the walking passages and actual interaction.

3) Interactions must make narrative sense
In order to claim that the player is immersed in a narrative, their actions must be somehow connected to the important happenings. The gameplay must not be of irrelevant, or even marginal, value to the story.

While generally A:AMFP does attempt this, I never felt satisfied with my actions. That is because it's never me figuring out what to do next in order to get on with the story, but it is the game's narrative constantly telling me what to do. "My other voice" told me countless times I had to drain the water, so often that it became annoying and I was glad I was over with it eventually just to hear something different. What might have worked better for me would have been the basic information: The kids are in the flooded part, help them. Then, I would have been on my own. Maybe I could have been given a map, on which I would have had to fnd a place from where I could have drained the water. On my way there, I could have heard more voiceover from the kids, telling me that the water is rising, putting me under pressure.

4) No repetitive actions
The core engagement from many games come from mastering a system. The longer time players spend with the game, the better they become at it. In order for this process to work, the player's actions must be repeated over and over. But repetition is not something we want in a well formed story. Instead we want activities to only last as long as the pacing requires. The players are not playing to become good at some mechanics, they are playing to be part of an engrossing story. When an activity has played out its role, a game that wants to do proper storytelling must move on.[...]

Unfortunately, to me this was the biggest let-down in the "puzzles". 90% consisted of turning wheels. I loved that mechanic in the Penumbra games and A:ADD because this way of having to move the mouse definitely helped me feel immersed into the game. But in A:AMFP it's almost like a running gag, a homage to A:TDD. It became so repetitive to me that I felt dumb for doing this banal action yet again - as I said before - I felt like a monkey who was given toy blocks by its keeper.

5) No major progression blocks
In order to keep players inside a narrative, their focus must constantly be on the story happenings. This does not rule out challenges, but it needs to be made sure that an obstacle never consumes all focus. It must be remembered that the players are playing in order to experience a story. If they get stuck at some point, focus fade away from the story, and is instead put on simply progressing. In turn, this leads to the unraveling of the game's underlying mechanics and for players to try and optimize systems. Both of these are problems that can seriously degrade the narrative experience.

This is obviously met in A:AMFP - but in such a way that people, including me, now moan how easy the challenges were.