Amnesia - problems with getting scared?

[Istrebitel]

"This is not good" was ment as a general conclusion that general adventure-like story game wont offer you 3 choices on every advancement of the plot. "That's not good" was meant to state that even though in real life the hero would have much broader choices, we have to narrow them because otherwise we make a lot of content out of which player will only see a part. (Replayability is good in games that are supposed to be replayed like KOTOR).

But generally, in an "open" world, that's what is going to happen - you WILL have choices. So, in order to narrow those choices, we "Break" them - make them unwanted (your hero would hesitate to break the lift and climb down the shaft, he will try to fix it if possible) or outright blocked (caveins, barred doors).

What i was trying to communicate is that while devlopers look at this from the point "player sees that this door is blocked, that way is caved in, so he chooses to go this way" and thats fine. But when this "path a is blocked, path b is blocked, my only choice is path c" happens over and over, you start to wonder - what is the chance of all those paths being so conviniently blocked so that only one path always remains? And here i tried to make an example (poor one i think since you didnt get it, sorry) that if we take a natural situation, where random events "break" paths (key for this door is lost or in unaccessable place, this path is caved in, etc) we will very hardly be left with a situation when its always ONE way forward. Most likely, some places would still have alternate routes available!

And i dont see why you say its a sloppy design when there is a choice that doesnt have a reason to exist.

Like, i'm walking 15 minutes to a metro station every work day and i have 3 general routes around the blocks to take (except unreasonable ones that will lenghten my journey). Every route is completely optional and MUST not be there - road is of same quality - generic asphalt, time spent is very similar, no danger or benefit walking either of one.
Yet if i'd be playing a game where i'd be the player character, and story of my life is told, that starts with a typical day of me going to work, it would feel unnatural to have one road under repairs and other route blocked by a crime scene line, only leaving one way to walk. Because that is unnatural to have in this setting!

[eliasfrost]

"This is not good" was ment as a general conclusion that general adventure-like story game wont offer you 3 choices on every advancement of the plot. "That's not good" was meant to state that even though in real life the hero would have much broader choices, we have to narrow them because otherwise we make a lot of content out of which player will only see a part. (Replayability is good in games that are supposed to be replayed like KOTOR).

You need to be more specific then. And why did you bring this up if it's only bad to have more than one way to do things? I'm so confused because you say that the game need to have more than one way to do things, yet you think it's a bad design choice to make things have more than one way to advance because it will leave things out? Could you please explain for me; do you want the game to have one way to do things, or multiple? Because you seem to change your mind all the time, even in the middle of your posts.

What i was trying to communicate is that while devlopers look at this from the point "player sees that this door is blocked, that way is caved in, so he chooses to go this way" and thats fine. But when this "path a is blocked, path b is blocked, my only choice is path c" happens over and over, you start to wonder - what is the chance of all those paths being so conviniently blocked so that only one path always remains? And here i tried to make an example (poor one i think since you didnt get it, sorry) that if we take a natural situation, where random events "break" paths (key for this door is lost or in unaccessable place, this path is caved in, etc) we will very hardly be left with a situation when its always ONE way forward. Most likely, some places would still have alternate routes available!

I'm confused, now again you want the game to have multiple routes, but earlier you said that it's bad because it leaves out content..?

Like, i'm walking 15 minutes to a metro station every work day and i have 3 general routes around the blocks to take (except unreasonable ones that will lenghten my journey). Every route is completely optional and MUST not be there - road is of same quality - generic asphalt, time spent is very similar, no danger or benefit walking either of one.
Yet if i'd be playing a game where i'd be the player character, and story of my life is told, that starts with a typical day of me going to work, it would feel unnatural to have one road under repairs and other route blocked by a crime scene line, only leaving one way to walk. Because that is unnatural to have in this setting!

Because it's a game, because in Amnesia you don't take a walk to the job, the game tells a story and you need to design the levels accordingly. Because the castle is crumbling and that's why some paths are blocked while some are not. In games you need to have a reason to do this or that, otherwise you wouldn't do it. There is no need to make another way that is extremely similar to take you from point A to point B because it's not desired by either the player or the designer. I totally understand what you mean but I just don't agree with you on this point, I'm sorry.

[hollowleviathan]

I think your argument that there's always a key available on the right side of each door is actually well-addressed by Amnesia. There are locked doors, but you advance past them, if I recall correctly, using acid, a crowbar, a remote explosion, and an actual key only once. You don't find most keys, because they're with the jailer or some other inaccessible location that makes more sense lore-wise than conveniently in a location where you can find them.

Also, the problem with making a wide-open world is that it mostly just derails the advancement of the story. You have to have some way of gating gameplay progress to bottleneck into important plot moments, otherwise you're making 1. a sandbox game with isolated nondependent quest hub, 2. a massive undertaking, WRPG like Fallout that is good for letting players make their own stories, or 3. a huge empty confusing map that adds nothing to either gameplay or story for the sake of some small immersion/suspension of disbelief, and at worst feels grindy and samey with excessive enemy encounters.

There's nothing inherently wrong with 1. and 2, but those are simply just not gametypes that fitted the Amnesia story.