In the event you give me the selection between a recreation that gives me freedom, and the chance to form the story and the course with my very own selections, versus a recreation that limits my freedom, and insists that I play and behave in a sure method, I’m all the time going to select the latter. I like course. I like imaginative and prescient. Fallout, Grand Theft Auto, and Pink Useless Redemption 2 is perhaps a few of my favourite video games of all time, but when I had to decide on a aspect – if I needed to belong to 1 type of ‘church’ of videogame construction – then I’d be an acolyte of shorter, extra linear, and extra organized and ruled video games the place my very own company is sacrificed for larger thematic cohesion. I’ll take the unique Metallic Gear Strong over Metallic Gear Strong 5. The slim corridors of the primary Half-Life are extra impactful to me than the beautiful, wide-open world of No Man’s Sky.
However though I can argue the virtues of this extra directed, managed videogame construction, ultimately it runs up towards an issue: if a recreation goes to be a recreation, at some stage it must let the participant in, and interactivity and subjectivity must be allowed to exist. There’s no such factor as ‘perfect game design,’ however I really feel just like the purpose, usually, is to unite these seemingly oppositional forces, to harmonize the developer’s intentions and assertions with the participant’s particular person inputs. That is why XCOM 2 is so good. Greater than another technique recreation, and maybe greater than another recreation in any respect that I’ve performed this yr, it establishes a communication, a mutual ‘writing’ course of, between the developer and the participant.
One instance. In most missions in XCOM 2, you’re on a time restrict. It’s not a literal ticking clock, however maybe you solely have ten recreation turns till the aliens explode a bomb, or execute a hostage, or destroy the ship that’s coming to rescue you. This can be a strict, developer-enforced boundary – mechanically, it’s the non secular reverse to an open-world recreation or an RPG, the place the participant is permitted to roam, or not, at their will.
However whereas it limits literal exploration (you don’t have time to see the complete map, or kill each enemy, or experiment with doing something and every thing you need) you’re nonetheless being inspired to suppose, to plot, and to make use of your company. It’s solely by means of a shrewd utility of your troopers and your concepts that you could surmount the impediment the sport has positioned in entrance of you.
And out of this comes a terrific sense of objective and stress. On paper, XCOM 2 doesn’t have a lot of a narrative. The characters don’t speak all that always. There’s not a number of lore. The cutscenes are brief. However though it’s a mechanical or ludic system, the time restrict on every mission turns into a metaphor for the severity and the excessive strain of XCOM’s and humanity’s scenario – actually and within the extra summary sense, below the hovering jackboot of the alien invasion, time is operating out.
Likewise, due to these deadlines, every thing you do as a participant feels extraordinarily consequential. Narratively, the destiny of the XCOM mission and the complete species is on a knife edge. Suitably, once you’re taking part in XCOM 2, the success or failure of your mission hangs on a single errant resolution.
The developer, on this case Firaxis, creates a boundary. The participant has to reinforce and design their interactions round that boundary. However what this creates is a larger and extra compelling sense of what’s at stake, dramatically. And that, in flip, compels the participant to suppose extra, to interact extra, and to really feel extra like their selections, their inputs, have that means – their company is perhaps directed or restricted, however what the participant chooses to do in XCOM 2 truly issues.
