> maintain focus on suspension of player disbelief
Something that really struck me when I when I first played Half-Life 2 was how much it all felt like a movie set, where everything was designed to look fantastic along this one narrow path that you're quickly ushered along, but there was absolutely nothing beyond that path. It's all just lovingly detailed facades.
That's the story with all linear AAA games. I think for most players the illusion works great, but I can't help but see the artifice.
> That's the story with all linear AAA games. I think for most players the illusion works great, but I can't help but see the artifice.
It's okay, since this a stylized classic HN insight porn comment.
Calling it an "illusion" is a really dumb take. It reminds me that hardly anyone in this forum reads fiction, and even if you created Ready Player One for them, they'd do exactly what the game designers gave them to do.
Anyway, Call of Duty games have a great variety of levels. "Defend Burger Town" comes to mind as a Modern Warfare 2 (2009) level you could explore pretty freely.
Half Life 2 had open set pieces. Uncharted 4 has possibly the best chase sequence in gaming. It would be so stupid and reductionist to call that an "illusion," just because they have some paths for your car to take.
What do you want? Even the real world expects you to walk and drive along paths. That's just architecture dude. It exists just as often in "open world games" like Red Dead Redemption as it does in "sequence of setpieces" games like Call of Duty.
Something that really struck me when I when I first played Half-Life 2 was how much it all felt like a movie set, where everything was designed to look fantastic along this one narrow path that you're quickly ushered along, but there was absolutely nothing beyond that path. It's all just lovingly detailed facades.
That's the story with all linear AAA games. I think for most players the illusion works great, but I can't help but see the artifice.