“…And He Said: Funny How? Like I’m a Clown”

Game Dev - Detail Oriented — In my ceaseless analysis of all things, a pattern has emerged. A few weeks ago I had a revelation while thinking about The Sopranos. Tony is so overwhelmed by the acts he’s committing, he needs therapy. Where a director like Scorcese focuses on the violence, he rarely focuses on the costs. David Chase, however, zooms in on what that costs the body, mind, and psyche. What makes the show interesting is the twist on a well established genre and the focus on the details of Tony’s life. Details are what takes something from good to great

This also applies to music. I saw the Smashing Pumpkins, a band I really liked for a long time, two weeks ago. I’ve since gone back and listened to a bunch of their music. What I’ve noticed with music is it becomes interesting with layering. I watched an interview with Jimmy Chamberlin, the drummer for SP, who echoed that sentiment. This is especially true in his case as he’s a jazz drummer playing with an rock band. So his odd and frequent fills expand the music and drive it forward. A change to the formula. This is also true with a song like High from The Cure. There’s a distinct “tap tap” that adds something meaningful to the song. The Cure are masters of layering and creating texture. This same methodology applies to great games

To understand what I mean here let’s look at details in a few games throughout history (there are many more that could have been discussed but I kept it at 4 for brevity):

Baldur’s Gate 3 does such a good job of representing a DnD experience that it’s as close as one can get to it without playing the actual game. The game systems let players do almost anything they want, which is precisely what DnD should feel like. For example, in the first act, players can find a gentleman who has gotten himself stuck in a patch of deadly, exploding proximity spores -> if anything gets too close, spores explode and kill him. Players can use mage hand to give him a scroll; they could notice the ledge on the side, jump up there, and circle around closer to him and jump down; They could throw the backpack or scroll to him if they’re strong enough. The point is, all of these methods let players be creative in their approach. Just like DnD, BG3 offers players many ways to solve problems. That stays true to the core of the game

Resident Evil 4 (remake or original flavor), wasn’t just a great game; it set the stage for an entire style of gameplay that would follow it. Prior to RE4, the series relied on creepy atmospheres and tension building through static, isometric camera angles leading to the unknown around every corner. Those games, themselves, were genre defining. But by the time RE0 had released on the Gamecube, that formula had started to lose its glimmer. How could a successor emerge that would contain all the tension, creepiness, and camp while reinventing gameplay? How about an over the shoulder camera? Brilliant! The decision to move the camera allowed designers to do things that they weren’t able to in earlier games, like create scale and make something like El Gigante feel enormous and imposing. The tight static corridors of the predecessors were replaced with a tight perspective, adding a new horror factor: seeing how quickly Leon could, and would, get mobbed by enemies. Pray none of them have a chainsaw

Sekiro took the teachings of both the Souls games and Bloodborne and turned them on their head. It traded the tried and true dodge roll of Dark Souls and the faster paced countering of Bloodborne for a rhythmic parry system as well an arm that doubled as a high powered grappling hook. This turned the focus from facing enemies head on to a stealth based action game

Sneaking up on enemies and assassinating them from the shadows became the best way to deal with them. Enemies here have health bars, they’re ancillary: the way to success is to issue a killing blow after successfully parrying an attack. So the combination of stealth — often by grappling up to a rooftop or sneaking up on an enemy/boss — would eliminate one of the killing blows needed, making the fight easier (they were still hard). The shift in formula allowed FROM to keep the other aspects of their games, obtuse narrative, amazing world design, and world art that tells a story while shifting to an entirely new way to play

Half-Life redefined the FPS. It wasn’t a Doom clone as many games before it had been. It wove a compelling narrative along with gameplay innovations that make the game a titan of the industry (HL2 also did this). From the interactive ride into the Black Mesa research facility at the outset, it was clear HL was something different. Moreover, each portion of the game opened with a title card, something which had not, to my knowledge, been done in a game prior. “Black Mesa Inbound” was how the game opened while Gordon Freeman rode the tram into work. Obviously, there were lots of game design improvements that made HL special but that narrative throughline and chapter names that took shooters out of the age of Doom. The weaving of work -> incident -> escape -> cover up -> escape changed gaming forever. The action inspired Halo, Half Life 2, F.E.A.R., and scores of other games. (It’s also worth noting games like Thief, Deus Ex, and System Shock also had immersive worlds that felt lived in. Arkane Studios making the modern incarnations of those games has been a bright spot in these innovation-starved times)

Like a beautifully crafted song, or an exceptional show, the details are what make it memorable. They evoke emotion and tie it together. While this didn’t go into the more subtle details, it’s clear how meaningful design and attention to detail are what takes a good game and makes it great. Each of these games was an evolution that, through careful attention, became legend. The minutiae that might go unnoticed at the time often makes us remember the game long after we’ve stopped playing it