Beginning in the middle of the action: is it a bad idea?

[maga (Sam Kabo Ashwell)]

@Morley

For me this is where it moves into tricky area. I sort of feel that if PC is in a situation that logically would be time-sensitive and the game strongly hints that you should play as though there were a time limit, then the player has no business messing around trying to figure out if it’s a real limit before even attempting the sequence.

IF players are, on the whole, geeks. They like to take things apart to see how they work. Sometimes they break them in the process.

(But they know the risks, and hopefully they’ll be gracious enough not to blame you.)

[Morley]

Well, yeah. I didn’t mean they have no business checking it out ever. But checking in the middle of a critical sequence during your initial playthrough is, IMO, playing a bit rough. I want to believe it’s possible for an author to do a good enough job to effectively delay the code-poking habits of even the most poking-inclined players for a least a bit, but I wonder about this. Especially when fabulously well-implemented games can be the ones we feel most inclined to break.

[capmikee]

I think that has as much to do with the quality of writing as with the quality of implementation.

[Ghalev]

@Morley

I want to believe it’s possible for an author to do a good enough job to effectively delay the code-poking habits of even the most poking-inclined players for a least a bit, but I wonder about this. Especially when fabulously well-implemented games can be the ones we feel most inclined to break.

I think at some point (preferably Square One) you have to have a crystal clear idea of who you’re designing for, and design for them, and only them, and dismiss the rest of the universe as (literally, actually, simply and sincerely) irrelevant.

The person who delights mainly in throwing themselves at the walls to see if they’ll hold, or prying into the crevices to see what squirms out … god bless them as testers. But they aren’t (for most works) the audience, and rate no consideration except as a playful afterthought. The reasonable (or even the desperate and confused) actions of the audience are paramount. The parser-poking antics of the XYZZY crowd are … optional yuks, not to be conflated. If time allows, by all means, toss them a few bones: there’s a good lad, pat on the head, good little geek, etc. But they’re not the audience.

Even if the audience are sometimes biologically the same people, in a different frame of mind.

[Peter_Piers1 (Peter Piers)]

So, do you start using the wait-and-restore technique as soon as you see signs that you’re probably being timed, or only after you’ve been forced to restore once and know it’s a timed sequence?

Yep. I want to know if I’m really constrained, I want to know if my game session is in real jeopardy. Timers don’t make me excited, don’t make me type faster even though real time’s not an issue; timers don’t make my run blood faster. Good-written fast-paced well-designed sequences do that.

Most people stick with the timers, they’re easier. So I stick to “z” until the game proves me to be better,

For me this is where it moves into tricky area. I sort of feel that if PC is in a situation that logically would be time-sensitive and the game strongly hints that you should play as though there were a time limit, then the player has no business messing around trying to figure out if it’s a real limit before even attempting the sequence. There may be situations I’m not imagining where that makes more sense, but presumably they’d all be rated “cruel”.

You’d like Infocom games. Their time-limit (when there is one) actually allows you time to explore, think and then solve. Whereas Magnetic Scrolls, whose “Fish!” I recently played, allowed me no time to finish even when I was optimizing my every move (since it was my first playthrough, I allowed some examining time, some exploration time, minimal as it was. No dice. That timer is tight).

So in Infocom games I can take it easy. In MS I can’t. In other games… I assume there will be a timer, and will try to see how long the timer is. It will also give me an idea of how convoluted the solution will be - smaller timers will probably equal solutions where I have to move around less, do less things.

Of course, if the game is well-designed, I’ll probably just save at the beginnning of the timing and then try to work it out without "z"ing. But the game had better have me hooked.

And it seems that this behaviour horrifies some of you game writers. It shouldn’t, it’s just my personal strategy born of playing lots of old-school (I recently played Avon. Wouldn’t have gotten anywhere without this and other strategies. With them, and a couple of hints, I actually won the game). It doesn’t bother my immersion or atmosphere anymore than, say, a QuickSave/QuickLoad will diminish my enjoyment of Unreal, or the VitaChambers will diminish the excitement of BioShock.

What WILL hurt my immersion is a fast-paced scene that, because of shoddy design, I can’t get past. I’m stuck forever in a fast paced scene, and that hurts. And putting a timer there is adding insult to injury.

[dstinson]

There is no bad idea as to where you are going to start and what you are going to do as you can pull it off any which way possible. What you probably have to think of though is how you are going to give the backstory piece by piece so it will not seem like you are just forcing down the players’ throat making it hard to bear at times.

Then it is also a matter of how you are going to let it rise from then on while providing them with earlier knowledge of the story.

[Biep]

@Morley

I’m wondering: are there any games you’ve played that effectively begin in the middle of a relatively suspenseful or fast-paced sequence? A timed sequence? A conversation?

For an original twist on this, see The Baron. It definitely starts with a deadly timed sequence in medias res - or maybe I should say in mediam rem, as the game is rather deep (and disturbing), but none of that comes up in the opening sequence.

The Baron is one of those games that cannot be discussed without spoiling, I think.