The Role of Interpretation in Prince of Persia

Today, I've published an article on GameCareerGuide examining the role of interpretation in Ubisoft's 2008 Prince of Persia. This is my first professionally published essay, and I am pleased with how it turned out. I would like to thank my parents for never giving me a ride to school, and the GameCareerGuide editor who took a chance on an unknown kid. Read the essay at GameCareerGuide.

I would love any comments on the essay. Feel free to leave a comment under this post or to email me at finnhaverkamp@gmail.com

Walking the Mirror's Edge

I was a true runner. Leaping across rooftops blind to what's below, vaulting boxes and gaining momentum, running along walls in defiance of gravity. But I had a little help, from Faith. Yes, the concept too, I suppose, but I mean the character. Faith's runner-trained eyes see the world in a different tint, a stage, each pole, plank, and pipe a red-tinted path through the colorless rooftops, a bread crumb trail of maneuver and escape. And then I realized: I wasn't the runner, Faith was. Her innate runner-vision, her bread crumb trail, was my crutch. I was no runner, merely a player. I wanted more control. To truly be a runner, I needed to see this bread crumb trail for myself, not let the eyes of Faith show it for me.

So I went to the options. Runner Vision: Off.

Ah, now I was a true Runner, with a capital R, free from Faith's handicap, who with Runner-tuned eyes perceived a bread crumb trail innately, naturally. In this white canvas of a cityscape, I painted my own path of red; a pole, of course! a plank, aha! Now I was Faith. I was a Runner.

Or this is how it felt at first. Almost immediately, I became lost and confused. My artistic vision, painting my own trail of red through the white canvas? Gone. Perhaps I'd lost my muse. The canvas became an infinite desert. With thoughts of Where am I? Where am I going? And all the while being torn apart by assault rifles and pistols and snipers. Far from being the finely-tuned runner of Faith, I was a frustrated gamer, angry at the game and it's city and it's level design. "Where in the heck am I going?" and "Haven't I been here before?" were frequent utterances.

It occured to me that, maybe, this is how Faith feels. Runner-vision off, I considered myself to be closer to Faith than ever. Playing was fast, nervous, and intense. Sometimes. Other times, playing was annoying and awful. Its all in the job description. I finally realized that the runner-vision is in the game for a reason: the levels weren't designed %100 linear, they've got some freedom to them, options of movement and style.

With runner-vision enabled, the game breaks down to goals: get to the next red-highlighted object. Completing each goal requires two steps from players.
1. Platforming Puzzle. Figure out how to get to the next bread crumb.
2. Platforming Ability. Get to the next bread crumb.

All players need to do is see where they need to go next, deduce how to get there, and finally, accomplish their task of doing so. Repeat.

But with the runner-vision switched off, a third step is added to the list: Figure out where to go. However, as I've just stated, the levels are not linear; they stretch out to multiple directions, buildings, and hallways. Knowing which route to take isn't always clear. If the first step fails, identifying where to go, then the remaining two steps completely break down and the gameplay becomes a mess of confusion, cursing, and, good chances, death.

In an excellent article on Gamasutra, Ian Bogost discusses Mirror's Edge, including its criticisms, innovations, and potential meaning. He states at one point, "Like a photograph that highlights an unexpected object through selective focus, runner vision draws the eye to the detritus that would otherwise seem like visual noise, reattenuating it into signal." And he's absolutely right. The runner-vision, at least for the first playthrough, is almost a necessity. DICE was well aware that gamers would become lost without some sort of guidance.
Personally, I would frequently switch the runner-vision on or off throughout the game depending on my mood and recent streak of either frustration or flow.

I've already discussed Mirror's Edge a couple of other times (Time one. Time two). But now that I've actually played and beaten the game, I can discuss it from a first-hand perspective.

Sometimes, a game is questioned as either being innovative or just plain bad. But when that game garners significant critical discussion amongst the industry's best voices, you know there's more to the game than flaws. Mirror's Edge has received lots of attention over its seemingly opposing priorities, difficulty and flow. On one hand, Mirror's Edge is about experiencing the thrill of parkour. Bogost, in his article, discusses how everyday objects in the world of Mirror's Edge are transformed from their purely functional uses (boxes, forklifts) into means of locomotion. Players get to live in the shoes of a parkourist, trained to see these objects in a new fashion, and likewise, use them in a new fashion.

But across the spectrum from the flow of parkour is the game's difficulty. It is commonly believed that too much challenge equals stunted flow. Which in turn equals no fun. The particular problem of Mirror's Edge, most critics have argued, stems from its level design. Quite simply, the level design doesn't jive with the intended flow of movement. Rather, the level design jars with players' abilities, most often derived from its frequent death traps, either in pitfalls or stubborn swat teams. I cannot argue with the dieing part. I died probably over a hundred times over the course of the game. Jump to pipe, miss, die. Respawn. Jump to pipe, miss, die.

The general consensus on failing goes like this: players are willing to accept failing if they feel said failing is their own fault, not the game's. But if players feel their failing is entirely the fault of the game or the control (ala Ghosts and Goblins), then they cry foul and enlist the game disk for skeet-shooting. So which is Mirror's Edge? Really, the game is a conundrum. Mirror's Edge is intentionally difficult, to be certain. But all of the platforming sections are eventually beatable. But, in the last couple of chapters, you will need to need to engage in combat with the swat teams, and whether or not they are unfairly difficult may be a matter of opinion (for my part, they are). Bogost proposes a different take on the concept of challenge and the design of Mirror's Edge.

Bogost writes:

Unlike Assassin's Creed, which adapts the fluidity of parkour by making movement consistently easy, Mirror's Edge adapts that fluidity by making it hard. But what initially seems like a punitive design gaffe actually carries a crucial payload: requiring the player to reattempt sets of runs insures that the final, successful one will be completed all in one go.

He makes an intriguing argument. As I read it, Bogost is saying, in a way, that players build-up to flow. Eventually, you do complete that perfect run, partially thanks to the large distance between check points. But until that moment, the gameplay amounts to what is less so trial-and-error and more so just plain error. Bogost goes on to argue that the extreme difficulty of Mega Man functions differently, but I mostly disagree with this assertion. It's fascinating that Mirror's Edge gets so much flak for being unnecessarily difficult when Mega Man 9, which functions in exactly the same manner, is at times lauded for its difficulty. Likely, this is due to the fact that Mega Man is a long established franchise, one that comes with expectations of grueling difficulty, whereas Mirror's Edge, a modern mainstream game, has expectations of being easy as compared to its contemporaries. Oppositely, the new Prince of Persia, which more or less eliminates death altogether, also is criticized, except for completely opposite reasons. One statement that can be made at least is that difficulty in games is receiving plenty of attention these days, which hopefully means new developments and innovations in its design moving forward.


I think the criticism most people harbor for Mirror's Edge comes from their confusion about its goal. Mirror's Edge presents itself as a mechanism of flow, but the difficulty often conflicts with this proposition. Everytime you die in Mirror's Edge, all immersion is lost. As pointed out above, it isn't until you make that one perfect run does flow finally kick in. I would agree with Bogost, as he concludes his article: the key to enjoying Mirror's Edge is suspending expectations. The game presents something different. It asks players to be patient as they explore the intracacies of their ability. It offers to players the feeling of being a parkourist. But, to get there, players must suffer and learn as one.

Further Notes on A Melding of Concepts

1up has posted an absolutely excellent interview with Prince of Persia devs Benn Mattes (producer), and Michael McIntyre (level designer). The interview is long, but covers a ton of topics, including interesting ideas on co-op design, and offers some truly great insight into the minds of these developers and the philosophy of Ubisoft Montreal. I would highly recommend reading the article. But for my purposes, the developers discuss at length the game's level design, which I also discussed in an article a couple of days ago.

Their explanations differ slightly from my own earlier conclusions, particularly the use of the term "linear," but I think the end result is the same. They explain themselves far better than I ever could, so. . .Commence Quotations!

Ben Mattes:
But not sandbox. We literally tried sandbox and it didn't work. We literally had level design that was fully beautified. It was shippable quality -- we had post effects, and everything was working in it. And we brought it to be playtested, and no one got any flow because they were overwhelmed with choice. You still had the ingredient-based controls: A to jump, B to swing off the ring. And yet they'd jump and land on a beam, and then they would just stop, because they didn't know, "Should I swing off of that pole or climb on that ledge or go over to that crack or climb up that wall or drop down to that beam?" So every step was slow, and we weren't getting that flow through the world that we wanted.

Michael McIntyre:
For acrobatics, we wanted them to be Prince of Persia-like, meaning they require inputs -- different inputs the whole way along, not like Assassin's Creed where you hold down buttons and you just flow and go. As soon as we knew we wanted that philosophy, the idea of an entirely open world wasn't working, so that was where we really had to decide to differentiate ourselves with a very controlled open world with a network of designed paths -- that's when things really started working for us on the design side.

Ben Mattes:
Yeah, when we made that decision to go to the network structure, everything just opened up to us. One of the great things about this network structure is I really believe we found the recipe -- I don't know if it's the only recipe, but it's a really good recipe -- for giving the player some of the freedom of an open world game, i.e., "Do I want to go there first or there first or there first?" putting a little more authorship into the hands of the player in terms of the experience they're going to have when playing the game, while maintaining the benefits of an on-rails, hold-your-hand linear game. Because we can more or less be guaranteed that every X number of minutes, you're going to have a relatively major set-piece type of experience, and you're going to encounter something spectacular, and we're going to push the story forward in an important way because of the way the world is organized.

We really think that fans of Drake's Fortune and God of War and Prince of Persia and all those linear action/adventure games who've never played a sandbox game, they're not going to walk into this game and suddenly feel overwhelmed by possibility, because they're still going to have the benefit of Elika's compass power, and the map structure, and the way the world is organized to have a more structured experience. But people who really like the sandbox games should hopefully feel like they're in control a little bit more, so they kind of get to dictate how the game unfolds -- and hopefully, they'll enjoy that element as well.

Interesting stuff, for sure. Ubisoft's priority was on retaining the spirit of Prince of Persia, which meant creating an environment that promoted acrobatic flow. The game hasn't come out yet, but based on everything I've seen and read, I think their final conclusion on level design will prove effective.

A Melding of Concepts

The battle of level-based versus open-world games has raged since the early days of video games. Mario and Sonic were level-based, but Metroid and Zelda featured worlds open for exploration. Indeed, the two game design models are engaged in a never-ending tug-of-war. A few years ago, the commercial and critical success of Grand Theft Auto 3 KO'd the long popular level-based design, decrying level-based games as "linear." In this generation, for a game to be called "linear" stands out as the worst form of sacrilege.

Meanwhile, open-world games were a fascinating new breed, unbound by the constraints of a level-based structure, allowing players to stretch their virtual arms and relish in the beauty of freedom, exploration, and choice. Games that relished in open-world design include Crackdown, The Incredible Hulk, and the Mercenaries series. But as the past-generation fades and the present hits its limelight, critics and game designers alike have bored gaping holes into the formally lauded open-world structure, revealing many pitfalls of its own. The tug-of-war continues, with both level-based and open-world games planting their feet firm before the mud-pit.
Ubisoft's Far Cry 2 was released only a couple of weeks ago, and the reception has been fairly split. Just look at Gamespy and Gamespot's catch-lines for their respective reviews of the game.
Gamespot's Shaun McInnis writes, "...Far Cry 2's first-person action squeezes every last drop of potential out of the unique African setting." Whereas Gamespy's Fargo writes, "Visually breathtaking and ambitious in scope, Far Cry 2 falls shy of it's amazing potential."
McInnis goes on to write, ". . .Far Cry 2's free-roaming terrain brilliantly harmonizes with the first-person combat." Fargo, meanwhile, writes, "The pacing of the game is way off. The majority of your time is spent driving to or from missions or safe houses or bus stops." And continues, "Far Cry 2 could've easily been a four-star game or higher if the focus would've been on the missions and not the travel."

Similarly, Chris Remo wrote an opinion piece about Far Cry 2 on Gamasutra, about authored narrative versus emergent narrative. Remo writes:

The game's persistent component parts feel designed to convey a convincingly (but not flashily) coherent world, but even more importantly to increase the chances of memorable things happening. [...] In fact, the game tries to define a set of rules and an environment in which memorable experiences are likely to happen, and simply lets the player loose in its world -- a fascinating prospect.

Clearly, people are of split opinion on open-world structure and of Far Cry 2 specifically. But each of these three commentators above make valid points. McInnis believes that Far Cry 2's open-world meshes well with its first-person-shooter gameplay. Fargo feels the open-world structure (of Far Cry 2, at least) creates a cohesive world, but is hindered by hideously repetitive sequences. Remo, on the other hand, is excited by the "prospect" of memorable, emergent gameplay scenes only made possible by the game's open-world. Who is right? They all are, really. But lets look at some more examples.
A game which eschews the open-world structure, soon to be released, is Blue Omega's Damnation. Damnation is a level-based third-person shooter which emphasizes verticality. In fact, the game is often marketed as "Taking the Shooter Vertical." Jacob Minkoff was interviewed a few months ago in Play Magazine. In the interview, he defends Blue Omega's decision to keep Damnation level-based in a time when both publishers and gamers seemingly refuse to invest in anything but open-world. And I think Minkoff makes something very clear: level-based is not synonymous with linear. Level-based games have accrued this stigma of linearity, which even itself isn't bad but has been painted black by critics and forum-goers. Even so, Minkoff explains why level-based games can be fun without being linear:

I sort of equate it to the idea of a three-year-old getting their own soda from the soda machine. I love coke, and I love orange, and I love lemonade, and I'm going to put them all together--but then, oh my god, I don't want to drink this! I think that's the feeling that occasionally happens, it's like, you want choice, well here you go. Here's every choice you could ever want. Well, now there are so many choices I don't know quite what to do. What we're trying to do [with Damnation] is find that balance. You've got choice. You won't feel trapped or claustrophobic or held down in the game, but you're not set adrift.

To achieve this, every level in Damnation has a clear objective in the distance. The player's goal is to reach that objective by any means necessary. In the same Play interview, Minkoff likens the concept to a famous trilogy: "Lord of the Rings is all about that. Tower, get to it."

Taking the shooter vertical is more than just a marketing line, its a design foundation. Blue Omega didn't want for Damnation to fall prey to the pitfalls of the open-world genre, but also wanted to avoid the negative perception of the dullness of linear progression, and so they designed with a mantra of interesting, tall level design. The levels in Damnation offer multiple routes for tackling situations; players have to be both observant and skilled to make the most of the environment. Additionally, players have access to a "spirit vision" or a self described "wall hack" which allows them to see the glowing auras of nearby enemies. Everything works hand-in-hand.

And this is really the core philosophy behind Damnation: The levels, platforming, shooting, spirit vision; everything was designed in unison to function cooperatively. The game wouldn't be the same in first-person; the freedom of platforming would likely be lost. Likewise, the game wouldn't be the same with an open-world structure. You're probably thinking by now, "Well of course; that's obvious." Is it? The only reason it seems obvious is because Blue Omega designed a cohesive structure. They could have just as easily tried to fit Damnation into an open-world structure, but as is, the attempt would have failed. The point is that neither level-based nor open-world is "the right way." Both offer their own opportunities and limitations. Good design is taking advantage of either form and building a game to mesh with the chosen structure.
But I'm getting ahead of myself. Another platforming game soon to be released is Ubisoft Montreal's Prince of Persia. Unlike Damnation, Prince of Persia takes place in an open-world. But just like it would be incorrect to label Damnation as linear, it would be unwise to label Prince of Persia with all of the negative connotations recently associated with the open-world structure. In an interview with IncGamers, Thomas Delbugeut explains PoPs unique structure:

Granted, there are a lot of things that are different about this Prince of Persia – the prince is completely different, the atmosphere is completely different – but we wanted to keep all the core elements that make it Prince of Persia. We lost most of that trying to incorporate an open world structure. So we went back to the drawing board and created more of a network thing, which allowed us to get more of those step-by-step sequences. It was a lot more interesting and ended up giving us the game we have now.

A network. Not open-world, not level-based, a unique approach to level design. In a Developer Diary, Producer Ben Mattes describes the structure "with an analogy" of a highway system, wherein players choose different routes connecting various cities in the world. As with Damnation, the routes are specifically designed to function with the Prince's acrobatic abilities and powers. Wall-runs, slides, pole hugs, shimmy's: sounds linear, doesn't it? But Montreal has in-fact (presumably, of course) completely avoided the stigmas of both level-based and open-world structures by merging the two forms. It's worth noting that Prince of Persia is different from open-world games such as Mercenaries 2 or Far Cry 2 in that it's not focused on emergent gameplay situations. But that's actually the beauty of the design. Prince of Persia is about scripted gameplay sequences; it's a puzzle-platformer. But by opening up the world halfway with a split-path structure, Ubisoft has avoided any prospect of being undermined as linear.
There's one more game coming out this winter that forgoes open-world structure for straight-up level-based gameplay. Not to say it's linear, either. I'm talking about Mirror's Edge, the first-person parkour game developed by DICE.

Chris Remo (again) recently interviewed Mirror's Edge producer Nick Channon for Gamasutra. In the interview, Channon discusses the philosophy behind the game's structure:

I think it's just looking at what you've got, looking at where your strengths are in your game, and in your mechanics, and building the levels out around it. And the fact that we could've gone open world, we could've made a game that felt very open, but we went for a more linear story, and we went for a more level-based game -- and the reason for that was that we wanted to pack as much action in as we could.

As soon as we'd have gone open world, I think that would've watered it down. So I think that was one learning, in the fact that a lot of people think, nowadays, that open world's the way to go, and it's the next-gen thing -- I don't think I believe it is.

It's clearly right for some games, absolutely, but you can actually get a lot more in, at times, in more of a level-based [game].

Channon hits the nail on the head. Open-world structure is right for some games, but it wasn't right for Mirror's Edge, and DICE realized this. DICE had goals, priorities. And like Blue Omega has also done, Mirror's Edge has been designed for every aspect to work cooperatively. Something I didn't mention earlier, Ubisoft didn't feel the open-world structure catered to the intense, one-on-one fights that were to take place in Prince of Persia; they weren't making Dynasty Warriors, and they knew it. So Ubisoft designed the world alongside the combat structure, so the two fit together like a nice little puzzle. In a similar manner, DICE had certain things they wanted to accomplish with Mirror's Edge, among them being a strong, linear narrative. And to achieve this, they designed the game with levels, because they felt it fit their intentions and motivations. But a linear narrative does not mean linear levels. Far from it. In the same interview at Gamasutra, Channon expounds upon the above statement.

You have to give a choice; it can't be just, 'Do this, do this,' you know. And that's what we've done: We've built every level out to have lots of choice, and I think the thing that we're really pleased about is that, actually, the amount of choice in every level is just limited to your imagination. Which really plays in the movement, and the parkour elements that we talked about.

You see what Channon is saying? Level based. In part to help the narrative, but still offering freedom of movement, split-second, instinctive choice, to complement the fast-paced action. Additionally, DICE has consistently said that they want the levels to be replayable. How many times have you played the demo? Exactly. Much like time trials in racing games, the levels in Mirror's Edge are intended to be played again and again, encouraging players to find, and successfully perform "that perfect run."

Here is the point of my rabble: it's about the design. Level-based, open-world, a mix of the two, they're all correct so long as the game is designed from every perspective, every facet, ever aspect to work cooperatively as one cohesive unit. Far Cry 2 was designed open-world to keep player's immersed in the illusion and to encourage experimentation with the nigh infinite weapons and approaches available to any given situation. Damnation promotes experimentation with approach as well, but in a completely different manner with a level-based, vertically oriented structure. Prince of Persia blends the benefits of both worlds to maintain its puzzle platforming gameplay without feeling overtly linear. And Mirror's Edge focuses high-speed action within a linear narrative by offering split-path levels.

The tug-of-war between the the two sides is likely to continue, but we're also starting to realize that both approaches offer plenty of opportunity for effective gameplay scenarios if designed properly.

Update: Mirror's Edge Discussion Continued Here.

Tomorrow: Linear is Fun

Sources:
Sonic and Knuckles from Neoseeker
All other images from Gamespot

Prince of Persia and Graphics

The above are in-game screenshots. Yes, really. When I first saw them, I almost cried. This game is so unbelievably good looking. This is the new Prince of Persia. Rumor has it the game is called Prodigy, according to a recent trademark filing. According to a press release at Kotaku, Prodigy will be released for PS3, 360, and PC. Another Prince of Persia game is also in the works for the DS. Most importantly, Prodigy is being developed by Ubisoft Montreal, the same studio which developed the Prince of Persia trilogy for the previous generation, and also my favorite developer.

Below is more concept art and renders from Prodigy.

The video game medium is a graphical medium, hence the "video." Our technology, is nearing a peaking point. Thats not to say, however, that in ten years we won't have more realistic graphics; indeed, the potential for realism in ten years will be uncanny. But right now, our present technology allows for a broad range of graphical expression. We can have graphics as realistic as Metal Gear Solid 4, as cartoony as The Simpons Game, or as beautiful as Okami. That said, I think our industry is sometimes afraid to break away from realistic graphics.

There is nothing wrong with emulating reality, if that is what the game calls for. Half-Life 2, in order to relay its story, to convey its message, is best suited with realistic graphics. Using the same engine, Team Fortress 2 possess graphics that represent its own themes explicitly for the purpose of gameplay. Not all games need to be so graphically defined. In fact, we are normally just fine with graphics that fall somewhere in between. And thats a good thing. In the same way that it would be shame if all games featured realistic graphics, it would be sad if games either had to be completely realistic or completely "cartoony."

I think we need to be wary of defining our games by their graphical aspects alone. Okami is downright gorgeous, but its gameplay, its story, and its themes are also commendable elements, to say the least. Part of why Okami succeeds as a game is because each of its elements work copperatively to form a cohesive experience.

That aside, assuming these screenshots are truly representitive, I think that Prince of Persia is the best looking game ever made. Just look at them. When you see these screenshots, I can't help think "what have we been missing." Prodigy continues in the footsteps of The Wind Waker, Okami, and Team Fortress 2 to demonstrate exactly what video games are capable of graphically. Graphics have progressed to a point that allows us to visually express ourselves in nearly any way imagineable. Prodigy looks like a comic book. The fact is even more profound when we consider that Ubisoft Montreal's other two franchises, Splinter Cell and Assassin's Creed, are highly realistic graphically. I've already expressed my love for Ubisoft Montreal, but you've got to hand it to them, they are some talented folk.

Screens from Joypad via Pro-Gamers
Character screen from Recenzeher