Level artists Vs. Minor obstacles

[Raff]

I'm playing a free-to-play beta Diablo clone called Path of Exile, which I rather like. However, it happens to have presented me with an egregious example of one of the oldest face-plants in video games (and films for that matter): The insurmountable obstacle that any able bodied individual could easily clamber over or squeeze through without any hassle whatsoever.

Games are absolutely full of these, but generally they're not a problem if just used to enclose a limited space, provided that the available area is satisfying enough. The real problem starts when the obstacle becomes part of the game narrative (whether dynamic or scripted).

e.g. I have a quest to find this road to somewhere or other, but I find it blocked and have to find a way around.

I'm really surprised how often this happens and apparently doesn't bother the developers. It makes me wonder whether some games are made by daleks. It's the same glaring inconsistency of plot over-riding the action on screen that leads to situations like the ending of Titanic where they just can't quite be arsed to both get on the piece of wood.

[youmeyou]

I still recall with consternation Snake's inability to jump over foot high obstacles in Metal Gear Solid. Really stood out in an otherwise amazing game.

I'd say it's a necessary evil in any non-sandbox title, but I guess it comes down to how subtle you can make it so as not to break immersion.

[elmuerte]

That's one of the things that bugged me a lot in the Uncharted game. Here you are climbing and jumping enormous distances all the time. And then in some cases you cannot even jump on a ledge.

What's even worse are invisible walls. There are still games that have them.

[Raff]

Incidentally, I absolutely HATE the trend of the last few years for making you press a contextual button to hop on or off a ledge when in any half reasonable game you could achieve the same effect by just pushing forward without the need for a big picture of a button in the middle of the screen or taking control away while an animation plays out.

[Murdoc]

video games.

Seriously though, I think a lot of developers try to avoid stuff like that, but at the end of the day it's an accepted trope for both developer and player, even if it breaks a bit of the reality of it.

But the same could be said in any game that gives you a rocket launcher, in which you can argue, why can't I just make my own door?

The answer? video games.

[youmeyou]

video games.

Seriously though, I think a lot of developers try to avoid stuff like that, but at the end of the day it's an accepted trope for both developer and player, even if it breaks a bit of the reality of it.

But the same could be said in any game that gives you a rocket launcher, in which you can argue, why can't I just make my own door?

The answer? video games.

Frozen Synapse has a great application of rocket launchers: they'll blow up anything and are used as a way to demolish enemy cover. But they can afford to do that as the game has such a limited set of variables at play. The problem with wanting unlimited possibility space is you need unlimited resources to do so. So yes. Video games.

[Raff]

video games.

Seriously though, I think a lot of developers try to avoid stuff like that, but at the end of the day it's an accepted trope for both developer and player, even if it breaks a bit of the reality of it.

But the same could be said in any game that gives you a rocket launcher, in which you can argue, why can't I just make my own door?

The answer? video games.

I think there are a lot of instances where it's easy to accept and some when it's not (like when the implication is an epic, narrative critical detour), and it's often just a case of making a boulder a bit bigger, a slope a bit steeper.

[Murdoc]

I think there are a lot of instances where it's easy to accept and some when it's not (like when the implication is an epic, narrative critical detour), and it's often just a case of making a boulder a bit bigger, a slope a bit steeper.

The problem being is there's probably dozen, hundreds, or even thousands of these implications and 99% of the time the person placing these props are not aware of it, have a million other things to worry about, or don't care. There is also budget and time restraints to everything too, as youmeyou pointed out...and may I add Space Asshole 1's rocket launcher was pretty god damn awesome too.

So yeah, it is an issue and if the developer or employee is too lazy, dumb, or doesn't care it sucks. I'd go out on a limb and say its usually the first two examples followed by budget(money and time).

But if we wanted to make a curve graph of video games from 2000 to now having this problem, I think developers have been improving this and as technology increased more problems have risen just as much as they have been solved.

I also like the idea of bring this up again since we may have plateaued on the issue, like we came up with accepted tropes and no one is doing much about changing it.

With that said, there are a ton of other issues to not break the reality of the game that haven't been touched since early 2000.