For the last few nights I have been playing Killzone 3 and loving its improved mechanics and lushly decorated yet beautifully destroyed environments. I have always considered the Killzone series B-level shooters with AAA level graphics and D-level story. As I continued to play the game I kept wondering why every level had me following yet another brutish jock of a character that liked to scream at me while reciting the same generic lines I could hear by watching any 80’s action flick. Then, after yet another egregious instance of having to follow a character that spouted bad dialog at me only to lead me to the next segment of actual game play, it struck me: the days of the old groan-inducing escort mission have been inverted, and the reason for this switch is the overuse of scripting in today’s games.

Once upon a time developers trusted us enough to have faith that we could explore their world and find our own way. Sadly, as things have gotten more linear and scripted over the years, the skills needed to create a world which is easy to navigate and fun to explore are beginning to disappear. In a way we have made a trade up from the old “find the blue key then open the blue door” method of game design for a “follow someone to the next door and walk  through” method. That isn’t to ignore the many benefits of this type of game design. Without the advances in game scripting made over the last few years we wouldn't have the intensity of a game like Call of Duty: Black Ops. There would be no Half-Life 2, which would have also meant no Portal. Now that would be a crying shame!

I am actually a fan of much of the scripting we see in modern games, but it does seem like people are losing the ability to provide both excellent scripting and rewarding exploration in many modern FPSs. It is sad that there seems to be an either/or mentality, with developers choosing whether to go linear or open because I think that taking the best aspects of both types of design could be a great thing.

Codemaster’s Operation Flashpoint 2: Dragon Rising charmed me with the added immersion that exploring its vast environs provided, but when it came to providing something to sweeten the mix other than the games rather blah shooting, there was no real scripting in place to add that extra oomph. Fallout 3 provides some amazing moments when you walk over a hill to see another expansive vista, but its scripting is rather limited unless you are having one of the games all-too-rare conversation trees. When you look at the flipside, games like the Call of Duty series and Medal of Honor have some truly amazing scripted events, but the process of exploring the environment is almost always a sprint from point A to point B.

With the staggering and continued success of the Call of Duty series, I doubt that heavily scripted games are going away. We are not seeing a ton of titles trying to mimic the experience of Fallout, and I have not seen a single game that tries to take the best aspects of both game types. Still, I hope that one day we will be able to play games that offer both the rollercoaster-ride intensity that good scripting provides and the immersion of a detailed world that can be explored for more than just the straight line set in front of you.