The Replayability Dilemma

Before we kick off, please note that I am using footnotes to augment this article. Also, I have included screenshots of games I find particularly replayable (or not) for the sake of a bit of colour.

The Replayability Dilemma

This article was inspired by the Co-Optional Podcast, and as such I do heartily recommend readers also have a watch of that.

Hearing a commentator who I greatly respect talk about what he considered to be replayable games got me thinking. Replayability is something that I factor into my reviews and discussion on video games, in part because a lot of developers these days make a big deal about how replayable their games are. So this begs the question, is replayability quantifiable, and if so, how do we evaluate it? I thought I would have a bit of a discussion on the matter, and tie things up with a case study of sorts.

What is replayability?

Quite obviously, replayability concerns how likely a game is going to be replayed after the initial play-through. Developers *cough*BioWare*cough* often make a big song and dance about how replayable their latest game is, and how players will immerse themselves in the game over and over again. It seems that the industry wants players to believe that games that are replayable are better value for money.

SM Railroads! Dozens of hours.

Value for money in any form of entertainment is very tricky to define. You are paying for an experience, and as such it isn’t like buying bread, or underwear. For example, very few movies are the same length, or cost the same to produce, yet you pay the same amount at the box office for tickets, no matter the film.[1] Video games are much the same, and the equation is made trickier due to the gradual drop in price of games as time passes. After all, is a two year old AAA game that is $30 necessarily going to be worth $50 less that the new AAA game that has come out today for $80? I would argue that no, it isn’t necessarily worth even 5 cents less, the issue is that the economies of scale and time influence price but not necessarily value.

So, when a new game comes out developers (and publishers) want people to buy it then for the $80, rather than wait for a sale, or for time to pass and drop the price. This is because they are businesses and need to make a profit. The more you pay for a game, the more they make. Quid pro quo.

Therefore the blanket question of What is replayability? needs to be broken down a bit more and examined. There are various forms of replayability, and they all get played for marketing.

Types of Replayability

I will attempt to lay out some broad themes of replayability as follows:

Choices – One way which a number of developers try to create replayability is to create a large number of diverse choices which the player can make as they play. The idea behind this is fairly logical, players will want to play the game again to see what happens when they make different choices. Ultimately it seems to work fairly well as a way of getting people to replay game.[2]

Just Cause 2: Tonnes of content done right.

Content, Content, Content! – Some developers think that packing the game world with huge amounts of quests, items, events, and such like will improve replayability. This only really works if your player-base is either anal-retentive, or is a firm believer in Pokemon taglines. The Borderlands franchise is a chief offender in this regard and I have this to say: You know what, I don’t care about the 50 bazillion guns I didn’t use, find, or earn. I don’t give a flying f*** about them – quality over quantity, please!
Ahem…as I was saying, content dumping can work very well, or very badly. The Elder Scrolls, for example, often does it extremely well. The game worlds of that franchise are jam-packed with stuff to do, sights to see, things to make, but never do they seem cluttered – the world breathes; it feels natural rather than contrived.[3] On the flipside are behemoths like Dragon Age: Inquisition (it is gonna get a big chat later on in this article). Yes, lovely world building, but too much dross. So much dross in fact that it invalidated one of the lauded new game mechanics – the horse riding.[4] Further, it had all the grind factor of an MMO, without the social element that makes grinding in an MMO almost bearable.[5]

Bethesda gets it right.

Immersion & Story – This is, in my opinion, the best type. The game might contain other elements
like choices or endless f***ing content, but what keeps pulling you back under is the way the story is told. The story might be hilarious, or it might tug your heartstrings over and over again, or maybe the world is just amazing to wander around in (Skyrim, Cyrodiil, or anywhere in The Witcher). Whatever it is, I think this works excellently for the same reason that people re-watch films or TV shows until their HDD cracks the sh*ts purely for some originality, or they re-read a book until the words have been worn off the page.[6] People love a good story, so games that deliver one do well, and deservedly so.

Those are my top three, and the ones that stand out.

So, that is something of a rough idea of some ways that replayability can be created, with varying levels of effectiveness. Now, let us get our hands dirty with some investigation…

Case Study – Dragon Age: Inquisition

This is not a review of the game, although I will express my opinions on it. I will primarily be looking at elements of the game that contribute to its replayability.

One of the things that puzzled me about Inquisition was the way they simultaneously pushed the ideas that it was reeeeeallllyyyyyy looooooong and also very replayable. Why did that puzzle me? Because I didn’t really think that a Dragon Age story would be both amazing enough to get me to play it for 90+ hours and also play it through again.

I was right.

Immersion killing hair and animations.

My first (and only complete) playthrough of Inquisition came in at around 100 hours. In that, I certainly missed some side quests and probably some special gear as well. However, I felt that I had immersed myself pretty well, and got a good feeling for the game. So, 100 hours of my life used, I sat back and wondered about replaying it. Sure, trying a different race would be interesting (although the changes, even in the dialogue, are rather cosmetic in nature), but beyond a few things in the early game, there were no choices that I could make in the mid to late game that would justify me playing through another 100 or so hours. What about the different classes? Well, my enquiring subconscious, they are basically the same as they have always been in Dragon Age, and they were simply cherry picked amalgamations of Dungeons & Dragons classes anyway.

For me there was no good reason to replay the game even once, let alone several times. Even if I were to ignore the rather average combat, hours of grinding[7], and glitches, the story was not good enough to justify it, and the choices that I was actually interested in were few and far between. For me, this is an issue I have had with all the Dragon Age games. I can replay Neverwinter Nights or Mass Effect until the proverbial cows come home, but when it comes to Dragon Age I just don’t care.

One of the big problems is the length. Given how many games are under 10 hours long but cost the same as Inquisition, surely the 90+ campaign was value for money enough as it is. I would like to point out that a long story isn’t by definition a good story – in this case a long story padded out heavily with grinding and mind-numbing Ubisoft-watchtower-esque activities certainly isn’t by definition a good story. BioWare were going for an epic. I’ve read epics. The Iliad is quite good but by all the gods I wouldn’t dive back in and re-read it. BioWare wanted you to love the epic-length

Charming, but not quite...

story, but also wanted you to replay it as much as the much, much, much shorter Mass Effect 2.[8] This was a problem. The story was good, don’t get me wrong, but it wasn’t that good.[9]

Next was the grinding. MMOs use grinding because achieving high levels is a big thing in those sorts of games, and they need to keep people playing for as long as possible because that is how MMOs make their money. Inquisition is a single player game, the money is made when the game is bought, not when random person #5471639 has been playing for 6 months, desperately trying to find more f***ing Elfroot. It wasn’t necessary, and just felt like excessive padding used to justify the at times tedious levelling system.

The combat in Dragon Age has never been stellar, and Inquisition was no exception. It is clunky, despite its flashy animations, and wears thin pretty fast. I replay Neverwinter Nights 2[10] because despite the clunkiness, it is honest. You can literally see the D&D game running as you play, see the dice-rolls, and the turn-based origins of the game. That is part of its charm. I replay Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning (in part) because its combat is fun, fast, and frantic – what I look for if combat is going to determine my replays. Inquisition is neither particularly honest about its Origins[11], nor does it have the fun and panache of Kingdoms of Amalur. The combat is not going to get me coming back for seconds – it was the over-boiled cabbage of the meal the first time through.

Look, a label! And a glowing outline.

The world was pretty, and rather diverse. That said, that is true of Minecraft as well, with Minecraft worlds having the added advantage of being randomly generated. Having a pretty world with lovely skyboxes falls into the same basket as pretty graphics and animations for me. They are garnishes. If the meal is a steaming pile, then it doesn’t matter that you have garnished it with a beautiful lemon, dill, and yoghurt sauce, because I am still going to taste the steaming pile. Also, games with pretty worlds are a dime a dozen[12] these days, and so unless it really stands out, which Inquisition’s doesn’t, it isn’t worth much. The pretty graphics are also let down by the weirdness of BioWare facial animations, and BioWare hair. 
Inquisition's Thedas doesn’t feel like an open world, and I never felt the excitement of exploration – I mostly just was annoyed at how long it was going to take me to get to my next objective. If you want great worlds to explore look at anything from Bethesda – whatever other flaws their games may have, they know how to build a damn good world. BioWare, on the other hand, are better at set pieces, and that shows when they try to make these expansive maps. The palace in Orlais was far more interesting than, for example, the Western Approach.

Bethesda get's it right again.

Then, of course are the soul-crushingly long loading times. I accept that there is alot to load, but plenty of other 'big' games can manage without taking so long that I can play a level of Angry Birds on my phone while I wait. Worse still are the immersion breaking labels on everything. Other games also have labels, but do it in such a way that they don't intrude on the game world. Little niggles count against replayability, they really do.

I could go on and on for almost as long as a playthrough of Inquisition, but I feel my point is made. Inquisition was too long, too padded, too clunky, and had too average a story to be replayable. If # of hours played = value for money in your mind, then Inquisition is for you.[13]

As for me? Well, I am going to go and re-read some Terry Pratchett, and replay Mafia II for the 20^th time.

P.S. I will conceded, in a first for the Dragon Age series, the music is great. In fact, it outshines the rest of the game at times.

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[1] This, obviously, assumes that you are going to the same cinema every time, and ignores any special discounts for specific days of the week.

[2] I do have some caveats though, more on this later.

[3] Guild Wars 2 is another example of lots of content done well.

[4] Yahtzee covers the many irritating quirks of DA:I this in his ZeroPunctuation episode.

[5] I don’t like grinding, got a problem?

[6] This totally happens. Completely legit.

[7] Both types, this is a BioWare game after all.

[8] Which was a masterpiece.

[9] Also, don’t even get me started on the BS that is BioWare’s habit of putting massive plot points in the DLC of previous games, long after many have gotten sick of throwing money into the bin for DLC. Seriously, cut that shit out.

[10] Shameless self-promotion, watch my Neverwinter Nights 2 videos.

[11] Punning 101.

[12] I’ve stopped counting the clichés.

[13] I promise you though, Minecraft is cheaper and offers even more hours of play. It is the jackpot if that is how you measure value.

Sagrannus Gaming: Hand of Fate

It has been a while since my last post here, and for that I apologise. Studies and YouTube have been rather time consuming.

Today, however, I bring to you my review of Hand of Fate, by Brisbane-based developer Defiant Development.

Hand of Fate - Sourced under fair use from Wikipedia.org

Hand of Fate

Developer: Defiant Development[1]

Publisher: Defiant Development

Genre: Action Role-Playing Game

Released: February 17, 2015

Often, I say as an Australian, the Australian presence within the Video Game Industry is overlooked. This is probably due to a number of reasons. Often, video game companies are multi-national entities, staffed by people from all over the world. Don’t get me wrong, this is a wonderful thing. Further to this, there is the factor of few Australian game companies having a presence on the global radar. Sometimes, Australian Devs aren’t even identified as Australian, instead entirely separated from their nationality. I don’t want to make a big deal of this, but did you know that Pandemic Studios (Destroy All Humans, Dark Reign 2, and Star Wars: Battlefront) had a studio in Brisbane, Australia? And that Medieval II: Total War, was in part developed by the now defunct Australian branch of Sega?[2]

This is neither the time nor the place to discuss the past glories of the Australian Video Game Industry, because there is good news! There is a new(ish) Australian Developer on the scene: Defiant Development. After playing their first PC game, which is self-published, you can certainly believe it when they say that their company is “composed of a veteran team of game developers doing what [they] do best…” The game I am looking at, Hand of Fate, certainly demonstrates that. While certainly not perfect, its charming aesthetic, great voice acting, spot-on soundtrack, and innovative gameplay earn it a place up there with the best of Indie games.

So, let’s dive right in shall we?

Plot

The Dealer greets thee.

The plot, while a player could ignore it in favour of the gameplay, is drip-fed perfectly through the excellent character that is the Dealer. Hints and allusions to past events fill the game, but leave enough unsaid to let the player fill in the blanks to their own satisfaction.

The plot certainly is not the lynchpin of the game, but is not so absent as to be detrimental.

Gameplay

This is where Hand of Fate plays one of its strongest hands (ha ha). Combining Action-RPG combat (feeling like a simplified version of Batman: Arkham Asylum, or Shadow of Mordor) with a well thought out card game, and some elements of choose your own adventure game. When you read that, it sounds like a mess, but by golly it isn’t. Defiant have executed this combo in such a way that it feels balanced, and is very immersive. You find yourself hankering for the next fight, despite the somewhat clunky feel of the combat. The massive variety of cards, and the sub-plots that exist therein, pull the player in deeper. For the special cards that have a broad spectrum of stories to tell, the player (if successful) is awarded with tokens that then unlock new cards for further games. There is a strong element of chance involved as one has to often play the game’s equivalent of “Find the Lady” to determine success or failure (and varieties of each) for certain actions within the game. The entire game is narrated and commented upon by the nameless dealer who the player plays with/against, but more on the dealer later.

Rising from the cards to fight.

As mentioned before, the combat is clunky. Whilst it models itself upon the combat system of AAA games, such as those mentioned above, it fails to be executed as well as them. Its animations certainly do not flow as well as one would like, and often point of connection doesn’t feel precise. The controls are sound, and work well under the hand most of the time, and the combat is by no means unenjoyable or stodgy. It simply lacks the crispness and preciseness that AAA gaming has made us expect of this combat style. However, if one factors in the limitations of Indie development, what Defiant Development achieved here is certainly praiseworthy. The combat, which is primarily melee, is augmented by a variety of special moves that either arise from equipment equipped by the player character or, you guessed it, gained from various cards available within the game.

Victorious once more.

The variety of enemies, and their somewhat varied combat styles, spice up the combat. However, this spiciness is still rather limited, and the combat, whilst solid, does feel a bit repetitive during long play sessions. The varied arenas that combat takes place in help to ease this feeling, but if you are playing for more than an hour or so, prepare to feel yourself slot into a groove.

The inventory interface, and the general UI are all well laid out and are easy to understand and use. The shop interfaces are incorporated into the game’s concept, and work well for the most part – never detracting from the immersive qualities of the game.

Besides the clunky and at times repetitive combat, the gameplay of Hand of Fate is what makes it stand out from the crowd, and at times leaves the player forgetting they are playing an Indie game.

Graphics

Charming and bold.

As is seen almost every time a skilled developer gets their hands on the Unity engine, the Unity engine can be used to create something beautiful. From the character design, to the card art, to the backdrops within the card game room and the various combat arenas, Hand of Fate is a handsome game. With a slightly chunk aesthetic in the 3D elements (seemingly inspired/linked to the art style on the cards) Hand of Fate certainly stands out. Even the gloomier arenas are great to look at. Don’t get me wrong, this isn’t a AAA game in looks, but it certainly stands head and shoulders above other Indie games. This, I think, is in no small part due to a well thought out and implemented aesthetic that agrees with itself throughout, and fits the setting of the game excellently.

The designs of the weapons and armour in the game are great. Very characterful, and finding a pleasant medium between fantasy and realism.

Beautiful cards.

The cards themselves deserve special mention. They are perfect, there is no other way to say it. They are quirky, crisp, and are filled with character. Anyone familiar with the art of playing cards will immediately admire these cards – they often take established themes of card art and then add their own distinct flavour.

I found myself at times wondering whether this was really the Unity Engine…[3]

Soundtrack

Yes. That sums it up I think.

The music is great. Atmospheric when it needs to be, it comes to the fore when the cards are being dealt, with a great bit of guitar playing that really adds a sense of urgency to the game – reminding the player that this is more than just a card game, this is a game where someone is playing for their life.

As to voice acting, the stage is stolen by the Dealer (voiced by Anthony Skordi). Every line is delivered brilliantly, with just the right amount of affectation to keep the player engaged. The Dealer is such a fantastic antagonist – I can’t think of any better – and this is in no small part due to the mystery and ambiguity of his character.

(Re)Playability

The ‘Story Mode’ of Hand of Fate will fill many hours with challenges and fun. There are a number of different difficulty modes, some of which simply ramp up the challenge, whilst others add specific variables that will change certain elements of the game.

Add to that the presence of ‘Endless Mode’, and you will find dozens of hours of fun here. Defiant have also been adding new content (for free) which both sweetens the deal, and adds yet more gameplay time.

For an Indie title, Hand of Fate provides more replayability than one might expect.

Charity can be rewarded...

In conclusion then, Hand of Fate is not a perfect game. The combat is the sticking point for me, mimicking something great but not quite hitting the mark. But the rest of the game – its gameplay, aesthetic, music, and the Dealer – more than make up for it. Add in the fact that it is currently 24.99 AUD on Steam, and it is easy to see why it has been recommended so widely by critics and curators. Despite its little foibles, I cannot help but be charmed by this game, and recommend it to you with no serious reservations.

Sagrannus Rating – 9/10 (Must Buy)

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[1] http://defiantdev.com/

[2] http://www.kotaku.com.au/2013/04/sega-studios-australia-closing-down-later-this-year/

[3] The only other Unity engine game I have ever played that has earned such high praise is Divinity: Original Sin, which was not an Indie development.