We’ll Do it Live!
July 17th, 2008It seems the “in” thing to do in survival horror games now is to make accessing your inventory occur in real-time. That is, when you access your inventory, the game is still “live” and you are open to take hits. This was the case in the recently released Alone in the Dark game, it is apparently going to be the case in Resident Evil 5, and the Dead Space Producer is bragging that you can’t even pause his game (which I have to imagine, or at least hope he means that you handle your inventory “live”, and not that there’s literally not a pause function in the game, as that may be the one single feature that no publisher in their right mind would ever ship a game without).
I’ll keep this relatively short, but my question is, is this really a good thing? I like keeping the action moving and having the ability to “quick swap” weapons as you’re now able to in RE5, but I do know that it was helpful in RE4 to sometimes take a look at what’s in your inventory (even in the middle of a fight) and consider what your options might be. According to the Dead Space Producer, this is exactly what they want me to avoid now, though. Certainly, this probably creates more tension, but does it also decrease the usability of the game at the same time? Is the trade-off worth it?
Posted in Commentary, E3, Jeff |
July 17th, 2008 at 6:59 am
Yeah, my gut instinct is that this could end up badly.
However, designers make choices to effect gameplay all the time and who knows, this could completely change the game for the better. (the live inventory, NOT the lack of a pause feature)
Reading this makes me wonder; does the game have such an elaborate inventory system that QA testers found themselves mucking with it so much that it disrupted the flow of the game? Necessitating a “fix”?
July 17th, 2008 at 9:08 am
Sounds awesome to me. Does anyone remmeber steel batallion, where if you didn’t hit the eject button before dying your save would be deleted?
It really kept the tension up.