One of the things I love in my games is the freedom.
Even though at a fundamental level, all games can only offer the illusion of choice, still
we enjoy having them as long as the process is well-hidden, enjoyable, and we're able
to reach catharsis (or the feeling of relief at the end of our game).
Essentially, it's just us as gamers (as people) wanting to enact agency in our favorite
medium of entertainment.
What that basically means is we like our capacity to execute free will.
Nowadays, gamers associate freedom with non-linear Open World Sandbox games and looking at how
freedom is generally perceived, to an extent, those games do encompass a broader sense of
freedom.
The most obvious example, Skyrim, gives you the freedom to do what you want (within the
confines of the game, of course).
You can choose your playstyle and complete quests in any order you like which is a big
part of Skyrim's appeal.
And within the game, you have the opportunity to choose your interactions, playstyle, and
how you want your journey to progress.
Skyrim, like many of Bethesda games has thousands of hours' worth of quests and if you have
the patience you'll get your money's worth from these games.
Unfortunately, my experience after hours and hours of playtime wasn't what I expected,
short story I was lost and started to feel a bit burnt out.
Being overwhelmed with SO many quests that they start feeling repetitive, I started to
FEEL like I was doing the same thing over and over again.
After some time, I stopped caring for the quests and I realized I had no idea how to
get to the endgame and up to this video, I still haven't.
Don't get me wrong, Skyrim is in no way a bad game.
It just manages to showcase how extreme freedom can lead the player into losing their sense
of purpose.
But freedom doesn't only exist in one type of game.
Dishonored isn't an Open World game per-se, but it offers so much freedom in terms of
playstyle and exploration.
Dishonored is made up of level-based areas and throughout these levels (or areas) there
are interesting events happening that revolve around the main story and completing these
side objectives will contribute to the final outcome of your ending and you're free to
choose the way you see fit to handle each given objective.
You can spare, assassinate, kidnap, or frame your target in a variety of ways too.
It might not have the scope that many sandbox games have, but because of the smaller scale,
there's a concentrated effort into optimizing the gameplay and details that have profound
effects on your overall experience with the advantage of linear progression making for
effective storytelling.
I say linear but not in a bad way because I was always free to choose my own approach
when dealing with my objectives.
What Dishonored proves for me, is that linear games do not take away the freedom we associate
with huge sandboxes.
I would much rather have a smaller area to explore, given that there are more meaningful
things to discover- which is exactly what Dishonored is all about.
Another similar game I've played is Deus Ex Human Revolution.
Deus Ex plays like Dishonored but set in the future.
You're free to roam around and look for side objectives that can supplement your main
goals.
Like how investigating a suspect might lead you to uncover more information that could
change the outcome of your main mission via an extra dialog option or exploring an area
might help you find you a way to diffuse that bomb without the need to suffer casualties.
These are the reasons why we appreciate the freedom in our games, to discover things that
are otherwise invisible when taking the beaten path.
What freedom offers is choice, and what gives that choice meaning is consequence.
Even if it's only the illusion of choice, at the end of the day, I'd like to think
I made the right decisions regardless of how things ended.
What I'm trying to say is that we should really expand our views on freedom in video
games to not only include Open World sandboxes but all types of genres as well.
Open world sandbox games provide us with the freedom of exploration but many times I've
felt that they don't really offer us much in terms of story-telling and meaningful things
to do.
Far Cry 4 had this problem where missions get really really repetitive.
I remember doing an escort mission and feeling accomplished when I was done with it.
Only to find out that not only does it not affect the final outcome of the game, there
are an endless parade of escort missions available around Kyrat which just falls into the category
of busy work.
Busy work as in it doesn't affect the world in any way, it doesn't give any meaningful
consequence.
Even if I skip every side mission available, there's no penalty, no consequence.
On the other hand, even IF I complete all these challenges, I'm not contributing to
my end-game and the rewards become rather pointless during the late game.
So, these challenges lack both intrinsic and extrinsic motivation.
Intrinsic as in, there's no accomplishment for myself to achieve, no story or lesson
I can learn, nothing of value to my curiosity.
Extrinsically, the experience or money I get for helping just isn't game changing enough
to warrant doing it another hundred times- I'm being hyperbolic, but I'm almost sure
there's actually that many.
Alright guys, that's all I have for this video.
Remember this is my opinion and yours may differ greatly.
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