Velvet Assassin Notes
These are some notes I jotted down while playing Velvet Assassin (a third-person stealth game for the 360), they aren’t edited, so forgive any mistakes.
VELVET ASSASSIN DESIGN NOTES
SHOOTING
This game is obviously designed around melee stealth combat.
The shooting in general is extremely poor; this is especially apparent in certain segments where the game makes it the core mechanic, tossing stealth out the window in favor of run and gun gameplay.
-Clunky acceleration on aiming, feels delayed and hard to pinpoint your target
-Shots are wildly inaccurate and inconsistent in their damage even at short range
-Despite being silenced, enemies can hear the gun very easily
-Very little ammunition
It is clear the developers intended the knife to be your main weapon for dispatching foes, but then why even have the gun? It doesn’t compliment the knife well in being a ranged alternative due to its unreliable nature. It doesn’t enhance the stealth (the core mechanic) in any way, nor does it present fun or interesting gunplay.
If the game is designed around melee and the ammunition is so scarce, make the gun a super weapon. A get-out-of-jail-free card. Give the player one clip for a pistol, and it can be resorted to in several situations to bail the player out:
-If you fail stealth and need to dispatch foes quickly to save yourself
-Take out an enemies in tricky positions that make them hard to sneak up to and melee
Or
Provide a secondary use for the gun like Splinter Cell does. It can be used to shoot out lights, enhancing the stealth gameplay.
Or
Remove the gun altogether and give an item that will compliment the melee stealth mechanics. Something that will allow the player out of tight spot, like a smoke bomb or a taser.
Why do stealth games insist on giving you loud weapons? What can I possibly do with a shotgun in a game like this? It directly conflicts with your main game mechanic, sneaking around. I have low health, low ammo, and poor accuracy, which is fine because this accentuates the melee stealth combat, but it doesn’t lend itself well to gunplay. I also don’t have any tools to avoid damage, such as a cover system.
STEALTH
-If spotted, and you run and hide, enemies seem to know exactly where you are
-Character moves too slowly
-Enemies can spot you randomly even when fully concealed
-Satisfying melee kills
-Unclear how much noise you’re making
-Light is treated like a hazard (cool idea)
-Guards stand together and have the same conversations when you fail and need to restart a checkpoint
Give the player an interesting, non-intrusive way of knowing how much noise they’re making. Stealth games should give players as much information as possible (Batman detective vision) to solve the challenge ahead.
Light is treated like a hazard. Example:
A single light source is covering the whole floor. It is a window with a fan in it, you must stay inside the moving shadows of the fan to cross the room. Very interesting mechanic.
Conversations
Because of the nature of stealth games, you have to observe patterns and make actions based on those patterns. If you have to wait for two characters to finish up their conversation (especially when you failed and have to hear it again) and resume their pattern, it results in gameplay that is purely waiting without any engagement.
Splinter Cell, Assassin’s Creed, and Batman all handled this well by letting you take out two guards at once.
OR
Remove the concept altogether.
OR
More creative solutions that don’t interrupt gameplay. Maybe the player hacks their remote communications and can listen in while still playing the game.
OR
Don’t play dialogue again after player has had to load a checkpoint.
PROGRESSION
-You can level up your character in the game by putting points into Stealth, Morphine (the game’s crazy super invisibilitly mode), or Strength.
-Stealth makes you move faster while sneaking, Strength makes you have more health, Morphine makes the super mode last longer.
-Each section upgrades linearly, so every point in Stealth will only make you move faster.
Adding points into a skill should give different benefits ala Skyrim. For example:
Stealth: Move faster while sneaking, less chance of being spotted, reduced noise while running, etc.
Strength: Faster kill animations, ability to kill two guards at once, etc.
Morphine: Morphine regenerates slowly, increase regeneration rate, etc.
Experience is only earned by finding collectibles, why not by taking down guards? Or sneaking through an area without being spotted? You know, actual core mechanics.
Call of Duty Beat Chart Comparison
A few weeks ago, as I was doing my daily browse of Gamasutra, I came across this fascinating Article about charting the pacing of a game. I immediately decided to put it to use and see what king of information I could gleam from not only the results, but the process.
So while playing the multiplayer in Modern Warfare 3, I decided to run through it’s campaign with the intent of logging the pacing (maybe grab some intel I hadn’t found yet as well).
When Modern Warfare 3 first launched, I balked at how little they had changed, it was just the same game. It had long rail-shooter sections, tons of unplayable cutscenes, and what seemed like very little actual gameplay. Was my initial impression correct? Lets take a look at the chart:
Each cell is one minute of gameplay.
(These are only about half the levels in each game, in the interest of time.)
I gotta say, I was surprised at the results. The game is not as scripted as I originally thought. Aside from Turbulence, which is essentially an interactive cutscene, the game is fairly good at keeping you engaged. Combat is kept to a brisk 5-6 minutes and lengthy cinematics are followed by long bouts of gameplay. Rail sections are kept mercifully short, and seem to be mostly used to punctuate the combat or to engage you during a cutscene.
What is really interesting to me, is how consistent the levels are in length. Each is around ten minutes. The whole pace of the game is very brisk and keeps things moving.
NOTE: The last three blocks in Persona Non Grate should have a rail section in between the cinematics. I had labeled it a cinematic initially, but after some thought, a rail section is more fitting. So, cinematic, rail, cinematic.
So, with that, I decided to see how Black Ops stacks up. It’s developed by a different studio (Treyarch) so there are bound to be some differences. Treyarch was always recognized as sort of the B-Team in Call of Duty. They make good games, but not quite as good as Infinity Ward was putting out. So let’s go to the chart and see what the differences are:
Oh Black Ops. Playing through these levels again after playing MW3 really put one thing into perspective: Black Ops is a slower game. Levels are around 15-20 minutes, often indulging in lengthy cutscenes and combat sections.
I wanna talk about the Pentagon level for a second.
It’s four minutes of you not doing anything. You just watch your character walk around the Pentagon, and then talk to the President (MW3 did this as well with Turbulence, but at least there was some gameplay in that level). Some of it is not even viewed from your point of view, there are complete cutscenes that show your character from a third-person.
Maybe this is a personal thing, but a great aspect of CoD has always been that you are in these insane situations. This is why the game makes you view all the cutscenes from a first-person, that is why it’s so scripted. Placing you outside of that character just doesn’t make any sense.
One last thing about Black Ops, I labeled those sections in Baikonur ’stealth’. I should note they are only labeled that way because if you fire your gun, the mission ends. That is the only reason they are not cinematics, the segment right after has you walking around in enemy disguises but the game won’t even let you shoot sooooo…there it is.
OKAY, so comparison of the two games:
Cinematics
Black Ops consistently has 2-3 minute cutscenes (some without ANY player interaction), whereas MW3 sticks to a one minute max. Black Ops also tends to start the levels with lengthy cutscenes.
Combat
MW3 has shorter fights, while Black Ops can get a bit overindulgent with its combat with a section of nothing but combat for seven minutes.
Rail Sections
Both games like to use these ‘half-gameplay’ sections to punctuate their cutscenes and combat scenarios. Luckily both keep it short, with Black Ops using them more frequently.
Stealth
This is a big one. Modern Warfare initially implemented these stealth segments in CoD4. It worked really well, and gave a nice slow valley to accentuate the peaks of the insane combat. It allowed the game to breathe a little bit, which was welcome.
In MW3, the stealth segment is almost 5 minutes long, but it is consistently demanding things of the player. It can be failed at any time, but instead of ending the mission, it turns into a combat scenario.
In Black Ops, I had to mark most of the stealth section as a cinematic. It just didn’t involve any player involvement, and if you strayed from the path in the few sections it gave you control, it would instantly fail the mission. Instead of being a refreshing slow-paced gameplay section, it’s a playable cutscene.
Conclusion:
I felt that Black Ops dragged. It just would bog you down in these lengthy cutscenes and combat sections without any breaks to offset it. It’s important for a game like Call of Duty, that is so much about the setpieces, to keep the player progressing. They’re there for the insane shit. Not to stare at Reznov’s (russian character from Black Ops) face for 3 minutes.
So, takeaway, this illustrates how important it is to keep the player engaged with different things to do. Altering up the gameplay to avoid repetition. No matter how good your gameplay is, doing the same thing for upwards of 10 minutes will lead to the brain wandering. Cater the pace to the kind of game you are making and revolve it around the core mechanic. Present it in different ways, even the rail shooting sections in CoD involve you shooting.
