5 Gaming Cliches that need to DIE.

Everyone has an opinion about which gaming tropes are good, and which are bad, and in most cases the quality (or necessity) of a given cliche is more dependent upon the skill with which it is executed than the nature of the trope itself.

Mostly--but not always.

There are some cliches infesting our contemporary medium that are simply too ridiculous to ever be implemented with any real success; some tropes that are so pervasive many gamers don't even notice them at all: here are the five worst gaming cliches that need to die.

Or, rather, the 5 most annoying gaming cliches that ought to have died out years (or decades) ago.

#5: Directional Audio

Some of you may read "directional audio" and have no idea what I'm talking about. Others may know but simply wonder why I think it's such a big deal. First: let's talk about why audio matters. Why does audio matter?

In a game, moreso than in any other medium (that makes use of noise), audio is profoundly important. It is expository--through spoken dialog, the player learns about the virtual world he or she is inhabiting. This provides context for the experience--it allows you to know what you're doing, and more importantly, WHY you're doing it. Noise also goes a long way to establishing the setting--environmental noise and background music sets the tones for specific areas, and makes the world come alive. Try playing Dark Souls or Persona 4 or Zelda without any music, and the experience is far shallower.

But audio also has a more immediate, necessary role: through audio cues, players can detect enemies and thus avoid imminent attacks, see through traps, ascertain the environment--and through simple dialog (often in the form of commands barked at players) learn his or her most immediate objective.

And almost all of that is LOST with directional audio.

But what is directional audio? It's audio whose volume is dependent on the position of the games camera, and/or the proximity of the player to whoever or whatever is speaking. This is an ancient trope, and at first glance, it's a good one--it's one of those little tricks that programmers worked out years ago, and were really impressed with, and have therefore used it in every game since.

There's only one problem--human hearing is not based on direction. If you're speaking to someone in real life and walk 5 meters away, you can still hear them perfectly. Not so in games. If you're 1 meter away from someone, and then turn your head away, does the sound suddenly drop off? In almost every contemporary game, that's exactly what happens--from Mass Effect to Call of Duty to Arkham City.

And it needs to ****ing stop. Saying, "I'm sorry, but I didn't hear you: I was looking the other way" is just too stupid of a notion to exist in this day and age.

#4: Ye Olde England and other Archetypal Settings

Okay, yeah: this is an obvious one. Ever notice how almost every game takes place in one of four basic settings? We've got Ye Olde England for fantasy games, the Modern Era (literally 1940-present) for most shooting games, and then Star Wars and Mad Max based-worlds for all science-fiction settings. Those 4. That's it.

Let's look at the big games of this generation and classify their settings, shall we?

Borderlands - Mad Max
Call of Duty (all) - Modern Era
Catherine - Modern Era
Dragon Age (all) - Ye Olde England
Dragon Quest (all) - Ye Olde England
Fable (all) - Ye Olde England
Fallout (all) - Mad Max
Ghost Trick - Modern Era
Grand Theft Auto (all) - Modern Era
Halo (all) - Modern Era
L.A. Noire - Modern Era
Mass Effect (all) - Star Wars (or, more accurately, a shallow rip-off of Babylon 5).
Persona (all) - Modern Era
Professor Layton (all) - Modern Era
Rage - Mad Max
Resistance (all) - Mad Max
Saint's Row (all) - Modern Era
Uncharted (all) - Modern Era
Yakuza (all) - Modern Era

It's so homogenous I could puke. Actually, I think I did. Variety is, as they say, the spice of life--and when it comes to settings, games offer hardly anything in the way of variety. It's no wonder that games like Valkyria Chronicles and Red Dead Redemption and Journey and The Witcher are so appealing to so many gamers so long before they were released: they offered unique settings that promised a far more unusual(and therefore interesting) context than is typical for the genre.

Human history is ancient: we have a majestic past stretching back further than we can imagine, and a future equally great in scope: we have thousands of cultures and languages and stories to tell, so why is it so many games are so intent on telling us the SAME stories in the SAME settings over and over again.

This cliche doesn't just need to die--it needs to be killed with fire or acid.

#3: State-based A.I.

Another mechanical cliche that irritates the hell out of me, but that many of my fellow gamers (that's you!) may not be fully aware of. What is state-based AI? Basically, it's artificial intelligence in its simplest form--the enemy (or allied) AI characters or units each have set forms of behavior depending on state.

Usually, it goes something like this:

Passive: enemy does not detect player, and is therefore either motionless or performs basic patrol movement.

Active: enemy detects player and moves directly toward player, attacking.

Sometimes there's a middle state ("Alert") where the enemy AI "almost" detects the player, and adopts a new searching-movement pattern.

As I said: AI at its lowest form. Take the notoriously difficult game, Dark Souls, for example. It becomes much less difficult once you get a handle on how limited the AI is, and learn to use the terrain to your advantage. Or stealth-based games like Deus Ex: Human Revolution. Once you figure out the basic AI states, the challenge evaporates.

The gist of state-based AI is that A) it's extremely predictable, and B) fails to provide much in the way of challenge. It's one of the reasons so many games artificially inflate difficulty simply by altering the Health/Damage attributes of the player and/or his or her foes.

Normally I'd leave it at that, but I just know someone is going to ask, "Great, so what's the solution?" Simple--we move on to the next "stage" of AI. Ever notice how enemy (and ally) AI in games today seems roughly equal (and in many cases worse) than AI in games 10 or even 20 years old? That's because we've been stuck at this stage for a very long time.

The next step? Objective-based AI. Let each individual AI be governed by two factors--one, the objective. This is what the AI wants to achieve; and two, how far the AI is willing to go to achieve that objective. To keep this post short (and I know, it's a long one--and we're still only half-way through!) I'll simiply say that a more dynamic AI like this would allow the AI to operate in the absence of the player--to act more like a human being. To advance and retreat based on the situation, to make decisions based upon what the player is doing AND what other AIs are doing. To decide when to give up and flee.

Just think of it: when was the last time you saw AI in a game act with even the smallest semblance of self-preservation?

#2: A Villain in lieu of an Antagonist

Everyone these days is talking about how games are an emerging art form, and about how the medium is as great a revolution to how humankind explores narrative as books or film back in the day.

And you know what, they've got a point. Games have a lot of potential. Shame hardly any of it is realized. We keep seeing the same archetypal plots unfolding in the same archetypal settings with the same archetypal characters--and the one role holding the narrative back more than anything else is the antagonist.

A good narrative is all about conflict, and a good conflict requires A) a protagonist, and B) an antagonist. The player is the protagonist. He or she is a fully realized human being, and can use his or her imagination to fill in whatever gaps may exist in the game's own narrative, making the protagonist (or player-character) of every game the most integral, fully-realized and full-dimensional character in the cast.

In those few games that we deem truly great--truly memorable, from Suikoden II to Shadows of Amn to Dragon Quest VIII to Final Fantasy VII--we always see actual antagonists. Some of them are evil, some of them (as was the case with DQ8's Marcello) actually have the moral high ground. They're all fully-realized, fully-developed characters that feel just as human (or moreso) than the player character. And you know what? That makes for one hell of a compelling game.

But what do we usually get?

Final Bosses. Evil monsters with no goal beyond simple destruction, with no ambition beyond annihilation, with no personality beyond "LOL evil." From Dragon Age to Mass Effect to L.A. Noire to Uncharted, video games typically give us boring mono-dimensional monsters in lieu of actually, fully-realized villains.

And lets not forget the cardboard enemy types. I think the (painfully underwhelming) Ace Combat: Assault Horizon really hit on all of the boring enemy cliches--there are poorly-equipped evil brown people with no clear motivation, and then there's the fan-favorite big bad, the USSR--risen from the grave. Who wage war, once more, with no real motivation. Which is basically the same roster of foes and depth typical to the average Call of Duty or Bioware game.

*sigh*

People, if you really want gaming to evolve into a genuine form of narrative expression on the same scale as film or literature, that's something that ought to die--and given how well realized many SNES and PS1 era enemies are, it should have died long, long ago.

#1: The Mana Bar

I've pointed out this cliched mechanic several times in the past, and criticized it, only to be ridiculed by my peers. But guess what? I stand by my assertion that the mana bar is an unnecessary relic of the past that has no business in contemporary gaming--in fact, it never did.

It's a staple of most RPGs and action games--you have one bar for HP that depletes as you take damage, and another bar for mana that depletes as you cast magic spells or use special abilities. Hell, it even pops up in DBZ fighting games and the occasional sim.

So what's the problem?

Mana is based on the eastern concept of Chi (or Qi or Ki). Basically, it is the "life force" or "spirit force" of a being. In short, the mana bar represents the life force of the player. You know what else does that? The HP bar.

Two different mechanics based on the same concept. And it's EVERYWHERE.

Remember back how when Dead Space came out, everyone was so impressed by the lack of a HUD, and wondered why it had taken the medium so long to get rid it--after all, it seemed like a no-brainer in retrospect, right? The first (good) RPG to merge HP and mana bars will get a similar reaction, I promise you.

What function does the mana bar serve? Class distinction. The basic dichotomy is this: warriors have high HP and low mana, mages have low HP and high mana. This forces mage-classes to focus on ranged, skill-based combat, and forces warrior-classes to focus melee-based combat. The ultimate end is that warriors are able to soak up damage while tanking, whereas mages are "glass cannons" (or in the case of the old Infinity Engine games, glass nukes) that can deal out way more damage, but can't take much damage. At all.

So what changes when you merge the Mana Bar into the HP bar?

Nothing at all. You can have a mage and a warrior with the same HP stats: the warrior is the same as ever, but the mage gets weaker with each spell--because the magick is literally eating away at his or her life force. Actually, this does change one thing--it gives added tension to magic-based combat. It makes the whole dynamic much more intersesting--do you have the mage focus on weaker spells so that he or she can better defend his or herself, or risk mightier magicks leaving your mage vulnerable to enemy attacks?

The mana bar is the worst sort of gaming cliche--it's not something that makes the experience much worse than it ought to be (those kinds of cliches are the easiest sort to spot and remove), instead it's a trope so common, so pervasive that developers add it without thinking about it, and gamers glance at it without considering whether or not its necessary.

As games in general move more and more toward greater accessibility (mostly through more streamlined graphical user interfaces and more efficient, logical gameplay mechanics) ancient cliches like mana bars, recycled medieval settings and direction-dependent audio need to die.

The sooner, the better.

[Godmars290]

I think that the Mad Max/post apocalypse motif has been done to death. Likewise LOTR/grudge fantasy, but not the modern era if you exclude shooters.

Don't know what your issue is with Persona. Pre-P3-4 there have been ones set post apocalypse/rapture as well as turn of the 20th century Japan.

Edit:
Still hold that the modern era isn't all that worn out. Aside from FPS. Sci-fi for that matter, again in regards to RPGs.

ME is a shooter. If it were an RPG ME2 would have done more with "non-combative" races like the elcor than make them background characters.

[Canary]

I think you're confusing Persona with Shin Megami Tensei. The SMT games have had a bit more setting variation, but Persona 2, 3 and 4 all took place in modern Japan. And the first game, too, I think--but it's been a very long time since I played it, and I didn't spend much time with it.

[coolbeans]

This blog definately required some thought. Some of these graze by me unnoticed (save for AI) :P.

[SageHonor]

A couple things

~ Thank you for not making this blog cliche. I agree with coolbeans. It does seem like you took time and effort to create this

~ Mass Effect 1 had a GREAT antagonist. Saren and Sovereign. Now Sovereign was all about simple destruction etc but Saren actually was definitely deep as a character and had good motives. Especially if you read the novels. I cant say the same about the collectors in Mass Effect 2 lol. ASSUMING DIRECT CONTROL

~ In Deus Ex the developers kept talking about IMMERSION.. yet the A.I. would constantly break me out of that. At least they were funny.. KEEP RUNNING ASSHOLE! RUN YOU BASTARD! YOU RUNNIN? YOU RUNNIN BOY!!

~ I like your A.I. idea. Bioware actually stated that the enemies in Mass Effect 3 have specific objectives they want to carry out etc. I also thought KZ3 had great enemy A.I.

[theonlylolking]

You should not have to read novels to find out the characters motives.

[unkn0wn]

Impressive blog,very good read and interesting theoretical (at this point at least) solutions to AI. I don't mean that it's theoretical in that it can't be done, only that, like you said, developers seem to be stuck.

Coolbeans made the comment that some of these graze by unnoticed, but I feel like the point of innovation is seamless immersion.

[Sillyace92]

Good stuff, especially about Directional Audio, I really hate that

[bobrea]

It says Halo is modern era :\

I'm so with you on directional audio though. Some games mess up on my 5.1 speakers so bad that if I turn around I can't even hear someone talking at all. It's ridiculous.

[LightofDarkness]

Well, for one, Resistance is modern era and Halo is futuristic. But Halo isn't very Star Wars, it has more in common with the Alien/Predator universe than Star Wars, and it genuinely feels like it's own thing. That, and the Witcher is very much a "Ye Olde England" setting, it just mixes Scottish and Welsh races in to the fold. I'll agree about ME though, even though I'm quite a fan, it has obvious influences from Babylon 5.

I agree that the Mad Max setting needs to die a horrible death as well, I never really liked it and it's been over-saturated now.

As regards antagonists, the Witcher 2 has a few and they're all very real. They're politicians and kings, activists and rebels and they all have motives and feel like genuine people. An example is Iorveth, who is an antagonist at first, but should you sympathize with his plight you have the chance to aid him, thus changing the way the second act plays out almost entirely (while simultaneously knocking your allegiance to another character). Although none of them will stand out as truly "great," as I doubt if any of them are diametrically opposed to the player's goals (they may be too understandable for their own villainy's sake).

I've wanted a game to do the HP/Magic bar thing for years. It has some interesting other effects too, like allowing you to harvest enemies' life-forces to enhance your own or be wasted on extravagant, annihilating spells. Likewise, once you are dangerously close to death, using the last vestiges of your own life-force would cause "EX" or "desperation" effects, amplifying the damage significantly while placing your character in extreme risk and making it more difficult for them to recover depending on how much risk was taken. Imagine being able to sacrifice your own character for the good of your other party members with one last, hugely destructive or debuffing spell and turning the tide of a seemingly hopeless fight. Thrilling stuff.

[caseh]

Valkyria Chronicles was a bad example for a game that has a different period setting. Its based loosly around Europe mid 1930s. :)

I can see what you're saying but if a game isn't set in modern era/mad max/star wars/ye olde england then what time periods are left exactly?

[plmkoh]

1. #5: Directional Audio

This is NOT a "Cliche", developers don't intentionally want to give you bad audio cues, it might sound like an obvious no brainer thing to implement, but what you are asking for is 1000s of audio samples being processed. What about storage (try fitting on an Xbox disc), what about RAM overheads for the processing, not everything is EAX certified so how will lower budget games pay for it?

2. #4: Ye Olde England and other Archetypal Settings

All fantasy is "Ye Olde England" because "fantasy" is "Ye Olde England" which has been derived from JRR Tolkien's "The Hobbit" or "Lord of the Rings", it may seem like a Cliche but that's only because of what it is, deviate and it is no longer classic fantasy.

I couldn't begin to fathom how you were able to label all games set within the last 100 years to be "Modern era". Tell me are there any similarities between something from 1940's to something in the 1990's? That is the very reason we have different "ages" to differentiate them ie Information age for the 80's.

3. #3: State-based A.I.

Once again, we as a human race haven't even begun to scratch the surface of true "AI" and what we call "AI" now are a bunch of pre-scripted commands that are context based. Now with that said you try cramming in a fully fledged AI system into a game console whilst having the game render breath taking graphics....it's impossible.

4. #2: A Villain in lieu of an Antagonist

You know I hear you on this, we have a protagonist who is pure of heart and an antagonist who is pure evil. Yeah you know why this is the way it is, it's called conventions, we've had this style of story telling for centuries and generations, it's this way because people like to see a story of the hero overcoming his adversaries.

5. #1: The Mana Bar

Ummm do you even understand the concept of "gameplay" and "balance", funny how you have mentioned Dark Souls but yet don't even realise that concepts like a "Mana Bar" is designed to force the player to understand the limitations of a class and therefore force a style of play. Now tell me if you were playing a game of WoW PvP, why would I play as a melee character when I can just range my way to victory with a Mage who can cast unlimited spells with no "mana bar" cool down.

You know I came here expecting to read a blog about real "cliches" such as why in American games are characters with British accents always the "Bad guys". Yeah I supposed you touched on some, but really missed the point of what a cliche is. I think you'd better rename your post as "5 Gaming ANNOYANCES that need to DIE" instead.

[zerocrossing]

I would love a post explaining "why in American games are characters with British accents always the "Bad guys"

It really bugged that in Tomb Raider anniversary they changed Natla's voice from a American, to a cliched evil Brit :/

As a Brit myself (that has almost absolutely no evil tendencies) I find the stereotype weirdly confusing.

[caseh]

"As a Brit myself (that has almost absolutely no evil tendencies) I find the stereotype weirdly confusing."

Heheh, Killzone 2/3 made me chuckle. Spacebound Nazi's with British accents. :D

Not all brits are evil though; Captain Price, MacTavish and Ghost are all brits in the Modern Warfare franchise. :D

[LightofDarkness]

Caseh: It's not about them being brits, per se, that's true. Heroes have to be an "everyman" in most blockbusters, because we need a relatable "guide" to help us understand the story and setting as if we were there. This is almost always the protagonist. We can genuinely feel for these characters because they're like us.

Most people are not terribly sophisticated in either their manner or diction and are of average intelligence. They're also not terribly wealthy. What's the opposite of this? Of course, it's a sophisticated, well-spoken and highly intelligent person. These are almost always the antagonist. A brilliant scheming mastermind with a penchant for the grander/finer things.

Ask anyone what the most sophisticated accent they can think of is and they'll probably do an impression of a posh English accent. It is synonymous with the well-to-do, the sophisticated and well-spoken and the more intelligent among us. This fits the bill of our antagonist almost exactly.

Of course, why are we so easily able to dislike and distrust this antagonist? Especially in our current times, the average Joe has an almost instinctual distrust of these societal "betters." This is almost always the case, where posh-accented, intellectual sophisticats with more money than sense are regarded as untrustworthy, with every action harbouring an ulterior motive (usually power and money). Just look at the complete 180 we've taken with bankers and politicians these last few years as evidence of this.

It's seemingly an odd stereotype but it makes sense when you really think about it.

[Thirteenthorder]

From reading your comment on Number 5 alone I can tell that you didn't comprehend the article in its fullness. He's not stating "0h l0lz infinites mana ftw". He didn't even say anything about infinite spells with no cool down being viable in any way, shape, or form so your argument on WoW is totally invalid. I don't understand what part of losing the very same reserve of energy you rely on to stay ALIVE in order to attack with spells seems overpowered to you? Not to mention that bit about Dark Souls. Have you played the game? Show me where the infinite spells are because I've yet to find them. The only part of that example that even slightly makes sense is the fact that you have a number of uses for spells like Heal. Problem is, spells like Heal take about 10 seconds to even cast. As if that would be effective during the heat of battle.

Your argument on 4 doesn't need as large an explanation as 5. People like conventional things. And? An even larger share of the gaming community appreciates outside of the box concepts and story design.

Ahh 3. Since I'm a PS3 user primarily I'll put it like this: Blu-Ray. As disc space expands, who knows how much data we'll be able to fit onto gaming disks (if we even have those) of the future. Take a step back and be a visionary, just because something is conventional today doesn't mean an improvement or adjustment would be impossible tomorrow. People in the 70s would have laughed at the concept of a 3DS, yet today it's commonplace and financially practical.

2. He listed all games within the last 100 years? Did I miss that part of the article? And are you serious? A game has to bear relation to The Hobbit or LoTR to be authentically fantastical (read: fantasy) in nature? Well thank you for enlightening me, now I know why the RPG known as Rogue Galaxy was a colossal failure. #uttersarcasm

1. Saved the best for last. Aside from your very-obvious usage of technical terminology, I'd like to point out that fade-in fade-out audio arguably takes more RAM than a SIMPLE dialogue in full stereo 100% of the time (read: the solution to what shouldn't even be a discussed problem nowadays).

[Neckbear]

Heh, I actually remember that Atelier Rorona did pretty much what you talked about in this blog regarding Mana bars/points, having synthesis, skills and whatnot take away your HP.

And you know what? It was a terribly unbalanced system. You could heal HP with HP which basically made the healing resource infinite, to recover from high-level syntheses you only needed to purchase a healing potion from the shop and, overall, you would be able to easily break the game was it not because the time limits could stop you. In fact, so many people complained of the idea, the MP points saw a return in Atelier Totori because of it.

[zerocrossing]

Damn, beat me to it.

lol agreed. :P

[zerocrossing]

I can definitely see where your coming from with this one.

Though having played a couple of games that have integrated HP consumption instead of using a traditional MP bar (Atelier Rorona being my most recent) I can safely say this does give a added sense of tension, seeing your HP (hit points) being taken up with each spell you cast can be a daunting thing when facing a powerful foe, especial when you're HP gets so low you can no longer cast a simple healing spell.

However, if not managed correctly this system will just fail big, I have to admit though it holds much potential.

Thanks for the interesting read.

[FaSCoRP]

Regarding the classic topic of bosses and personalities. I'm glad that I've played F.3.A.R. Fettel character is amazing and the concept of final boss is not the normal one

[bwazy]

Guild Wars 2 doesn't have a Mana bar. Do your bloody goddamn research.

[Capt-FuzzyPants]

Yeah Final Fantasy 13 didn't have an MP bar either. Thats part of the reason the gameplay changed so much. And guess what people are still b**chin about it almost 2 years later. I guess thats what happens when cliches just die.

[Deadman_Senji]

Notice that all of the examples for how not to do villains are all western in origin. It really makes me laugh when people say WRPGs are so much deeper and better written than JRPGs, then you mention Xenogears and that usually shuts them up in a big fucking hurry.