The “Mysterious Wall In An Otherwise Normal City” Problem
Last night while playing Bioshock I was reminded of something that is rather annoying in linear games that should be easier to get around with modern consoles: corridors that go nowhere and mysterious barriers preventing your passage because games aren’t designed for it
Single player games tend to just have the barrier, while multiplayer games are free to change it up, or so it appears.
Duke Nukem 3D had the titular mysterious walls blocking your egress from its levels on any random street.
And of course Bioshock has its first level, wherein your plane crashes and Mysterious Flames appear whenever you swim in any direction that isn’t towards the destination city. Then once you’re inside, there is a Mysterious Hallway at the top of stairs that goes nowhere but has a plasmid dispenser. Which leaves you no choice but to take the plasmid required to continue onward.
The rest of the demo has gates that never open showing you pathways you can’t take.
Resistance: Fall of Man has the linear valley throughout.
Battlefield 2 gets around this issue with one of the best solutions I’ve seen so far: warnings and health penalization if you go outside the area the level designer set, but still presents an otherwise unblocked view outside of your allowed zone:
“Where are you going soldier? Return to your post or you will be shot.”
Tribes 2’s answer was to repeat the map endlessly, except without any buildings or items beyond the regular area. A barrier also appeared if you tried to fly out with the flag in CTF, showing where the game would force you to drop it so you couldn’t lead the other team on an endless chase.
Of course Tribes and Battlefield 2 are exclusively multiplayer affairs.
