Many triple-A games are too pretty for their own good. 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 isn't one of them — though it is very pretty.
Big-budget games are facing many problems right now, from the rise of generative AI, out-of-control budgets, swollen schedules, and a lack of a clear path forward on monetization. But the biggest creative problem facing triple-A games is that many feel like theme park rides you're guided through, not worlds you'꧂re free to explore. Let's tentatively call these games Pretty-Em-Ups.
Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 Is Persona 5 For Classical Musi✃c F🃏ans
Fans of Persona 5 won’t want to miss this one.
The Pretty-Em-Up Problem
In games like 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:God of War Ragnarok, 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:The Callisto Protocol, 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Final Fantasy 16, and 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Dragon Age: The Veilguard, there is one route through a level with little or no flexibility 🔴in how you proceed. You're funneled along until you reach a combat encounter or puzzle or fallen tree to lift with a companion, and then you hop right back into the funnel. The level doesn't exist to be explored; it exists to shuttle you from objective to objective.
I don't dislike all of these games. God of War R𓂃agna꧙rok made my GOTY list in 2022, after all. But they represent a worrying trend in game design. It's the endpoint of the pursuit of graphics as an end in itself. Instead of serving up interesting levels with interesting objectives, they give players a narrow track to run along with the occasional hurdle in the form of combat. The only thin💞g they have to offer is nice scenery.
Linear Games Have Changed
There are different forms of linearity, and linearity, in and of itself, isn't a bad thing. A game like the original Doom is linear in the sense that it has a sequence of levels that you must complete to finish its campaign. But inside those levels, you have a great degree of freedom in where you go first and which secrets you find or whether you find them at all. Similarly, 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Super Mario 64 is linear in the sense that ꧒there are gates that prevent yꦫou from advancing further until you collect the proper number of stars.
But any given level is open-ended, dro🅷pping you in and letting you run around to your heart's content. And you can play the levels in each subsection in whatever order you want. That's radically different from many modern games, which offer little to do but run in between combat encount❀ers.
I've Been Too Spoiled By Open-World Games
I can see that (one) pi🍷ece of t💮reasure, it’s like five feet away. Can I just grab that real fast? No, remember to come back after like ten hours?
Clair Obscur Clears Most Linear Triple-A Games
At first, I worried that Clair Obscur might feel the same. It's certainly very pretty and story-focused, a hallmark of pretty-em-ups. The ♛pre-release footage of the game had a lot of shots of the demoers walking through canyon-like areas while sweeping the camera across the sky.
But once I actually got to explore, I realized that it was possible to get lost in its world. Paths twist and double back. You might need to go up through a tunnel in a mountain, or down along a low path. I was especially pleased when, in an early area, I thought I had reached the next checkꦜpoint only to realize I had gotten turned around and was actually back where I started.
Add in the fact that combat feels both strategic and activeꩵ, that there's a world map to navigate, that spending skill points actually seems 𝓡to mean something, that boss fights will kick your butt if you're not prepared, and that enemies respawn every time you rest at a campsite and you've got a game that is far more interesting than the hyperlinear games I'm tired of playing.
Clair Obscur has an incredibly specific world, and its opening makes you eager 🌱to explore it. On-rails levels kill that feeling, so I'm glad Clair Obscur gives me freedom to see how pretty it is on my terms.
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