Earlier this year I made an op-ed video about interactive experiences at the Walt Disney
World theme parks and how I felt they were lacking when it came to offering any kind
of real challenge for guests looking for one.
Now that Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge is open, and along with it Smuggler’s Run and the
Datapad, I felt that it was only fair to revisit the topic because you know what…
I think they almost nailed it.
Almost.
So what am I talking about here?
Well the last video on the subject that I made back in May goes more in-depth on it,
but the short version is that I was pretty let down with the experiences that Disney
more or less pitches as interactive adventures or games.
Specifically I was referring to Sorcerers of the Magic Kingdom, Agent P at Epcot, and
Treasures of the Seven Seas in Adventureland.
It wasn’t that I was expecting some kind of Dark Souls gauntlet for the experiences,
but in some cases there wasn’t even a challenge, let alone a difficult one.
Experiences like Treasures of the Seven Seas aren’t the actual hunt or missions that it’s advertised as.
It’s essentially as interactive as using a Fastpass.
So, I think understandably, I was a bit worried about Smuggler’s Run and the Datapad at Galaxy's Edge.
Now that they’ve been out and open for a while and I’ve had time to experience both,
I have to say: I’m surprisingly impressed.
In fact, I would say that the two managed to address all the issues I had with the other
experiences I just mentioned.
I don’t think they’re perfect by any stretch, but to me they both represent a fantastic first step.
So I’m going to dive into Smuggler’s Run and the Datapad, what I think they do well,
and how I think they could be even better.
Let’s start with the big one: Smuggler’s Run.
I’ve ridden it at least 15-20 times by now, and it’s quickly becoming one of my favorite
rides at the parks.
I don’t think it’s anywhere near the peak of what we can see in the future with interactive
rides, but I think it’s a great advancement from the days of Mission: Space.
The ride puts you into one of three roles on the Millennium Falcon, and technically
speaking, how you perform that role does impact not only the experience of the ride, but the
final outcome.
That said, it’s a very on-rails interactive game.
You’ll always take off from Batuu.
You’ll always jump to lightspeed to Corellia.
As far as I know you’ll always get the first shipment of coaxium.
And lastly, you’ll always escape the collapsing Star Destroyer and get back to Batuu safely.
In those very broad strokes, everyone’s experience is going to be the same.
So the change in outcome isn’t one within the narrative itself.
However what Smuggler’s Run offers is the minutiae of how well or poorly you pull off
the mission.
Are you going to fly smoothly and bring back the Falcon in one piece or crash into everything
and bring back a sparking wreck?
Are you going to get a second shipment of coaxium? Or maybe even a mythical third shipment?
How many TIE fighters are you going to take out in the process?
That’s the kind of agency you have as a guest and it all results in a personal ranking
and score that carries over to your datapad.
Now some will say that’s not enough to matter, and considering these experiences are subjective,
they wouldn’t be wrong.
I personally disagree.
I’m very much a believer that it’s the journey more than the destination that matters,
and after having ridden it a bunch, I do feel a difference between a crew that knows what
they’re doing and one that doesn’t.
So while we end up in the same place at the end no matter what, the journey to get there changes.
And this is where I think Smuggler’s Run takes a good step forward.
There is a challenge there for the guest looking for it.
If you’re an engineer it’s that attempt at staying as close to 100% as possible.
If you’re a gunner you can not only try to top your kill count, but there’s also
an optional manual gunner mode that adds a little complexity to aiming and firing.
Piloting seems to offer the most challenge, with each crash drastically impacting your
final ranking.
It’s all there for the taking if you want it, but more importantly none of it is crucial
to the experience if you don’t.
It’s entirely optional.
That doesn’t mean there isn’t room for improvement though.
I would love to see Disney add an optional advanced engineer mode that does one of two
things: either make the role more difficult by adding a “correct” order in which to
hit all the switches and buttons, affecting your score.
Or more simply just add more buttons and switches to the task whenever the ship crashes.
I would also love to see Disney take the time to design a mission that allows for more narrative
branching.
The mechanics of the ride dictates that you’ll always get to Corellia, do the mission, and
get back to Batuu.
However I think there’s room to design alternative pathways on that mission that can be triggered
with different actions.
Add that different experience for the crew willing to take on the challenge to find it.
In other words, now that you’ve got the scores and ranks set, take that next step
so guests’ performance does impact the narrative.
Not a winning narrative or losing narrative, but just different outcomes for different experiences.
Also, Disney, you have so much money.
If these AAA game publishers can put out 60+ hour long games every couple of years, you
have no excuse to not introduce a new three-and-a-half minute on-rails mission every other year.
You have the means and it’s possible, so just do it.
Now the Datapad is where I found myself really impressed with Galaxy’s Edge.
It is, by far, the best thing that Disney has added to the Play Disney Parks app.
If you’re unfamiliar with the datapad, it’s a themed app experience for Blackspire Outpost
that includes the ability to translate text in the land, interact with objects in the
land via hacking, scanning, and tuning, and take on missions for different factions, including
the Resistance and the First Order.
You have a persistent player profile with all of the collectibles you get while using
the app, as well as faction rankings, titles, not to mention all of the credits you earn
from missions and from flying the Falcon on Smuggler’s Run.
Those missions offer, and I cannot stress this enough, extremely small snippets of narrative
through dialog exchanges that you come across.
It’s not the kind of dialog that’s going to tie into the films or anything, but they’re
little excerpts that add some depth of the characters of Black Spire Outpost.
There’s even a larger cooperative game at play while you’re in the land.
You can hack a number of panels in the name of either the Resistance or the First Order,
and slowly nudge the collective control of the outpost in one direction or the other.
Or you can install a credit skimmer, that pulls in credits for you to collect whenever
another player hacks the terminal.
The best part is that all of these activities require solving an actual puzzle.
It’s not just as simple as pushing a button or tapping your magic band.
They’re actual puzzles that you can either get stuck on or flat out fail at.
That is fantastic!
Now they’re not overly difficult puzzles.
They’re all highly visual and pretty simple.
So much so, in fact, that they don’t even really require instructions on how to play.
It overcomes a legitimate concern that some viewers raised in my last video, which is
that too complex of an experience can ruin the fun for guests who don’t speak English.
In this instance, the puzzles are universal.
They even seem to get slightly more difficult the more you play.
I noticed that after a number of hours with the datapad, the shapes puzzle grew a little
larger, and the hacking puzzle introduced a new element in which if you weren’t fast
enough some of the wires would reset.
Little touches like that add a challenge to what you’re doing, but not enough of a challenge
that it’s going to take up or ruin your day.
And if you fail at the puzzle, guess what?
You just try again.
No starting from scratch with the mission.
No game over screen.
No days ruined. No getting in a line.
The stakes are just high enough to add some challenge, but not so high that anything important
is riding on it.
As a Star Wars fan and a fan of the land, I can honestly say that I’ve put hours into
the datapad while there, and it really has helped in adding some immersion to Batuu.
But of course, again, there’s always room for improvement.
For one, the hacking of objects in the land could be a lot better.
As of right now, hacking everything from a door panel to an X-Wing usually results in
either a light or a sound going off.
It is pretty cool to hack a whole ship and hear it start to power up as a result, but
there’s a serious lack of movement.
I obviously don’t expect the ships to take off, but giving the objects some kind of locomotion
would be great.
It could be as simple as the A-Wing fins moving back and forth, or a droid moving around or
a moisture vaporator spinning a bit.
I assume the reason nothing moves now is because moving things tend to break, and broken things
need fixing, and that costs money.
Disney, you’ve got the money.
When even the interactive elements of Treasures of the Seven Seas and Agent P move, you’ve
got no real excuse.
The other major change that I think would really raise the bar for the datapad is giving
some purpose to the credits you earn.
Hacking panels can earn you a handful of credits, completing missions can earn you a couple
of hundred credits, and flying for Hondo on Smuggler’s Run can earn you thousands.
Right now, without any purpose for them, your credits just pile up as you spend more time
in the land.
Imagine how much cooler the app would be if you could trade in credits for something like
a Fastpass for one of the rides.
You can easily balance the cost so that it’s not easy to exploit on a day to day basis,
but still reward guests who put time into the app.
Similar to what they do with the Play Disney Parks app as a whole, they can also start
to produce and sell pins that you can only buy if you unlock the corresponding title
or achievement in the app.
Maybe even work those titles into Smuggler’s Run.
Imagine if you sat down in the Falcon and the ride detected via your Magic Band that
you were aligned with the First Order, causing Hondo to shoot off a line or two of dialog
about one of you being part of the First Order going against the First Order by working for him.
Nothing that actually changes the narrative, but a little touch that adds something different
to the experience. It just seems like the natural next step after, say, Small World reading your magic band
and saying your name at the end.
The last note I have for the app, and this is similar to the last one I had for Smuggler’s
Run, and that is that Disney should be updating it regularly.
While the dialog you unlock through missions and hacking is very short, they’re nice
little looks into the lives of citizens of Black Spire Outpost.
Most of the time they’re literally just four or five lines of dialog.
No audio. No video. Just text.
There’s no reason why Disney wouldn’t be able to hire a writer to stockpile a bunch
of little conversations that can then be introduced as new unlocks over the course of months or years.
Imagine a running storyline between side characters that plays out over time.
It’s not the kind of feature that is going to convince a family of four to make a Disney
trip from the Midwest, but it’s the kind of thing that can keep locals coming back,
and it’s just cheap enough that it’s low risk.
Like the complexity in Smuggler’s Run, the brilliance of the datapad is that none of
it is required to have a good time at Galaxy’s Edge.
If you don’t care about apps or puzzles then you lose nothing by ignoring it, and
if you want that extra world building, it’s there for you.
And ultimately, that’s how I think interactive experiences should be approached at the Disney Parks.
With each generation more and more people are familiar with video games, and that offers
an opportunity to lean into them with these attractions and apps.
As long as a balance is kept so that they’re not overly difficult for guests, or even mandatory
for guests who don’t want a part in them, they could really flourish at the parks.
I don’t think the experiences at Galaxy’s Edge represents the peak of that possibility,
but it’s a fantastic step in the right direction, and I really hope we see more in the future.