The new God of War game is jam packed with options, sliders, and toggles.
But there's one feature I would love to see.
A checkbox that means when I'm solving a puzzle, the other characters just... shut up for a
second!
ATREUS: Can you see anything from that block?
ATREUS: What about freezing the geyser under the wheel, maybe?
ATREUS: Hey!
Looks like you stopped the water flow on that trough.
ATREUS: There's a brasier to the left of the chest.
Maybe you can light it?
ATREUS: There should be a way to turn the wheel, no?
Yes, that's right.
Some players have complained that Ragnarok's chatty NPCs will offer up nagging hints, patronising
reminders, and out-and-out solutions.
But it's not just God of War - in games like Psychonauts 2 and the The Medium, characters
can't stop telling you how to play.
And in Horizon: Forbidden West, Aloy narrates every step of her own adventure like she's
recording a dang audiobook.
ALOY: Looks like there are massive clamps holding the shuttle in place.
Hope that there's a control console nearby....
So. Why does this happen?
Why do characters keep spoiling the puzzles in these games?
Let's dig into it.
For one thing - remember my video on combining multiple genres?
Ragnarok is, primarily, a combat-focused action game.
And so the puzzles are just palette cleansing moments of downtime between the fight scenes,
to help set the pace.
So, these hints help you move through the puzzles more quickly, to get back to the real
gameplay.
Also, recent PlayStation games have been dedicated to accessibility, and these hints can be seen
as a way of helping out players with, say, cognitive impairment.
But - according to the developers I talked to for this video - the biggest reason for
their existence comes down to playtesting.
At some point in a game's development, it will be handed to a bunch of random players
to see how they get on.
And one thing that developers are looking out for is moments where people get stuck
and frustrated.
Now this could happen for many reasons.
But on a game like God of War, a common cause is that while a puzzle was simple to figure
out when the world looked like a bunch of grey cubes - it's a lot harder to read now
that all of the pretty visuals have been put in.
Whatever the case, if a lot of people are getting stumped by the exact same bit, then
it's probably a good idea to step in and fix things.
Often the best solution is to, well, revise the design.
To perhaps tweak the layout, improve the visual clarity, or change the way the camera frames things.
For example, in Metroid Prime, the devs found that testers would often get stuck in rooms
that had morphball tunnels, simply because they didn't notice them.
So Retro added spotlights over the entrances.
You can also check out the commentary on the Portal games, to hear about how levels went
through dozens of iterations to help players figure out what to do.
So that's often the best solution - but it can be very expensive.
Especially when the artists have already finished dolling up the level, or the game is getting
close to release.
So sometimes the right option is to kick the can down to narrative, and get the voice actors
back in the booth to record some hints.
This is exactly what Dishonored did.
The devs found that players were refusing to go upstairs in the level Lady Boyle's Last
Party, because the guards told them it was off limits.
GUARD: No guests past this point.
To help fix this, the devs added voice lines to the guests, so they would drop hints about
what's on the upper floors.
Arkane says "we try not to lead the player by the nose, but at some point we found that
if we don’t give a little information, people just get lost and don’t know what to do."
So it can be a good solution and it can be done in a subtle and organic way.
But that's not how I would describe the hints in God of War.
Characters provide solutions before you've even had a chance to survey the layout.
They repeat the same dialogue lines over and over.
And they explain things in a way that's so patronising, it makes Fi seem standoffish.
MIMIR: Ugh!
Not quite right!
ATREUS: That was close!
Try again!
So, I think there's a bit more to it than just that.
And the ultimate culprit is the sheer scale of this game.
God of War is likely the year's most expensive release.
It is a massive blockbuster showcase for the PlayStation 5.
It's a triple A game, as they're sometimes called.
And with that status, comes a lot of extra pressure.
For example - the last God of War sold over 20 million copies.
And if just one percent of those players got stuck on a puzzle and stopped playing the
game, that's 200,000 lost users.
Plus, with such a big playerbase, Ragnarok will surely be played by a diverse range of
users - including casual gamers and complete novices.
And when you're making a game with a budget bigger than some countries' GDPs, publishers
don't like it if money is being spent on content that most players will never see.
Games already struggle with retention - IO Interactive once said that only 20 percent
of players would reach the last level in Hitman Absolution.
And now we can see trophy data on PlayStation and Steam, it's clear that most people simply
don't finish games.
So this creates an instinct at both developers and publishers to aggressively watch these
playtests, and round off every rough edge.
To jump in with a blunt force fix whenever a player gets frustrated.
And to remove anything that might leave a player confused.
Which... might sound valiant.
But - in my mind, at least - the ultimate outcome of this approach has been a whole
generation of games that seem terrified of letting the player think for themselves.
And it's not just that these hints mean you don't have to solve the puzzles.
We also see it in the way games are packed with waypoints, little dotted lines, exhaustive
quest logs, and messy map markers - all there to stop players getting lost, but it also
means you never have to think about where to go next.
And how games have these tightly constructed set pieces with a single, ultra specific way
to finish them - which means you never have to think critically or get creative with how
you overcome the obstacle at hand.
And so the stuff that I think makes games so engaging - like exploration, problem solving,
plan formation, risk vs reward, and suddenly realising the solution to a puzzle that's
had you stumped... all of that gets slowly worn away.
So, yes, as I said at the beginning - an option would be nice.
And we've seen plenty of games that have found ways to let people play for themselves.
In the new A Plague Tale, there's a setting to turn down character hints.
In Shadow of the Tomb Raider, you can independently tweak the difficulty of combat, exploration,
and puzzles.
In Jedi: Fallen Order, you have to press a button to opt-in to puzzle hints.
In Assassin's Creed, an exploration mode eases up on the waypoints.
And in Mario Odyssey, while the main game is reasonably straightforward - there's plenty
to explore in side content and the end game that will suit more seasoned players.
But I don't think sliders can really fix this more fundamental design philosophy that's
driving the current crop of AAA, western-made games.
You can't really use options to turn Assassin's Creed into Elden Ring.
And as budgets balloon, publishers become more and more averse to taking risk.
Which leads to games that are so afraid of losing any players, they practically play
themselves.
So, maybe I just need to rethink how I see these games.
Triple A games are like Marvel movies - great fun if you just want to turn your brain off
for a while and soak in the spectacle.
And on those merits, God of War is an absolute gem.
But if you actually want to engage your brain, you're probably going to have to look elsewhere
- most likely to indie games like Return of the Obra Dinn, Outer Wilds, Immortality, and
Tunic.
Let me know what you think in the comments down below.
This was also my first stab a sort of GMTK mini - a short, scrappy video I can use to
comment on the current game design discourse.
Good?
Bad?
Let me know.