Linearity in games

[Pumpkin]

So what is your opinion on this? Good/bad/don't care?

I think it depends. FFXIII felt very linear and constricting. Meanwhile FFX and Xenosaga are both very linear games, but they didn't feel like it to me and I still enjoyed them a good bit.

What are some example of linearity done well or done poorly?

[Formalhaut]

Meanwhile FFX and Xenosaga are both very linear games, but they didn't feel like it to me and I still enjoyed them a good bit.

You do remember the Mi'hen Highroad, right? My God that road stretched on forever. I have to say, FFX had pretty bad linearity. By necessity, because pilgrimage, but still.

[Pumpkin]

I actually love the Mi'hen Highroad :love:

[Fynn]

It all depends on how you like a story. With a fantastic story, linearity can be a good thing as you get to experience it at an even pace. If it blows, you're screwed because you've got nothing else to keep you going. You're stuck with a story you don't like with nothing to distract you from it.

[Karifean]

I tend to lose interest if I'm just left out in the open with no directions, so a degree of linearity is essential for me. This also applies to things like the World of Ruin where I almost ended up dropping FF VI because I felt overwhelmed by all the options I had without any strong indication as to where to go first. Most open games however manage to avoid this issue in some form or another. FF X-2 and XII for instance did a good job at that.

On the other hand I've never really felt like strongly linear games actually suffered from their linearity in particular. The problems generally lie elsewhere.

The Mi'ihen Highroad is actually one of my favorite examples of linearity not feeling constraining :D There's something to do and find every single screen including an optional aeon fight, lore, talking with several named side characters, a boss fight where winning is optional, exploring with a chocobo, and it tops it all off with the completely optional Oldroad.

[Fynn]

Yep. You guys know how I feel about FFX. The Highroad is not among my complaints.

[Shauna]

It depends on what the game wants to do. Matt and I were discussing this the other day, actually.

I don't really care that much about whether a game is linear or not, as I enjoy games on all ends of the spectrum.

[Rez09]

It's a bit hard to answer, as what counts as linear varies from person to person and argument to argument, but I generally don't think a linear experience is the bogeyman some people make it out to be. From the perspective of story itself, I think linear progression is agreeable enough, as the developer always knows exactly what page the player is on at any given point and they have a better ability to control the narrative when they don't have to contend with possible side avenues a player may have taken.

That said, my preference is more for free progression, as I feel it plays better to the interactive nature of the medium, whether this be through alternate story paths, different routes through the same story, or simply the ability to stop and explore the world around. You can never tell what aspect of your game any given player will appreciate the most, and this freedom does more to accommodate varied tastes than dragging them along a fixed experience would.

[Del Murder]

I'm usually fine with it. In RPGs I'm fine with a mostly linear path as long as the game opens up at some point to allow me to freely travel anywhere. FFX did a good job of this. FFXIII did not.

Most games are usually designed to be linear or open world and I'm fine with either. I tend to gravitate toward the more linear games only because I get overwhelmed when the world is too 'open' since I like doing everything I possibly can in a game.

[Depression Moon]

I don't know why in our industry why we see linearity as a negative. I don't have a problem with it, it all depends how well made the game is.

[sharkythesharkdogg]

Seems most people share my thoughts.

The linearity isn't an issue as long as the story is engaging to the point where I don't feel I'm being led along, but that I want to keep moving along.

The best linear RPG stories left me grousing that I needed to do certain side quests or grinding because I couldn't wait to find out what happened next in the story.

[Colonel Angus]

Super Mario Bros. was crazy linear. The current ones are a little freer, but it still feels like I'm just moving from the left to the right.

[Formalhaut]

I'm usually fine with it. In RPGs I'm fine with a mostly linear path as long as the game opens up at some point to allow me to freely travel anywhere. FFX did a good job of this.

Did it, though? By the time you get the airship, there isn't really much point travelling to places you've already been to, sans bagging the Dark Aeons and the odd celestial weapon hunt.

[blackmage_nuke]

Agreed it depends on the game and what you're aiming for. Some of the best games out there are linear. The Portal series comes to mind. There was a time when I prefered linearity to branching/open world games but now if done right I can find any format enjoyable. As said before though in RPG I prefer things to start linear then open up mid/late game.

[Del Murder]

I'm usually fine with it. In RPGs I'm fine with a mostly linear path as long as the game opens up at some point to allow me to freely travel anywhere. FFX did a good job of this.

Did it, though? By the time you get the airship, there isn't really much point travelling to places you've already been to, sans bagging the Dark Aeons and the odd celestial weapon hunt.
Those are some pretty good reasons already. There are also other things you could have missed. I found myself revisiting areas quite a bit. I'm just saying, for a very linear game, it was nice to have that option at some point. FFXIII was just about as linear as X but took away the ability to check out older areas save a few you visit in endgame.

[sharkythesharkdogg]

I'm usually fine with it. In RPGs I'm fine with a mostly linear path as long as the game opens up at some point to allow me to freely travel anywhere. FFX did a good job of this.

Did it, though? By the time you get the airship, there isn't really much point travelling to places you've already been to, sans bagging the Dark Aeons and the odd celestial weapon hunt.
Those are some pretty good reasons already. There are also other things you could have missed. I found myself revisiting areas quite a bit. I'm just saying, for a very linear game, it was nice to have that option at some point. FFXIII was just about as linear as X but took away the ability to check out older areas save a few you visit in endgame.

Admittedly, I didn't play more than 15-20 hours into the game before I lost interest, but XIII didn't even have stores or traditional towns. I mean, come on.

Everything was handled by those orb things, and not NPCs. I didn't find much there in the way of minigames or sidequests to break up the monotony of the fighting. While the fighting system was interesting in concept, I felt like I was commanding the fighting from the sidelines instead of having a more hands on approach, and that just wasn't as engaging for me.

I was left with no reason to explore, and nothing to do besides continuing forward with bland fight after bland fight. Since I didn't find the story engaging or adequately explained (far too many major story elements were left explained in the glossary of terms), I wasn't even motivated in those fights.

So piles of bland fights, no exploring of areas or cool towns to break up the traveling a little bit, a rather linear character ability/growth system, etc.

Honestly, if the characters, story, and combat system had felt more engaging I still might not have cared. However, since they didn't interest me much at all, it made all the other limited aspects of the first part of the game too boring to play. All I was left with that I liked was the very nice music, and amazing graphics. That's not even close to enough to make me care.

It's the first Final Fantasy I actually stopped playing because I actively disliked it. Others had enough redeeming qualities, but that one was a combination of things I actively disliked and things that were forgettable and boring. For me personally, that's why it's linearity stuck out so badly.

Final Fantasy 10 is not my favorite one, but it does offer a lot more to do in the opening part of the game to keep me interested, combined with a more traditional combat system that I enjoy better. I also found the characters and story more interesting as well. That certainly helps.

[Wolf Kanno]

As others have said, it really comes down to how well if works for the design of the game. Obviously certain games just work better in a linear format than others so I'll ignore those since this has moved onto the topic of RPGs.

It really comes down to how the game uses it. I feel there is a difference between linear in terms of the game playing in an unbreakable sequence of events vs. say a game whose actual level design is just a straight line. Take Xenoblade Chronicles and FFXIII for example, in terms of how the game moves along, both games are actually linear. The story only goes in one direction and you can only reach new locations in both games by completing story objectives in the game, the reason why no one cries fowl on Xenoblade Chronicles over the crap XIII gets is because Xenoblade's locations are built to be large, diverse, and filled many objectives and optional content whereas XIII's dungeons are simply roads with painfully few things of interest beyond the really pretty wallpaper that goes well with the music. Xenoblade's structure also strongly promotes backtracking to previous locations, while XIII largely makes most of its locations in accessible once completed. Now some games can be deceptive with this part, take FFX for example: you can, whenever you want before reaching the Al Bhed homeland, backtrack to Besaid. You can beat down the Spheremorph in Macalania Woods and then walk all the way back to Besaid Island collecting all of the Jecht Spheres to upgrade Auron's limit breaks; but the game never really tells you this is an option. The linear design of the dungeons makes hoofing it back without quick transportation a pain in the ass, so most players would opt to just keep moving forward until the airship becomes accessible instead of dealing with the long boring trek back and forth.

So first I would argue that linearity comes in many different styles which have their own strengths and weaknesses. While I have no problem with a game that proceeds in a series of sequential events that can't be skipped, I do appreciate it more when the level design is more open and filled with content other than battling, even just making large areas to explore can often be enough to satisfy me as opposed to mini-game hell. The problem with linear dungeon design is that it tends to destroy the illusion of immersion if the other elements are not up to par. If the plot and gameplay fall a bit short, then it becomes very obvious when the dungeon design is just a series of hallways and roads for the player because now you realize you're trapped and the story and random battles are your only options for entertainment which is a pretty troutty way to design a game in my opinion. Set pieces can also be an issue if it becomes too predictable which is a problem in FPS titles and some other games like Mass Effect, where the linear design suddenly moved to a big room makes you know that something is going to happen in this room because nothing ever happens in small corridor areas and something always happens in the bigger spectacle rooms. So it's certainly a design choice I feel designers need to be more aware of the inherent problems they propose to making an enjoyable experience.

Overall, linearity has it's places as a structure for controlling story and gameplay progression but when the design philosophy starts being applied to the level design itself (barring this isn't for a genre linear level design works in) then it runs the risk of making the immersion of the world fall apart because now the other elements have to pull all of the weight because you stripped away the level designs ability to be used as entertainment.

[Loony BoB]

So long as I'm having fun, it doesn't tend to bother me. Sometimes games can be too sandbox for my tastes, while others can be too linear, but I can usually enjoy both regardless to some extent.

[Ergroilnin]

I actually enjoy linear RPGs the most.

FFX was perfect game for me, it led me through story nicely while giving me just enough to freedom to discover and then at the end of the game let me visit everywhere.

FFIX is another kind of basically linear but very opened kind of game. While you definitely can explore a lot during the story, there are still pretty concrete instructions about where to go next.

I do not really enjoy the freedom games before the end too much, nowadays I do not have enough time to explore all the shit games has so I just want to see the story and if I can get easily lost during that, it's bothersome for me.

[Sephex]

A game can be as linear or as open as it wants to be as long as it makes sense in the game's context.

Using the FFX vs FFXIII context in terms of linearity, I feel FFX got away with being a linear game because the game's story drove the pilgrimage point home. By the time the pilgrimage became sort of weird and the game neared its end, the player was allowed to do whatever for the most part, or keep on going down the main path.

FFXIII felt very linear stylistically, but I think what frustrated most people is that the game kept talking about this grand world, and you see these huge, open areas, but you are on an obvious straight path the entire time. It's also very obvious that the actors recording lines were told little to nothing about the environment they were in while walking through the "hallways" because they would just say vague, generic lines like, "Hey, look over there!" When the game sort of opened up, the game more or less told the player to grind in this open field which, while not a "hallway" anymore, still felt constrictive because of the task given to the player by the point in the game.

[Ffamran mied Bunansa]

I often prefer my games 'linear'. As long as linear doesn't mean corridor simulator. Give me varied environments, fun things to do and a focused, interesting story over a bland open world any day. Not that games can't have both, it just seems few and far between.