The Nonlinear Game I Want to Play

What's Wrong With Nonlinear Games?

I'm not a big fan of nonlinear games. Games like Grand Theft Auto, or Infamous. Most of them aren't really nonlinear, but just a series of linear quests, or missions, in an open world. You go do a quest, and each quest is very linear. Then you walk through an "open" world, which is basically just a series of random enemies, until you get to the next quest. This is a concept which showed up in the first Zelda! In Zelda, there's an open world, broken up by a series of linear dungeons. Yet nobody thought to call that a sandbox game, or a nonlinear game, because it wasn't. And that's totally fine. I still love Zelda. However, with newer games like Grand Theft Auto, and Infamous, they're basically the same thing. Except they're called missions and not dungeons, and sometimes you can do them in a slightly different order. The difference is that (in my opinion) the gameplay is boring at best. Often times, its downright horrible.

So how would I go about creating a nonlinear game? First thing: take out quests. They're not really helping anything. They're just linear gameplay events, and we want to eliminate linear gameplay. However, I wouldn't take out goals. Goals are there for a reason, so that players will want to get through the game. You can still have goals without quests, they just won't be goals like "kill ten bad guys", or "collect ten packages".

Nonlinear Gameplay

Most of the gameplay in these "nonlinear" games is actually very standard, and rather boring. We've been shooting random guys with a shotgun for years, and most "nonlinear" games don't do much to change this. Games have been able to implement nonlinear gameplay into a game for a long time. Metal Gear Solid let you approach a given situation in tons of different ways. You could be stealth, or use brute force. Be nonlethal or kill everyone you come across. Spelunky is another great example. There are a million things to do in that game, even though it has a very linear progression. You get past one stage, and then you move on to the next. The difference is that every stage is randomly generated, and each of the elements of the stages interact in different ways, giving you endless possibilities. A snake might seem like just a snake, but there are about a dozen ways you can go about trying to kill it or get past it. You can jump on it, Mario style. You can use your trusty whip. If you've bought/stole another weapon like a machete or a shotgun, you can use that. Or, you could use the environment to your advantage by luring it into some spikes, or into a arrow trap. This is just with a snake, which is probably the most boring thing you encounter in the game.

So why is it that these linear games like Metal Gear Solid and Spelunky pull off this whole nonlinear gameplay thing better then actual "nonlinear" games like Infamous? In my nonlinear game, I would start by adding just a few elements, and making all of these elements act together in different ways. If added something like a spiked pit, I would make it so you can interact with that spiked pit in as many ways as possible by making it so you could lure enemies into it, or place something over the spikes so they don't harm you. If you can imagine an entire open world with all of these different items in the environment which are able to act together in an infinite number of ways, I think you would have the basis for a truly nonlinear game.

Further Reading/Watching:
Is interactivity inimical to storytelling? (by Chris Crawford)
Rev Rant: True Nonlinearity