Toast On Jam: Diamond Dog And Other Common Features That Need To Die

I don’t like dogs, never have. They smell bad and slobber and are so high maintenance and mildly racist. As I write this there is a cat on my lap. Sure, she’s an egocentric prick but she’s very self-sufficient and quiet and oh so cuddly.

This is all besides the point and merely part of the meandering whimsy that is the introduction to just about anything I write. I’ve been playing a good amount of MGS V and while Diamond Dog is rather endearing he is also of little use to me. He is just another canine companion wantonly tossed into a game.

And thus we arrive at the flavour the week. Hint: it sounds a lot like grape. I concede, I’m going to spend some time complaining and you are welcome to opt out at any moment.

Gaming is a creative medium and as such there will be borrowing and copying of ideas however. Like any medium certain trends and commonalities tend to appear, some better than others.

Let’s talk about the ones that should get in the sea. And not the nice part of the sea where Rapture or underwater Super Mario levels can be found, the shittier parts of the sea. Like the South China Sea, the Dead Sea is alright since it produces some great skin products.

My problem, people of the jury, is not with the sweet nubile pup purloined from the harsh Afghan desert and raised into an instrument of tactical espionage operations. Nay! My problem is more systemic, it lies with what DD represents.

Several years ago everybody was throwing QTEs into their games willy-nilly and building chest high walls. While the latter has remained the former has evolved and become a little more “immersive.” Press X to connect with this moment in the game. For a period every game needed to have some form of multiplayer component thrown in until even bloody Assassin’s Creed was doing it but that has now evolved into social interaction through games that are always connected to your friends. Then every game had to have a bow, you weren’t cool if your character couldn’t wield a bow. More recently its dogs.

Gaming is littered with overused elements and features that shouldn’t be spreading throughout the medium. One has to wonder whether developers actually included a dog into the game organically or decided to chuck it in simply because other people are doing it. What’s the point of including something in a game just for the hell of it? A defining characteristic of a great game is that, as much as possible, everything has a place and purpose. It’s indicative of the goal to ape the most successful games rather than to create a successful game.

Why do Mad Max or MGS V or even Fallout 4 need canine companions? There isn’t much of an explanation and unless the mutt in Fallout 4 is called Threedawg, there isn’t much need for them either other than the contrived sort.

This is but a small example to demonstrate what I’m getting at.

We’ve spoken ad nauseum about the folly of many sandbox games and the thing is that unless a developer has something worth doing in a sandbox environment there is no shame in a linear experience (especially if your sandbox is going to feel linear anyway). The same extends to social interaction. It makes plenty of sense for a racing game to be loaded with social and connected features such as Forza 5’s novel Drivatar system but MGS V’s online component? Not so much. It’s a needless and honestly hindering component of the game given that playing while connected to Konami’s servers slows the game down quite noticeably when flipping through iDroid menus.

I said it at the very outset of this console generation but just because the processing power is there to create a vast open-world and the social platform is there to festoon a game in leaderboards or online features does not mean you should. If there is a place for those things in the game then I’ve no problem but a bigger world needs to be a better world too. The Big Mac may be as big as a McFeast but one is certainly loaded with more than the other.

Relevant?

On the topic of sandbox games, and perhaps games in general, is an old gripe but one that becomes increasingly relevant as more games wander into sandbox territory. A myriad of collectibles does not add value to a game, it simply adds to the workload of those developers who have to go and place those godawful trinkets.

Since we’re on the topic of needlessly giving themselves work, why do developers feel the need to add “variety” and “value” to a game by throwing in some arbitrary management system for your base or hideout or hovel? It works a treat in games such as Assassin’s Creed II or MGS V where it is strongly tied to the character but surely not every game needs an arbitrary micromanagement mini-game. This grievance is quite interchangeable with that regarding social features. They’re nice and good in the right context or situation but too many developers throw them in for little to no discernible reason.

If I may detour for a moment to regard the realm of indie games. I’ve been playing and reviewing a good number of them lately, as has our site at large, and what stands out is the tendency to lean on “retro” visuals or gameplay. Let’s not milk nostalgia or use it as a copout, yeah? Some developers have done truly wonderful things in reviving old styles of games but many simply modernise old ideas. Independent development costs money and while Unreal Engine 4 may be free and readily available, creating something visually striking with it is hugely time-consuming. I get that. However, games such as Planet of the Eyes, The Swindle and Absolute Drift prove that you can create a visually striking and unique game with a little creativity.

Back to dog-piling on big budget games.

That’s a whole lotta NOPE.

A trend over the past decade or more has been of games getting progressively more serious. Games don’t laugh at themselves anymore. While the likes of Uncharted keep things lighthearted far too many try way too hard to maintain a scowl and end up looking a little constipated. If a number of games were a little less grim and a little more self-aware then they wouldn’t seem so preposterous. Wolfenstein: The New Order is fully aware of how mental it is and fully embraces that resulting in a fun game. On the other hand Mad Max is so straight-faced that it leaves players with a scowl. MGS V skirts the line and I genuinely can’t tell if I’m meant to be laughing or intrigued by a giant walking mech and references to a man named Hot Coldman.

The world would be a lot better off if we saw more in the vein of Psychonauts, Grim Fandango, Bulletstorm and anything by Suda51. The world certainly has a place for the heavier narratives but maybe not all the time.

This has been a mixed bag of assorted gripes and grievances. We can’t end off on that disjointed note can we? This isn’t a run of the mill sandbox game after all.

Let’s end this off in a coherent manner, yeah? That sounds like the right thing to do.

Any medium will always be filled with copied, recycled or rampantly overused material. That’s just the nature of creative media, everything is derivative but some things are more derivative than others. When X popularises a gameplay mechanic or element or feature then you can bet the rest of the alphabet will latch onto it soon enough.

The problem is that these plagues aren’t diminishing or going away, they’re evolving and multiplying. So many games are loaded with elements and features that simply don’t need to be there but are because other games are doing it.

A game shouldn’t have anything just for the sake of it or for the purpose of ticking a box on a checklist. Developers could save themselves a lot of time and effort by not bloating their workload with unnecessary tripe.

Perhaps games would release in a better state if a studio’s time wasn’t wasted on fulfilling a litany of meaningless tasks like adding 100 collectibles, 25×10 of the same side missions and a partridge in a pear tree.

Saints Row started out as an unlockable cheat for GTA and then things spiraled out of control.

Games have become so generic in many regards, especially the open-world breed and they’ve subsequently lost their unique charm. In years past developers would litter their games with fun little cheats and easter eggs. I yearn for games to go back to that. Instead games are loaded up with meaningless trinkets and dog breath.

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