The Renaissance of System Driven Gaming

After over a year of the new generation of consoles, an ugly truth has surfaced: graphically the new hardware isn't much of a leap above the old. There's improvement, sure, but nothing liberating like the jump from Playstation 2/Original Xbox to the Playstation 3/Xbox 360. Then the leap opened huge new opportunities for realism; this time the quality increase is just enough to push things ahead, but there's nothing fresh to sell the next-gen(in some cases next gen is struggling to keep pace with the old standards like High Definition output). So the triple A developers have to look elsewhere to prove these new machines are worth buying.

From this video you can tell there is a generational difference, but it's not really so great that it impairs gameplay. Watch in fullscreen 1080p to get the most accurate picture.

Enter System Driven Gaming. While the jump to better hardware doesn't mean too much for graphics, there has also been a huge boost to memory which means a game can run alot of intelligent stuff in the background. And this is what alot of designers have been taking advantage of. Things that go beyond the core game to expand on the worlds they create and give the impression there's something larger going on.

Middle Earth: Shadow of Mordor is a great example of this. Released this year, it was a standard hack and slash game set in the Lord Of The Rings universe, but with a twist in the form of the Nemesis System. With this, a real, hierarchy of Orcs battled not only you, but each other in their own tribal warfare. If any foot-soldier got a win over you, they had a chance to move up this hierarchy. You could affect the confidence of leaders by killing their subordinates. You could even possess Orcs and guide them to the top then topple the structure from the inside.

The games characters were randomly generated from a collection of "interesting" traits and as you battle your foes they would react to your past encounters.

To download a video describing these systems click here.
On top of this, a blend of procedural generation and hand-crafted content meant that every Orc in the hierarchy had fears, hates, strengths, weaknesses and even grudges specific to your encounters, affecting both game-play and story behavior. This system was exclusive to new consoles as it ran in real time and relied on the extra processing power; and as such was a showcase of what the new consoles could do.

Other games are pursuing this kind of design as well. WWE2k15; the latest in the series, has a career mode where your wrestlers ability to win is based on how interesting their character arc is. In some cases it's actually advantageous to lose and be the underdog for a while because it improves the long term appeal of that character to virtual audiences. The Metal Gear franchise has always boasted attention to systems that interact with each other, but they're going a step further in the latest series, with a base you must secure that can be broken into by other players in real time while you're away on missions.

All in all this is great news for more traditional gamers because it puts the focus back on the design rather than distracting people with graphics. We can look forward to a whole new generation innovative games that build upon the core principles that the last generation chiseled to perfection, such as shooters and open-world games, now with a cornucopia of extra content augmenting it. If there's any other games that fit the bill let me know, I really want to get into some in-depth games over the holidays.