Splinter Cell/MGS

Mister Mechanical hat in den Insertcredit-Foren den Unterschied zwischen Splinter Cell und MGS beschrieben, etwas das mit nie vernünftig gelungen ist:

This has been touched upon before, in another thread somewhere, but it deserves mention here as well because it applys. The whole MGS/Splinter Cell “misunderstanding”, as I’ll call it, is basically the difference between East and West. Both games are labeled as Stealth Action, and they are, however they are two different sides of the same coin. It’s the difference between Freedom and Liberty, as 108 puts it. MGS gives you the option to play the game stealthy or guns blazing, it gives you certain liberties within its world that work within its own logic, and because of that the game works either way you choose to play it. So the stealth part doesn’t really need any work, because the game can be played effectively either way. It’s all in the eye of the beholder, or in this case, the player. This type of design is apparent in other Japanese developed games, like Astro Boy, using another 108 example. One could play that whole game without ever using any of Astros special moves. This isn’t to say that the special moves are unnecessary, just that the game gives you that option. The is the “Liberty” side of the coin. Splinter Cell, however, tries to anticipate the players reaction to events, and it wants the play narrative to go a certain way. Rather than letting the player write their own play narrative, as MGS does, it ends up railroading the player down a certain path. Whenever I play Splinter Cell I get the impression that the developer is sitting right beside me, breathing down my neck. Typical western design overestimates the players reaction to a given event and tries to compensate for it by anticipating their every move. They are designing the game world and it’s mechanics after all, so they feel they should be able to mathematically deduce everything the player will be able to do. In doing so they try to create the illusion of choice, even though through trial and error you’ll come to find that there is really only one path through the game. The illusion of choice is the “Freedom” side of the coin. San Andreas falls into this trap too, a bit, with the missions that automatically give you certain weapons over the ones you already have, or missions that won’t let you win a race because you weren’t using the preselected vehicle. Basically they get caught up in their own conventions, and this is why I call it a “misunderstanding”. People think the Stealth Genre is defined, but it isn’t. It isn’t just about sticking to the shadows, or knocking everyone out with tranq darts. It’s simply about not being seen. MGS takes this in one direction, Splinter Cell in another. So I’d say in design principles, MGS is malleable and easy to play with, SC is rigid and doesn’t play well with others. This is because MGS understands the logic and limitations of its world, it has a cohesion that runs through everything, and Splinter Cell doesn’t. Ein paar Zeilen weiter ergänzt Ajulta:

MGS, in the way it gives you the liberty to go through its maps as you choose, is not really about stealth. The games really are action games with stealth elements added in to keep things interesting and to give the player options. It’s challenging and interesting to go through MGS without being spotted by a single guard, but you don’t have to do it, by any means. MGS was created by people who had a definite goal in mind, and that goal was: let’s make a game that gives the player an interesting world in which he is free to do anything within the constraints of that world. Let’s add in an interesting narrative that plays with videogame conventions and makes the player think. The MGS games are, as a result of all this, well-designed. They are tight. They were put together with feeling. The developers cared about making something good, and you can tell. Splinter Cell was created by people who had a definite goal in mind, too, and that goal was: let’s make a neat stealth game that involves Tom Clancy stuff and some shit. And, I guess, they succeeded at that, but the game has no real ambition. I never got the feeling, playing Splinter Cell, that it was something made by people who really cared. It goes through the motions, but it doesn’t do it very well. It doesn’t seem natural. The narrative feels forced, as though the hand of the game’s producer is clamped firmly on your shoulder, leading you through the game. There might be “stealth parts” that “trump” MGS, or “straight up-shooting” parts that “trump” MGS, but they have no cohesion. They do not fit together into a logical game. They were slammed together and draped over with a shitawful story.