作者：Eric Schwarz

id software的《狂怒》是款我很喜欢的游戏。从一开始，游戏便呈现了令人惊讶的世界以及我已经玩过数年的街机风格射击机制。除此之外，游戏在人工智能和动画方面的提升创造出众多有趣的遭遇战，敌人的战斗方式带有不可预测性和自发性，这在游戏中是极为罕见的。游戏在许多方面都取得了成功，呈现出异乎寻常的体验。

我像往常体验游戏那样打通《狂怒》，但是却发现自己玩的时间越长，就发现游戏中有越多令我着迷的东西。我觉得放下游戏变得很困难，我正在玩的是款制作精美的原创射击游戏。经过深思之后，我意识到产生吸引力的不只是核心动作和游戏玩法，而是围绕核心而构建的所有内容。

但就《狂怒》这款游戏而言，游戏中机制和结构的存在不是因为它们非常有趣，或者因为它们有一定意义，而只是因为它们之间互相依赖和加强。我把这种现象称为循环设计困境，这便是使得《狂怒》让人觉得不像完整的游戏而更像众多较小游戏的集合体的核心所在。

狂怒(from game-rage.benefitcrisis.info)

以战利品为出发点

当我开始玩《狂怒》时，脑海中跳出的首个问题是游戏对围绕收集、组织和使用道具构建起的战利品、仓库和其他系统的依赖性。当然，将道具管理作为关键功能的游戏有很多，但是射击游戏很少以射杀游戏怪物来收集战利品为基础，你通常所要做的只是确保拥有足够的弹药和生命值。

我理解在游戏中设置战利品是合理的做法。作为大灾难题材游戏，搜索补给的主题确实相当适合游戏背景，《辐射3》和《无主之地》等许多流行游戏也极为关注战利品元素，所以如果《狂怒》完全抛弃这种元素的话会显得有点奇怪。你可以收集治疗补给、道具、弹药和可出售的废弃物品，用换得的金钱来升级和购买有用的装备。此外，游戏还允许你进行某些有趣且简单的探索。

然而，《狂怒》看起来又像是完全同战利品或仓库管理无关的游戏。游戏被分解成各个不相关联的挑战，也就是玩家必须通过一定顺序征服的具体关卡，玩家的主要目标往往都是在关卡最终部分击败BOSS或扫清所有的敌人。角色的生命值会不断产生，所以唯一需要管理的资源是弹药（游戏邦注：在某些小游戏中还需要管理游戏时间）。从各个方面来看，战利品在游戏中似乎是毫无意义的。

我并不想贬低将战利品这个机制。玩家希望能够通过游戏中取得的小胜利而获得小奖励（游戏邦注：比如杀死敌人后可以获得金钱），许多开发商选择使用经验点数、道具或某些进展性系统来实现这个目标。击败敌人或解决小挑战本身应当让人觉得其存在除此次遭遇战之外的价值，将这些小挑战通过奖励的形式融入到更大的游戏系统中，这种方法可以让玩家产生向前发展的感觉。但每种元素都该有自己的合理位置，但在这样一款主要关于射击敌人的游戏中，让玩家在每个关卡中都腾出数十分钟摁下某个按扭以拾取战利品的做法并无多大意义。

合理性

所以，我们知道《狂怒》中有战利品。这确实很不错，但马上又出现了新的问题：战利品究竟好在哪里？多数游戏都含有某些将战利品同游戏本身捆绑起来的收集机制。在《最终幻想8》中，“Draw”机制便同魔法系统绑定起来。在《超级马里奥兄弟》中，收集100个金币可以获得角色数量奖励，这使得玩家可以玩更久的游戏。在《辐射》中，获得新道具同玩家处理更高难度情况的能力有直接的关联，更强大的装备可以让玩家的进展更加迅速，并产生提升感。

超级马里奥(from needfreegames.com)

问题在于，《狂怒》中并没有任何类似系统。开发商专注于将其设计成街机类射击游戏，有着相当固定的结构：虽然游戏略带开放式的升级机制，但获得这些升级只是时间问题，故事任务一个个按次序出现，甚至连新武器的出现也有固定的频率。尽管游戏宣传的是开放性世界，但《狂怒》是我玩过的最具欺骗性的线性游戏。它缺乏合适的世界地图，并且对GPS功能过分依赖，尽管关卡范围很大，但你的路径是固定的。

接下来要谈的是游戏创造战利品的理由，针对这个问题，《狂怒》提供了两种主要解决方案。其一是锻造系统。至少从理论上来说，锻造系统在游戏中有3个主要功能：让游戏世界中的所有道具派上用场；允许玩家自行制造特别武器；允许玩家从某种程度上选择游戏玩法。其二是金钱，《狂怒》或多或少地将金钱当成经验值，金钱可以升级车辆以及玩家的武器和护甲。

此外，《狂怒》是款线性射击游戏，玩家在游戏过程中可以通过爆破或射击杀死所有敌人。游戏的弹药库或多或少地确保了玩家获得故事进展所需的某些武器（游戏邦注：比如手枪、散弹枪、冲锋步枪、狙击枪和弩等），让玩家可以应对敌人发动的攻击。虽然偶尔会出现武器弹药用完的情况，但游戏定期提供枪支可以解决几乎所有此类问题。所以，事实上根本无需设置这些小物品的收集和制作，像RC Bomb Cars之类的部分武器虽然为玩家提供了新的战术选项，但它们并没有比手榴弹或散弹枪显得更有用。

有效性

《狂怒》采取了下列措施，努力促使玩家使用所有新的特殊道具和制造出的道具：它特别设置了玩家使用这些道具的地方。和武器一样，这些道具出现在场景切换期间，往往同游戏特定关卡的主题有所关联。比如，RC Bomb Cars被用来在Shrouded Bunker中击败敌人。事实上，开发商故意设计敌人刚开始背朝玩家，促使玩家偷偷地在他们背后使用RC Bomb Cars。

此外，Shrouded Bunker关卡中的许多部分，玩家只有使用RC Bomb Car才能取得进展。在多数情况下，玩家需要通过通风管或其他通道将爆炸物塞到墙体或障碍物的另一侧，然后引爆来摧毁墙体或门进入下个房间。这些都是简单的谜题，有助于引导玩家做出动作，但这种机制只出现在特定关卡中。此外，游戏甚至在某些情况下削减战术选项的数量，因为其他关卡的设计要促使玩家利用其他的道具。这样可能产生的情况是，玩家永远都不会再使用RC Bomb Cars，尽管关卡中有很多获得的机会或可以有足够的原材料来制作更多此类道具。

有个较经常被人讨论的例子是Lock Grinder，这个道具在游戏早期的一两个地方出现，完全只是可选项。Lock Grinder可以用来打开某些特别的门，但是它的制作需要涉及部分相当稀有的原材料。不过《狂怒》总是在你可能需要Lock Grinder的地方提供数量刚好的原材料，所以这已经不是种需要管理和合理利用的资源，这里的游戏机制被浓缩为点击菜单中的一个按键然后点击另一个按键来打开门。

此外，Lock Grinder本身几乎从未打开过任何有趣的东西。在所有的情况下，玩家使用Lock Grinder打开门后得到的是更多用来出售换取金钱的小物品、更多弹药和更多制造道具。使用Lock Grinder后从来没有得到过特别武器、升级、探索或角色。现在我们看到了整个循环：《狂怒》的整个战利品和制造系统归根结底就是“获得物品，使用物品，获得更多物品”。

《狂怒》中的竞速和驾驶也属于这个类别，尽管它有着自己的内置进展系统和升级路径，但其本身自成游戏。虽然驾驶车辆围绕Wasteland行驶并参与那些竞速挑战可以让玩家体验到大量的乐趣，但是驾驶过程与射击、战利品或制造系统并无关联。诚然，驾驶汽车可以帮助你从A点到达B点，但将A和B两点设置得如此远仅仅是因为游戏中含有车辆，并没有其他的目的。我原本期待驾驶汽车可能会同BOSS战斗有关联，或让你可以炸掉敌人的防御工事，但游戏将驾驶和射击完全分离开来。

整体与部分

我想再次强调的是，战利品、锻造系统和仓库管理之类的内容并无不当之处。我最希望的游戏也完全以它们为基础。但是，《狂怒》系统的不同之处在于，游戏将核心射击同战利品和制造循环分离开来。换句话说，如果将这些机制从游戏中分离，游戏丝毫不会受到影响。即便我无法通过获得材料来制造出Wingsticks，射击也丝毫不会受到影响。移除那些可获得战利品的道具也不会让游戏的关卡设计变得更加糟糕。如果直接给予玩家升级后的枪支而不是让玩家支付游戏中的金钱来升级枪支，也不会影响到枪支的趣味性（游戏邦注：枪支升级较很便宜，多数玩家在可以升级枪支时都会拥有足够的金钱）。

游戏经常会出现被分割成一系列较小游戏的情况，拥有各自的输入和输出模块，玩家有起点、进展和终点。所有这些小游戏之间的相互关系形成了我们认为完整和恰当的游戏，各种截然不同的输入和输出形成了背景和挑战。就其本身而言，按动按键让枪支开火并不是十分有趣，而且也不是个很有吸引力的机制，但是当这个事件融入了管理资源、击败敌人、环境导航和解谜等内容，就形成了一整个有趣的系统。这些系统间不同的输入和输出相互连接创造出完成的游戏，使游戏看上去不像只是简单的系统层次堆叠。

《狂怒》采用的并非这种合理的游戏设计方式。id Software确实很精通游戏制作，但是在这款游戏中所有围绕射击建立起的系统完全只是核心系统的附庸。除了起相互关联的关键系统外，机制之间还应当相互依靠和影响。《狂怒》中有3个游戏系统，它们之间的关联和依赖性并不大。竞速与射击的关联性很小，只是增加了整款射击游戏的关卡数而已，同时提供了一种更快的运输模型（游戏邦注：其存在为唯一原因是开放式世界结构，而设计后者的原因就是为了添加驾驶系统），战利品和制造系统同射击的关联也很小。最终的结果是，《狂怒》成了款设计重心并非围绕核心游戏玩法构建系统的游戏，游戏只是在努力为边缘机制存在的合理性添加条件。

结论

即便如此，我并不完全认为《狂怒》是款设计较为糟糕的游戏。我觉得将其称为2或3款游戏合一的游戏更为恰当。各种元素的存在只是为了提供某些功能而没有相互联系和提升，这是显而易见的。像《无主之地》这样的游戏，战利品提供新的战斗选项，开放世界提供更多的策略选项和开放式结构，驾驶提升了核心射击系统。与之相比，id Software很显然未能将所有公司需要的设计元素融合起来。

无主之地(from 2kgames.com)

对我来说，这次分析中最吸引人的结论是，这些不当措施丝毫未影响到《狂怒》的核心趣味性。正如我之前提到的，战利品获取、射击和竞速本身都带有一定的趣味性，能让我感受到快乐。但是，系统间未能联系贯通使之无法成为现代经典游戏。最后，这款游戏成了想法大杂烩，而我们得出的经验就是单个优秀的想法不足以成就优秀的游戏。（本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译，拒绝任何不保留版权的转载，如需转载请联系：游戏邦）

RAGE and the Circular Design Dilemma

Eric Schwarz

id software’s RAGE is a game I really wanted to love. From the get-go, it offered up an astonishingly beautiful, hand-crafted world and some of the best straight-up arcade-style shooting that I’ve played in years. On top of that, its advancements in artificial intelligence and animation produced a lot of interesting encounters and enemies who fought with a degree of unpredictability and spontaneity that is rarely seen in games. In many ways, it’s a triumph and a fantastic experience.

As accomplished as the regular gameplay was in RAGE, however, the longer I played, the more there was something about it that seemed to get to me. It was extremely hard for me to pin down – here I was playing a beautiful, original and fantastically-produced shooter, something that I’ve felt we’ve had a bit of a glut the last few years beyond a few stand-out hits. And yet, there was something about it that kept nagging at me throughout the entire experience, right up until the end.

After a good deal of thought, I realized what it came down to wasn’t anything about the core action and the gameplay, but rather, everything that surrounded it. RAGE is a game where the very mechanics and structure of the game exist not necessarily because they’re fun, or because they make sense, but solely because they depend upon and reinforce each other. It’s what I’ve taken to calling the circular design dilemma, and it’s at the core of what makes RAGE feel less like a complete game and more a collection of smaller ones.

It Starts With Loot

The first thing that got the question marks popping up in my head when I started playing RAGE was its reliance on looting, inventory and other systems generally centered around the collecting, organizing and using of things. There are a lot of games where management of items is a key feature, of course, but shooters, beyond making sure your ammo and health are at acceptable levels, aren’t really built on the same sorts of discrete hunting-and-pecking for doodads and trinkets in the environment.

I understand the rationalization for including loot in the game. As a post-apocalyptic title, the theme of scavenging for supplies is extremely fitting, and many other popular games, including Fallout 3 and Borderlands, already have a heavy focus on loot, so RAGE might look a little strange to be completely devoid of that element. It sounds great on paper – you scrounge up healing supplies, crafting items, ammo, and junk to sell, which you can use to purchase upgrades, exchange for more useful pieces of equipment, and so on. Plus, it lets you throw in a few quick and easy fetch quests. So far, so good.

At the same time, however, RAGE is also a game that has absolutely nothing to do with looting or inventory management. It is broken up into discrete challenges – specific levels the player must conquer in more or less a set sequence, where the primary goal is almost always to get to the end and defeat a boss, or simply clear out all the baddies. There’s regenerating health, so the only resource to manage is ammunition (and, arguably, time, if you count the defibrillator minigame). Loot is, for all intents and purposes, junk with no purpose in the game whatsoever.

Now, I don’t want to devalue the idea of looting as a mechanic. The prospect of micro-rewards for small victories (kill enemy, get money) scratches a very deep-seated itch in players that many developers choose to exploit using either experience points, items, or some other progression system to reinforce. Defeating one enemy or solving one small challenge should in itself feel like it has consequence outside the individual combat encounter, and tying those into a larger game system by way of rewards is a great way to give the player a sense of forward movement. However, everything has its place – and in a game that is primarily about shooting enemies until they’re all gone, so you can move to the next room and do it again, spending an additional ten minutes per level pressing the use button/key at flashing objects doesn’t really add anything.

Rationalization

So, RAGE has loot. That’s all well and good, but immediately the question reveals itself: what good is that loot? Most games that have some sort of collection mechanic tie that collection into the game itself. In Final Fantasy VIII, the (admittedly terrible) “Draw” mechanic ties into the magic system. In Super Mario Bros., collecting one hundred coins rewards a 1-Up, which enables the player to continue playing the game longer. In Fallout, the acquisition of new items is directly related to the player’s ability to tackle more difficult situations, with more powerful equipment allowing forward progress and a palpable sense of improvement.

The problem is, RAGE doesn’t really have any systems like that. It’s staunchly devoted to being an arcade shooter, with a very fixed structure – despite featuring a slightly open-ended upgrade mechanic, getting those upgrades is a matter of time, story missions come one-by-one, and even new weapons are doled out with a very particular regularity. Despite all the open-world hype, RAGE is one of the most deceptively linear, point A-to-B games I’ve ever played. The lack of a proper world map and over-reliance on the GPS feature only serves to highlight that despite its huge levels, your path is fixed.

So, what do we do? Well, the answer seems obvious – we invent reasons for that loot to exist! Again, this is one of those “good on paper” ideas. There are two primary solutions that RAGE provides to this problem. The first is a crafting system. Crafting, at least in theory, serves three major functions in the game: 1) It uses up all those items in the world, 2) it allows players to build cool special weapons, and 3) it allows a degree of choice in play-style. The second solution is money – RAGE more or less uses cash as experience, with dollar bills paving the way to upgrades for both vehicles and the player’s weapons and armor.

Except, RAGE is a game that is about going from point A to B and shooting, blowing up or otherwise killing all the enemies in the way. The game’s arsenal, which is more or less guaranteed as the player receives certain weapons for making progress in the story (Pistol, Shotgun, Assault Rifle, Sniper Rifle, Crossbow, etc.), is already more than capable of dealing with the onslaught of foes. While ammunition for a single weapon can occasionally get scarce, swapping to a new gun for a little bit rectifies any and all problems. All said and done, it really doesn’t need all these cool gadgets and trinkets to craft and collect, and while a few, like the RC Bomb Cars, open up new tactical options, they’re rarely more useful than a straight-up grenade toss or Shotgun blast to the face. Which means…

Is It Useful Yet?

RAGE does the next logical thing as it tries to justify all the new special items and crafted implements for the player to use: it gives the player very specific places to use them. Much like weapons, these items appear at set intervals and often tie into the themes of particular stages of the game. For instance, the RC Bomb Cars are used to take on the enemies in the Shrouded Bunker – in fact, they’re positively littered all over the place, and enemies often start out with their backs turned to the player precisely to allow for the option of sneaking the RC Bomb Cars up behind them to detonate.

What’s more, there are many sections of the Shrouded Bunker level where the player can only proceed by use of an RC Bomb Car. In most cases, it involves piloting the things into small ventilation ducts or other passages to reach the other side of a wall or barrier, then blowing up a convenient stack of explosives in order to knock down the wall or door into the next room. These serve as simple puzzles and admittedly help break up the action, but other than this particular level, this mechanic barely ever shows up in the game again save for a couple of optional extras and secrets. What’s more, it even pales as a tactical option because other levels are designed specifically to take advantage of other items, such as EMP Grenades or the Shock Darts for the Crossbow. Chances are most players will never, ever touch the RC Bomb Cars again, despite having dozens of them available within levels, and the raw materials to craft even more.

A more general example concerns the Lock Grinder, an implement that is, save for one or two places very early in the game, entirely optional. The Lock Grinder is effectively a method for opening specific doors, and must be crafted from a few fairly rare raw materials. However, RAGE is always extremely methodical about providing exactly the number of materials to make a Lock Grinder whenever you might need one, so instead of being a resource to manage and carefully weigh the advantages of using, instead the mechanic is boiled down to pressing a button in a menu and then another to open a door.

On top of this, the Lock Grinder itself almost never opens up anything interesting. In just about every case, the only thing players will ever find for using it is… yep, you guessed it, more junk items to sell for money, more ammo, and more crafting items. You never come across any special weapons by using the Lock Grinder, or upgrades, or quests, or characters, and save for the game’s optional collectible card game, there’s simultaneously no reason to open those doors, and no reason not to open those doors. We’ve now come full circle: RAGE’s entire looting and crafting system has been boiled down entirely to “get stuff, use stuff, and get more stuff.”

Racing and driving in RAGE also falls into this category, although considering it comes with its own built-in progression system and upgrade path, it resembles a full game in its own right. Despite it being a lot of fun to drive around the Wasteland and engage in those racing challenges, though, nothing about it ties into the shooting, or looting/crafting for that matter. Sure, driving helps you get from point A to B, but then, the only reason that A and B are so far apart is.. because there have to be cars in the game. I’d expect that the driving might factor into more boss battles, or let you blast through enemy fortifications, but the driving and shooting are literally divided up by invisible walls. I thought this was a shooter?

Parts of the Whole

Again, I want to stress that there is absolutely nothing wrong with looting, crafting, inventory management, and all that stuff. My favorite games utterly depend upon them. The key point that differentiates RAGE’s systems, however, concerns a fundamental disconnect between the core shooting and the additional loot/craft/spend cycle. In other words, you could take these mechanics out of RAGE and lose absolutely nothing at all. The shooting will not get any worse if I can’t loot crafting materials to make Wingsticks. The game’s level design will not get worse by removing those lootable items. The guns aren’t any less fun to use by making players pay money for the upgrades versus simply handing them over (especially as they’re cheap, become available at particular points in the game and most players will be able to afford them as soon as they become available).

Games can usually be broken down into a series of smaller micro-games, individual modules of input and output whereby the player has a starting point, a processing state and an ending state. It is the interrelation of all these micro-games that form what we consider to be a full, proper game, with the distinct inputs and outputs of each forming the context and challenge. On its own, the act of pressing a button to fire a gun isn’t too much fun, and certainly not a compelling mechanic – but when that event is contextualized by resources to manage, enemies to defeat, an environment to navigate, puzzles to solve, and so on, you have a system that is enjoyable. It’s the way in which the different inputs and outputs of these systems link to each other that creates a complete game, not the sheer number of them.

RAGE, outside of its basic shooting gameplay, does not adhere to this understanding of game design. id Software are complete and utter masters of their craft, and I applaud them for that mastery, but everything around the shooting is completely ancillary to it. Instead of building systems that are interrelated, networks of mechanics which depend on and influence each other, RAGE has three games in one which, at best, intersect with one another only in ways which enable each other. Racing has little to do with shooting and only enables more shooting levels, and a faster mode of transport (which only is necessary because of the open-world structure, which only exists to facilitate driving, etc.), and looting/crafting/spending has little to do with shooting other than the fact that it is enabled by that shooting. The end result is that RAGE is a game where the design is not focused around building upon the core gameplay ideas, but on trying to rationalize and justify the existence of its side-mechanics.

Conclusion

After all this, I’m still not entirely convinced that RAGE is a poorly-designed game. I think it’s much more accurate to call it two or three games in one than a single game, however. It’s clear just by looking at the disparate elements that many of the features exist simply for the sake of them being there, rather than to enhanced and build on one another. Compared to a game like Borderlands, where looting enables new options for combat, the open world allows for more tactical options and open-ended structure, and the driving enhances the core shooting, it’s clear that id Software struggled with trying to include all the things they wanted in a way that led to a coherent end result.

The most fascinating part of this analysis to me is how little a lot of this actually gets in the way of the core fun of RAGE. The loot acquisition does indeed scratch that “I’m getting better!” itch, the racing is a fun diversion, and the shooting itself, as I’ve mentioned, is the most enjoyable I’ve played in quite some time. However, that lack of consistency and coherence is exactly what prevents it from being the modern classic that many players waited five-plus years to get their hands on. In the end, the final game is a hodgepodge of ideas, and a case-in-point that a great idea in isolation isn’t enough to make a great game. (Source: Gamasutra)