作者：Leanne Taylor

我是一个游戏写手，但我不打算谈这个，因为我讨厌游戏中的对话。如果我不能跳过，我宁可愤怒地退出。然而，如果我有跳过的选项，我不会跳过。为什么？因为我不喜欢让别人告诉我要做什么。不能让游戏摆布我。

刺客信条(from gamasutra)

但我想不出什么机制不是我讨厌的——战斗、跳跃、解谜、隐藏物品……这么说来，我真该讨厌所有游戏。不幸的是，我要靠游戏谋生，我不可能讨厌游戏。我对我的工作非常尽职，至少在目前为止的大部分时候，我对游戏尽心，把游戏做得更好。为什么？因为我喜欢游戏。我只是不会在所有时候喜欢所有游戏。

有时候我想扑向《军团要塞2》的server和按W+鼠标左键操作的Pyro，同时不断地尖叫医生救命。有时候我想在对《龙腾世纪》中的虚拟人物说话，因为至少他们是可预测的。有时候我想成为解决各种超自然事件的侦探，所以我装了《Mystery Trackers》，对着隐藏物品的场景到处点击，就像疯狂的《暗黑》玩家。

键盘(from gamasutra)

然而，我觉得我错过了什么。我不知道《光晕》和《战争机器》的剧情。我只知道《死亡空间》和《生化奇兵》及其续篇，因为我一位非常有耐心的朋友在玩这些游戏。奇怪的是，尽管当我的朋友Steve淡定地把尸变怪的四肢剪断，我会感到神经质般的焦虑，但是，《死亡空间2》仍是我最喜欢的游戏之一。我真希望我自己能玩这款游戏。

问题是，我对打斗无能。这也不是因为我缺少练习。玩《时之笛》时，每当我走进或离开房间时，敌人就不断地刷出来，害我吓得扔掉3DS。如果探索水之神殿时，我可以不必担心水中的蝙蝠鱼攻击我，我会高兴得多。

还有另一个问题。我喜欢《辐射3》，但有时候我不想探索所有地点，而只想快速通过。《天际》也是同样的问题。即使我是是探索型玩家，也会有这么个时候，我想直接到达龙穴然后弄死它。

但这些都不算真正的问题。在《Escapist》中有不可跳过的部分（强迫你看的过场动画），但有时候，你得让玩家无视你辛苦工作的成果。当然，我说的这个问题仅适用于剧情。

玩《战神2》时，我之所以死大部分是因为我错误地估计了什么时候该跳跃或摇摆。游戏允许我降低战斗难度，这不是嘲笑我么？另一方面，我很喜欢《超级马里奥之3D大陆》，因为在我经常挂掉的时候，它给了我一件无敌狸猫装。通常，我死亡的原因与在《战神》里的一样——空间感太差。但至少我有机会从判断错误的跳跃中恢复过来。

Kratos Tanuki(from gamaustra)

至于隐藏物品的游戏，在休闲模式下，你可以跳过所有谜题，或者随便乱点一通（如果你真的不想找）后你还是找不到大部分隐藏物品，你可以等着系统的提示你各个物品的所在，这样你就不用自己动脑子了。你甚至可以跳过剧情部分。这都跳过，那还剩下什么？剩得不多了，但像个傻子一样玩游戏就是这样的结果。

所以为什么我不能这么对待其他游戏？我希望《辐射3》中有一个选项：和平版本。如果我可以在《质量效应》中按下“简略版”的按钮，我可能早就过了Citadel这一关了。 如果在《The Misadventures of P. B. Winterbottom 》中可以只玩与剩下的剧情有关的事件，那这游戏就好多了。

PB Story Bit(from gamasutra)

不要误解我，我知道没有打斗部分的《死亡空间2》会非常短，一定程度上也会很怪。《心灵杀手》没有了在噩梦模式下寻找遗失手稿的过程，就只剩一半了。但你知道这些游戏应该怎么样吗？我希望可以让我自己做出选择。

我不喜欢错过所有好剧情。我的一个好朋友参与制作《光晕：致远星》，所以我购买也尝试玩这款游戏。猜猜我玩到哪里。对了，我在教程部分就死了。而且是死了一次又一次。

确实，没有练习我是不会进步的，但你知道什么？我不想练习啊。我只是不擅长某些事，那也没什么大不了。如果我沉浸于自己的Nolan North（游戏邦注：Nolan North是美国演员和游戏声优，《神秘海域》是其代表作）情结而打算玩遍《神秘海域》系列，因此强迫自己进步，这才不好吧。让我关掉打斗吧。这不是我要的体验，毕竟我们生活在后现代社会。让我玩我想要的游戏版本吧，即使游戏变成了电影，那也是我自己的选择。不要拦着我。

Nathan Nathan MAL(from gamasutra)

PS2上的《Futurama》将游戏唱片和包含所有过场动画和特色玩法的DVD做成一部迷你电影。我买了这游戏，但只看了电影。我从来没有玩这游戏，但我付钱了，我想商家可以称之为成功。

重点是，我们可以跳过游戏中的大部分过场动画和对话。虽然我们仍得自己解决谜题，但至少还有游戏攻略。而打斗无能和空间感太差则无药可救。即使当我关闭打斗按钮，让所有暗黑生物从我眼前消失，我也无所谓。或者，在《生化奇兵》中让游戏的AI代替我操作角色完成打斗部分，即使我可能会损失更多弹药和命值，但毕竟是活着出来了。这两种选择都比我单枪匹马来得好。遗憾的是，这种情况已经存在20多年了，而且短期内我看不到会有什么改观。

所以我提议所有游戏中都应该有个D选项：跳过一切。允许游戏各个部分独立玩，然后让我自己选择玩哪一部分。谁知道呢？如果打斗和探索一样有趣，那我也会试一试的。（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）

Option D: Skip Everything

by Leanne Taylor

Hi there. I’m a games writer, but I’m just gonna come out and say it: I hate dialogue in games. If I can’t skip it, I’ll ragequit. However, chances are if I do have the option to skip, I won’t. Why? Because I don’t like being told what to do with my time. You don’t control me, game.

I sat at this screen for hours.

But you know, I can’t think of a single mechanic I haven’t hated at some point – combat, jumping puzzles, hidden object scenes… Man, I must really hate every single game out there. Unfortunately for my bank account, that’s not true. In fact, I’ve dedicated my career, and most of my life thus far, to games and making them better for future generations. Why? Because I love them. I just don’t love all of them, all the time.

Sometimes I want to jump on a TF2 server and W + LeftMouse Pyro, while continuously screaming for a medic. Sometimes I want to talk to an imaginary person in Dragon Age because, at the end of a long day, as least they’re predictable. And sometimes I want to be that cool detective who solves all the paranormal cases, so I load up Mystery Trackers and click through hidden object scenes like a Diablo player on crack.

Stop hacking my account, Leoric!

And yet, I feel like I’m missing out. I don’t know the story of Halo, or Gears of War. I only know Dead Space and BioShock and their sequels because I have very patient friends. And, oddly enough, despite the crippling anxiety I feel while my friend Steve is calmly shearing limbs off nearby necromorphs, Dead Space 2 is one of my favourite games. I just wish I could play it.

The problem is, I suck at combat. It’s not for lack of trying, either. Playing Ocarina of Time with enemies that respawn every damn time I enter or leave a room drives me to throw my 3DS at the wall with alarming frequency. I’m just lucky my husband is a good catch (hur hur puns). If I could explore the Water Temple without worrying about random underwater bat-fish attacking my groin every time I try to navigate around this one set of spikes, I would be so much happier.

Pictured: What they should have replaced the Water Temple with.

There’s another problem. You know I love you, Fallout 3, but sometimes I just want to fast travel without having to discover the destination first. The same goes for you, Skyrim. I’m even an Explorer type (according to my idol, Bartle) but there are days when you just want to get to the dragon’s lair so you can shout at it until it dies.

Children, this is what we call ‘conflict resolution’.

But none of those are the real problems. As the Escapist series Unskippable (which highlights custscences that force us to watch them) points out, sometimes you just have to let the player skip your hard work. My problem is that, so far, this only applies to storytelling.

Playing God of War 2, I died the most often because I misjudged a jumping or swinging section, at which point the game would mock me by offering to decrease the combat difficulty. Thanks. On the other hand, I’m in love with Super Mario 3D Land because it gives me the stupid invincible tanuki suit when I die too much. I usually die for the same reasons as I did in God of War – bad spatial perception – but at least I have a chance of recovering from a misjudged leap. And I sparkle, and that makes everything better.

Have fun trying to get that image out of your head.

Hidden object games, in my opinion, have got the big games beat. Playing on casual mode, you can skip every puzzle, and if you can’t find most of the hidden objects by randomly clicking (if you really don’t want to look for them) you can just wait for the recharging hint, which will tell you, without judgement, where every single item is. You can even skip the story segments. What’s left, you may ask? Not a lot, but that’s what you get for playing the game like a jerk.

So why can’t I do this in other games? I would love the option to have a Fallout 3: Pacifist edition. If I could toggle a button for “short version, please” in Mass Effect, I might have gotten past the Citadel. An option to simply play a sequence containing the remaining story moments (i.e. all of them) in The Misadventures of P. B. Winterbottom would be nice.

It’s sad when you have to Google still images from a game based on a silent movie to get the plot.

Don’t get me wrong, I understand. Dead Space 2 without the combat would be a very short – and somewhat weird – game. Alan Wake would be half the experience without the risk-reward motivation of finding those missing manuscript pages on Nightmare mode. But you know what these games would be? My choice.

I’m tired of missing out on all the good stories because I have the reflexes of a wet dishcloth. A very dear friend of mine worked on Halo: Reach, so I bought it and tried to play it. Guess how far I got. That’s right, I died in the tutorial. Repeatedly. Really.

Sure, I’m not going to get better without practice, but you know what? I don’t want to practice that. I’m just not good at some things, and that’s okay. What’s not okay is being forced to get better (or get better friends?) if I want to indulge my Nolan North obsession and play through the Uncharted series. Let me turn off combat. It won’t be the experience you wanted me to have, but we live in a post-modern society anyway. The death of the author has already been established. Let me play the version of your game that I want, even if it may as well be a movie. That’s my choice, not yours. Stop taking it away from me.

I am in for this, by the way.

The Futurama game on PS2 already did it. They included the game disk and a DVD containing all of the cutscenes and salient sections of gameplay to link them all together into one mini-movie. I ended up buying the game just to watch the movie. I never played the game, but they got my money, and I reckon they’d call that a win.

The point is, we can already skip most of the cutscenes and dialogue available in games. We’re still at the stage where we have to do the puzzles ourselves, but at least there are walkthroughs. There are no walkthroughs for sucking at combat or having poor depth perception. Even if causing all the Darkspawn to flee from my presence when I turn off the option for combat causes a Benny-Hill-style montage of foreshortened tactical retreats, I’m okay with it. Or what about allowing the game’s AI to take control of my character during combat in BioShock 2, even if it means I don’t always come out with the most ammo or the most health, but I come out alive? Both of these are still better options than what I could accomplish alone. Sad it may be, but that’s the way things have been for 20 years. I don’t seem ‘em changing any time soon.

So I vote that every game should include an Option D: skip everything. Make each standalone element fun or successful in its own way, then let me choose which ones I want to engage with. Who knows? If your combat’s as much fun as your exploring, I might even give it a try.(source:gamasutra)