本文原作者：Thomas Grip

《生化危机7》发行于几个月前，它被公认为“回归原作”的作品，甚至有人认为它是系列作品中的最佳版。对我来说，《生化危机7》给我最直观的感受是它回归了其本质，用一个激动人心的故事强化了故事体验感。为了更好地解释我要表达的意思，让我们来回想回想《生化危机》初代（1996）。

我猜你们当中很多人都知道，初代《生化危机》的整个构架基本都摘自它的启蒙作品《Alone in the Dark》(1992)的。不过《Alone in the Dark》的问题比较糟糕，它的控制速度很慢并且反应也不太敏捷，固定的镜头角度让玩家很难对环境能有一个清晰的概念。而第一代《生化危机》在这方面改善了一点，不过大部分根本性问题还是遗留下来了。而且跟《Doom》(1993)比起来，生化一代的战斗系统真不怎么样。

然而《生化危机》通过对游戏情节的包装搞定了这个问题。回想一下你第一次遇到一只僵尸的情景：

你进入一个房间，看到有个人坐在地板上。它转过头露出这面目——啊！是僵尸在撕咬尸体。你拔出手枪，朝僵尸开了好几枪最后终于杀死了它。

这个场景的战斗本身并没有太有趣。因为房间很小，所以你也不怎么动得了，糟糕的控制系统也帮不上什么忙，而你也根本没法决定朝哪里瞄准。你基本上只要让人物面对正确的方向然后按下攻击按钮直到把僵尸打死就好了（或者有可能跑出房间）。从单纯的游戏性角度来说，这很没趣。但是当它被叙述文本包装起来以后，就突然变得令人兴奋起来了。事实上，那愚钝的控制感和有限的镜头角度在这里为游戏起到了有益作用——它们让玩家感到无法控制，这直接投射出了即将发生的情景——正在接近的僵尸！于是一种紧张恐怖的氛围油然而生。

这就是情节叙述的力量。将游戏行动包装在游戏的情节的叙述中会让他们发挥出大于两者之和的效果。如果单独来看，《生化危机》的玩法机制略显一般，不过当使用在合适的环境里时，它们在特定体验上的表现就比用《Doom》的基础玩法机制在效果上要好很多。

这还不是唯一让《生化危机》能作为游戏运作下去的原因。还有另外一个很大的因素就是对资源的管理，这在很大程度上帮助游戏维持住了长期的吸引力。然而我还要再次强调，这款游戏之所以能这么火要多亏了它所设定的世界。要确保你有弹药和治疗药草，这可不是数字游戏，这些有限的资源给这个僵尸大批出没的世界营造出一番求生氛围，给人以十足的兴奋感。

这几年来，《生化危机》系列游戏越走越偏离了它的情节叙述之路，而把注意力大多集中在了游戏机制的提升上。《生化危机4》（2005）迈出的是这种演变的最大一步。

《生化危机7》终于再次拾起了从生化一代之后就夭折了的情节叙述，并在这方面投注了大量精力。首先让我们来想想《生化危机7》。这里是一个很典型的战斗场景：

Resident Evil 7 （from gamer sky）

以及这里是另外一部的当代动作游戏的场景：

Titanfall 2（from gamer sky）

你可以看到，相对比之下，《生化危机7》好像更无聊——目标不精确而且移动空间不足。不过这些缺点在游戏中却发挥了积极的作用。单看它的游戏性那确实没什么出彩的，但我们得结合游戏的情节发展来看——比如说，你碰到第一个敌人是拿锯子准备割了你的女朋友僵尸变体，很显然这个战斗系统糟透了，不过这却凸显了这个场景下的绝望感——相反地，如果在这个场景中，良好的游戏技能让你能够很好地迂回战斗来躲开攻击，这样的效果反而不佳了。游戏的前半部分就是按照这个模式进行的，玩家扮演着有血性的主角同大量的精英敌人战斗，亲身体验着游戏的故事情节发展。这比《生化危机》的前几部作品进步了非常多，它称得上是所有已发行的恐怖战斗型游戏中的佼佼者。《生化危机7》能有如此反响就是因为它不再单一地把关注度放在游戏机制上，而是将其与战斗场景相结合从而营造出与情节呼应的体验感。

这种结合的优点在遇到“小怪”的时候更明显——他们的毫无预警性出现贯穿整部游戏。他们的出现基本上全都没有情节设置（通往女孩房间之路就是个很好的例子），基本就是为了确保玩家一直都有事可做。

该结合的优点在整个游戏的最后三分之一更加清晰了。这时候玩家基本只有小怪可以打了，游戏开始把焦点转移到“玩”，不再给你那么多武器和攻击道具了。我们恐怖生存体验的角度来看，可以知道它在这个焦点转移上下了大工夫。游戏的后半部分有大量的故事内容要让玩家体验，但形式不再是有趣的剧情场景，而是让玩家通过对材料的阅读或者观看战斗中的过场动画来体验。

还有值得一提的是，《生化危机7》中不止在情节上做了包装，而且在谜题上也下了功夫。比如说，有一些谜题是房子里疯了的居民留下的，这些谜题本身没什么特别，但由于前后发生的情景赋予了它们令人兴奋的点。这让人不再觉得自己是在解决抽象的谜题，而是在用自己的计谋来打败那些反派角色。

所以为什么我们没有看到更多注重情节场景体验的游戏呢？我觉得很大一部分原因就是那些游戏本身游戏性太强太有趣而忽略了情节场景的体验。我上个礼拜就这个话题写过一篇博文，论证的要点是：当你可以在让游戏变得更好玩和改善情景体验之间作选择时，选择让游戏好玩的路子更简单直接。

当游戏有一个有意思的核心循环时，你可以用抽象图形和临时资金来进行游戏测试，但这对于主攻情节体验的游戏来说就完全不一样了——你可以想象出用了一定的资金之后这个游戏成品会是什么样子，但你终究没法保证是否能做到想象中的样子。毕竟不可能把才做一半的游戏拿出来给人测试还妄想得到有用的反馈。除此之外，想做成一款这样的游戏要耗费很多资金，而且做成之前还需要很多时间，重点是做成之后还不知道能不能玩。所以很多游戏才会打退堂鼓，回头去做所谓可靠吃香的“经典游戏”。

尽管有如此不同，但做出这类重情节体验类游戏的益处跟难度是成正比的。我想不会有人反对《生化危机4》和《生化危机7》是两种非常不同的游戏体验——前一种重游戏趣味性，后一种注重特定情节体验的营造。

《生化危机7》肯定不是最完美的恐怖体验游戏，但是它确实拥有其他游戏不可比拟的东西在里面，它之所以能如此出类拔萃的原因主要就是它对情节体验概念的重视。在我看来它就像第一个吃螃蟹的人，非常勇于尝试。我之前有些过一篇文章，是讲关于太好玩的游戏想再在游戏性上有所进步可不太容易的。但是如果我们想要进一步发展电视游戏、提供更好的故事体验，那它（把焦点放在情节体验上）就是唯一的方法了。目前有很多迹象都在朝这个方向指引、它们中有一些在《生化危机7》有所体现，这也就让我更加坚定了这种想法。
但是我们可不能瞎子抹黑似的在这条路上横冲直撞还想着自己能成大器。我们必须好好地对这个领域进行侦查，看看那条路径最有希望。我的博客之后要探究的话题就是要如何才能找到这条路径。

本文由游戏邦编译，转载请注明来源，或咨询微信zhengjintiao

Resident Evil 7 came out a couple of months ago and was generally perceived as being “back to to form”, even called one of the best games in the series. What really stood out to me was that it felt like Resident Evil had returned to its roots on telling a compelling narrative, and used that to power the experience. In order to unpack what I mean by this, let’s first consider the first Resident Evil game (1996).

As I guess most of you know, the first Resident Evil was heavily inspired by Alone in the Dark (1992), and the whole setup is basically ripped from there. Now the problem with Alone in the Dark is that it is extremely clunky. The controls are slow and not very responsive and the fixed camera angles makes it hard to get a good idea of your surroundings. Resident Evil improved a bit on this, but most of the basic problems still remained. Compared to a game like Doom (1993), the game’s combat is a lot less engaging.

Resident Evil attacks this problem by wrapping the game’s happenings in story. Consider the first encounter you have with a zombie:

You enter a room, see someone sitting on the floor. It turns around and reveals itself. Argh! It is a zombie eating on a corpse. You pull out your gun, shoot the zombie a couple of times, and manage to kill it.

The combat in this scenario is not very interesting in itself. The room is small so you cannot move around much and the clunky controls don’t help much. You cannot really decide where to aim, either. You basically just have to turn your character in the right direction and press the attack button until the zombie eventually dies (or possibly just run out of the room). From a pure gameplay perspective this is quite dull. But when it is wrapped in a narrative context it suddenly gets very exciting. In fact, the clunky controls and limited camera angles works to the game’s advantage here. They make the players feel like they are not in control, which gets directly projected on the situation at hand – the approaching zombie. A tense and scary situation arises.

This is the power of narrative context. By wrapping gameplay actions in storytelling the experience that arise exceed the sum of its parts. Taken solely on their own merit, the gameplay mechanics don’t feel very engaging. But when used in the right environment they work far better at providing the intended experience than using the basic gameplay of Doom would have.

This is not the only thing that keeps Resident Evil working as a game. Another big aspect of it is the resource management, which is a great help in making the game engaging over longer periods of time. But again, it works so well because of the world it is placed in. Making sure that you have ammo and healing herbs is not just a numbers game. By playing it in the world of a zombie-infested mansion it turns into a survival scenario which makes it a lot more exciting [1].

Over the years, Resident Evil have distanced itself from the narrative context, and focused more on improving the gameplay mechanics. Resident Evil 4 (2005) is the biggest step in this evolution.

Resident Evil 7 picks up where the first one left of and puts, once a again, lots of focus on the narrative context. First of all let us consider the combat of Resident Evil 7. Here is a typical combat scene:

and here is one from another contemporary action game:

Titanfall 2 (2016)

As you can see there is a lot less fun for the player to have in Resident Evil 7. The aiming is imprecise and the spaces doesn’t allow for a lot of movement. But all of this work in the favor of the game. Once again, we cannot just analyze the gameplay on its own. We have to take into account the context in which it happens. Here is where Resident Evil 7 has plenty. For instance, the first enemy that you encounter is your girlfriend turned mutant, who is now attacking you with a chainsaw. Sure, the combat is quite awkward, but that only fuels the desperation of the situation. This scene wouldn’t be nearly as good if the player was able to circle stife, and had explicitly defined mechanics for avoiding incoming attacks.

The first half of the game continues like this, with many of the hostiles not being run-of-the-mill monsters, but characters with personalities. You’re not just taking part in generic combat encounters – you’re taking part in narrative happenings. This is a huge improvement compared to basically any of the previous Resident Evils and, in these moments, the game honestly have one of the best implementations of horror combat in any game released. And all of this is due to not simply focusing on making the combat as fun as possible. Instead the focus is on combining context and mechanics in a way that gives rise to the desired experience.

How well this works becomes apparent when you start encountering the “mold monsters”. These pop up without much introduction and serve as the generic enemies throughout the game. Almost none of these encounters (the path to a girl’s bedroom is a great counter example) have any sort of narrative setup, and the monsters are mostly there in order to assure that the player keeps occupied.

The final third of the game makes this even clearer. Now the player mostly just encounter these generic monsters, and the game starts focusing on the gameplay instead by giving you more weapons and other offensive gadgets. Viewed from the lense of a survival horror experience, the game greatly suffers from this shift in focus. An important thing to note here is that the game doesn’t drop its storytelling ambitions. The last half of the game has a lot of story-stuff that it shares with the player. The problem is that the player is not put in any interesting narrative situations. Instead you have your documents to read, or cut scenes inbetween the combat, but you are never part of the storytelling like you where in the first two-thirds of the game.

It is also worth to bring up that it is not only combat that Resident Evil 7 wraps in a narrative, it also does this with its puzzles. For instance, there are a few instance when puzzles are put there by another mad inhabitants of the house. And while these puzzles themselves are nothing out of the ordinary, the context makes them a lot more exciting. You are not just solving abstract riddles – you are trying to outsmart one of the game’s antagonists.

So why don’t we see more games that has this kind of focus on narrative context? I think the biggest reason boils down to the fact that, at their core, games are simply too fun. I wrote about this in a blog post last week. The gist of the argument is: When you can choose between making gameplay more fun, and improving the intended experience, focusing on fun gameplay provides a more straightforward path.

When you have a fun core loop you can test out your game using abstract shapes and temporary assets. The same is not as true for games that rely heavily on narrative context. You can imagine how the game will play out if all the proper assets were there, but you can never be sure. It is not possible to hand out a half-finished game to testers and expect to get proper feedback. On top of that, the aspects of the game that make or break the experience are often very costly. A big, uncertain, investment is needed and it takes a long time before it can be evaluated, whether it worked or not. The temptation to fall back on the good-ol reliable “classic gameplay” is very strong indeed.

Building these game works very different from games where the focus is on a fun core loop. But the benefits can be really large indeed. I don’t think anybody will argue against the claim that Resident Evil 4 and 7 are very different experiences. One is possible by following the fun, and the other one by focusing on creating a certain experience.

Resident Evil 7 is by no means the perfect horror experience, but it contains some truly exceptional stuff. The things that all stand out are heavily reliant on the idea of narrative context. To me it seems like the game has just dipped its toes into this though. As I explained in my post on games being too fun, to go further down this route is not an easy mission. But if we are to evolve the videogames medium and provide stronger storytelling experiences it is the only way to go. The many signs pointing in this direction, some of them apparent in Resident Evil 7, makes me even more confident in this.

But we cannot just stumble blindly on this path, hoping to bump into greatness. We must scout the territory and see which route seems like the most promising. Finding how to do this is what this blog will continue to explore.

Footnotes:

[1] The case of the resource management is not as clearcut as the combat one as it has a much better gameplay core going on here. In fact there are games like Desktop Dungeons that uses a quite related mechanics and bases its entire gameplay around it. So while the narrative context is an important factor here, it is not nearly as important as it is for combat（source：gamasutra.com  ）