以《塞尔达传说:旷野之息》和《异度之刃》为例谈好点子的重要性

原作者：James Margaris 译者：Willow Wu

如果你在游戏行业工作，你大概听过很多类似于“想法是廉价的（ideas are cheap）”这样的说法。每个人都有很多很多的想法，但是制作才是关键。

在这篇博客中，我将从概念层面入手，通过深入分析两个具体的例子来反驳这个说法:《塞尔达传说:旷野之息》的烹饪机制和《异度之刃》中的未来视机制。

“想法一抓一大把”

冒着被认为是嘲讽的风险，让我先告诉你这件事：如果你认为想法不重要——它们很廉价、随手可得，所有没有投入实践的想法都是一样的——那么你也必须相信，这个你目前所拥护的这个观点，也只是一个无足轻重的想法。

当然，我明白“想法是廉价的”修辞意图。你去逛逛论坛，看看那些有抱负的游戏开发者们，每次你都会不可避免地看到一些没有实践经验的人在寻找合作团队，希望能够一起实现某个绝妙的想法。然而其中大部分都是将两个经典创意结合在一起或者只是换个背景设定。这些人的问题并不在于想法本身不惧任何说服力，而是他们的想法没有说服力——肤浅而乏味。

制作是关键？

普通版的《俄罗斯方块》比最佳版本的Columns更好玩。

计算机科学系的大一学生可以做一款比最佳版本Columns还好的《俄罗斯方块》。人们喜欢早些年那款黑绿两色的低分辨率《俄罗斯方块》，也就是Gameboy版本。如果说构想不值钱，制作才是最重要的，那为什么随便一个普通版本的《俄罗斯方块》都比最佳版本Columns、Klax或者是Hatris要好？

在2017年的GDC上，任天堂展示了《塞尔达传说:旷野之息》的2D NES风格概念原型。游戏原型看起来非常有意思，但如果说制作才是重点，而且原型的制作效果跟最终版天差地别，那么任天堂干嘛要费劲做这个东西呢？他们证明了这个特殊版本是具有可玩性的，但是后来又抛弃不用了，为什么？你可以说这个原型让他们有了更好的想法，但如果想法不重要的话为什么还要去改进呢？

还是说任天堂就是不擅长做游戏，他们觉得这个看似毫无意义的过程非常重要？

并非一家之言

Brace Yourself Games创始人、游戏设计师Ryan Clark在YouTube上分享了他的一篇演讲《如何才能不断创造出畅销的独立游戏》（How to Consistently Make Profitable Indie Games）。我个人通常不太喜欢看与游戏开发商业、营销相关的演讲，但Clark的演讲相当不错，观点明了，难以反驳，所以我在这里不再赘述了，但是我会用具体的例子来分析：《盗贼遗产》vs《全金属狂怒》，两个都是Cellar Door Games的作品。用开发者们的话来说，《全金属狂怒》是一个“惨不忍睹的失败”，虽然我不会说这个游戏的构想很糟糕，但它看似并不符合“有足够的吸引点”和“容易推广”。Steam预告片中承诺“这是一个具有独创性的动作RPG游戏”，但是在看完论坛讨论以及开发者访谈之后，我还是不知道所谓的独创性指的是什么。

这就与之前的《盗贼遗产》形成非常鲜明的对比——玩家一下子就能看出游戏的亮点所在，随着话题热度的增加，《盗贼遗产》就从众多类大魔界村/恶魔城风格的游戏中脱颖而出。

那么《全金属狂怒》的制作水准比《盗贼遗产》差吗？如果换成Tacoma vs Gone Home或者是Nidhogg 2 vs Nidhogg呢？你会想开发团队的后续游戏应该会受益于前作的成功，毕竟他们有了经验，资金也相对充足了一些，事实也确实如此：Tacoma和Nidhogg 2在技术上和画面上都比上一个游戏好。

Battle royale游戏正在分裂市场。有人要说H1Z1、《绝地求生》、《堡垒之夜》、Radical Heights等等游戏的成功不是因为battle royale而是因为游戏本身的优秀制作水准吗？Boss Key Productions只花了5个月的时间就做出了Radical Heights，根据Steamspy的统计，Radical Heights的用户大概有100~200万。Lawbreakers的制作比这个游戏差吗？

就在今天，我读了一篇文章，内容是关于某个发行公司的签约策略——他们要的是有出色构想、鹤立鸡群的游戏。所以即使你不相信想法是重要的，那些花钱的人可不这么认为。

《塞尔达传说:旷野之息》中的烹饪系统

在本篇文章中，我将会花大量时间讨论《塞尔达传说:旷野之息》和《异度之刃》，以此来证明出色构想的重要性。这些设计是任何合格的开发人员都能实现的，制作要求并不高。

首先我们要讨论的是《塞尔达传说:旷野之息》中的烹饪系统。先来看看玩家的反馈吧：首先是推特上的一段对话，这就是很多玩家第一次接触游戏中烹饪系统的反应。

为了让我的观点更具合理性，我还问了游戏媒体编辑Kirk McKeand，《塞尔达传说:旷野之息》的烹饪系统是他最喜欢的，这其中的原因是什么？他的回答是：

“大部分的制造系统都是在游戏菜单内部完成的。你选择需要的材料，然后游戏会自动合成，成品就这样出来了。

然而在《塞尔达传说:旷野之息》中，你可以一直实验。你把材料一起扔进去，看看会获得什么样的东西。利用合理的材料一般就能够获得你想要的成品：鱼和肉是最常用到的。这就能够给玩家带来满足感。

除此之外也非常具有真实感。你把材料拿在手中，然后扔进锅里，看着它们在汤中旋转。屏住呼吸，仔细听游戏的音乐，它会告诉你是否成功了。”

在分析这些反馈之前，我们先来看看《塞尔达传说:旷野之息》中的烹饪系统是如何运作的：它有独立的两个层次——首先是由配方主导的，直接决定了食物的功效，另外一个是美学层，会根据你所扔的食材来命名、呈现成品。

食物的功效——比如恢复多少生命点数，提升抗寒或者是耐热属性，这都是由线性配方决定的。在实际效果中，鸟腿+橡子和高级兽肉+苹果没有区别（或多或少）。这个配方层包含着一些有趣的变数，与真正的烹饪相呼应——某些成分，比如盐可能会削弱最终成品的的效果。（显然《塞尔达传说:旷野之息》的开发者们对盐的把控很敏感。我个人不会在任何东西里放盐。）这并不难懂，玩家很容易就能发现。

食物的名字和图片是由独立的第二层所决定的。这是按照我们对烹饪的理解来选择的，没有任何特定的配方：把两种蔬菜放在一起，你就得到了一道素菜，把鱼和蔬菜放在一起，你就得到了一道鱼类料理。有不少食物需要的是特定材料：比如南瓜派就需要四种配料。这个系统背后并没有什么逻辑。

了解这些之后，让我们来看看玩家的反应。我在社交媒体上看到很多人非常关注食谱——大家会分享食谱，或者是整理出一套食谱大全。但是当你理解烹饪的原理之后，你就会明白为什么大家其实用不着看食谱书：因为它涉及的大概只是烹饪系统的美学层面，而不是功能性层面。在推特上求食谱的人，其实他们真正想要知道的并不是怎么做出那道菜，而是特定的烹饪配方以及每个材料的属性。

同样地，再看看Kirk之前说的话：“在《塞尔达传说:旷野之息》中，你可以一直实验。你把材料一起扔进去，看看会获得什么样的东西。利用合理的材料一般就能够获得你想要的成品：鱼和肉是最常用到的。”这似乎就对应了烹饪系统的两个层面：美学层——在大众看来，鱼和肉就是人们的最常用原料，以及配方层——通过实验，你可以确定组合规则和配料的属性。

根据我的观察，大多数玩家都正好处于这两个系统的中间。他们把食谱作为重点，同时也明白游戏有即兴创作的空间。就像是现实中的烹饪——他们从食谱开始，然后按口味调味。找到一个你喜欢的可以补心配方，如果你想要恢复得更好，可以加一两个苹果，或者如果你想要提升耐热或耐力，可以加入对应的属性提升材料。

配方更新

《塞尔达传说:旷野之息》中烹饪的实际效果是公式化的。但是当人们描述它的时候，他们经常会谈到探索，发现和实验。

在大多数游戏中，烹饪或其它制造机制都会采用使用食谱/蓝图系统。在正式学习系统内置的配方之前，玩家甚至都不能自己创造东西。虽然开发者们加入这些系统是出于合理性考虑，但是这些材料玩家很少能想的到。举个例子，在《我的世界》中，你要做梯子的话首先你得用木头做出一个H形状的架构。为什么要摆成一个“H”形状？如果你在组装一个梯子，你肯定是把部件放在地上组装，然后再把它直立起来。如果你把另一根棍子放在最上面的一排，它是不是就成了阶梯？还有，能不能做金属梯子呢？

在《最终幻想14》中，玩家可以制作“魔蛇鸟肉丸”，材料看似都没有问题，但是你不能通过多加盐来提升暴击率。这食谱是挺合理的（如果你相信魔蛇鸟腿肉是制作美味肉丸的关键的话），但也仅仅是如此了——意思是它并不简单，或者说玩家不太容易能够想到所有材料。

将类似的固定配方系统应用到《塞尔达传说:旷野之息》烹饪系统的美学层，给每个成品分配一个固定的属性。这个系统的巧妙之处在于它的随性：番茄、几个橄榄和一些鱼肉就能做出一道Salmon Veracruz，虽说菜品外观不同，但是效果是一样的。你不必绞尽脑汁去猜测游戏设计师的想法，或者是等待某个NPC告诉你特定的食谱。你可以自己去尝试，慢慢了解这个烹饪系统，创造出自己的食谱。你可能一直都没有机会知道确切的水果蛋糕食谱是什么，但是你可以通过实验收获的你自己的水果蛋糕，在效果上并没有差别。

如果没有美学层，有些人或许就只会去制作一桶一桶的稀粥，跟真实的烹饪体验脱节。两个苹果和一个坚果就成了“Food Item 0xABF0001D”，三个苹果和一个坚果就成了“Food Item 0xBADF00D”。两个系统都摆脱了传统菜谱模式的束缚，但是又不会让玩家觉得难懂。

想法vs制作

分析完这个例子，我们再回头看看开头所说的“想法很廉价，关键是制作”。《塞尔达传说:旷野之息》中的烹饪系统确实很受欢迎，但是制作上并不算特别出众。一些小的细节，比如烹饪时发出的叮当声、食物可以堆在你怀中的这种物理表现是值得称赞的，但是UI设计的不合理性可能会在一定程度上冲刷掉这种好感。这些精致细节就是由想法决定的。这个系统无论是在技术上还是复杂程度上都没有什么特别之处。美学层很有可能是就用Excel做出的一张巨大电子表格，跟其它游戏一样。功能层所需的配方就相对简单一些，再加上一些基本的属性值。这一系统的优势在于烹饪是以配方为基础的，同时美学层则提供了一种直观性的规则。也就是说游戏中有一定的食材搭配规律，同时也允许玩家自由发挥。这很重要，我在上文说过，两个层次是相互独立的。这是一个非显而易知的设计想法，但实践起来并不难。可以说任何一个游戏都可以加入《塞尔达传说:旷野之息》的烹饪系统，这并不难做——但他们没有。虽然坚持按照菜谱烹饪的设计方式也有充分的理由，但我们不得不承认对很多游戏来说这是一个默认选择，而不是主动选择。这些开发者们要么是没考虑过要做另一种系统，要么就是拿不出可行的方案。

《异度之刃》的未来视

论证成功并非在于制作而是想法的第二个例子就是《异度之刃》的未来视机制。《异度之刃》中（初代Wii/3DS版本，不是续作或是X），主角预见未来的能力是游戏剧情发展的重要转折点，但我要说的是机制方面。

战斗预警

在《异度之刃》的战斗环节中，你会在某些时候预见到敌人的大招，借此机会你可以采取行动，改变未来。也许你看到了敌人对某个角色进行了致命的5连击，这时你就可以利用技能让队友变成暂时的无敌状态，阻止攻击。

希区柯克著名的“炸弹理论”就说明了意外与悬疑的区别：两个人谈话，半小时后桌子下的炸弹突然爆炸，观众会惊讶，但如果一开始先让观众知道桌子下有个炸弹，然后这两个人的谈话过程整个都变得悬念迭起了。未来视在战斗中制造的是悬疑而不是意外，这在其它RPG游戏的战斗中并不常见。

不久之前我在玩《世界树迷宫4》（Etrian Odyssey IV），我在游戏遇到了一个乌龟外形的FOE（一种强大的怪物，相当于小boss）。几个回合之后，它发动了致命攻击，团队成员无一幸免，这就是一种意外。我完全不知道怪物会出这一招，没有任何办法应对。在《异度之刃》中，敌人越厉害、招数越强，你可以使用未来视的机会也越多，意味着你有更多时间来处理这个定时炸弹。战斗难度系数越高，紧张程度自然也就越高，不仅仅是因为困难的战斗本身就让人捏把汗，还得益于游戏中的颇具特色但又浅显易懂机制设计。

这个系统的有趣特性之一就是它让难度变得有弹性，意思就是说战斗越困难你能看到的预知场景也越多，避免死亡的机会也更多，最少也能起到一个暂时的防御效果。这是一种非常聪明的方法，让玩家有机会把敌人的实际难度曲线调整成渐进式的相对平滑形态，而非剧烈波动，容易一招致命。游戏中最强大的boss Lorithia，她的难点很大程度上在于她周围的那些致死岩浆，无法让玩家使用未来视。

在过去30年中，几乎所有RPG游戏的开发者们都会说他们对战斗系统进行了革新，还取了个非常吸引眼球的名字，虽说这其中确实有些比较有趣的玩法（比如《最终幻想》的ATB系统、《格兰蒂亚》的半即时战斗系统以及被称为JRPG战斗系统巅峰的《最后的神迹》），但大部分还是名字起的好听罢了，实际效果并不能称得上是优秀。《异度之刃 X》和《异度之刃2》就位列其中——X中的灵魂之声系统太过于复杂了，至于2啊……一言难尽。

物品预知

我想分析的最后一个出色构想是《异度之刃》中的我称为“物品预知系统”的设计。这个系统是这样的：你看到一个物品，如果它最终是可以用来完成某项任务的，那么游戏就会开启未来视，让你看到使用那个物品的的未来场景，并在物品栏中对这个东西打上标记，让你知道它和任务有关。即使在角色还没触发任务的情况下也是如此。

在很多游戏中，开发者们想向玩家传达重要信息，但是角色本身并不应该知道，这该怎么办？《异度之刃》的物品预知系统就是一个非常普通但是有效的解决办法。我在推特上关注Adrian Chmielarz，因为他总是对这类问题一针见血。

如今这些包含收集物品机制的游戏中，有些道具最后可能会用于交换任务奖励。但要是玩家没有激活这些任务呢？在许多游戏中，有些信息是开发者希望玩家能知道的，因为这能在一定程度上优化他们的游戏体验（比如说避免来回折腾），但问题是角色不应该知道。最常见的解决方案就是无视这个问题，让玩家自己决定要干什么，或者是直接挑明，但这会变得非常没意思。就比如这样：“玩家们好，我是Fred Jones，本关卡的设计者。就是想提醒你们一下马上就要进入任务区域了，出于我们的技术原因，如果你错过触发条件那就会自动判定为任务失败。另外，你已经找到了本区域80%的物品，你刚才捡起来的浆果很重要哦，因为在这条路的尽头会有一个NPC找你要三颗浆果，然后他会给你一顶帽子作为回报。祝你玩得开心。”

《异度之刃》的解决办法很简单，没有任何技术难度，而且跟剧情搭得上，而不是像《刺客信条》那样在追逐场景中告诉你“失去同步”就任务失败了，简直想让人翻白眼。我最近看到顽皮狗公司的员工说《神秘海域》中被玩家看作是血量条的东西其实是运气值。当它不断降低，最后消耗殆尽时，总会有一颗子弹打中你，然后死掉。我很佩服开发团队能够想出这么个理由来解释为什么Drake之前被打中那么多次都没事，然而这并无奇特之处的一颗子弹就要了他的命。

《异度之刃》的这种设计也并非是具有突破性意义的，不会影响玩家对整个游戏的评价。但这是一个非常棒的设计，可以提升玩家的游戏体验——在不破坏沉浸感的同时巧妙地解决了大多数游戏未能解决的问题。如果“想法是廉价的”“每个人都有想法”，那为什么能解决这个基本问题的游戏团队那么少呢？现实是当开发者们遇到这类问题时，绝大部分人都想不到一个好的解决办法，到最后就是随便给个跟剧情完全不相关的理由糊弄过去。

总结

有些游戏开发相关的格言是有价值的，但是“想法一抓一大把（Ideas are a dime a dozen）”不是其中之一。3A游戏在很大程度上是由技术和制作主导的，但是它们也受益于引人入胜的游戏点子。比如《超级马里奥：奥德赛》中马里奥可以朝霸王龙扔帽子然后附身，这就引起了很多玩家的兴趣。《塞尔达传说:旷野之息》在技术方面的完成度确实非常高（作为一个开发过Wii U开发世界游戏的人，我向你保证这个工作一点都不轻松！），但我认为想法对游戏有更加重要影响。从某种程度上说，《塞尔达传说:旷野之息》的制作确实存在着个别不尽人意的地方，比如重复的敌人营地和简陋的地牢。游戏的过人之处在于它是如何不懈地追求“玩家优先于角色”的设计美学以及“所得皆所愿”游戏玩法。《塞尔达传说:旷野之息》团队值得称赞并不是因为他们做到了别的团队做不到的事，而是他们完成了其他团队不愿意做的事。

独立游戏团队所能提供的发展条件（比如技术水平、预算）往往就会决定游戏的生死。《杀戮尖塔》(Slay the Spire)有很多优点值得说，但是制作水准并不在其中。市场中还有各种各样有趣的模拟器游戏，它们在各个方面都不算差，但制作除外。《茶杯头》的艺术风格让人印象深刻，但如果换成是制作效果更好的“独立像素风格”游戏，销量肯定不会这么好，因为后者相对更加大众化，缺少特色。

当然，凡事都有例外。有很多游戏点子不怎么新奇的产品收获了成功，有很多创意惊艳的游戏却以失败告终。行业中也不存在专门的“创意人”职位——等了六个月，你想出一个很酷的创意，告诉大家，然后你就继续惬意地靠在椅背上，等待大家去实现它。但是想法真的非常重要，能够想出好点子也是一种非常重要的技能。

本文由游戏邦编译，转载请注明来源，或咨询微信zhengjintiao

Breath of the Wild, Xenoblade Chronicles and the Power of Good Ideas

If you work in the game industry you’ve probably heard many “ideas are cheap” variations. Ideas are a dime a dozen. Everyone has lots of ideas — it’s the execution that matters. Insert your own pablum here.

In this blog I’ll grapple with this idea on a conceptual level, then examine two specific examples that rebut it on a practical one: cooking in Breath of the Wild and the look-into-the-future mechanics in Xenoblade Chronicles.

“Ideas are a Dime a Dozen”

At the risk of being snide let me begin with the following: if you believe that ideas don’t matter — that ideas are cheap and easy to come by and that on paper all ideas are equal — then you must also necessarily believe that this idea, the one you’re currently espousing as some fundamental wisdom, is also a dime-a-dozen idea of no consequence.

Of course I grasp the intent of “ideas are cheap” rhetoric. If you visit any forum for aspiring game developers you’ll inevitably run across a person who has no practical skills and is looking for a team to implement their brilliant idea, which is nearly always of the “X+Y” or “X in space” variety. But the problem with these people isn’t that ideas are weak, it’s that their ideas are weak — shallow and pedestrian.

Execution is what Matters?

A mediocre version of Tetris is better than the best version of Columns.

A first-year CS student could make a version of Tetris better than the best Columns. People loved the Gameboy version of Tetris, with its green and black low-res display. If ideas are cheap and execution is what matters why is any middling execution of Tetris better than the best Columns or Klax or Hatris?

At GDC2017 Nintendo showed off a 2D “NES-style” proof-of-concept of Breath of the Wild. Why bother making it? The prototype looks fun but if execution is what matters and the prototype version is wildly different in execution from the real version what’s the point? They proved that this particular execution worked but then threw it out, so why bother? You could argue that the prototype helped them refine their ideas, but if ideas don’t matter why bother refining them?

Is Nintendo just terrible at making games and reliant on a nonsense process?

But Don’t Just Take My Word For It

This slide from Ryan Clark, taken from here, is self-explanatory and hard to argue with, so I’m not going to elaborate on it much. (Side note: I generally loathe game development business and marketing talks but Clark’s are quite good) Instead I’ll talk about this in a specific context: Rogue Legacy vs Full Metal Furies, both from Cellar Door Games. According to the devs Full Metal Furies is a “pretty massive failure”, and while I’m not going to say that the game idea is bad it definitely seems to whiff on “has great hooks” and “will be easy to promote.” The Steam trailer promises “a unique twist on action RPGs” but even after reading forum discussions and interviews with the devs I’m still not sure what that refers to.

That’s in stark contrast to Rogue Legacy, which had an immediately obvious hook that helped it stand out in a sea of other Ghouls and Ghosts / Castlevania-style PC games.

Is the execution of Full Metal Furies significantly worse than Rogue Legacy? Same question but sub in Tacoma vs Gone Home or Nidhogg 2 vs Nidhogg. You’d think the followup effort would benefit from increased experience and capital after a successful previous title and thus be executed better. And in practice that seems true enough: Tacoma and Nidhogg 2 are more technically and graphically sophisticated than their predecessors.

Battle royale games are tearing up the market. Is anyone willing to claim that H1Z1, PUBG, Fortnite, Radical Heights, etc, are all finding success not because of the idea behind them but because they are well-executed? (Editors note: I began writing this quite a while ago!) According to Steamspy Radical Heights has 1 to 2 million users, and it’s been in development for 5 months and has mostly temp assets. Is it better executed than Lawbreakers?

Just today I read an article about a “triple-I” publisher who described their signing strategy as looking for high-concept games that will stand out in the market. So even if you don’t believe that ideas are important the people doling out money think otherwise.

Cooking In Breath of the Wild

For the bulk of this blog I’ll discuss two games that illustrate the power of clever ideas. These are ideas that any competent developer could implement had they the want, not ones with high execution requirements.

First up is cooking in Breath of the Wild. I’ll begin with some user reactions. First is a Twitter conversation representative of a lot of the talk about cooking as players first explored the game.

I’ve awkwardly cropped out the identifying details here as you weirdos can’t be trusted.

In a further attempt to lend legitimacy to my opinion I also asked Kirk McKeand, games media writer and BOTW cooking fan, why it’s his favorite cooking system.

Most crafting systems take place solely inside the menus. You choose the recipe you want to craft, the game automatically combines the ingredients, and you get the finished result.

In Breath of the Wild, you are always experimenting. You throw ingredients together to see what works. Things that make sense usually become the recipe you were expecting: fish and meat becomes surf and turf. It’s satisfying.

Then there’s the fact that it’s so tactile. You hold the ingredients in your hands, throw them into a pot, and they swirl around. You hold your breath and listen to the music for a hint at how successful you’ve been. Then, boom, you’ve got some inedible slodge.

Before considering these reactions let’s examine how cooking in BOTW works. The cooking has two independent layers – a purely formula-driven layer that determines food effects, and a purely arbitrary aesthetic layer that determines graphic and name.

The effect of food — how much health it restores, any additional bonuses like heat resistance or stamina — is determined by a linear formula. (More or less) In practical terms there’s no difference between a bird thigh + acorn dish and a prime meat + apple dish. This formula layer has a few fun twists that nod to real cooking — some ingredients like salt have diminishing returns. (Apparently the BOTW devs are sensitive to over-salting. Personally I never put salt on anything. Take that, Gordon Ramsay) But it’s very straightforward.

What food is called and what graphic is used is determined by a second unrelated layer. Here the entries are chosen in line with our understanding of cooking with no formula whatsoever: combine two vegetables and you end up with a vegetable dish, combine a fish and a vegetable and you get a fish dish. Many of these are extremely specific; Pumpkin Pie requires four set ingredients. There’s no logic behind it other than our real world understanding of how certain dishes are made.

With this in mind let’s look at those reactions again. The focus on recipe is something I’ve seen a lot on social media — people sharing recipes or advocating for a recipe book. But when you understand how the cooking works you see why a recipe book wasn’t included: that book would presumably describe the aesthetic layer rather than the functional one. When the people in that tweet thread ask for the recipe what they really want to know (though they don’t know they want this) is not how to create that dish, but the cooking formula and the attributes of each ingredient.

Similarly look at the middle of Kirk’s quote again: “In Breath of the Wild, you are always experimenting. You throw ingredients together to see what works. Things that make sense usually become the recipe you were expecting: fish and meat becomes surf and turf.” This seems to nod to both layers of the cooking systems: the aesthetic layer — that fish and meat becomes the expected surf and turf, and the formula layer — that by experimenting you can determine the the rules of the combining formula and the attributes of ingredients.

From my experience observing player reactions most players fall squarely in the middle of these two systems. They use recipes as anchor points while understanding that there’s room for improvisation, very much as in real cooking; they start with a recipe and then season to taste. You find a recipe that you like that restores X hearts, then add an apple or two if you want a little more healing, or add a status-effect ingredient if you want heat resistance or stamina.

Innovation Through Formula

The practical effects of cooking in Breath of the Wild are formulaic. But when people describe it they often speak of exploration, discovery and experimentation.

In most games cooking or other crafting systems use a recipe / blueprint system. In many games you can’t even create something until you officially learn the recipe in-game. And while these systems are often designed to be plausible they are rarely predictable. In Minecraft to make a ladder you build an H-shape out of wood. If you put another stick on the top row does it make a step-ladder? Can you make a metal ladder? Instead of an H why wouldn’t you craft a ladder out of an H on its side — surely if you’re assembling a ladder you’d assemble it laying on the ground before turning it upright.

In Final Fantasy XIV you can make “Cockatrice Meatballs” (yum!) out of a bunch of stuff that kind of sounds like it might make meatballs. But you can’t add extra salt to increase the critical hit percentage they give you. The recipe is plausible (if you believe that “Cockatrice Thigh” makes for a good meatball) but that’s all that it is — it’s not intuitive or predictable and any number of other recipes would be just as plausible. Put another way, the Cockatrice Meatball recipe is the evolutionary psychology of the cooking word.

These sorts of fixed-recipe systems map to the aesthetic layer in Breath of the Wild while assigning each result a fixed stat line. The brilliance of BOTW cooking is that the arbitrary logic of “a tomato, some olives and some fish creates Salmon Veracruz” affects only the aesthetic of the food, not the function. You don’t have to hunt for recipes by trying to read the minds of the designers or wait for NPCs to give you specific formulas. You can experiment, learn the system and create your own recipes. You may never stumble upon the exact formula for fruitcake but you can experimentally derive your own recipe that has the same functional properties.

Without the aesthetic layer you’d be crafting interchangeable buckets of gruel with no categorization, mnemonic or relationship to real cooking. Two apples and a nut would create “Food Item 0xABF0001D” and three apples and a nut would create “Food Item 0xBADF00D”. Both systems are required to break out of the normal recipe-bound paradigm while remaining understandable.

Idea vs Execution, Again

Time to circle back around to the framing device of the piece and the discussion of “ideas are cheap, it’s the execution that matters.” Breath of the Wild cooking was well-received but the execution is not standout. Small touches like the jingle that plays when you cook something and the fact that food items are physical objects that stack in your hands are neat, but those are offset by a UI design that makes assembling dishes a bit clunky. And those neat touches are themselves idea-driven. Nothing about the system screams technical excellence or complexity. The aesthetic layer is most likely defined in a giant Excel spreadsheet somewhere, the same as how it would be defined in other games, and the functional layer is a relatively simple formula and some basic attributes. The strength of the system is squarely in the idea of having food be formula-based while creating an aesthetic layer to add apparent order. “Apparent” is key here because, again, there’s no real relationship between the aesthetic and formula aspects. This is a non-obvious idea with straightforward execution. Nearly any game could implement BOTW’s cooking system without much trouble — they just didn’t. And while there are some good game design reasons to stick to a rigid recipe-based approach it’s hard to avoid the conclusion that for many games this is less an active choice and more a default one. Those developers either didn’t consider alternate systems or couldn’t come up with one that worked.

Future Sight in Xenoblade Chronicles

The second in-depth example of an idea rather than execution-driven success is the future sight mechanic in the Xenoblade Chronicles. (The original Wii / 3DS version, not the sequel or X) In Xenoblade Chronicles the protagonist’s ability to see into the future is a major plot point but I’ll be talking about a couple mechanical aspects.

Battle Premonitions

During battles in Xenoblade you’ll sometimes flash-forward to a devastating enemy attack, giving you a chance to react to it and change the future. Maybe an enemy does a killer 5-hit combo on a character in the flash-forward, but the power of precognition allows you to change the future by using an ability that makes them temporarily invincible

Alfred Hitchcock once famously differentiated surprise and suspense as the difference between a bomb suddenly going off under a table as two characters chat vs the audience watching the oblivious characters knowing a bomb has been planted. The future sight battle mechanic in Xenoblade creates suspense rather than surprise, something rarely found in RPG battles.

Not too long ago I was playing Etrian Odyssee IV and I came across a turtle-style FOE. (A strong monster — FOE stands for “***ing obnoxious enemy”) After fighting it for a few rounds it did a tail-wack attack that hit everyone in my party for lethal damage. That’s surprise. I had no idea the creature could do that and I had no way to react to it. (This story has a happy ending — the next time I met this creature I turned it into turtle soup) In Xenoblade the tougher an enemy is and the more potentially lethal attacks it makes the more often you see the flash-forwards and the more time you spend with the threat of a ticking bomb looming over you. The tougher the battle the higher the tension, not just because tough battles are naturally tense but because of an explicit mechanically-added element.

An interesting property of this system is that it provides a natural rubber band on difficulty, in that the harder a battle is the more you’ll see these warning premonitions and the more chance you have to stave off death, at least temporarily. It’s a very clever way of applying an organic asymptotic smoothing to enemy difficulty. It’s no coincidence that Lorithia, generally considered the toughest boss, is tough largely because of a sort of deadly lava environmental hazard around her which doesn’t trigger flash-forwards.

Nearly every JRPG in the past 30 years has claimed to have a battle-system innovation with a trademarky-sounding name, but while a few of these are interesting (Active Time Battle, Grandia’s timeline-based thing, whatever the heck is happening in The Last Remnant) most are fancier in name than execution or are more finicky than good. Both Xenoblade Chronicles X and Xenoblade Chronicles 2 are guilty of this — the “soul voice” system in X feels overcomplicated for the value it adds and 2…well

Item Get!

The final clever idea I want to talk about is what I’ll call the “item premonition system” in Xenoblade Chronicles. The system works like this: when you come across an item that can eventually be used to fulfill a quest the game flash-forwards to a scene of you turning in the item to finish the quest, then marks that item in your inventory to let you know that it’s quest-relevant. This happens even if you don’t yet have the quest.

This is a humble but brilliant particular solution to a largely unsolved class of problem in games: communicating important information to the player that the character has no business knowing. I follow Adrian Chmielarz on Twitter because he calls these sorts of things out consistently.

Many games these days feature collectible items that can eventually be turned in for quest rewards. But what happens when you don’t yet have the quest? More broadly speaking in many games there’s some information the designers want the players to know for ease-of-use reasons but that the characters shouldn’t know. The most common options for dealing with this is ignoring it and letting the player twist in the wind, or calling it out in a way that makes the hand of the designer very apparent. “Hello player, this is Fred Jones, designer of this level. Just want to let you know that you’re approaching the mission boundary area, and if you cross it you’ll automatically fail for reasons related to our technical implementation and that have no narrative justification. Also just FYI you’ve found 80% of the items in this area and that berry you just picked up is important because down the road an NPC will ask you for three of them and give you a hat in return. Good talk.”

The Xenoblade solution to quest items is simple, very easy to implement and has good in-world justification, not an eye-roll-inducing narrative justification like “losing synchronization” during chase scenes in Assassin’s Creed games. I recently saw Naughty Dog employees claiming that the health bar in Uncharted is actually a “luck bar” and…no. I applaud the attempt to come up with an in-world explanation for why Drake can soak up so many bullets but this one just doesn’t work any better than “a wizard did it.”

The Xenoblade solution isn’t a monumental change that pushes the game from a 6 to a 9 at “TheGameDudes.com”. But it’s a great idea that improves player quality of life without breaking immersion, and elegantly solves a problem left unsolved in most games. If “ideas are cheap” and “everyone has lots of ideas” why are games that solve this basic problem so rare? The reality is that when it comes to these sorts of problems entire game studios often don’t have a single good idea and end up just slapping some non-diegetic text onscreen and moving on.

This is the Part Where I Conclude the Essay

The conclusion is the part of the essay where the author summarizes the premise, and that’s the part you’re reading right now.

There are some game development aphorisms with merit but “ideas are a dime a dozen” is not one of them. AAA game development is largely a technology and production-value-driven medium, but even AAA games benefit from compelling ideas. That Mario can throw a hat at and take over a T-Rex is a great idea that instantly resonated with people. BOTW is a strong technical achievement (as someone who worked on an open world Wii U game let me assure you: it ain’t easy!) but the strength is ultimately more in the ideas. On some level the execution in BOTW is a bit weak with repetitive enemy encampments and modest dungeons. The strength of the game is how it relentlessly drives towards certain design aesthetics: the capability of the player over the character and “what you expect is what you get” gameplay. BOTW is not an example of a development team doing what other development teams could not — it’s an example of a development team doing what other teams chose not to.

Indie games often live or die by their premise. There are many positive things you can say about Slay the Spire but that it has good production value isn’t one of those. There are all sorts of jokey “simulator” games that are middling in all aspects but premise. Cuphead has great execution of its art style, but great execution of a more standard “indie pixel art” aesthetic wouldn’t have sold nearly as well.

Of course there are plenty of fine games with no flashy grand ideas, and plenty of “big idea” games that fail. And there’s no “idea guy” job where every six months you come up with one cool idea then lean back and wait for everyone to implement it. But ideas very much do matter, and quality idea generation is a skill like any other.（source:gamasutra.com ）