Via Kotaku, Official Xbox Magazine has a Q&A up with Nour Polloni, producer on the newest Alone in the Dark game for the PC, 360, and PS3 (and possibly the Wii as well). While most of it is the standard “you’ve never seen anything like this” talk expected from any sort of interview with the leader of a new game, there’s one very interesting gem regarding the more difficult segments of the game, and how you don’t have to play them if you don’t want to. From Polloni:

Another achievement is linked to whether or not the player skips. We want everybody to be able to finish our game, so one of the other new features we’ve added is the ability to skip sections using a DVD-style menu if you get stuck, but always at a cost, and achievements is one way to reward players who don’t skip.

Emphasis mine. The reaction to this news (and because the interview was a Q&A where follow-up questions weren’t possible, the sum total of public knowledge about this feature is contained within those two sentences) on the various gaming blogs has been somewhat predictable – lots of wailing and gnashing of teeth, a chorus of doom and gloom in both “death of teh hardcore” and “death of videogames, period” flavors, and perhaps one or two people actually stopping to consider the potential of a feature like this.

I think it’s a great idea, personally, and can’t help but wonder how many other games would benefit from such a feature. That bit in Gears of War where poor squad A.I. meant me getting eaten alive by bugs because my teammate was too dumb to follow without my holding his hand? Skipped. The aggravating, completely unimportant knife fight with whatshisname towards the end of the otherwise superb Resident Evil 4? Pass, thanks. The horrible bits of Assassin’s Creed’s story taking place in the future? Not this time. That other part in Gears where I kept dying, again due to Dominic being some sort of overly muscled idiot child with guns? Half a dozen retries is more than enough, actually. How many games go unbeaten because the player hit a point so hard for them that the frustration over constantly failing wasn’t worth whatever lay beyond? It’s an issue Polloni and team have clearly taken into account – as the quote above says, they want players to finish their game. The skip button is just a way of making sure that happens. Rather than an excuse to ignore important parts of development such as gameplay tuning and balance (as many commenters are quick to label it), it’s giving players the ability to decide how they play the game. No amount of balance is ever going to account for everyone’s unique difficulty tolerance, and while this may not ultimately be the best solution, it’s certainly one of the more interesting and, more than anything, humble options I’ve seen. There aren’t many egos in games willing to essentially say “sure, skip over this awesome bit I spent months building, I don’t mind”, and I’d be very interested in seeing this sort of idea crop up in a design meeting at the likes of Epic or Ubisoft Montreal. Well done, Eden Games.

Leaving aside all the stuff about player choice, though, the bit that has me the most excited about more games adopting the Skip Button approach is the ability to immediately jump to my favorite bits of games I’ve already played without having to slog through all the bits between again. The ability to immediately access the jungle and desert bits and final Warthog run from Halo 3 without ever having to see any of the supremely boring Flood enemies is a dream I’ve had since finishing the game last year, and the idea of popping into whatever bit of Call of Duty 4’s excellent single player game whenever I like appeals just as much. Alone in the Dark wasn’t really something I’d considered being excited about, but I’m now very interested in seeing this idea implemented, if only for the potential ramifications on other titles.

Filed under: talk about games