以《塞爾達傳說:曠野之息》和《異度之刃》為例談好點子的重要性

摘要： 以《塞爾達傳說:曠野之息》和《異度之刃》為例談好點子的重要性 原作者：James Margaris 譯者：Willow Wu 如果你在遊戲行業工作，你大概聽過很多類似於“想法是廉價的（ideas are cheap）”這樣的說法。每個人都有很多很多的想法，但是製作才是關鍵。 在這篇...

以《塞爾達傳說:曠野之息》和《異度之刃》為例談好點子的重要性

原作者：James Margaris 譯者：Willow Wu

如果你在遊戲行業工作，你大概聽過很多類似於“想法是廉價的（ideas are cheap）”這樣的說法。每個人都有很多很多的想法，但是製作才是關鍵。

在這篇部落格中，我將從概念層面入手，通過深入分析兩個具體的例子來反駁這個說法:《塞爾達傳說:曠野之息》的烹飪機制和《異度之刃》中的未來視機制。

“想法一抓一大把”

冒著被認為是嘲諷的風險，讓我先告訴你這件事：如果你認為想法不重要——它們很廉價、隨手可得，所有沒有投入實踐的想法都是一樣的——那麼你也必須相信，這個你目前所擁護的這個觀點，也只是一個無足輕重的想法。

當然，我明白“想法是廉價的”修辭意圖。你去逛逛論壇，看看那些有抱負的遊戲開發者們，每次你都會不可避免地看到一些沒有實踐經驗的人在尋找合作團隊，希望能夠一起實現某個絕妙的想法。然而其中大部分都是將兩個經典創意結合在一起或者只是換個背景設定。這些人的問題並不在於想法本身不懼任何說服力，而是他們的想法沒有說服力——膚淺而乏味。

製作是關鍵？

普通版的《俄羅斯方塊》比最佳版本的Columns更好玩。

計算機科學系的大一學生可以做一款比最佳版本Columns還好的《俄羅斯方塊》。人們喜歡早些年那款黑綠兩色的低解析度《俄羅斯方塊》，也就是Gameboy版本。如果說構想不值錢，製作才是最重要的，那為什麼隨便一個普通版本的《俄羅斯方塊》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《塞爾達傳說:曠野之息》的2D NES風格概念原型。遊戲原型看起來非常有意思，但如果說製作才是重點，而且原型的製作效果跟最終版天差地別，那麼任天堂幹嘛要費勁做這個東西呢？他們證明了這個特殊版本是具有可玩性的，但是後來又拋棄不用了，為什麼？你可以說這個原型讓他們有了更好的想法，但如果想法不重要的話為什麼還要去改進呢？

還是說任天堂就是不擅長做遊戲，他們覺得這個看似毫無意義的過程非常重要？

並非一家之言

Brace Yourself Games創始人、遊戲設計師Ryan Clark在YouTube上分享了他的一篇演講《如何才能不斷創造出暢銷的獨立遊戲》（How to Consistently Make Profitable Indie Games）。我個人通常不太喜歡看與遊戲開發商業、營銷相關的演講，但Clark的演講相當不錯，觀點明瞭，難以反駁，所以我在這裡不再贅述了，但是我會用具體的例子來分析：《盜賊遺產》vs《全金屬狂怒》，兩個都是Cellar Door Games的作品。用開發者們的話來說，《全金屬狂怒》是一個“慘不忍睹的失敗”，雖然我不會說這個遊戲的構想很糟糕，但它看似並不符合“有足夠的吸引點”和“容易推廣”。Steam預告片中承諾“這是一個具有獨創性的動作RPG遊戲”，但是在看完論壇討論以及開發者訪談之後，我還是不知道所謂的獨創性指的是什麼。

這就與之前的《盜賊遺產》形成非常鮮明的對比——玩家一下子就能看出遊戲的亮點所在，隨著話題熱度的增加，《盜賊遺產》就從眾多類大魔界村/惡魔城風格的遊戲中脫穎而出。

那麼《全金屬狂怒》的製作水準比《盜賊遺產》差嗎？如果換成Tacoma vs Gone Home或者是Nidhogg 2 vs Nidhogg呢？你會想開發團隊的後續遊戲應該會受益於前作的成功，畢竟他們有了經驗，資金也相對充足了一些，事實也確實如此：Tacoma和Nidhogg 2在技術上和畫面上都比上一個遊戲好。

Battle royale遊戲正在分裂市場。有人要說H1Z1、《絕地求生》、《堡壘之夜》、Radical Heights等等遊戲的成功不是因為battle royale而是因為遊戲本身的優秀製作水準嗎？Boss Key Productions只花了5個月的時間就做出了Radical Heights，根據Steamspy的統計，Radical Heights的使用者大概有100~200萬。Lawbreakers的製作比這個遊戲差嗎？

就在今天，我讀了一篇文章，內容是關於某個發行公司的簽約策略——他們要的是有出色構想、鶴立雞群的遊戲。所以即使你不相信想法是重要的，那些花錢的人可不這麼認為。

《塞爾達傳說:曠野之息》中的烹飪系統

在本篇文章中，我將會花大量時間討論《塞爾達傳說:曠野之息》和《異度之刃》，以此來證明出色構想的重要性。這些設計是任何合格的開發人員都能實現的，製作要求並不高。

首先我們要討論的是《塞爾達傳說:曠野之息》中的烹飪系統。先來看看玩家的反饋吧：首先是推特上的一段對話，這就是很多玩家第一次接觸遊戲中烹飪系統的反應。

為了讓我的觀點更具合理性，我還問了遊戲媒體編輯Kirk McKeand，《塞爾達傳說:曠野之息》的烹飪系統是他最喜歡的，這其中的原因是什麼？他的回答是：

“大部分的製造系統都是在遊戲選單內部完成的。你選擇需要的材料，然後遊戲會自動合成，成品就這樣出來了。

然而在《塞爾達傳說:曠野之息》中，你可以一直實驗。你把材料一起扔進去，看看會獲得什麼樣的東西。利用合理的材料一般就能夠獲得你想要的成品：魚和肉是最常用到的。這就能夠給玩家帶來滿足感。

除此之外也非常具有真實感。你把材料拿在手中，然後扔進鍋裡，看著它們在湯中旋轉。屏住呼吸，仔細聽遊戲的音樂，它會告訴你是否成功了。”

在分析這些反饋之前，我們先來看看《塞爾達傳說:曠野之息》中的烹飪系統是如何運作的：它有獨立的兩個層次——首先是由配方主導的，直接決定了食物的功效，另外一個是美學層，會根據你所扔的食材來命名、呈現成品。

食物的功效——比如恢復多少生命點數，提升抗寒或者是耐熱屬性，這都是由線性配方決定的。在實際效果中，鳥腿+橡子和高階獸肉+蘋果沒有區別（或多或少）。這個配方層包含著一些有趣的變數，與真正的烹飪相呼應——某些成分，比如鹽可能會削弱最終成品的的效果。（顯然《塞爾達傳說:曠野之息》的開發者們對鹽的把控很敏感。我個人不會在任何東西里放鹽。）這並不難懂，玩家很容易就能發現。

食物的名字和圖片是由獨立的第二層所決定的。這是按照我們對烹飪的理解來選擇的，沒有任何特定的配方：把兩種蔬菜放在一起，你就得到了一道素菜，把魚和蔬菜放在一起，你就得到了一道魚類料理。有不少食物需要的是特定材料：比如南瓜派就需要四種配料。這個系統背後並沒有什麼邏輯。

瞭解這些之後，讓我們來看看玩家的反應。我在社交媒體上看到很多人非常關注食譜——大家會分享食譜，或者是整理出一套食譜大全。但是當你理解烹飪的原理之後，你就會明白為什麼大家其實用不著看食譜書：因為它涉及的大概只是烹飪系統的美學層面，而不是功能性層面。在推特上求食譜的人，其實他們真正想要知道的並不是怎麼做出那道菜，而是特定的烹飪配方以及每個材料的屬性。

同樣地，再看看Kirk之前說的話：“在《塞爾達傳說:曠野之息》中，你可以一直實驗。你把材料一起扔進去，看看會獲得什麼樣的東西。利用合理的材料一般就能夠獲得你想要的成品：魚和肉是最常用到的。”這似乎就對應了烹飪系統的兩個層面：美學層——在大眾看來，魚和肉就是人們的最常用原料，以及配方層——通過實驗，你可以確定組合規則和配料的屬性。

根據我的觀察，大多數玩家都正好處於這兩個系統的中間。他們把食譜作為重點，同時也明白遊戲有即興創作的空間。就像是現實中的烹飪——他們從食譜開始，然後按口味調味。找到一個你喜歡的可以補心配方，如果你想要恢復得更好，可以加一兩個蘋果，或者如果你想要提升耐熱或耐力，可以加入對應的屬性提升材料。

配方更新

《塞爾達傳說:曠野之息》中烹飪的實際效果是公式化的。但是當人們描述它的時候，他們經常會談到探索，發現和實驗。

在大多數遊戲中，烹飪或其它製造機制都會採用使用食譜/藍圖系統。在正式學習系統內建的配方之前，玩家甚至都不能自己創造東西。雖然開發者們加入這些系統是出於合理性考慮，但是這些材料玩家很少能想的到。舉個例子，在《我的世界》中，你要做梯子的話首先你得用木頭做出一個H形狀的架構。為什麼要擺成一個“H”形狀？如果你在組裝一個梯子，你肯定是把部件放在地上組裝，然後再把它直立起來。如果你把另一根棍子放在最上面的一排，它是不是就成了階梯？還有，能不能做金屬梯子呢？

在《最終幻想14》中，玩家可以製作“魔蛇鳥肉丸”，材料看似都沒有問題，但是你不能通過多加鹽來提升暴擊率。這食譜是挺合理的（如果你相信魔蛇鳥腿肉是製作美味肉丸的關鍵的話），但也僅僅是如此了——意思是它並不簡單，或者說玩家不太容易能夠想到所有材料。

將類似的固定配方系統應用到《塞爾達傳說:曠野之息》烹飪系統的美學層，給每個成品分配一個固定的屬性。這個系統的巧妙之處在於它的隨性：番茄、幾個橄欖和一些魚肉就能做出一道Salmon Veracruz，雖說菜品外觀不同，但是效果是一樣的。你不必絞盡腦汁去猜測遊戲設計師的想法，或者是等待某個NPC告訴你特定的食譜。你可以自己去嘗試，慢慢了解這個烹飪系統，創造出自己的食譜。你可能一直都沒有機會知道確切的水果蛋糕食譜是什麼，但是你可以通過實驗收穫的你自己的水果蛋糕，在效果上並沒有差別。

如果沒有美學層，有些人或許就只會去製作一桶一桶的稀粥，跟真實的烹飪體驗脫節。兩個蘋果和一個堅果就成了“Food Item 0xABF0001D”，三個蘋果和一個堅果就成了“Food Item 0xBADF00D”。兩個系統都擺脫了傳統菜譜模式的束縛，但是又不會讓玩家覺得難懂。

想法vs製作

分析完這個例子，我們再回頭看看開頭所說的“想法很廉價，關鍵是製作”。《塞爾達傳說:曠野之息》中的烹飪系統確實很受歡迎，但是製作上並不算特別出眾。一些小的細節，比如烹飪時發出的叮噹聲、食物可以堆在你懷中的這種物理表現是值得稱讚的，但是UI設計的不合理性可能會在一定程度上衝刷掉這種好感。這些精緻細節就是由想法決定的。這個系統無論是在技術上還是複雜程度上都沒有什麼特別之處。美學層很有可能是就用Excel做出的一張巨大電子表格，跟其它遊戲一樣。功能層所需的配方就相對簡單一些，再加上一些基本的屬性值。這一系統的優勢在於烹飪是以配方為基礎的，同時美學層則提供了一種直觀性的規則。也就是說遊戲中有一定的食材搭配規律，同時也允許玩家自由發揮。這很重要，我在上文說過，兩個層次是相互獨立的。這是一個非顯而易知的設計想法，但實踐起來並不難。可以說任何一個遊戲都可以加入《塞爾達傳說:曠野之息》的烹飪系統，這並不難做——但他們沒有。雖然堅持按照菜譜烹飪的設計方式也有充分的理由，但我們不得不承認對很多遊戲來說這是一個預設選擇，而不是主動選擇。這些開發者們要麼是沒考慮過要做另一種系統，要麼就是拿不出可行的方案。

《異度之刃》的未來視

論證成功並非在於製作而是想法的第二個例子就是《異度之刃》的未來視機制。《異度之刃》中（初代Wii/3DS版本，不是續作或是X），主角預見未來的能力是遊戲劇情發展的重要轉折點，但我要說的是機制方面。

戰鬥預警

在《異度之刃》的戰鬥環節中，你會在某些時候預見到敵人的大招，藉此機會你可以採取行動，改變未來。也許你看到了敵人對某個角色進行了致命的5連擊，這時你就可以利用技能讓隊友變成暫時的無敵狀態，阻止攻擊。

希區柯克著名的“炸彈理論”就說明了意外與懸疑的區別：兩個人談話，半小時後桌子下的炸彈突然爆炸，觀眾會驚訝，但如果一開始先讓觀眾知道桌子下有個炸彈，然後這兩個人的談話過程整個都變得懸念迭起了。未來視在戰鬥中製造的是懸疑而不是意外，這在其它RPG遊戲的戰鬥中並不常見。

不久之前我在玩《世界樹迷宮4》（Etrian Odyssey IV），我在遊戲遇到了一個烏龜外形的FOE（一種強大的怪物，相當於小boss）。幾個回合之後，它發動了致命攻擊，團隊成員無一倖免，這就是一種意外。我完全不知道怪物會出這一招，沒有任何辦法應對。在《異度之刃》中，敵人越厲害、招數越強，你可以使用未來視的機會也越多，意味著你有更多時間來處理這個定時炸彈。戰鬥難度係數越高，緊張程度自然也就越高，不僅僅是因為困難的戰鬥本身就讓人捏把汗，還得益於遊戲中的頗具特色但又淺顯易懂機制設計。

這個系統的有趣特性之一就是它讓難度變得有彈性，意思就是說戰鬥越困難你能看到的預知場景也越多，避免死亡的機會也更多，最少也能起到一個暫時的防禦效果。這是一種非常聰明的方法，讓玩家有機會把敵人的實際難度曲線調整成漸進式的相對平滑形態，而非劇烈波動，容易一招致命。遊戲中最強大的boss Lorithia，她的難點很大程度上在於她周圍的那些致死岩漿，無法讓玩家使用未來視。

在過去30年中，幾乎所有RPG遊戲的開發者們都會說他們對戰鬥系統進行了革新，還取了個非常吸引眼球的名字，雖說這其中確實有些比較有趣的玩法（比如《最終幻想》的ATB系統、《格蘭蒂亞》的半即時戰鬥系統以及被稱為JRPG戰鬥系統巔峰的《最後的神蹟》），但大部分還是名字起的好聽罷了，實際效果並不能稱得上是優秀。《異度之刃 X》和《異度之刃2》就位列其中——X中的靈魂之聲系統太過於複雜了，至於2啊……一言難盡。

物品預知

我想分析的最後一個出色構想是《異度之刃》中的我稱為“物品預知系統”的設計。這個系統是這樣的：你看到一個物品，如果它最終是可以用來完成某項任務的，那麼遊戲就會開啟未來視，讓你看到使用那個物品的的未來場景，並在物品欄中對這個東西打上標記，讓你知道它和任務有關。即使在角色還沒觸發任務的情況下也是如此。

在很多遊戲中，開發者們想向玩家傳達重要資訊，但是角色本身並不應該知道，這該怎麼辦？《異度之刃》的物品預知系統就是一個非常普通但是有效的解決辦法。我在推特上關注Adrian Chmielarz，因為他總是對這類問題一針見血。

如今這些包含收集物品機制的遊戲中，有些道具最後可能會用於交換任務獎勵。但要是玩家沒有啟用這些任務呢？在許多遊戲中，有些資訊是開發者希望玩家能知道的，因為這能在一定程度上優化他們的遊戲體驗（比如說避免來回折騰），但問題是角色不應該知道。最常見的解決方案就是無視這個問題，讓玩家自己決定要幹什麼，或者是直接挑明，但這會變得非常沒意思。就比如這樣：“玩家們好，我是Fred Jones，本關卡的設計者。就是想提醒你們一下馬上就要進入任務區域了，出於我們的技術原因，如果你錯過觸發條件那就會自動判定為任務失敗。另外，你已經找到了本區域80%的物品，你剛才撿起來的漿果很重要哦，因為在這條路的盡頭會有一個NPC找你要三顆漿果，然後他會給你一頂帽子作為回報。祝你玩得開心。”

《異度之刃》的解決辦法很簡單，沒有任何技術難度，而且跟劇情搭得上，而不是像《刺客信條》那樣在追逐場景中告訴你“失去同步”就任務失敗了，簡直想讓人翻白眼。我最近看到頑皮狗公司的員工說《神祕海域》中被玩家看作是血量條的東西其實是運氣值。當它不斷降低，最後消耗殆盡時，總會有一顆子彈打中你，然後死掉。我很佩服開發團隊能夠想出這麼個理由來解釋為什麼Drake之前被打中那麼多次都沒事，然而這並無奇特之處的一顆子彈就要了他的命。

《異度之刃》的這種設計也並非是具有突破性意義的，不會影響玩家對整個遊戲的評價。但這是一個非常棒的設計，可以提升玩家的遊戲體驗——在不破壞沉浸感的同時巧妙地解決了大多數遊戲未能解決的問題。如果“想法是廉價的”“每個人都有想法”，那為什麼能解決這個基本問題的遊戲團隊那麼少呢？現實是當開發者們遇到這類問題時，絕大部分人都想不到一個好的解決辦法，到最後就是隨便給個跟劇情完全不相關的理由糊弄過去。

總結

有些遊戲開發相關的格言是有價值的，但是“想法一抓一大把（Ideas are a dime a dozen）”不是其中之一。3A遊戲在很大程度上是由技術和製作主導的，但是它們也受益於引人入勝的遊戲點子。比如《超級馬里奧：奧德賽》中馬里奧可以朝霸王龍扔帽子然後附身，這就引起了很多玩家的興趣。《塞爾達傳說:曠野之息》在技術方面的完成度確實非常高（作為一個開發過Wii U開發世界遊戲的人，我向你保證這個工作一點都不輕鬆！），但我認為想法對遊戲有更加重要影響。從某種程度上說，《塞爾達傳說:曠野之息》的製作確實存在著個別不盡人意的地方，比如重複的敵人營地和簡陋的地牢。遊戲的過人之處在於它是如何不懈地追求“玩家優先於角色”的設計美學以及“所得皆所願”遊戲玩法。《塞爾達傳說:曠野之息》團隊值得稱讚並不是因為他們做到了別的團隊做不到的事，而是他們完成了其他團隊不願意做的事。

獨立遊戲團隊所能提供的發展條件（比如技術水平、預算）往往就會決定遊戲的生死。《殺戮尖塔》(Slay the Spire)有很多優點值得說，但是製作水準並不在其中。市場中還有各種各樣有趣的模擬器遊戲，它們在各個方面都不算差，但製作除外。《茶杯頭》的藝術風格讓人印象深刻，但如果換成是製作效果更好的“獨立畫素風格”遊戲，銷量肯定不會這麼好，因為後者相對更加大眾化，缺少特色。

當然，凡事都有例外。有很多遊戲點子不怎麼新奇的產品收穫了成功，有很多創意驚豔的遊戲卻以失敗告終。行業中也不存在專門的“創意人”職位——等了六個月，你想出一個很酷的創意，告訴大家，然後你就繼續愜意地靠在椅背上，等待大家去實現它。但是想法真的非常重要，能夠想出好點子也是一種非常重要的技能。

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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: ofollow,noindex" target="_blank">gamasutra.com ）