Scott Greig
Project Director/Producer
Joined: 05 Apr 2002 |
 Posted: Monday, 28 June 2004 07:11AM
Here let me toss a little gas on the fire. 
Why are riddles and puzzles good? Answer: They make the player feel good when they figure them out. In other words they provide a challenge for the player. No challenge, no fun.
Why are we seeing less and less riddles and puzzles in games? Answer: Because of the Internet  No seriously, puzzles tend to be binary progress gates. That is, player either solve them and advance or they fail and are blocked.
In the olden days (you know, before the Internet), puzzle games were one of the most popular genres. When you were stuck, and I can't think of a single game that didn't I didn't get stuck in, you either kept banging your head on it, went to the store and paid good money for the hint book, or got a friend to help you. Some of my favorite memories of playing puzzle games were actual memories of a group of my friends sitting around the computer shouting out suggestions on how to proceed.
Now, if the average player is stumped by a puzzle, the solution is only a couple clicks away. I don't know of very many people who are willing to hammer away at a puzzle when they can simply pop over to a faq site and get the answer. I certainly do it, and I used to love puzzle games.
The net effect of this is to practically kill the effective challenge of any puzzle. If you make the puzzle too easy, everyone gets it and they think "what a dumb puzzle, that was too easy". Any harder and most people just look up the solution.
So, if you are wondering if there will be any puzzles in Dragon Age, then the answer is there will be some, but they will make sense in context of the story, rather than being added just as a challenge.
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Scott Greig
Dragon Age Project Director / Producer
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