This might be a difficult opinion to articulate, but I’ll try my best. Since the beginning of video games, developers have always put hidden items in their games to try to get players to spend more time playing. They can also serve as a way to tell a story, or just to provide a fun experience. The Gears of War series had items that were meant to provide a more detailed backstory, and were decently well hidden.
Cog Tags (highlighted in blue)
What Gears of War did right is that they didn’t clutter the maps with hundreds of these collectibles. There were only a small handful per section (chapter) of the game. While playing these games, I did not feel like these collectibles hindered my experience of the game. If you didn’t collect them, you weren’t really missing anything, other than achievements. Another game that I think got it right is Halo 3 with the skulls. There was one per level and they did absolutely nothing to progress the story. They were also really well hidden, so you probably wouldn’t stumble upon any of them while playing casually. What they did do is add varying degrees of difficulty, or fun, to the game, which a lot of people enjoyed.
However, the game that spawned my interest in writing this post is much more recent; Rise of the Tomb Raider. The 2013 reboot of the series was fantastic. I was hooked right from the beginning thanks to the great story telling, the theatrical cut scenes, and always changing environments. It had its flaws, like the poor rpg elements, but it more than succeeded in terms of being fun and telling a good story. When its sequel, Rise of the Tomb Raider, was released, I had high expectations. Unfortunately, my initial play-through didn’t feel as spectacular as the prequel. One of the main reasons I feel this way is because of all the collectibles in the game.
An area with all item locations hidden.
The same map, but with all items revealed.
In the pictures above, you can see an example of just how many items there are on a map, and this is just one of several locations, although it is one of the main areas. This map might look large, but it only takes a minute to get from one side to the other, meaning these items are really packed in. In my opinion, there are way too many items in this game and it really takes away from the player’s experience. What makes it worse is that you can only reveal locations of certain items by first finding other hidden items. And then it may only be a couple, and they might be on the other side of the map. For a large portion of this game, I felt like I was just running back and forth collecting these things. Even when I was trying to progress the story, I would always spin the camera around quite often just to make sure I didn’t miss anything, only to later find out that an item I missed was all the way back at the beginning of an area. Even if you try playing the game without picking up anything, many items are in plain site and you just feel lazy if you don’t grab it, or run right by it when you know it’s there. Having OCD doesn’t help either.
I fear this series could be going down a dark path where the developers try to get the players more involved by throwing in hundreds of collectibles. It’s also lazy on their part, and really not that fun for the players. Instead, they should spend more time strengthening story telling elements, which is what this game relies on. An interesting side note is that the 2013 game included a multiplayer. Now we have the sequel which has a less involved story, a bajillion collectibles, and no multiplayer. At least the pc graphics are good.
If you’ve played this game, what are your thoughts. Also, are there other games that you think have too many collectibles?
It is interesting to think about how in-depth design goes into side aspects of games, such as collectibles. I agree that both Gears of War and Halo 3 designed their collectibles well. One thing that was great about Halo 3’s skulls was the armor set that you receive, Hayabusa, upon collection of the skulls. I believe that in order for collectibles to work, they need to offer the player some sort of reward and they must be limited and somewhat difficult to find.
Whether the developer offers information regarding the backstory of the game or new sets of armor, it is much more satisfying for the player to receive some sort of reward. By spreading out collectibles, it does not overwhelm the player. Both Gears of War and Halo 3 had one collectible per chapter or level. When playing any game, such as Tomb Raider, that is overwhelming when coming to collectibles, I will not even bother.
There is one more way that I haven’t seen anyone mention that can make collectibles ruin a game, even if the collectibles are otherwise just fine, and that is long-winded explanation text that can’t be skipped. Maybe for some games a quick description of the collectible is necessary, especially if it has an immediate effect, but in the case that you are going about collecting X number of the same thing and the games tells you about it every time, it gets very old. An example of this that I remember reading about all over the place were the collectibles in The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword. In this game, you needed to collect treasures or bugs for different side quests or to upgrade some weapons. However, these collectibles would just spawn randomly, and when you picked them up, the game had to stop and tell you about it every time, even if it was your 70th pick up of that item. That, combined with relatively slow text speed throughout the entire game drove many people, myself included, crazy. Just browsing through some forums and articles, you see posts like these all over:
-http://www.gamefaqs.com/boards/960633-the-legend-of-zelda-skyward-sword/61614686
-http://kotaku.com/5869411/10-stupid-things-terribly-wrong-with-the-legend-of-zelda-skyward-sword (#4 on the list)
-http://www.giantbomb.com/forums/the-legend-of-zelda-skyward-sword-3830/is-zelda-skyward-sword-really-that-bad-1489039/ (Post #6)
Based on my experiences and that of many online, I think that Nintendo made a pretty big mistake with not allowing players to skip that text. Especially frustrating was the fact that in the last game before Skyward Sword, Twilight Princess, text was almost always easily skippable.
While these collectibles are a bit different than the ones mentioned in the original post, I still very much consider them collectibles. Collectibles that are very well done, except for the explanation of them every time that can’t be skipped.
I agree mostly with bhm5059 in his 3 factors of doing collectibles well in a game. Although I would lend more credibility towards the first two. In order for me to feel like i need to go out and collect things in a game there has to be a certain reward that makes me feel that the collectibles are worth it. Now I am not a person who feels the need to 100% games and get all of the achievements/trophies in a game and by no means do the collectibles ruin a game for me unless the collectibles are tied into the main story.
Take Batman Arkham Knight for example. This is a game in which its predecessors also had a large number of collectibles but in this game they decided to make content that was only accessible from collecting all of the Riddler trophies. This even was not enough to ruin the game for me because I was able to google the content. So I think that in order for collectibles to ruin a game for me at least you would have to make a game that forced me to collect the items in order to progress the story.
I think there are 3 factors for doing collectibles well in games: the number of collectibles, the reward for the collectibles, and how the collectibles are represented on the map. I love how skulls are handled in the Halo series in that there are only a few of them, and collecting them adds only a small bonus to playing the game. Collecting a skull usually adds a new challenge to playing, making the game more difficult for experienced players. This is a low incentive to get the skulls, as they don’t add anything major to the gameplay or progress the story. However, by only having one per level, they are a small challenge to anyone interested and are not a major task to collect. They are also hidden on the map, so players who had no interest in the skulls didn’t have to worry about them.
I think another series that handled collectibles well was Sunset Overdrive. Sunset Overdrive was a game all about running and jumping across a city while you were fighting monsters. There were several types of collectibles you could get, and most were a form of currency while others were just for the sake of achievements. While Sunset Overdrive did have a lot of collectibles, they felt fun to collect because running around the city was the point of the game, so you never really felt like you were going out of your way when you went hunting for the various items. I also liked these collectibles because they didn’t clog your map. You would only see the collectibles if you purchased a locator for a particular item in an area of the map, so you could find them easily if you were hunting them. This kept the map less clustered while you were doing missions, and kept the items from feeling overly important compared to mission objectives.
For me, the best example of bad collectibles is the Assassins Creed series. Assassins Creed likes to show as many collectibles on the map as possible, creating unnecessary clutter as shown in the link below.
http://www.gosunoob.com/ac4-black-flag/havana-map-of-collectible-locations/
As shown, there are a large variety of collectibles, most of which create no real effect other than giving you an achievement. They are shown with such frequency that they distract you from major quests, and are a nuisance to anyone uninterested. It feels like the collectibles in this franchise are created merely to give players something to spend time doing as they provide no worthwhile reward for anyone willing to spend the time collecting these objects.