Longtime readers of the blog may remember a very early post about scope in video game design. You start with all the ideas in the world, and then you see which ones you can make easily, which ones are worth sweating to fit into the game, and which ones aren't worth the effort required to implement, either because you simply don't have the resources to do it, or because you could do it, but then you'd ship in five years, and you need to ship in (some time measurement with a number and a period of time that would get me fired for saying it), or, really, because nobody was willing to schedule the meetings, send the e-mails, barge into people's offices, and fight the fight to get that feature in.

My computer has old files, documents about characters, story arcs, environments, combat mechanics. If I sort them by date and open up the oldest, it's like a trip down memory lane. Oh, hey, that was where the story was gonna take place! Aw, that combat rule system I really thought would make it. Wow, in retrospect, that follower was never going to be good.

So much gets cut. It's the only way that anything gets made. You aim high, and then you run like hell for the target until one group, be it level art or cinematic design or combat programming, tells you that they absolutely positively can't make it, and something's gotta go. If you're the one saying that, you almost always feel awful, which you may or may not cover with a show of anger that you were ever expected to try for this obviously impossible goal, and you have to justify the fact that you can't hit these goals. If you're not the bottleneck, then you're frustrated that your stuff is being cut by somebody else's workflow, and you try to salvage as much as you can.

There are books and games and comics I've read that I'd love to talk about, but I can't, because they're clearly out of character for me and would make it clear what kind of game we're making. If I mention playing God of War or Ninja Gaiden, that sends as much of a message as casually mentioning that I've recently read Heaven Sword, Dragon Saber, Outlaws of the Marsh, Bridge of Birds, and Romance of the Three Kingdoms might have clued somebody in if I'd been working on Jade Empire a few years back. I remember someone saying that you can learn a lot about a dev's unannounced project by looking at his Amazon wishlist. Right now, given the amount of Indigo Girls and Justice League on mine, that suggests a lesbian superhero game. Maybe I should throw Nintendogs on there just to muddy the waters a little.

I don't have much else to say, except that I wish I had more to say. I'm as much in love with our game today as I was before -- hell, more so, even, as decisions that needed to get made are finally getting made, and we've got a solid course plotted -- but this is definitely the time when you have to justify the things that are precious to you, the things you want to fight for, the things that you love enough to make somebody else do crunch-time to fit in the game.

And then, just to go back on myself: I'm playing Ninja Gaiden 2, which my mother got for me as a Father's Day present. I am playing it for work, but not for a project-specific reason. I want to be able to talk intelligently with combat guys when they talk about bosses and how said bosses work whenever we bring up big-fight ideas, and as the hot new thing, this seemed like an important one to play. I've heard the combat guys on Dragon Age and Mass Effect 2 using similar terms, so I don't think it's project-specific, which means yay, I can talk about it. :)

Love the combat. Every animation reinforces the fact that you're a ninja. You feel badass, and you also feel like the enemies are badass, and when you're in clusters of enemies, you have to keep moving, since they don't just stand there nicely waiting for you to finish pounding that one guy before whacking you. I'm playing on the easy mode, because I'm a big wimp who cannot handle the higher difficulties, and I've finished the first chapter (first end boss only took me two tries to defeat).

And then... then I look at the rest of the game, and I think, "Wow, we're trying too hard."

The dialog. Sweet Christmas, the dialog. I slapped on Japanese VO and English subtitles, so that I could labor under the delusion that the acting was better in the language I didn't speak. They fell facefirst into the uncanny valley, and everyone except the hero looks like a fricking idiot; the hero only looks non-artificial because the only parts of him you see are his eyes and his massive ninja-bicep arms. The rest of him is covered in pleather or a chrome Shredder helmet. The sword looks fantastic, but increased graphical realism really hits home the fact that a leather-and-chrome-clad ninja is just about one policeman short of a Village People video.

And the level design. Man, BioWare gets slammed for having levels that are too linear, and then, in this game for which I have heard praise regarding its exploration, you are walking in what amounts to very pretty tubes. You can go to the right, and advance the plot, or you can go to the left, find a box, get an upgrade for your health... and then go to the right, and advance the plot. Tubes connecting squares that have a few more enemies in them. Early in chapter two, I walked across a bridge, then tried to jump off, and couldn't. The area below the bridge is an area you can explore... but it's not, really. I'm guessing it's in a different load-chunk or something, so that when you're on the bridge, you're looking down at a nonexplorable picture of the water below, and when you're in the water, you're looking up at a nonexplorable picture of the bridge up above. Tubes. Tubes with pretty art and nice squares.

And yet... nobody cares. People will take all of that, happily, if the combat is good. Probably a message in there somewhere. Like, ya know, make the combat good. (And don't screw up the camera -- the one thing everyone has been ragging on the game about, justifiably.)

I'm also playing Puzzle Quest, and I have reached the level where I am now slightly annoyed if my enemy gets a turn.