This week on Extra Punctuation, Yahtzee discusses why AAA games need to put more effort in making it fun to go from point A to point B.

AAA Games Need to Step Up Their Traversal – Extra Punctuation

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This week on Extra Punctuation, Yahtzee discusses why AAA games need to step up their traversal.

This episode is sponsored by RAID: Shadow Legends. Install Raid for free on Mobile and PC, and get a special starter pack with an Epic champion Knight Errant. Use the Promo Code JTSKIN before October 7th to get both the Epic Champion Stag Knight and Gilded Glider Custom Skin! You can redeem the Promo Code either via this site or inside RAID: Shadow Legends itself if you are playing via an Android device or on Plarium Play.

Check out more recent episodes of Extra Punctuation on BioShock‘s incredible opening, Baldur’s Gate 3‘s wonky romance systems, and not wanting to save the world anymore.

Extra Punctuation Transcript

In my old Dev Diary series I frequently talked about my adherence to the philosophy of game design that focuses on the primary gameplay loop, or the moment to moment, second to second experience. But we’ve been seeing a lot of big games lately where the primary gameplay loop appears to be, well, a secondary concern. For all the merits or demerits of Starfield and Baldur’s Gate 3 that I’m sure we could argue over until the Metacritic scores come home, neither game would look particularly enticing if you randomly clipped a few seconds of an average runthrough. The Starfield clip would probably just be a mid-conversation staring contest with a dead-eyed NPC and the Baldur’s Gate 3 clip would be me yelling at that bloody Astarion for not automatically jumping over a chasm the way all my other children did.

These games are unapologetically focused on the big picture. It’s usually with these epic-scale RPGs and suchlike that the primary gameplay loop philosophy breaks down. They’re supposed to be about your long term goals, reaching the end of the journey, telling a grand narrative that unfolds over hours upon hours of play. But is that any reason NOT to have a strong primary gameplay loop? Maybe you like Baldur’s Gate, but imagine if you had the option of traversing that game’s maps on the back of a purring motorbike.


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Author
Image of Yahtzee Croshaw
Yahtzee Croshaw
Yahtzee is the Escapist’s longest standing talent, having been writing and producing its award winning flagship series, Zero Punctuation, since 2007. Before that he had a smattering of writing credits on various sites and print magazines, and has almost two decades of experience in game journalism as well as a lifelong interest in video games as an artistic medium, especially narrative-focused. He also has a foot in solo game development - he was a big figure in the indie adventure game scene in the early 2000s - and writes novels. He has six novels published at time of writing with a seventh on the way, all in the genres of comedic sci-fi and urban fantasy. He was born in the UK, emigrated to Australia in 2003, and emigrated again to California in 2016, where he lives with his wife and daughters. His hobbies include walking the dog and emigrating to places.