Contrived Story To Go With Your Gameplay?

So I'm playing Arkham City and really enjoying it.

It reminds me of a conversation Mark Nau and I had in the early days of Spidey 3.  I was throwing out ideas for how we could take our highly 'gamey' challenges - the trick markers - and make them part of the story. I forget what the ideas were exactly, something along the lines of Dennis Hopper in Speed giving you various challenges or he's going to blow someone up. Contrived. Transparent.

Mark said if the game is going to have these really gamey bits he'd rather just have them be gamey. So the trick markers stayed pretty much the same as Spidey 2.

Arkham City, on the other hand, weaves them in. Frex, it has the "Augmented Reality Training" where the tricks you do are theoretically pre-progrmamed missions batman created to practice; and the Szasz telephone missions, which are pure races from one point of the city to another. Part of me recognizes these things as contrived and transparent; the other part of me appreciates the immersion.

What do you think?

Comments

[Jeffool]

I definitely have to go with your instinct here. Generally I feel the more contextual consistency, the better. (Unless the game or mechanic lends itself to non-contextual elements.) Crackdown, for instance, was a wonderfully fun game. But it always annoyed me that the orbs were out-of-context items.

Call them "nebulous overcharging devices used by the unsavory to aid in their nefarious criminal deeds!" or "a street level compound created by criminals to increase their own strength, that The Agency could convert to useful fuel for the cybernetic Agents!". The gameplay could be the same (fun), and you could even keep the same greenish glow and noise/feel when they're near, just add a single model at the base of the glow. It would've fit in perfectly with the end's "reveal", and passively explains why you can toss cars, but don't punch through bad guys. And I, as a gamer, think it would've been a nice touch.