kohlrak: Notepad++. I do any post that i have more than 10 words to respond with in notepad++ because it's far, far too easy to loose posts to the void on gog. I can ctrl+z to return it after i've ctrl+a;ctrl+x the whole thing.
.Keys: Second time this happened to me. Unfortunate.
That's why i make the suggestion. Sometimes i don't learn my lesson though when i think i'll make a short response and end up making a long one. I say "eh, it'll be fine," and i loose out. The undo buffer of some programs is long enough that it is indeed worth using them. The addition of a character counter to let you know when your post is getting dangerously long (somewhere slightly above 10,000 characters is where gog will just reject it).
That's true. Backtracking is really for upgrades and map traversal.
But why is it 100% rescriction? This kind of restriction in player freedom would be, actually, a Linear single player campaing with 1 path for the whole game.
The constraint I was talking about is based in how a player can achieve a certain degree of progression, based in the quantity of possibilities for them to reach the Item/Ability needed for further progression throught map exploration.
I'm not saying it's necesary, but rather challenging the notion that open world means mostly free while metroidvania means mostly restricted. It seems strange when 2d and 3d most obviously are the differences. Fundamentally, the big picture is to open the whole map to the player in both genres, yet for storytelling and/or progression accounting developers inevitably desire to hold the player back in some way. The rough bit is, the things you normally do to restrict movement in 2d aren't really all that tenable with 3d viewpoints (usually either movable isometic camera or first person, both of which are very, very visison restrictive) and the excessive flexibility that 3d offers (2d games are notorious for tight jumping).
I wouldn't call Terraria a Metroidvania. It's more of an Sandbox imho. But still, one could argue that the Boss Based and Item Based progression are huge candidates to make it a Metroidvania in this kind of discussion we're having here.
Sandbox is more of a genre-like feature than a genre. Take the sandbox-ness away from minecraft and terraria and you could still have games in theory, but we would classify them as completely different genres. I've always had this notion of "sandbox" as a genre instead of using it as a feature. I have similar issues with "roguelike" at this point, because the term seems to have grown significantly out of it's genre box due to advanced technology making it so it's not restricted to turn-based RPGs. At this point in time, looking at Parkan, we can argue that's a roguelike, but it's also a first person shooter and a space shooter. It's sequel, parkan 2, is more of a remake than a true sequel, and it lost the roguelike ship and planet generation.
As for the "Percentage Index", it was just an example to clarify my point of view. Use it as a measure for scientific map exploration at one point delimitation to qualify as a Metroidvania would be flawed. haha
The big picture is, it's not useful for defining boundaries between open-world and metroidvania, which is my only real concern in this thread. To me, the amount of early game freedom has no bearing on metroidvania classification.
Wans't even thinking about Batman being a Metroidvania though. It ins't in my point of view. Just a normal action game. The "Arhkam games" in the list was just a joke, based in
Quote 39, because any game can have any other genre characteristic and not necessarily be the same genre; though, yes, for me, like I said in a
previous post, a Metroidvania is 2D.
So it is, for me, a necessary mechanic for it to be considered Metroidvania. But this is just my opinion anyways.
Right, but this is where the whole battle started. I think we're largely in agreement, then, because my whole argument is that the separation between 2d and 3d is the separation between metroidvania and open world, from a necessity point of view. There's just certain things that 2d's restrictions allow you to do, given controllers are still heavily based on 2d, outside of spotty motion controls. Simply looking at the transitions all genres ultimately made from 2d to 3d it becomes apparent that many 3d genres are spiritual successors to 2d genres and their manifest changes are a direct result of the limitations on the developer that movement to 3d places. While features like the ones mentioned above are certainly manifest results, they're certainly not the fundamental difference, but merely side effects. I believe, fundamentally, the heart of the matter is precisely the same between the two, in that you're looking to make your avatar stronger in order to progress to more capable in some way (either in combat or movement) to move forward. I don't necessarily feel that the restrictions are remotely even necessary, which is why the way metroids have slid all over your freedom index is not a major concern for me. Now where it gets really fun is throwing turn-based and action-oriented RPGs into the mix of things.
