Over the past few years, I’ve noticed (andwritten about) a frustrating trend in triple-A action-adventure games. Whether it’sGod of War Ragnarok,The Callisto Protocol, orFinal Fantasy 16, this generation’s big-budget linear narrative games seem to be getting smaller and smaller. Despite their often bloated runtimes, they feel increasingly tiny because they hem the player in at all times, directing them along a narrow critical path with few choices about where to go and what to do.
The Callisto Protocol was the worst offender on this count. Inmy reviewat the end of 2022, I noted that its extreme linearity kept the player from feeling like they were ever discovering anything. Triple-A games have often been compared to roller coasters, but this was one of the rare games I’ve played (outside of light gun games in arcades or old school platformers like Crash Bandicoot) where the experience never let you leave the rails at all.
But, other games have less extreme examples of the same tendency. God of War Ragnarok’s world felt like a theme park to me, with corridors guiding you between attractions, not like a world that actually existed or mattered outside the confines of your story. Final Fantasy 16 had the same problem, grabbing your hand and leading you from battle to battle with little to do or think about in between.
A “Wide Linear” Take On Seattle
So, it’s been refreshing to revisitThe Last of Us Part 2in 2024 and get a reminder that linear triple-A games don’t have to be like this. ThoughNaughty Dogis seen as the trendsetter for modern action-adventure games, its PS4 magnum opus actually plays very differently than many of the games the Santa Monica studio has inspired.
This hit me hard when I reached Seattle and made it past the main gate. Here, the narrow overgrown streets and forest paths that you’ve been traveling emerge into a wide open area where the city has been reclaimed by greenery. you’re able to see as much or as little of this as you want, scavenging the local shops for supplies (and a memorable serenade) or beelining it for the gasoline you need in order to progress.
Naughty Dog has called its games “wide linear,” and levels like this — plus the Madagascar section inUncharted 4and the Western Ghats chapter from Lost Legacy — exemplify that approach to design. They’re linear in the grand scheme of things. You can’t choose to take a different path forward — you need to find fuel to progress to the next part of Seattle. But, they’re also broad, allowing for many choices about where to go first (or skip completely) within that limited section.
Naughty Dog’s games also provide more to do even when you’re on a tight critical path. In The Last of Us games, each battle can be tackled in multiple ways, and there are supplies and collectibles to find around each area.
It’s true that The Last of Us Part 2 is an impossible standard to reach in some ways. Few developers can deliver the graphical fidelity Naughty Dog can, and Naughty Dog wasreportedlyonly able to achieve it throughits use of crunch. But, hyper-linearity is a design decision, and developers can choose to make their games different. I love linear games but, increasingly, this kind of experience asks players to turn off their brains and run in one direction until the next fight. That’s boring, and The Last of Us Part 2 is a reminder that there’s another way to do it.
