Sir Peter Molyneaux, Commander of the British Empire, has dished publicly about what he believes to be the five most innovative games of the past 20 years. I agree with him on all but one.
People like to make fun of Peter because he says outrageously bombastic things about what his games will do, and of course though they’re usually excellent games, they’re unable to deliver on his impossible promises. But speaking personally, I like it when Peter gets excited enough to say crazy things. All it means is that he’s so exuberant about the medium and about what he does that he gets carried away. That’s real, genuine passion. Moreover, I’ve spoken with Peter a few times at various conferences and he’s very friendly and accessible. That scores you points in my book, especially if you’re a God Among Developers with canon as brilliant as Populous, Powermonger, Magic Carpet, The Movies, and Fable under your belt, plus of course the ambitious but… distinctly lacking Black & White series.
His top five most innovative? Here they are, along with a note on whether or not I agree (but I am not Sir Steerpike, Commander of the British Empire, so my opinion really doesn’t matter):
- Dune 2: the Building of a Dynasty: First true RTS. Steerpike-Approved!
- Super Mario 64: Innovator of open world gaming. Steerpike-Approved!
- Tomb Raider: Female protagonist, plus 3D platforming. Steerpike-Approved!
- Halo: Brought first person shooters to consoles. Steerpike-Disapproved!
- World of Warcraft: Brilliant-if-vaguely-unethical use of layered objective/reward systems to magnetize play. Steerpike-Approved!
Halo? Seriously? There’s no game in the universe that’s less innovative than Halo. There’s nothing about Halo that hadn’t been innovated five years earlier on the PC. Halo’s one claim to fame, as Molyneaux notes, is that it made FPS gaming possible with thumbsticks. But I just don’t consider that one of the five most innovative innovations in the last two decades. Besides, Halo’s squishy controls, irritating protagonist, adolescent story and bumptuous puzzle solving mark it as a BAD GAME. Yes, you heard me. Halo and its successors were then, are now, and will always be bad games. Badly designed, badly written, badly put together. Poor controls, poor story, poor camera, poor level design. Bad.
The only reason Halo did as well as it did is because… well, it brought FPS to consoles. Halo was to console gamers what DOOM was to PC gamers. So innovative? No. I’d give Halo’s spot to DOOM, and never lose a night’s sleep.
I thought GoldenEye brought FPS to consoles. It also taught me that no matter what anyone thinks, playing an FPS with a controller sucks enormously.
Yes, indeed, the crown should go to Goldeneye and not Halo for that particular distinction.
I don’t know if the Halo SERIES is necessary bad, but Halo itself fell apart after awhile. It became too repetitive and needlessly drawn out. However, it was the first console FPS that proved you could play without a mouse and keyboard and I don’t mind that nearly every FPS that has followed has copied the interface. I just wish they wouldn’t copy everything else about Halo as well.
I definitely disagree with him on Tomb Raider. I think just having a female protagonist is not groundbreaking and the imagery of Lara Croft has been a setback for women in gaming, both as players and characters, ever since. Granted, this is all his opinion.
I am glad he is passionate about gaming, but I do hope that he makes some less dubious claims for his next game.
Hey Jason O – yes, I thought about this issue with Tomb Raider when I was contemplating my Steerpike-Approved verdict. Lara Croft could have been a much more compelling female character, and I do agree that in many ways her portrayal set games back. At the same time, though, she’s among the earliest (and definitely most successful) protagonists who are not just female, but female AND strong, smart, brave, independent, and tough. While it’s certainly a pity that Core Design (and later Crystal Dynamics) chose to focus more on tight shorts and boobs than the above positive qualities, they are nonetheless inherent in her character, and I believe that Lara, for all her shortcomings being designed by puerile males, led us to characters like Alyx Vance.
I certainly wouldn’t include Halo as terribly innovative, but I don’t think it’s a “bad” game. Sure, it had an insipid storyline and a semi-mute protagonist, but it succeeded in creating the most immersive, visceral firefights I had ever seen in any shooter on any platform. It has since been surpassed by Half Life 2 and a dozen other shooters, which is why Halo 3 was so damn underwhelming.
Lara Croft probably did as more damage to females in gaming than good, for two obvious and well-marketed reasons. Sakey does make some excellent points about her character, so I suppose I must begrudgingly agree. Star Trek’s Uhura is constantly celebrated for being a black woman not playing a maid or cook, even if she did very little on the show. Croft certainly had a bigger part than Uhura’s “hailing frequencies open, Captain!”
It’s funny. I AM that puerile male. As much as I love Alyx Vance and her realistically modest-but-pretty frame, I frequently found myself checking out her…um…goods. Don’t roll your eyes at me. I know I’m not the only one.
Just like to throw in my two pence on console FPS.
Now, I have never found Halo’s gameplay or environments (don’t know enough about the narrative to judge that) compelling, but I’d like to posit to you fine people that Timesplitters for PS2 from Free Radical Design (ex-Rare/Goldeneye devs), was not only the finest title available at the launch of PS2, but also the first to introduce players to a dual thumbstick control setup(hence not Halo).
Lord knows it took me a week to get used to, and I’d never encountered it before, but it’s definitely the best FPS mapping for a pad yet devised.
Can anyone challenge this claim by producing another title which predates it with the same controls?
I guess Timesplitters wasn’t as popular as Halo, but it’s approximately 13x better so I wish it got more credit!
Heck, mrrobsa, all I know about Timesplitters is that it was well-received. You, Jason O, and Lokimotive are all correct, though: Halo did not bring FPS controls to the console world, just made them workable for all types of players. But I still don’t see that as a top-five innovation. I mean, The Legend of Zelda introduced consolers to the idea of subscreen inventory management and overlapping quest objectives (two other things that had been available for years on PC), why doesn’t it appear on this list?
As for Dobry’s comment, I’m right there with you, and I think many independent women would be as well. Look, men are attracted to the female form, we have a hard time not looking at it. But most of us are just as affected by the tough, sarcastic Alyx as b the jiggling apparitions of Ninja Gaiden 2. In Alyx’s case, her beauty is part of the package; same goes for Lara, despite their overdoing it in the external appearance. But when you think of how many games ONLY pay attention to that external side, even now – and when you realize that in pre-Lara technology most game plots were based around a man rescuing a woman you usually couldn’t even distinguish from a block of pixels – well, that’s why I agree with Peter on this front.
One of the reasons I’m intrigued by Final Fantasy 13 is my hope that they write the female lead character Lightning in a newer way. Lightning is…. well, plain is harsh, but she’s not a model. She has perfect bone structure, but my reaction upon first seeing her was “she looks so tired.”
I hope to see a strong, tough, intelligent woman combined with one who is bitter or angry, undergoing estrangement, feeling overwhelmed by the forces against her and her own internal self-doubt, knowing that she can only count on her brains, her physical courage, her strength, and the friends she trusts to get everyone she cares for through. This person needn’t be a bitch or a caricature, just a real human with real psychic wounds. I think many gamers (and characters) would be able to fall easily for such a three-dimensional character even if she doesn’t fit the classic definition of huge-boobed beauty.
There’s nothing I love more in the morning than the smell of napalm. Oh, that and Halo bashing. Yes! Arrrgggghhh… oh the lies people tell about Halo. “Innovative”? Pfft. Now I don’t know about 2 and 3, and I’ve only just started to play ODST, but as far as Halo 1 is concerned, I haven’t come across many blander shooters. Even bad ones like Postal and Serious Sam have some comedic value. Halo is worthless.
Thank you for bashing it so elegantly, Steerpike.
As a woman myself, I’d like to weigh in on the Lara debate. I’ve been playing games ever since I could first load a tape into a Spectrum, and Tomb Raider burst onto the scene when I was 12. I had never played any other game with a female protagonist – apart from RPGs like Arena and Daggerfall where the point is to make your own character – and Lara became my role model. To be honest, I didn’t really even notice her skimpy clothing. I noticed her independence, her strength, her intelligence, her ingenuity. Lara may have been designed by men – and it shows – but her character was not DEFINED by men as so many female character were at that stage. In my opinion she is a milestone in gaming politics.
Welcome to the site, Rumple.
I agree with you completely. While there is still a very puerile “boobies” attitude in the games industry, we’re beginning – slowly – to see a willingness to create empowered and intelligent female characters. Cate Archer, Mona Sax, Alyx Vance, etc. are all great examples. Then we have Bayonetta and Rubi Malone on the other end of the spectrum, but at least progress is being made.
Two of my favourite female characters were Annah and Fall-From-Grace from Planescape: Torment. Multifaceted, intelligent and empowered, they weren’t merely strange looking party members but personalities that you began to care about and more often than not talk to because they were so intriguing. Having said that, the entire game was intriguing.
Oh yeah, good ones! There were also a couple in the Baldur’s Gates. Plus the female Jedi from KOTOR – her name escapes me – and, believe it or not, Julie from Heavy Metal: FAKK2.
So, progress.
Ah, I missed out on Baldur’s Gate – it’s on my ‘To Play ASAP’ list. I’m not a great Star Wars fan but I’ve only heard good things about KOTOR. I can’t recall many good female characters that haven’t already been mentioned here that don’t hail from the adventure genre! Elaine Marley, Maggie Robbins, Laverne (for different reasons), Eva from Grim, Nico Collard to name a few.
KOTOR is brilliant. One of the best RPGs ever made – up there with Planescape Torment, Fallout 2, Morrowind… it’s brilliant. You owe it to yourself to try it out, even at the expense of Baldur’s Gate. Which is also brilliant.
I haven’t played any Fallout games (well I actually started playing the first but an unfortunate bug stopped me in my tracks) but I heard a lot of stuff about Fallout 2’s humour being really sophomoric and misogynistic. This is something I noticed with Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines and it really put me off pursuing Fallout as a result. I want to play Fallout 3 but that will have to wait until I get a better computer. How does Morrowind compare in the grand scheme of things? Do you prefer it to Oblivion? (I haven’t played either!)
I prefer Morrowind – Oblivion was a very broken game, one which I like less with each passing day. I reviewed both here at this site – Morrowind here and Oblivion here.
I would not say that Fallout 2’s humor was sophomoric or misogynistic, I’d say that it was intentionally trying to convey the idea of civilized humans devolving quickly into barbarism after a major catastrophe. Yes, there’s pimping out of spouses and working as fluffers, but I saw these things as Black Isle’s way of reminding us that civilization and its constructs are very delicate things, and that human beings, male and female alike, are wanton and vicious creatures capable of any monstrosity.
You have a point. I think it was more down to the options that the developers allowed the player rather than the incidents that occur within the context of the game. Those I can appreciate but in Bloodlines I remember various dialogue trees bottle necking into nasty remarks that I simply couldn’t avoid which had no discernable impact on the game but were still written/designed. At one point I could tell my female ghoul to dress in nothing but a small t-shirt and a g-string for no obvious reason. Perhaps it was to satisfy male curiosity or perhaps it was to show how much power you had as a vampire?
Mmm, when it comes to Bloodlines I’m inclined to say that it was just a messed up game. Messed up mechanically, messed up story- uh, ically, etc. I think Bloodlines tried but often failed; I think Fallout 2 tried and succeeded, but was more subtle.
I wanted to love that game – Bloodlines – but I had so many bug problems that were never fixed, and I never got over the failure of the small things that ruined the large. Much like Oblivion in that respect.
I played Bloodlines years after release using one of the two dualling fan patches. It was the David and Goliath of patch wars. The game was still a mess because the fundamental stuff couldn’t be changed; the combat was very weak yet the game relied on it too much instead of focusing on the more interesting socio-political feud between humans and vampires and the different vampires themselves, the ‘gamey’ levels were very dull and repetitive not at all helped by the dumb AI. Then of course there was just the general clunk of everything in between. It had its moments and I really wanted to like it too but I came away stressed and ultimately disappointed.
We forgot to mention Jade from Beyond Good and Evil. She was a great female protagonist.
Instead of Halo, what about Counter-strike? It was the first game I played that allowed me to kill people over the internet. And it was the first mod I knowingly played. Both things are 10x the “innovation” of porting something to a console…
I don’t know about the other two Halo games, but I played through Halo 2 on co-op with a friend and found the visual design remarkable. There’s a level, Regret is its name I think, where the player has to take a massive metal gondola to a temple across a lake, and you get a minute or so just to stare at the temple and the end of the gondola structure as you approach. Yes, the gameplay and the story is nothing to celebrate, but the game has its moments when it’s a genuine feast for the eyes.
And Steerpike, I wouldn’t exactly call KOTOR1 a masterpiece – the writing is kinda ruined by the you’re-either-Ghandi-or-Hitler moral choices Bioware is fond of being taken to never seen since extremes. And yes, Bastila is a capable female Jedi warrior, but she also falls to the dark side because she was impulsive and had poor control over her emotions (translation: she wasn’t a good stoic male) and, according to the canon stating Revan is a male, she needed the man she had fallen in love with to bring her back into the light. Uh-huh.
Now KOTOR2, on the other hand, for all its shortcomings, has what is basically a malevolent old hag become the most complex and sympathetic character in the story. Forget Bastila and Lara Croft and the rest of the army of young, lithe, athletic female action heroes- if you’re interested in genuine feminism then you should be talking about Kreia more.
Also, what about April Ryan and Zoe Castillo? Can’t forget those two.