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There’s a moment in
Resident Evil 5 where after you’ve done physics defying acrobatics and taken on a horde of infected townsfolk (complete with their own near-invincible, chainsaw-wielding, psychopath), the game tells you that to progress further you’ll need a key to open a gate.
So that’s you, a heavily armed ex-special forces guy with muscles the size of Bournemouth, needing an average common variety key to open a rusty gate that you could easily kick down or use your partner to climb over. Last time I checked, this year is 2009 and not 1996. Then again, the last time I checked the date it turned out I missed my brother’s birthday by at least a week ... but that’s not important right now.
The locked door and its associated ‘busy work’ puzzles have always irritated me in games. The whole idea made sense in something like the original
Alone in the Dark, which was primarily a puzzler featuring a character who wasn’t strong enough to take down a door or willing to use up precious ammunition to open one of the many rooms in the mansion from hell. When
Resident Evil stole/paid homage to the series, instead of characters who were lowly private investigators, they were a pseudo-S.W.A.T. team for the local police force. There was the obligatory ‘master of unlocking’ in the team, but why wasn’t Jill ever able to use these skills on the Mansion Key doors?
However, I loved
Resident Evil so much that I was willing to overlook the numerous plot holes and bad acting. It turned the traversal from a puzzle to its solution, the most mundane of game mechanics, into an unnerving and new experience. Survival horror would become one of my favourite genres ever, but many of the games associated with the tag kept to the same formula of antagonistic obstacles and the locked door puzzle. No matter how you dress it up with tangents that branch off, you’ll still find yourself coming back to that same locked door scenario. It’s always waiting around the corner in a situation which could easily be overcome by brute force; the same brute force you’ve been using to overcome your enemies.
‘It looks like the lock is broken. I can’t open it.’ Really?!
Damn, if only this axe was a crowbar, then I’d get inside!
Silent Hill eventually became a parody of itself as its protagonists would collect brutal melee weapons that could easily smash in one of the many ‘broken lock’ doors they encountered. Even then, they would find the one door that could be unlocked and still have to look for the key on another floor. At one point that didn’t even make sense once Harry Mason smashed a padlock off a gate with his axe. Look at
Silent Hill: The Room; the whole concept is based around a locked door! Did you know that
Silent Hill: Homecoming features 133 broken doors? No, really. There’s even a video of all the doors featured floating around the internet.
You know, I’m not a fan of
Dead Space since I find it to be full of boring ‘busy-work-go-here-now-there’ objectives and in-your-face horror that’s been done before, but at least the locked door puzzles were realistic. These were huge bulkheads that ran on malfunctioning technology. It wasn’t like
Resident Evil 5, where the pluckiest of survival horror investigators who could survive bites, gunshots, stabbings and gooey suffocation were stopped by the odd door. Hell, even at the end of that game Chris has to
punch a boulder into lava; so why not a door? Quite frankly, that insults my intelligence despite the game’s previous efforts to reduce Easter Egg Hunts for keys.
I mean what is the locked door puzzle essentially? It’s just another way to prolong a game at the end of the day. It’s not a real puzzle with a sense of accomplishment as your reward; it’s an irritating obstacle to climb over.
Sometimes, it doesn’t even take the physical form of a key or a door. Take
Lost: Via Domus for example; in one episode, Elliot has to get past Jack, who guards the pathway into the jungle. Elliot has to talk to Kate and this triggers a flashback in which Elliot remembers that he can lie. So this ability to lie becomes a metaphorical key that he uses on the metaphorical door which is in the form of a person. Jack runs off and you get access to the jungle pathway.
Let me reiterate, you have to get an impassable object to move so you carry on down a specific path, even though in reality you could just walk down the beach and enter the jungle unseen. Hell, how can you forget to lie in the first place?! What kind of mentality is going on in game developers’ heads when they think that nonsense up? I sometimes wonder if the door puzzle is part of some design quota that developers have to fill in order to receive Christmas bonuses.
I’ve recently noticed that Climax to have (seemingly) dispensed with a majority of the door puzzles in
Silent Hill: Shattered Memories. Now, Harry Mason barges through doors like he’s being chased by welfare officers inquiring about his late child support payments. In the mess that was
Alone in the Dark 5, the one saving grace was that Edward Carnby had the ability to just trash a door with whatever was at hand to get the goods inside.
For me, it’s a step in the right direction in games, especially when we’re supposed to be emulating films to a point where not only the visuals are lifted but the themes behind them as well.
Survival horror is built on the fear of traversing the unknown and not standing around scratching your head over a newspaper conundrum. I don’t think, even with assimilated genres like action adventures, we will ever escape the locked door syndrome in a linear setting. It should have really stayed in the past and left to people who were creative with the situation, like the old LucasArts point and click adventure games or fantasy titles like
Zelda (where the locked doors seal off large playing areas rather than a room with another puzzle).
I mean, it’s not like leaving out the infamous locked door puzzle will make a game shallow, right?
Now if you excuse me I need to run some errands...Crap. Do you know where the front door keys are, honey? Huh? I’ve got search the freezer and thaw out
what now?!
Contest:
7:00 PM on 10.14.2009
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My favorite is when the game says that the door is jammed. Um...OK, what does that mean? How exactly does a perfectly normal door just go and get jammed?
This is one of my biggest pet peeves in vidjagames, it not that I want all my games to be photorealistic and have convincing physics engines; all I ask is for them to MAKE SENSE within their own fictional universe. Overpowered game heroes should not be stopped by cranky old wooden doors.
Saying that, I've always kind of accepted the whole locked door mechanic, I suppose its because they make a hell of a lot more sense to me than immovable npcs (which you have also mentioned) or even worse the invisible wall/force field.
One thing that also bothers me is how in many recent games you can enter tons of doors to various buildings... but about 25% of them can't be opened. So you run up to a random building... hit whatever button opens the door, go in... but next time you run up and nada, nothing, zilch. You can't even tell at a distance what doors are openable and which one's aren't. All doors should either open, or no doors should open. I know it's supposed to be part of "exploring"... but I just find it annoying. :(
@Hutty: Invisible walls are the pits. I don't mind if something is realistically blocking the area (like a police barricade) or gives the character a good enough reason not to enter (like an evil forest), but when I hit nothing, then I just test the limits of the invisible wall (like when I played the original Killzone) and forget I'm supposed to be playing the game.
@Elsa: I don't mind the locked door puzzle if its surroundings make sense. Obscure was set in a high school at night, so naturally everything was locked up and some doors could be broken into if you had the lockpicking character or just smashing the window. So to me, that's actually acceptable than say F.E.A.R., where just about every door refused to open because there was a desk in the way (which is the game you've completely reminded me of).
Of course, the complete opposite of the locked door puzzle can be found in Battlefield: Bad Company, where you have to destroy the doors you encounter. None of them can be opened normally and have to be smashed open with a knife or a grenade. It was good OTT fun, but at the same time, what's wrong with leaving it open for the player or just climbing through the window?!
Doors aren't really a hinderance in real life, but game developers want to make an adventure out of the mundane and end up making needless obstacles.
Allow keys to be equipped as weapons. They do minimal damage to enemies, but are the only weapons capable of destroying locked doors in one hit (maybe two). The player literally stabs the key anywhere on the door to do damage. Locked doors are essentially stationary enemies with abnormally high defense. They can be destroyed with regular weapons, but to tear them down by force would take much more resources that would be better spent on the enemies waiting behind it.
It’s the same basic “key – lock” formula but it’s done in a way that fells rewarding instead of irritating
Locked doors for the sake of padding, and worse, situations like Killer 7, where I have 7 characters at my disposal, but only one can pick locks, irritate the hell out of me. I have to pause, switch to him, unlock the door, and switch back. Why? Because unlocking doors is that characters gimmick!
Or gaining powers in linear games that let you traverse obstacles that otherwise pose no difficulty. "Now you can pick locks!" Well since there were no locked doors until I got this power, and I didn't have to learn any new button presses or techniques to make my character automatically unlock the door when I action-button it, why are we celebrating this new-found ability? To offer a false sense of progress.
Wow, you've touched a nerve.
This is why I think that game environments should be fully fleshed, realized and open to player interaction based far more on freedom of exploration rather than just "object x works only on object y" kind of gameplay. You need the Red Key. Fuck the Red Key, I can cleave giant monsters in half with this sword that's bigger than I am, please, tell me, why do I need a goddamn Red Key?
But in all other RE, I agree, you have a grenade laucher, take down the door for god sake. It happened once, where the helicopter crashed in the police station and you had to use the explosive.
"Lock is Jammed...."
"Lock is Jammed...."
"Lock is Jammed...."
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRGGGHH!!
SH Pits, too. Nobody can argue with a gaping pit. Except a rickety wooden plank for a bridge, perhaps.
What I find even more annoying than doors with keys are fake doors. Doors that look identical to other doors (not flat and boring vs. "real" doors that pop out) but can't be opened. In a game like GTA it makes some sense but specifically Bioware will do it and just drive me fucking crazy as I frantically try to find my way. At least locked doors can be opened!
Seriously if there is no other side it's not a real door!!! It's a fucking wall!!!
Great write up.
In game mechanic terms, I UNDERSTAND why they limit your progression through specific areas, but it is so ridiculous how flimsy doors and low walls blockade you when you're desperately attempting to keep your brain un-digested by the walking dead.
http://hlcomic.com/index.php?date=2006-07-17
Regardless, the only alternatives are either:
A. They make the game suspiciously lack doors anywhere but along the linear path you're supposed to follow.
B. They waste tons of time and money filling out empty rooms attached to all the doors.
I think the heart of the complaint here is that people get frustrated by a lack of "realism" without thinking about the fact that these types of obstructions are put there for specific game design purposes, and without them you'd wind up with a game where the only thing to block the player's progress would be tougher/faster/more numerous enemies. That's great if you're into action horror, but otherwise you're breaking the game.
...but when it comes to broken locks, and your character has a rocket launcher, that wooden board with a knob deserves to be blown the fuck up.
But in Rule of Rose, when you open some door, creepy kid just pop out of the door and close it back, it got me the first time but it's getting laughable after that.
@Ubersuntzu: You make a very good argument from a development stand-point.
I have to say, I picked out Silent Hill because unlike Resident Evil or Alone in the Dark, you don't open up every door presented to you. You're right, The Room did indeed make perfect sense and it explained to the player why, but stuff like Lost: Via Domus (where a man is a door to an open area) made no sense at all. I love Silent Hill a lot, but Homecoming was a complete joke design-wise.
@Xzyliac: Ha! Don't get me started on the doors in Mass Effect! I think that flaw stems from the re-used locations problem. I was even willing to accept that these were cheaply produced pre-fabricated bases, but BioWare obviously didn't have the time or probably disc space to contend with the cosmetics.
Prince of Persia: Rival Swords was absolutely ridiculous in this department. The Prince, for all his acrobatic and combat training, can't open a simple door. It got to the point where, when I'd see a door, I realized that I'd reached a dead-end and needed to go back. That is the exact opposite of what a door should do. To add insult to injury, you get a sword near the end of the game which lets you smash through walls. If you reached the end of a hallway with a door, you were going the wrong way. If you reached the end of the hallway, and it was featureless and blank you could open the wall. Talk about LAME.
Also, your image of George W. Bush was complete win. If the Chinese didn't have ideas about becoming number one superpower before that incident (which was televised), then they certainly did afterwards. :O)