Feature: making Killzone 4 the perfect shooter, a few tweaks and a major change – Part 1
When Guerrilla Games released the highly anticipated first-person shooter, Killzone 2, they ran with the tag line, 'War.Perfected' for the game and review sites and critics all seemed to agree that it was exactly what the game had done.
It did not bring genre changing gameplay mechanics or introduce anything the industry had not already seen before. All it did was make the environments more atmospheric, the shooting more deliberate and weighty and the movement more heavy.
The multiplayer was simplified and a few core game types were kept with a host of options on how to customize online gameplay and lastly, the maps on offer were so perfectly balanced that it was a case of voting for one’s favourite map instead of voting
to skip or avoid one that gamers did not like.
Killzone 3 did improve on Killzone 2 in a number of ways, but it was more a case of improving the sum of the game’s parts as opposed to the whole.
So what can Guerrilla Games do to make Killzone 4 the best shooter possible? To be honest, a few minor tweaks are all that are needed in certain areas while a complete overhaul is needed in others.
A storyline to make gamers care
The problem with the storyline in the Killzone games has always been that they failed to connect with the gamer. Killzone 3 tried to make some headway in that respect but in the end, one did not care whether or not the ISA succeeded as long as there were
Helghast to takedown.
It should be the other way round; gamers should want to take the Helghast down because of the storyline. Vengeance, a personal mission, a rescue mission or a race against time, any of these could be used as premise for the next game.
However, the main thing is that while the original Killzone dealt with guerrilla warfare against an invading force, the second game saw an invasion and the third returned to guerrilla warfare, the motives did not connect with the gamer.
So whatever path the developers decide to follow, the main focus has to be making those who are playing the game care about why the in-game characters are doing what they are doing.
A bit of background about Vekta, or a few scenes showing why the ISA soldiers are fighting the war they are, be it for family or to prevent a Helghan invasion or something along those lines, would go a long way.
It would be prudent to try and live up to the Uncharted series in terms of storytelling. Despite the fact that the recent Uncharted games, Among Thieves and Drake’s Deception, do have multiplayer components, the main reason people bought the game was the
single-player campaign.
Killzone has the base on which to build on the storyline, yet it just does not seem to be taking a particular direction. It is almost as if the developers decided on certain action sequences and set-pieces and then built a story around those moments instead
of the other way round.
So after that rant of sorts, the first thing Killzone 4 needs is an investing, immersive and engaging story to grip gamers from the beginning and then refuse to let them go till the end, where ideally that ought to be a twist that should leave everyone’s
jaws on the floor.
Read on in the next part of this article: Feature: making Killzone 4 the perfect shooter, a few tweaks and a major change – Part 2
Disclaimer: the views and opinions expressed in this article are the writer’s own and do not reflect the editorial policy of Bettor.com
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