The Fallacy of ‘Replay Value’ – Extra Punctuation

And this felt like a misstep, to me. Certainly at the time because I had absolutely no intention of putting myself through that wringer again anytime soon. Like any good horror game it’s a harrowing, claustrophobic experience that fills you with adrenaline from the simulated threat, and it frequently took me a while even to work up the courage to leave the safe room, and without the motivation of seeing the story ending and discovering where it was all leading I didn’t see much appeal in going back.

Mystery is one of the main things that makes horror effective beyond simple jumpscares, and the mystery would only lessen the more one played The Bunker. In the one playthrough I did, I thought that despite the monster’s appearances being unscripted the game did a rather good job of never letting me get a good look at the bastard. It was always just a shadowy glimpse before I turned tail and legged it. The best look I got was on one occasion when I hid in a fenced off area on the assumption the monster wouldn’t be able to navigate the vent I’d used to access it. Spoiler alert: I was wrong in this assumption. But if I’d kept playing and kept making incredibly stupid errors like those I’d see the monster more and more, as well as its janky animations and Weetabix-like flesh. And how something looks in your imagination will always be more effectively scary than how it looks in actuality.

Also, the promise to rearrange all the pickups and traps in future playthroughs wasn’t a terribly effective draw because the item conservation and the trap avoidance weren’t the interesting parts. What doesn’t change from playthrough to playthrough are certain specific inventory puzzles – the finding of keys to go in doors or of the bolt cutters to open the doors locked with chains – as well as general understandings of where in the bunker you need to go and when, and the pleasure of figuring all of that out is something that can only be had once. On all future playthroughs you’re just going through the motions.

If the point of these procedural elements was to add replay value then it misses the mark. I don’t believe anyone could credibly argue that The Bunker offers a new experience with every single playthrough. The game’s important story points, puzzle locations and general sequence of where you need to go never changes, and those are the parts you remember, not the ground level fiddling about in between.

There was an indie game, CHASM, that purported to be a procedurally generated metroidvania, but after I’d finished it, I started it again to test that claim, and honestly couldn’t tell if anything had been moved around. Metroidvanias tend to require a tight structuring, you have to find and collect items or abilities that open up the map in a specific sequence, so I’m pretty sure CHASM was just swapping around a few nondescript rooms in between each significant progress point. And I didn’t feel terribly inclined to replay that, either.

I feel like, if you’re shooting for procedural mechanics in the name of infinite replay value, you either go whole hog or not at all. Make something like The Binding of Isaac where everything is randomized each run and every playthrough can be different. Either that or just make a PvP multiplayer only game, that’s as good as procedural because human enemies will always come up with new and exciting ways to torment each other. But you can’t do that if you also want to tell a story. A story you hope to have any control over, at any rate.

So what am I saying, that a single player story based game should give up on any hope of replay value? That they should resign to being cast aside like a rubber johnny the moment they’re finished and supplanted with the next new hotness? That they should forfeit any ambition for the prolonged player engagement demanded by publishers unless they’re willing to drag the story out fifty hours too long like Last of Us 2 or God of War Ragnarok in the desperate hope of retaining our attention?

Not at all! What we’re doing here is making the mistake of conflating “replay value” with “making every playthrough different.” The same mistake a lot of those previously discussed Choose Your Own Adventure Book games make. I mean, I replay games, when schedule permits. Which admittedly isn’t very often but I can certainly dedicate at least one hour to it per fortnight. Most recently, I’ve been replaying We Love Katamari, now it’s been ported to Steam. Because I think it’s really fun. I also think they could easily have brought it out the same time they ported the first game because it’s basically the same game but slightly more polished with more ideas, but never mind, it’s here now. And I’m not replaying it expecting anything new.

I mean, it does have some new levels but I haven’t really engaged with them. I’m replaying it ‘cos I used to play the shit out of it back on my old PS2 and I wanted to bask in its great soundtrack and cathartic town destroying action again. And it’s the same with everything else I ever replay – I’m after a nice comfortable familiar experience. I don’t have the energy to electrify myself with novelty all the bloody time.

Now, my habits don’t apply to everyone, I know. Some people, speedrunners for example and other lunatics, like to replay their favourite games while imposing extrinsic conditions on themselves to milk a bit more novelty out of them. Playing them the fastest or with the lowest possible completion score or with a breeze block strapped to their head. Hell, a lot of people will just bump the difficulty level up a notch when they replay a game. I usually don’t. More often than not I replay games on the same difficulty level as before, doing exactly the same things as before. It doesn’t matter to me that it isn’t different, if I wanted a new experience I’m spoilt for sodding choice on Steam and in the world in general, the whole point of replaying is to return to an established comfort zone.

And I suspect those of you who do bump the difficulty up or play with your nostril hair tied to a swingball set or whatever are primarily motivated by the fact that you like playing the game, and secondarily by the twist of novelty. So when I see single player games going out of their way to design themselves around this notion of “replay value = different,” with their procedural elements and their branching storylines, that feels off. I think ultimately what gives a game “replay value” is, at heart, being fun to play and having an interesting story. A story that is very rarely made more interesting from being diluted across multiple paths.

I mean, I know a lot of my viewers rewatch my old ZPs a lot. I doubt many of them would care that much if I redid them all in a high-pitched West Country accent. Well. Some of them might. Maybe it is time I set up that Cameo account.