Been watching my spouse play God of War: Ragnarok. Like many contemporary titles, Ragnarok includes a wall-climbing and grappling hook system that allows a player to traverse vertical spaces with ease (within predefined reasons). As I'm watching the Big Beef Man on-screen fling himself up the sides of sheer cliffs, I had a thought: "Why is this necessary?"
Climbing requires no other skill in these games beyond looking for the "push button now to climb" indicator that pops up on-screen. Sometimes the ascent is slow, with Kratos picking his way along a bare rock face, or sometimes it's fast, Kratos lodging his blade into the lip of a cliff, which then yanks him violently upward. The animations are all smooth and natural, with just enough snap to make the action satisfying to watch.
It still doesn't change the fact that for navigation this action is completely useless. Verticality is an illusion. The challenge that an animated sack of muscle laden with knives and axes faces while traversing an area gives as much pause to Kratos as it does to a bird--within predefined reasons. Kratos can only go where the gamedevs have given him permission to go. He is a breathtaking aerial juggernaut along his fated pathways, but is impotent in forging his own path despite having the strength and the equipment to do so.
This isn't to say that there's no point whatsoever to climbing or grappling; there are other considerations, such as these actions serving as "micro-breaks", very short pauses in gameplay that segment gameplay loops and gameplay thoughts as a player traverses an area. Relatedly, they can be thought of as a replacement for doors in outside spaces. They can also serve legitimate game mechanic purposes in active combat, becoming a conscious decision to take amongst other decisions--one can either make an attack, or grapple up to high ground to change tactical approach.
From what I can see, Ragnarok uses quickie vertical motion more for navigation than for combat. The player spends a good chunk of their time running around stunningly rendered mythical worlds, unlocking bits of lore and story progress along the way. It's a few steps above a Where's Waldo visual search, and sometimes progress is locked behind this find-the-thing gameplay, or locked behind simple logic puzzles or even blatantly arbitrary equipment upgrades (somehow needing a magical spear to ascend or traverse areas where grappling would've been logically functional).
Is this the real reason for illusory verticality? Is this the gameplay hour equivalent of using 15pt font sizes and 2.5x spacing on your homework essays? The arbitrary upgrade progression certainly is, but the rest isn't so clear.
Despite all the pomp and flair of a creative endeavour that had more money dumped into its budget than I could ever imagine having in a room at once, this game still remains a shockingly flat experience, with little joy in solving vertical areas--Kratos can't even leap on command. Not that Ragnarok ever set out to be that kind of game but, laughably, Quakeguy had far more liberty traversing 3D space than Kratos does.
Is this a bad thing? Maybe, maybe not? It's clearly no obstacle to commercial success, and it's kind of assumed to be the default in modern Triple-A. In fact, it's getting difficult to differentiate between these pillar titles--I remember thinking that certain areas of Ragnarok looked and played a hell of a lot like areas from Horizon: Forbidden West. We could get into conversations about gamedev conservatism, but that's already been covered exhaustively elsewhere. I'm just...fascinated by these absolutely gorgeous, multi-million dollar games getting pancaked in terms of basic navigation.
