Recently, my partner R.Márquez public a very successful article on lack of originality in modern triple A progression systems. We all already know well enough the typical skill trees, the color-coded weapons and armor according to their rarity, or the aesthetic items out of the loot boxes. Little to add that he did not already say, but I want to delve into how these kinds of systems also affect the design of the exploration itself.
All of these attack or defense enhancements that are pointless in the short term, or those weapons that we know we are going to drop in half an hour as soon as we find a better one, are little pills that the game uses to keep us satisfied and hooked. To feel that moving forward is of any use. They really aren't that decisive in the overall experience, but there are so many and they are so consistent because games can thus boast that their open world is not empty, and they already have an excuse to further inflate the duration.
It's his way of rewarding exploration: why would you come here if you didn't take anything back? Personally, I do not think it is a bad system, although most of the time I do think that it is used in a somewhat crude way. I like it better when those awards are really decisive, as it usually happens in the games of Arkane. Then this The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, which is also giving you things all the time, but what is really important is the wonderful process of discovery that has led you to the reward. However, What would happen if we didn't take anything with us for exploring?
Immersed in an alien world
It is far from the first to do so, but In Other Waters It is a great example of how you can pose a different kind of exploration than mainstream video games. The game by Gareth Damian Martin proposes us to explore the vast ocean of the planet Gliese 677Cc, inhabited by all kinds of alien life forms hitherto unknown to humans.
Dr. Ellery Vas has come here looking for her partner. Along the way, she is fascinated by the enormous and mysterious orchard that surrounds her. However, we do not control her. We are the AI inserted in your water suit, and we must guide her through the depths of this new world.
I have tried to use the expression "new world" in its most literal sense, but even then it cannot be devoid of certain connotations. New to whom? Obviously for us, because for the fauna that inhabits it, no. They are words that define everything based on their relationship with ourselves without taking into account what is foreign; as if we were the center of the universe.
As much as one wants to give it a meaning that is as pure and literal as possible, it ends up clouded by its own subjectivity. No wonder, then, that the meaning often attributed to "new world" is actually rather murkier: that of a discovery for colonizing purposes. It is new, and we are going to make it ours.
The story of In Other Waters It tells us of a dying planet Earth to which the expansive delusions of the human being have sucked up to almost the last drop of blood. In the course of it, whose main turns I am not going to reveal because of the spoiler, Dr. Vas concludes that we must protect Gliese 677Cc. As important as the discovery of new forms of life in the scientific field is, he knows perfectly well that, as soon as they are revealed, the big corporations will come to colonize the planet and kill him for his own benefit, as they have already done with Earth.
Exploration encouraged by curiosity
At no time does it hide its profoundly environmentalist message, and that translates into the way it is played. The world of In Other Waters It is open, it is full of things, but they are not there for us to take advantage of, but for us to discover them. It is true that in the first bars we are forced to use the samples we take to unlock paths and to move forward, but surprising how quickly that idea is discarded; I imagine the intention was to attract mainstream title players by giving them systems they know and then expect them to stick around for everything else.
Apart from that, we have to continue collecting samples both to study them and to avoid running out of oxygen and energy in our suit (or otherwise "die"), more for the mere question of survival than to increase our power. Also, the game wants to remind us that we are not harming wildlife by taking them.
However, all these mechanics seem anecdotal in front of its main asset: a kind of encyclopedia where we are collecting the creatures that we discover. Their description, their behavior, a hypothesis about their role in this ecosystem, and finally a sketch so that we can better see what they are like. When we travel the world of In Other Waters Freely, we don't do it in search of tools that can help us become more powerful; We do it simply to catalog these new species that function so differently from what we know, and it is certainly fascinating.
Dr. Vas herself does not stop exclaiming a highly contagious for having the opportunity to participate in something like that. Every new animal, plant or whatever it is a new reason to observe and satisfy our curiosity. If the main engine of archetypal video game exploration mechanisms is colonization, extracting resources and subjugating the terrain for our immediate benefit, trying to find a use for everything around us; that of In Other Waters is curiosity.
Discover by doing it, because it is incredible coexist with the foreign without having to exploit it, learning more and more about what surrounds us. For once it seems that this world exists outside of you, and not around you.
And you don't have to put a carrot in front of our face for us to want to explore. It is enough to have personality and hide a lot of interesting information in its recesses. Even navigation itself is unique, since we don't exactly control a character moving around an environment, but rather the AI interface built into Dr. Vas's outfit.
Being one with the machine, in the good and the bad
In other words, is a set of menus and indicators. Try to create a mechanical relationship with us through deliberately non-automated processes; Everything could be streamlined much more, but he wants to give that feeling of doing “scientific” work first hand.
So much so that the movement results extremely slow and rough. In that sense, and adding the fact that all we see are lots of dots on the map to represent the alien creatures and a lot of text to describe them, I understand that it can be heavy. The critic Cameron Kunzelman claimed Being bored and angry with the game for these reasons, but found a pretty interesting anchor point with the overall experience.
As he explains, In Other Waters It wants to make us aware of what we can do to protect the environment, and that process can be hard, since it implies that we put aside our individualistic hobbies and our comfort. for the general good. It is hard to sacrifice one's pleasures to contribute to the cause, and for him this game was just that: an exhausting and not at all fun journey, but very valuable as a whole for everything it represents.
I don't want to lie either: navigating this planet can be a tremendous discomfort. But in the end you just got used to it, and besides, all that matters little when you discover a new way of life that you could never have imagined before, represented with enviable writing skills. Gliese 677Cc is a wonderful environment with its own identity, not a place of passage.
