Why Can't I Carry More Than Two Guns?

Call of Duty was the third first-person shooter I owned back when it came out in 2003. The game was a big shift from previous FPS games in that you fought alongside other soldiers instead of being a lone wolf the entire time. The Russian campaign was particularly exciting as the developers didn't seem to care if dozens of them were slaughtered next to you. The first portion was based off the film Enemy At the Gates-crossing the river into Stalingrad while boats were being sunk and strafed by the German Luftwaffe all around you. Then you were issued five rounds for a rifle that you were supposed to take off one of your comrades after they were slaughtered by entrenched German MG-42s.


At least you finally got a weapon by the second level.

Anyway, it was an exciting game and I didn't resent a restriction in the series that continues to this day-you can only carry two weapons at a time.

Medal of Honor: Allied Assault was the second FPS I owned back in 2001 and part of its appeal was that you could switch between sub-machine guns, shotguns, sniper rifles, the BAR, and the rest of the World War II arsenal. The campaign wasn't quite as exciting, but it was fun to be able to switch weapons based on the circumstances. You could grab a sniper rifle for some situations, whip out a shotgun if you had to enter a house, or pull out whatever you wanted for when you had to hide from the MG-42s in Normandy.


Obligatory D-Day level. It's mandated to be in every WWII game.

Multiplayer for Allied Assault was similarly varied. You could pick whatever weapon you wanted and keep picking them up off the corpses of your enemies until you died.


You could also choose to play as a mad scientist, among other ridiculous costume choices.

Unfortunately, most games chose to follow Call of Duty's example in order to be more "realistic" instead of opting for the fun of being able to carry around a backpack full of assorted weapons. I can understand why restrictions exist in multiplayer, as it may affect game balance if one player is able to have every weapon at once. But why does this limitation exist in the single player game? Part of the fun is switching between different weapons.

This was particularly infuriating in the British campaign in Call of Duty 2. The first problem was that instead of giving you a Sten SMG or a Bren LMG, the unique British weapons, you were given the same Thompson that you were issued for all of the American missions.


Get used to looking at this for 75% of Call of Duty 2's single player campaign.

The second problem that occurred in both the first and second Call of Duty games was that it was easy to run out of ammunition for your starting weapons. This meant that you could either try and get through the game by using melee attacks or you had to pick up the German weapons. The first option is ridiculous and the latter option means that you're stuck using nothing but the MP40 and Kar-98K rifle for the entire goddamn game whether you're playing as Russia, America, or Britain. This was a significant factor behind why I never finished Call of Duty 2's campaign.

In 2007, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare came out. Surely the huge variety of weapons in the game means that the campaign will be diverse now, right? After all, you have American weapons, European weapons, Soviet bloc weapons, surely they'll let you use all of that? Well, no. You're still limited to just two guns. Usually you get issued an American weapon with more attachments than you're allowed to use in multiplayer and a pistol or SMG as your second weapon.


If you want to pick a gun up off the enemy, it's just a question of which AK-47 variant you want to use.

Although the graphical improvements were enough to get me to the end of Modern Warfare, along with the one really fun level in Pripyat where you got to sneak around in a ghillie suit, it's not a game that's worth playing twice because of the weapon limitation. Even worse, there are some parts of the game where you have to pick up a Javelin or other anti-tank or anti-aircraft weapon. This necessitates swapping one of your two weapons with the missile launcher. I always end up accidentally swapping the weapon I want to keep so I have to stand there for ten seconds or so until I can get to the right gun. This will end with me getting killed because they never place them behind cover; they're always set out where all the enemies are shooting.


Fortunately it locks on automatically so I don't have to figure out how to use that complicated sight.

Even games that shouldn't have to worry about seeming realistic have decided to limit the player to two guns. Army of Two, for instance, limits the player to either two or three weapons, (I forget which). This is despite the fact that they could easily haul around a few more if they just ditched some of their extraneous body armor.


Or if they put a backpack on...

Duke Nukem Forever, which tries to poke fun at current games, decides to follow the same convention for some bizarre reason. I've never actually played any games in the series, but I thought that part of its appeal was that it was just trying to be fun with no pretensions of seriousness. Why would you limit Duke's arsenal?


I guess the advertisements for previous games in the series were prophetic.

Why is this Problematic?
Let's go back to the first FPS I owned, Chex Quest. This was easily the best prize to come with a box of cereal ever. It was a modified version of Doom where you zorch green Flemoids with a wide variety of weapons.

You could:

Shoot them at long range with the Zorch Propulsor, although this risked causing damage to you if you were too close.


Wade into melee with the Super Bootspork!


Use the Rapid Zorcher for intense firefights.

All these different weapons led to a lot of strategy. If ammo for a staple weapon like the Rapid Zorcher was running low, you could use the Super Bootspork to save a few rounds. It also allows for more specialization of weapons, with some being useful for long range, some for short range, and some that you should only use against large groups or in desperate situations, like the Zorch Propulsor that also hurts you a significant amount. In comparison, if you only have two weapons the game can't fairly limit your ammunition supply as you don't have a lot of backup choices.

Bioshock was another game that gained a lot from allowing the player to hold an entire arsenal in their inventory. In addition to different guns you could also use different types of ammunition, each of which makes the weapon more effective against different enemies.


For example, antipersonnel rounds are great for blowing holes in splicers.

Max Payne also had a lot of different weapons to pick from, ranging from handguns to assault rifles. In many cases, this would require the player to decide whether they should stick to handguns and shotguns for single encounters early on to save more powerful ammunition for larger fights later in the level.


Fortunately the game was also much better than the movie.

Conclusion
I don't care if it's not realistic for the main character to have two handguns, three assault rifles, two sub-machine guns, a sniper rifle, and four different kinds of grenades. It's fun and that's what games are supposed to be about.


Max Payne doesn't like it when his weapon choices are restricted.

Designing Choices in Games

Most recently released role-playing games have added moral choices or dilemmas as a core part of game-play. Unfortunately, few of these games succeed in making them interesting. They only offer "good" or "evil" options, which limit the player to being an angelic fairy of holiness or a complete jerk.


Choices need more depth than this

In order to make these choices actually elicit thought on the part of the player there are some basic requirements.

1. Make every choice viable to complete the game.
In some games you can make choices that make it almost impossible to finish the game. In Baldur's Gate, for example, the game has a reputation system which goes from 1 (extremely evil) to 20 (Heroic and noble). Unfortunately, only the heroic and noble option is viable to complete the game. If you are good, merchants will give you a steep discount on items and most people will react favorably to you. If you choose to make an evil party and your reputation drops below a certain point your game becomes a living hell. You will be attacked by the guards in every town, merchants will refuse to sell you items, and as you travel you will be ambushed by large war parties from the major cities.


The game is rather difficult to beat when a giant army of mercenaries attacks everywhere you go

It may be realistic that the major towns have a bounty on your head when you're evil, but from a game play context it's a nightmare. If you give the option to play as an evil character it needs to be a viable choice.

As an additional problem, every other character in the game who joins your adventuring party has their own alignment of good, neutral, or evil. Good and neutral characters will leave your party if you become too evil, evil characters will leave your party if you become too good. This means that if you use these characters in your group you have limitations to the choices you can make-otherwise you'll lose half of your strength and be unable to finish the game without a tedious trek around the world to find some more people of like-minded beliefs to join you.

2. Don't make one path grant benefits that are much better than the rest.
The worst route you can take for making a moral choice system is to offer unequal rewards. Players will almost always seek to take whatever route offers the best items, the most money, and the most experience. If you have a quest with one choice that gives the player a couple healing potions and one that gives the player a tremendously powerful weapon, why on earth would anyone pick the one that offers healing potions?


No offense meant healing potions, but you're just not as fun as a new sword

In the Baldur's Gate games, persuading an enemy not to fight or letting them go is almost always the worst possible choice. You don't usually get any experience points for releasing them and you also miss out on all the items and gold they might be carrying.

This isn't to say that you can't offer different rewards for different options, but they need to be properly balanced. Otherwise players aren't going to think about what choice is the best morally or pragmatically, they will think about what choice gives them the best loot.


Hmm I don't know if I want to kill hi-wait I get a TANK if I kill him? When and where do you want him dead?

3. Don't make good and evil moral compasses for players.
This is more of a personal preference of mine than anything else, but I despise games that choose to give you a good/evil compass. Many recent games use this device, such as Infamous and Prototype.


At least the cover of the game makes being evil look viable

The problem I have with these moral compasses is that they are again placing an artificial device in the way that will take precedence over your actual beliefs when it comes to making choices. To get the best armor/weapons/ending to the game you are required to play as a complete evil bastard or complete good hearted soul. If you pick a choice in between the two, a pragmatic option, you don't get the best toys to play with.

On the other hand, I can also see why a lot games choose this type of system. It makes it easy to design all of the choices-you just make an evil and a good option. If you add additional options, it adds a great deal of development time and expense to the game. If you have different endings to the game based off your choices throughout, it's also a lot easier to just have two or three to worry about as opposed to a dozen or more.

However, if you must use some sort of numeric value to rate the player's choices throughout the game, it is better to make it based off something other than good and evil. Two games I can think of that do this well are Mass Effect and Arcanum.

In Mass Effect you can make Paragon actions, which tend to be forgiving and generous to others, and Renegade actions, which tend to be pragmatic. You are allowed to make either paragon or renegade choices in some situations based off your level in that side. For instance, a paragon choice might be to let someone who tried to rob you go after you beat him up with a stern warning to turn his life around. A renegade option might be to throw him out of the window of a skyscraper.


The renegade/paragon scale of Mass Effect

The best part of this system is that you aren't limited to only one side or the other, you can choose to make paragon or renegade decisions whenever you like. The only disadvantage to not going fully down one track is that there are a few persuasive choices that you need extremely high renegade or paragon scores in order to accomplish. However, if your score isn't high enough to make them it doesn't ruin your game. Thus, you feel free to pick whatever option seems best to you.

Arcanum is a steampunk RPG where magic and technology exist in the same world. You can choose to have a character who uses swords, armor, and magic or a character who uses molotov cocktails, grenades, pistols, and shotguns. Or you can pick a character in the middle who uses elements of both.


Unfortunately the game is also so old that including any screenshots would be a bad idea

However, the game features a compass between magic and technology-as you choose abilities that let you use magic the compass tilts toward magic, as you choose technological abilities it tilts toward technology. Highly technological characters cannot use or be affected by magic as well, so if you try and use a healing spell on your character it will not be as effective. A highly magical character cannot use firearms or explosives effectively. If you pick a character in the middle, they can use items from both sides, but not to their maximum effect. This makes choosing abilities when you gain levels extremely interesting-there are many variables to consider, making it take a great deal of thought.

4. Make major choices have effects later in the game.
If you want players to care about each decision, it's good to make big decisions have a lasting effect on the game. That doesn't mean that picking between some money and a healing potion needs to change the ending of the game, but some certainly should have significance.


I told you we should have taken the healing potion!

Let me conclude with a few examples of well designed choices. In one of the downloadable modules for the first Mass Effect, a group of terrorists has taken over a mining facility on a large asteroid and have aimed it at the planet below where millions of people live. The terrorist's leader has locked up a group of the miners and scientists in a room with a bomb rigged to go off. He makes an ultimatum-let him go or he will detonate the bomb and kill all of the hostages. You can choose to release him and potentially allow him to make a similar attack again or you can go after him and all the hostages will die. You suffer no changes in loot or experience for picking either route-it's all up to you.


Although the hideous nature of Batarians does tend to bias me toward killing him

Another example-you are sent to kill the leader of a nation or city because he has been imprisoning a specific group of the population. However, when you go after him he explains the reasons behind his actions. Perhaps that group was responsible for terrorist attacks against the population and he's trying the best he can to protect his people. The leader isn't a caricature of evil, as most games make the bad guy, he's a realistic, human figure. What choice do you make now? Should you kill him? Let him stay in power? Take him prisoner?


A decision becomes much more challenging to make when it's about someone whose awkward situation you can understand

Even better, make the choice be about a character you've known throughout the whole game and grown to like. One of the members of your party was hit by a corrupting spell by an enemy sorcerer that causes him to go into a berserk rage every few days. The first time this happens he kills a few innocent civilians before you can restrain him and it wears off. Do put him in restrains and try and find someone to dispel the curse? Do you kill him outright for killing civilians? Do you keep him with you but restrain him before he's going to go berserk because you like the guy and couldn't bear losing him?

I want to see more games that offer complex choices like this, not simple ones that are biased by rewards or other ancillary factors of the game. Difficult options force me to think and care about the world that was created and will keep me coming back for the next expansion or sequel in the series.