![]() Maybe there are significant new side quests, like the retired Knight who just happens to have a nice sword. Maybe there are powerful new monsters in the area, and maybe the more peculiar Shops might have rare items (Chrono Trigger did this with a shop in 12,000 BC that gets new items periodically). Lots of little touches (the couple who was in love are now married, or have eloped - and can you help their mother by bringing them a Hope Chest?) can make the backtracked area feel fresh and new. If I make a game which requires backtracking, I agree that it's really important to give the player some significant reason besides just the storyline to do so.ĭone well, you can really flesh out the backtracked area - NPCs might have changed, in some cases, dramatically. It's tricky, but I think in giving the player options and new things to explore and think about helps a bit. However, I don't think that will hold everyone's interest in my game, and I continue to look for ways to make backtracking as interesting and fun as it was the first time you were in the area exploring. The new Quests would even offer stronger monsters in some areas to engage players looking for something new when they backtrack. Sure, most of the monsters haven't changed, but if you're engaged in the story, it might be worth exploring all the old haunts again with the new characters to see what's hidden or what you might learn. I've made some of the areas respond differently to the characters in your party. I've somewhat mitigated this by having closed off areas, events, and sometimes quests until much later. Once you reach a certain point, there's not a whole lot to bring you back to the previous areas. It's one of the things I'm struggling with a little bit in my own game. Personally, I enjoy backtracking when it feels new or feels useful. There also aren't very many areas to explore when you come back. There's no reason to come back in most of those games to find out if the mons on the route changed (free tip, they usually don't). Pokémon works in such a way that most people serious about collecting all the mons just pick them up the first time. It doesn't engage your mind at all or the gamer's drive to accomplish things. You'll quickly explore those areas to obtain the near worthless items and be on your business. Or, maybe there were a few small areas you didn't have access to. In these cases, you come back just because the game demands you do. You're often forced to come back to previous areas because of the storyline. Pokémon doesn't offer any reason to backtrack, but some of its story elements force you to do so. They also know that many of the "expansions" that they're backtracking for involve some kind of puzzle that uses the equipment they've obtained up to that point as well as their own brains to collect the Expansion. Completionists will seek these items out during their backtracking because they want them all. It's backtracking in ways that gives the player more to work with, larger buffers, and generally more awesomeness. It isn't backtracking to pick up new items. As in, you're just increasing how much health you have, how many missiles you have, how many power bombs, and whatever else. A rather large chunk of the "backtracking" in the game is picking up expansions to your already existing arsenal. We're going to use Metroid as an example here. You also want to make some of the backtracking "optional". They're going to get access to new areas. ![]() The thing you want to remember about backtracking is that you want players to do it because they're going to get to explore new things. Games like Metroid do backtracking really well (for the most part) while games like Pokémon don't do it so well. ![]()
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