The passing of time

[elmuerte]

Properly showing the passing of time is, apparently, a difficult thing to do. For example when I watched the LOTR movies I didn't get the feeling that their journey took a bunch of years. but... games...

A lot of games don't contain much indication of time, except for the passing of days. But it does not happen often that the story gives an indication that days, months or even years have passed since the beginning of the game. I know of a few games that fail in making clear that a lot of time has passed.

Fable. Ignoring the first part where you are a child and then you are instantly a grown man. That part was made quite clear. But from the start of being a grown man to the end of the game, quite some years pass. But that's not clear at all, or at least, not to me. Only after taking off my armor I noticed my character aged a lot. Usually I switched armor without taking it off first. At some point my characters had greyish hair. And then it struck me that years have gone by, instead of a few weeks.

Fahrenheit. This game also contains a major distortion in time. At some point in the game a few years pass instantly. It is made clear during a conversation with a character you spoke to like 10 minutes ago (real world time).

Currently I'm playing Rise of the Argonauts. And it also fails miserably in indicating the passing of time. Traveling by boat takes a lot of time. And in the original story of Jason and the Argonauts it's know that the whole voyage took quite some years. This is also hinted early in the game (that the voyage will take quite some time). But in the game when you travel from island to island, it is just a loading screen. and during the normal character conversations it all seems like they only have met yesterday. Instead of being bunked onto a ship for 30 days. I was only reminded that it was quite some time ago that the voyage started during a small conversation with Hercules (who was with me from the start).

In most games the whole story takes place in a more or less linear time span, without major holes. So in that case you wouldn't notice the passing of time much (or at all).

But I can't recall any game that properly indicated how fast the time was passing, or how much time passed since a certain point without getting the feeling it sneaked up to you. Of course the boy -> man transformations are used often and clearly visible, but after that...

[ikopi]

Fahrenheit indeed immediately comes to mind.

The only other game I can think of is Mafia, and then more especially the ending, which did it beautifully.

Don't forget Ocarina of Time ;-)

[toblix]

There was this game... Grim something.

[DanJW]

What? A bunch of years passed in Fahrenheit? I'm pretty sure it was only a few weeks or months:

If you mean between Lucas' death and his return.

Not that it means it didn't fail to convey that.

I've always found the Metal Gear Solid games to be pretty good in giving me a clear sense of time and events. It's a bit like the TV series 24, in that time is critical and so every hour and day is counted.

I think RPGs do suffer especially from the weakness you describe. Probably because the nature of the events, travel and character progression would logically take much longer than they appear to in game-time.

[Roderick]

Has anyone ever heard of this game by Lucasarts called Grim Fandango? It came out in 1998.

[brkl]

Toblix has.

I like how the Gabriel Knight games worked.

[Erkki]

Also, The Last Express

[n0wak]

Yeah, the Last Express is a good one because the whole point of the game is that it takes place in real time with a fixed deadline. Majora's Mask does similar stuff.

Representing long passages of time in games is always awkward because, often, it is tied to narrative elements and/or scripted moments. If a game lets you explore outside of those it kind of falls to pieces. Like, say, in GTA. You can do one mission, then dick around for days (watch a full day/night cycle pass thrice, without eating or sleeping) and then do another mission that kind of exists outside of the continuum. Everything is urgent only when you're doing it, otherwise it can wait.

It comes with the territory, I guess. Dead Space tried to do a real-time mission structure on top of a generally free form game, and it got a lot of flak for it. Personally, I really appreciated what it was trying to do and understand the reasoning for its save system, but it became obvious that a lot of people don't have patience for that kind of structure. It's always easier to play on your own terms rather than being forced to keep a schedule over a game, unless the game is very generous and loose about it (Animal Crossing.)

So, yes, games in which time exists in a meaningful manner:

The Last Express

Dead Space

Majora's Mask

Animal Crossing and sequels

[Chris]

Far Cry 2 doesn't do much to keep track of the passage of weeks and months, but I really love how much the passage of time within a given day affects your experience. It's a great day/night cycle.

[Karimi]

I hate to say it , but the original Pokemon games did a decent job of it. The creatures you could catch at night were different from those you caught in the day.

Planescape I think did a good job of giving you a sense of time as a context in which your story was set. There was this sense that a LOT of stuff happened to the Nameless one before "your" story began. The mystery element of the game and unearthing your own history was brilliant imo.

Fallout 1 used the whole "time is running out" mechanic, where if you didn't find that water chip or the mutants the game ended.

[ikopi]

The Fallout time limit was thankfully only a gimmick, as you could buy all the time you want.

Another example I just remembered was Driver: Parallel Lines. Not a good game, but in this sandbox game, the first half of the game takes place in the seventies, and the second half in the modern era. Every building is still there, but with a modern jacket, really cool to see.

[toblix]

The Fallout time limit was thankfully only a gimmick, as you could buy all the time you want.

What? I seem to remember it was a definite limit that they removed in a patch.

[miffy495]

It comes with the territory, I guess. Dead Space tried to do a real-time mission structure on top of a generally free form game, and it got a lot of flak for it. Personally, I really appreciated what it was trying to do and understand the reasoning for its save system, but it became obvious that a lot of people don't have patience for that kind of structure. It's always easier to play on your own terms rather than being forced to keep a schedule over a game, unless the game is very generous and loose about it (Animal Crossing.

Do you mean Dead Rising? I didn't catch much of that at all in the time I spent with Dead Space. I may need to pump more into it if that's the case, as I like it when a game does something like that.

[n0wak]

Yeah, sorry, Dead Rising.