Locked door, I hate you.
I hate the way you are resistant to knives, to guns, to sledgehammers, to rocket-propelled grenades, to weapons that rewrite the very laws of physics, to dark unearthly magic, to punches that can knock a man’s head clean off.
I hate the way I could kick or smash you down in real life, with this puny human body of mine. But I cannot in the grand, escapist fantasy of a videogame.
I hate the way you are so often an easy shortcut for developers unable or unwilling to devise more satisfying obstacles and challenges.
I hate the way you so often lead to nowhere, how you are nothing more than decoration for a wall.
I hate the way I’m expected to give up trying to open you when I see the words “this door has been locked from the other side” or “this door opens elsewhere”, as though they’re a command from God himself.
I hate the way you always make that click-click, or clunk or uh-uh noise when I try to open you: the very sound of failure.
I hate the way your key or switch is always so far away.
I hate the way the fate of the world so often hinges upon opening you.
I hate the way the letter ‘E’ has worn off my keyboard because I’ve tried to open you so many times, in so many games.
I hate the way you’ve added hundreds, perhaps thousands of unnecessary extra hours to my lifetime of gaming.
I hate the way you’ve annoyed me so much that I’ve just written 200 words whining pathetically about you.
If you didn’t exist, locked door, videogames as we know them would be radically different.
Locked door, I hate you.
Related Stories:
“I hate the way you always make that click-click, or clunk or uh-uh noise when I try to open you: the very sound of failure.”
I needed to think a little extra about the uh-uh sound, but when I got it I really understood what you meant with the sound of failure.
BREACH, BANG AND CLEAR! Take that, you dirty wooden bastard.
I replayed Max Payne recently. It featured a whole corridor of locked doors that I spent 5 minutes wondering around before I realised I’m supposed to jump out the window.
I bet you couldn’t kick a locked door down, Alec!
(I nearly posted that without the comma then realised it could have an entirely different and strange meaning).
This subject always reminds me of this one episode of Murder She Wrote.
Angela Lansbury was hired as a consultant for a new virtual reality video game (it’s the 90s, yo!) and she chided the developers for lining a hallway with useless locked doors.
“People will always assume that locked doors lead to something special. You can’t just fill your world with locked doors and then not put anything behind them!”
Modern developers should heed Angela Lansbury’s advice.
Well said, you made my day!
One of my favorite moments of “Yay, game design!” was in the first Call of Duty, when you walk up to the very first door and a message pops up saying something to the effect of: “You cannot open this door. You will not have to open any doors in this game, ever.”
As much as I love old-school keycard quests and level design puzzles, I also love it when a game know what it is, and doesn’t follow the usual game design path. Call of Duty was a extremely tightly-scripted, linear Nazi-shooting game; if trying to figure out which door leads you to the next set piece does not fit into that game design, then screw it: no door opening! More Nazi-shooting!
Locked doors have a place. Doors that are not only locked but completely unopenable I have no qualm with, doors that you should be able to open in the progression of the story but can’t for no particular reason I hate. When I run up to a door and think “Finally, the boss battle” only to be rewarded with something unimaginative like a ‘locked door’ message I get a tad irritated. If (lets take HL2 for an example) the level designer has actively given me a reason to not want to go through a door, EG Immediate doom on the recieving end of a stunstick, I don’t mind so much. Oh, and if someone knocks the handle off a door that immediately screams to me that it’s a detail and not meant for story progression, which I also quite like. Lets me immediately disregard that particular door as a source of amusement.
In max payne the locked doors were plenty and horrible, then again they could also be seen as a symbol of how he had no choice but to solider on and other emo stuff
The battle between realism and gameplay emerges again. Should developers stop making games in settings where many doors are present simply so that they won’t have to make many of them locked?
Aaaaw.
Group hug everyone <3
This story/poem/song is full of win.
Max says:
The battle between realism and gameplay emerges again. Should developers stop making games in settings where many doors are present simply so that they won’t have to make many of them locked?
It’s not about realism, or not only. It’s also about lazy game design. There are more credible *and* more interesting ways of doing this. But they require more thought and creativity.
I’m trying to think if there is a door in FO3 that won’t open without just cause.. anyone know of one?
I stand and ponder.
Is this real? I grasp the knob.
It won’t turn. Again!
Look what you’ve done Alec… Look at what you’ve DONE!
EDIT: I choose to edit because I can, and for no other reason.
I hate stupid little fences
The best thing about Beyond Good & Evil is, that you can open every door in that game. Even those that look like you can’t.
Don’t let Alec anywhere near Silent Hill:Homecoming:
http://www.gamesradar.com/f/the-133-locked-doors-of-silent-hill-homecoming/a-20081009104956726084
I’m sorry I ate the plums, locked door, etc. etc.
Marvellous. Simply marvellous.
I think a lot of you are missing the point. Many of the locked doors that piss me off are actually part of the game, but they do not make any sense. When I read this post I immediately thought of my Oblivion character who has a 100 security and destruction rating, as well as 100 strength. Sometimes you run into doors that say, this door requires a key to open. How is it possible that this door, unike the several thousand other locked doors that I have unlocked using nocturnal’s skeleton key or an alteration spell, HAS to have a key to open it? That is the type of locked door I hate, and I think those are the ones the author was talking about.
I finally finished Portal last night and by the end I could tell which doors were real because they had a handle on, whereas the ones that are just painted on the wall don’t. Nice little touch, not sure if that’s a hard and fast rule throughout the game though (handle=door, no handle=not door).
Actually, in Max Payne (1) they had a really funny moment, where you E’d on one of those locked doors, giving you the standard click-cluck sound, only for the wall surrounding it to fall into the next corridor by itself a few seconds later, leaving a locked door standing in an open space…
Also: “I just locked an open door. Strange. Yet, symbolically compelling.” (5 points for those who recognize game this is from)
Oh, I know that feeling very well :)
However, video games have limitations and have to force the player into the plot somehow. Even Neverwinter Nights 2 type of games where you can unlock most doors with your spells or skill, has some “plot doors” which are only unlockable via keys or plot events. I don’t think there exists a better way to do that yet…
MANNY!
The locked door has a positive counterpart: The misteriously convenient ramp (wich can be formed out of almost anything) that leads to a window or platform. Or perheaps the ventilation shaft (there is almost always one).
@Jeremy: If you include urban D.C., FO3 sports way too many inexplicably locked doors to count – or it’s like reckoning sand, at least. Some are obviously ruined and convincingly non-functional, but many are not. What’s irritating, of course, is that a few of them can be opened and lead to nondescript shops, while other, apparently identical doors remain forever beyond approach.
This key is no longer needed. Discard it? Yes/No
Resident Evil 1 is terribly guilty of locked door syndrome, but how can you not love a game that makes you go through 4 crests, 2 emblems, and a square crank to fight a giant, [wo]man-swatting plant?
There is a reason why I ALWAYS get lock picking in a rpg, and disarm trap to when playing a D&D game.
I like to explore and loot things, I hate it when something blocks my way.. but then a lock pick saves the day! yay!
Locked door is a dick, but he’s nothing on foot-high wall.
I hate all the locked doors that you can open with a pick, but there are no keys for them anywhere. That’s what I hate.
….what’s this? EDIT BUTTON?! How long has this been here?
lol at your binds. real men use yuhjklbn and kick doors.
@Jazmeister:
But every time I’ve been round your house I’ve never found your front door key lying conveniently in a nearby flower pot. My lockpick set, however, never fails.
Having read through all those comments there is only one thing to say… you all rock! :)
Amen, brutha!
In our upcoming game Steam City Chronicles (http://www.mission9games.com), there are a lot of locked doors. But every one of them is openable and often the solution is nearby. Also, they’re all thick metal doors which is why explosives won’t work.
Maybe the locked door is so burned into my psyche that I don’t even remember when I encounter them.
I don’t really notice locked doors either, that’s only when they are designed to all look the same so you know when you come across one though. And this I don’t mind, it’s the beautiful enticing locked doors that wind me up.
An open mind is like an open fortress with its gates unbarred and unguarded.
I’m playing through Gothic 3 at the moment, to see how much the patches have fixed. And this just made me realise that the game has no doors, locked or otherwise. Everything is open and inviting! Aww.
I believe the op is talking about locked doors that never open and never lead any where along with locked doors that require you to go on some fiasco to find the way to open it. Obviously he’s never played Myst (Thank God for him) Because he’s still alive and with us instead of dead from self inflicted door wounds.
If you ever played D&D there are a lot of doors in dungeons ect and they can all be opened unless your DM is a lazy lazy person. Why can this not be the same for video games?
I can understand locking doors and then having you go get a key some how or a way to open it, but there should be more than one way to open the door in this case. Say if you have a welding torch you could just melt the hinges off and the door falls over, or if it’s wood you just kick it in, along with the moral results of what you’ve done. Maybe the person behind the door or the owner of the door doesn’t care for you destroying it ? :P
Maybe you can’t kick in the door becuse you’re to weak, that is interesting. But being a giant guy you should be able to kick in most doors unless their frame is metal and so are they.
Fallout 3 has more fake/unopenable doors then it has REAL usable doors! Also I find it strange that some computers are locked. You need a certain skill to hack them . . .but then it has YOU hack it yourself in some stupid mini-game. If you are going to hack it any way why do you need a certain level of skill O.o Either it should do it by itself based on skill or it should let you do it regardless of skill if you are determined enough to work out the password.
There is a small gif with a guy trying to open a locked door with everything he has, I think that would go well with this topic :)
…But mostly I hate the way I don’t hate you. Not even close, not even a little bit, not even at all.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E3G_OAKMfSc
There’s a robot on the other side of that door who loves you.
*shakes his fist*
Jeremy: MS Paint Adventures is already the greatest roomisode ever told.
Ah locked doors. I am a level designer, and here are the rules I live by:
1. Avoid doors that are just there to make the wall make sense. Imply that they’re on another wall somewhere, perhaps.
2. Wall-prettifying doors that ARE visible must be made obviously non-interesting. Have them boarded up with corrugated iron, or have a metal grate over them, or behind a burnt out car or anything!
3. IMPORTANT doors should be obvious and tempting. They should be the eyecatchingly lit door at the end of the gently curved alleyway with the creaking sign above it, and the sparking neon light reflecting in the puddles beneath. Hang a lantern on it.
4. Most importantly, if you have fake doors in your game, make them really obviously consistantly different from REAL doors, and teach the player the difference in the first few moments of the game and NEVER EVER break that rule.
Games are all about a limited, simplified version of reality and every single game has you learn its rules. Crates can be smashed. Walls cannot be jumped. Massive festering bleeding wounds can be healed with a herb in a plant pot. As long as you make internal sense, then the player will generally accept it (and get on to more important things like winning). If you break your own rules, or confuse the player, they’ll hate you for it, and write poems about you on their blogs. :)
My favorite Locked Door is from Shenmue for Dreamcast, where your venture into someone’s garden is completely cut off by a child’s tricycle.
Oh man, I’m the first to post this?
http://www.hlcomic.com/index.php?date=2006-07-17
Locked doors are a neccesary evil, what I hate FAR more, is openable doors (usually that NEED to be open to progress) that look the same as the generic “locked door”. The amount of games I’ve played when I’ve run down a hall pressing use on every door for half an hour till one door, identical to the next flies open.