thegamedesignoer-blog

[thegamedesignoer-blog]

Premise

Almost every Title in 2018/19′s Release Window has some kind of Inventory System. Some more prominently defined and displayed as such, others less. In this article, I will delve deep into Inventory Systems and how much Inventory Management is too much!

Video Games offer a lot of content to interact with - Weapons, Ammunition, Armor, Consumables, Quest Items and much more. And why would you not want to pick them all up and store them inside of your inventory? Nobody will hunt you down for it! The only really limiting factor in some games is the apparent carry capacity. If you stuff your inventory too full, you have to drop some things or otherwise you will move slower - resulting in a less fun player experience.

Although all of these Inventory Systems generally fullfill the same function (store stuff which the player can then use, drop, sell, trade), there are certain ones which stand out due to good or bad represenation of features - so lets look at some examples I found during the many games I played!

Good Examples

Honestly, I never had a chat with someone about a game they played recently and heard them say: "Wow, did you notice how good the inventory was?". And it's true - if something works extraordinarilly well, you will probably not notice it at all. If a Menu is easy to navigate, it feels like a natural movement and not like a burden. So it only makes sense that you don't notice them a whole lot. But I do noticed this: some Games have superb categorisation of Sub-Groups of Items, have a great representation of their items or have an excellent layout.

The first Inventory System I want to look at is the one of Resident Evil.

It does something which I call “Realism without Weight” or “Inventory Tetris”. The inventory puts an emphasis on space - ammunition and meds only fill a small portion of the space, but weapons fill a lot of space, simulating an emphasis on their weight and sice and importance for the game. If you want to blast zombies with a big shotgun, you will need to sacrifice precious space for it. If you want to leav some space empty for emergencies, you will need to stick with pistols, which again results in less fire-power.

To symbolise how much space actual weapons and their ammunition take of the inventory, I made a quick representaion of it - red and orange being weapons and ammunition:

I did the maths and found out that weapons and their ammunition take around 59.16% of the entire inventory space - this prooves that the focus of this System is to really show how much weapons are worth in this game!

The next example I have is what I call a “Passive Inventory”. These are types of inventories which do not require active management by the player (meaning the player does not have to clean up the inventory, nor rearrange to make fit for more). And I picked out a classic for it:

Doom’s Passive Inventory is something you generally do not feel. However when you first start the game, the inventory only has one out of 10 slots filled - with the pistol. Theonly real representation for this is the “Arms” section in the Bottom Bar which lights up the filled slots. Only after progressing through the game, these slots fill with other weapons, such as the Shotgun or the BFG.

However, Doom has another Passive Inventory which does not allow for Active Modification by the Player - the Ammunition. The Player cannot (or rather: does not need to) clean it up because he carries too much. The Ammunition depletes when firing and stacks up again when walking over ammunition-crates.

This is not only simple in its Design, but it is genious because the player gets a feeling of being rewarded with cool stuff without needing to manually rearrange things or even open another screen saying “Inventory”!

The last positive Inventory System I will take a look at in this article is the one from Skyrim (and somehow also Fallout 4 since they are almost the exact same):

I love this Inventory System for its Categorisation, however I despise it for its Carry Weight-System!

Things are neatly ordered by categories: Weapons, Apparel, Potions, Scrolls, Food, etc. and it even features a function to show all items in your Inventory and has another section for your Favorites: enabling you to switch kits on the fly without having to scroll through endless lists of items mid-fight.

And what is so great about this Inventory System is that data-wise, it is a logistic nightmare! So much stuff to keep track of, but the player does not have to see any of this chaos whatsoever, but got it all neatly ordered in categories!

Bad Examples

It is hard to really point out Inventory Systems which are badly designed and not drift into them being bad because of awful UI (ask me about bad UI and I can give you multiple pages of examples!). But I still managed to find my favorite example!

This is what I call a “Logistics Nightmare”. Too much stuff without any categorisation whatsoever, resulting in this:

Do you find this fun to look at? Maybe you do if you are a Hardcore-RPG-Fan, but the first time I touched World of Warcraft, this exact thing frightened me and got me to uninstall the game again after a week, I am serious!

In this Inventory System, you have no categorisation of items, no emphasis on size/weight whatsoever, letting you think you have Hermiones Magic Fannypack or something like that! World of Warcraft just lets you collect EVERYTHING you can find in the world, as long as you have a spare slot left. No rules on size of objects, no rule on weight of objects. A blade which can slay Undead Demons is put to the same size, weight and importance as a keg of beer.

Conclusion

To conclude this article and maybe give you a tip along the way if you want to design an Inventory System yourself:

Keep it simple! It is hard to imagine your Player Character carrying 50 swords, 25 sets of armor and a stack of food which could feed an entire family for a week.

So, just keep in mind what the most important thing of your game is: is it weapons? food? quest items? Don’t make the player search for the desired item for minutes if you can also make the inventory a whole lot more comfortable and accessible!