Philips Magnavox Videogames and the Entertainment Revolution Trigger Happy - Manual (Page 370)

Trigger Happy
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Such videogames at the moment, however, fall
squarely into the high-velocity driving genre, and for a
good reason. Because games as yet have only made a
few faltering steps toward a necessary goal of the
future: the fully interactive environment. If you were
walking a character around that virtual Shibuya, it
would soon become apparent that all the complex parts
of a building—shop doors, drainpipes, windows—are
not real objects modeled by the program. They have no
symbolic function: they are simply pictures thrown on
to a flat surface. You could not go into a shop or shin
up the drainpipe.
Providing a fully functional rendering of such a
hugely complex environment as a real city is still
beyond current videogame abilities. Even at its
blisteringly high speed, Metropolis Street Racer cannot
give the player total freedom to drive around: there is a
set circuit, with many streets cordoned off by invisible
barriers. But it will happen eventually, even in complex
exploration games. The problem as things stand is that
certain arbitrary simplifications have to be made. All
right, say in the London levels of Tomb Raider III, you
can open that door but this other door’s just a dummy,
just painted on for atmosphere. But that’s our old
enemy, functional incoherence. Anything