Video Game Inventory Systems

Whaddya buyin

8 Likes

Dont really care how it’s organised but any attempts to limit how much you can carry or weapons that degrade can get bent.

I like ones like the one in DD because they force you to consider what’s really important to you without absolutely drowning you in it (although that example is ridiculously punitive, particularly since they released districts, so I’ve modded the amount of heirlooms you can stack. Sue me)

Think inventory systems crucially become shit when you can carry/have to carry so much stuff around with you it all fades into irrelevance and annoyance you’re constantly having to rifle through, at which point it would be better to shunt it into a separate crafting system or some such.

Quite like the jigsaw-type one in the recent Deus Ex games, thinking about it. Small enough for you to think about it, big enough for it not to be really annoying, and you can spend upgrade points on it if it’s something that bothers you.

Witcher 3 was alright. Had to do v little cocking about with that. Once you had the upgrades it was big enough to carry what you needed plus as many broken rakes and candelabras as you liked (if that’s the sort of thing you like)

WHAT?!

i’ve finished resi 4 like, i dunno, 30 times or some shit. the inventory gives me the horn

2 Likes

Depends very much on the game.

RE4’s system is on the face of it a dreadful faff, but the fact that you have to keep choosing what to throw away, whether it’s worth buying that rifle early on if you have to get rid of a whole load of ammo and generally making the best of what space you have I think works pretty well in that particular game. In something like Half Life (my reference points for First Person Shooters are pretty antiquated!) it’d kill the flow of the game though.

This is key too. If you’re going to give me 200 different items, most of which have one very specific purpose, then don’t show me all of them all of the time, or make me scroll past 50 types of flower to get to the thing that I want to use every couple of minutes.

2 Likes

big fan of stuff like ultima VII.

Love it when bags/containers have their own separate window/space with stuff inside, really satisfying in a nerdy way.

2 Likes