ok general question: how do people feel about searching walls for secrets, a la the bomb / missile blocks in metroid or the bombable walls in zelda? i'm doing some thinking about how that affects optimum play and whether it's actually desirable or not.
while individual secrets like this, particularly those which tell a story or have clever visual clues, can be very interesting, i'm interested in the way this affects player behavior.
in super metroid, for instance, a lot of players end up wandering around and shooting (or later scanning) every single wall, which is less interesting and more like a chore. and in a way, even the most cleverly designed super metroid trick wall secrets are perpetuating this.
by establishing that there are truly hidden passages, they both allow for some fascinating moments, and also burden (certain) players with the knowledge that there may be a secret literally anywhere, and the only way they can be sure is to check everything.
and to clarify, i don't think that's necessarily bad! but it does have a large footprint, it does cast the game in a very specific way. and i'm curious about what other sorts of compacts with the player are possible, and how they'd differ from this. later zeldas, for instance-
in later zeldas they moved away from this and toward a model where almost all the secrets are clearly presented, as if on a platter, and the pleasure is in figuring them out as opposed to finding where they are.
