When a game incorporates a physics engine to a game should it go all the way and apply it in the entirety of the game? If it cannot do so should it add at all?

These are two questions I have been asking myself this past week as I am making headway in Gearbox's Brothers In Arms: Hell's Highway. The game introduces destructible cover for the first time in the series. This destructibility varies depending on whether it is sandbags, brick or wood. You and your squad mates can only stay behind soft cover lying around in the battlefield for only a short time before it is completely destroyed. It adds an element of realism which also increases the factors to consider when making tactical decisions in the battlefield. That’s a good thing.

At the same time however the game breaks its own rules as the physics only apply to preselected objects and not to all materials found in the game world. For example haystacks are impenetrable to bullets. Walls of a wooden building are indestructible even to rocket launchers while at the same time wooden furniture next to them can be shredded to pieces by MP40 fire. The developer also uses indestructible wooden furniture to block the player’s path to prevent the player from deviating from the pre-determined path.

This inconsistency spoils the immersion and the believability of the world that I might otherwise had enjoyed. It seems that as technology is improving and developers drive towards more and more realistic environments this can backfire. The more lifelike a game is or tries to be, then the more evident are its unrealistic elements (reminds me of the comments I heard about the Beowulf movie, which I have yet to watch).

This is where the developers must spend time and money to refine a game in order to camouflage these issues. For example do not have wooden walls or furniture unless they can be destroyed. Use rocks, concrete or steel instead. While not entirely realistic it will ensure that the rules of the game world are consistent much like in real life.