No, Walking Simulator generally refers to games that eschew almost all gameplay besides walking around and looking at things. Like with any genre, there is no hard line of what is or isn't a walking simulator but think games like Dear Esther [0], Firewatch [1] or Proteus [2]. While RPGs typically do have a focus on story, there is also a heavy character building and/or progression component as well as almost always some form of combat.
I've noticed that while initially derided as not being "real games", AAA games have started to co-opt the design into even the most action-heavy games. Uncharted, God of War, and Returnal have long sections of just walking and character building.
Games constantly have this tension of 1. wanting to include story 2. but a truly interactive story is really freaking hard (no sarcasm), so 3. the story isn't interactive, which means that 4. the solved problem of telling non-interactive stories is cinema, so games use cinematic techniques.
The problem is that this strange attractor for games is constantly pulling the game into just being a movie, because the need to control things for the cinematic portion spreads. If I need you to be wearing a shirt with pockets for this cutscene, you can't shop for arbitrary clothes, or they just don't show up in a cutscene. If this character needs to be alive for a cutscene five hours in, you can't kill them now. If you can't kill them now, you must be denied the interactivity to do so. It is very difficult to confine this need for control in a story-heavy game because it naturally tends to spread out until everything is completely controlled for the benefit of the cinema and it is just a fancy movie.
I'm neither condemning nor praising this right now. Just describing.
"Walking simulators" solve the problem by essentially stripping you of all ability to change the environment except on very specific rails. This can support non-linear story telling, but not arbitrarily-changing stories. In the case of AAA games, a key indicator of this is your character suddenly holstering the weapon that is otherwise their constant companion with no player input, and since the only verb you meaningfully had to change the environment up to this point was "shoot", now you have no environment changing abilities, and the game need not explain why suddenly everyone and everything in the world is bulletproof since you simply can not fire.
That said, I think the case for calling them "not real games" has some virtue to it. It isn't like there's a bright shining line, but there's certainly "games" that are more interactive (in the limit, consider something like Minecraft) and there are games that are less interactive (in the limit, things that are essentially just choose your own adventure), and as is so often the case in practical philosophy, just because we can't draw a bright shining line doesn't mean we can't at least come close, or that the inability to draw a line means that we have to pretend there are no differences at all.
> a truly interactive story is really freaking hard
Why do you think that is? I am not ignorant of reasons and explanations, such as needing too much content, but what do you think are the fundamental reasons?
You, the real human, cannot say whatever you want to the NPCs. Instead you either have to rely on a few scripted choices, or a silent character. Neither of those are very fun. Interactive also implies the ability to change outcomes. That is also difficult as every outcome requires writing, animating, etc. So games give the illusion of choice with a few well defined branches, then railroad you into a few endings.
Another approach is to not craft an explicit narrative. Just give a fleshed out, lived-in world and let the person explore. Let knickknacks, street trash, architecture, NPC behavior, etc tell the story. How can a game describe a dystopian world without an NPC saying "I sure do hate being oppressed!" and giving a questline for toppling the government? Maybe draconian transportation systems, NPCs eyeing the character if not dressed right, ugly architecture seeping into established spaces.
Yeah. Basically, imagine a world in which every single player of Final Fantasy X had a full DM behind them. Even if we stipulate the entire world prepped as a playground beforehand, who knows what you'd get up to in such a scenario? Who knows how radically divergent all our experiences would have been?
Such a thing is simply impossible today, and for the forseeable future. The closest you can get is AI dungeon, and IMHO and with all due respect to the creators, that's little more than a glimpse at the possible future, it is as far away from this reality as Pong is from FFX.
Since Uncharted is an attempt to make a game series by putting AAA game stuff in the skeleton of an Indiana Jones movie, it suffers what they call “ludonarrative dissonance” by not just being a walking simulator game.
Indiana Jones might kill one guy per movie; Nathan Drake has shot thousands. He’s one of the most prolific mass killers in human history. And yet the cinematic parts of the game don’t seem to notice.
> Indiana Jones might kill one guy per movie; Nathan Drake has shot thousands. He’s one of the most prolific mass killers in human history.
Having no idea about either of these games, I guess this is because, again, they combine a story-heavy narrative with a plain old shooter. I sometimes wish that these games which have interesting setting and/or narratives would actually try to innovate on the gaming part and avoid the "just kill them all" genre.
There should be something more between a "walking simulator" and a "kill them all" that allows you to enjoy the setting while still having some type of actual game inside.
That is kind of what survival games or "minecraft-likes" are. A lot of those games have little to no combat. Most of the game being enjoying the setting while engaging in the light game systems. No Man's Sky is probably the best example I can think of; while there is combat it is almost entirely optional or avoidable.
It's not a binary spectrum between action game and walking simulator.
Tomb Raider had some sections that probably fit the walking simulator genre, but also areas of action and puzzle games.
Walking simulator is defined by moving and exploration. Interactions usually involve reading, or changing your environment (not in ways to unlock new areas, but perhaps to see new things). Playing one, you clearly note the vibe. There isn't much to do except move forward and see/experience new things, building out a plot and understanding of a narrative as you do so. You don't generally drive the plot through your actions, but instead learn about it.
Tomb Raider is a pretty standard adventure game with a couple major exceptions:
- There's a lot of combat.
- The world is 3D rather than being 2D backgrounds.
But most of your time is spent wandering around solving puzzles and trying to figure out where to go next. It would be a better game, in my eyes, if they took the combat out entirely. Compare Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis.
Depending on the walking simulator, they've got more in common with some kind of immersive art installation than a "game". I get why people want to draw the distinction.
> Uncharted
Funnily enough, my favorite parts of Uncharted 4 were the parts where it became a walking simulator. I was surprised both that the game contained so much of that, and that I liked it better than the rest of the game.
I consider walking simulators to be in the same category as the old LucasArts-style point & click adventures.
Often there is the very reduced or entirely eliminated puzzle-solving component.
In the old point & click adventures, with the very linear story, if you can't figure out a puzzle, then you are stuck. You absolutely can't advance through the story.
With the walking simulators, if you miss some bit, then you miss a part of the overall story, but you'll still get to the end and get the big picture. And you can usually go back and pick it up if you realized you missed something.
BTW, some walking simulators I can recommend:
Gone Home - very good story.
What Remains of Edith Finch - also very good and heartbreaking story.
Tacoma - also decent.
Observation - trippy story
Return of the Obra Din - this is a bit closer to the old point & click in the sense that you are a detective, and must actually Sherlock your way through.
I wouldn't have classed Return of the Obra Din as a walking simulator, but more of a puzzler like Myst. Was great, though. I'd recommend both The Talos Principle and The Witness, along those lines.
My favorite pure "walking simulator" I've played, by a mile, is Firewatch. Haven't played What Remains yet, though.
This is kind of a sliding scale -- I'd put Jazzpunk or Thirty Flights of Loving in the same category but I think they're traditionally considered "adventure games".
Feels like a very different genre from, like, IF where you have to work hard to see the whole story (Trinity, Curses).
[0] https://store.steampowered.com/app/203810/Dear_Esther/ [1] https://store.steampowered.com/app/383870/Firewatch/ [2] https://store.steampowered.com/app/219680/Proteus/