Is there anything more iconic in a game than a treasure chest? It can take many forms but when a chest presents itself, you know exactly what it is. No redundant descriptors are needed. You don’t need anyone telling you what a chest is. The only thing you need to know is what is inside of it. So you walk over to it hoping to reveal it’s contents…
…and it’s locked. Damn. If you only had a key, right?
Wrong! Sometimes you just need two pieces of metal, or a cable, or a brick. If there is a will or a convenient device that gives you access, there is a way!
We all know how chests suit one function: to hold stuff. Sometimes that stuff is so valuable that it requires a lock. You, as the player, must use your insight and gut feeling to determine if it’s worth opening, usually at risk of punishment. In some cases there won’t be anything worth your efforts, but the important thing is the lock itself. You could have limited lock picks or another diminishing resource that enables you to engage with the lock. You’re trading moments of time, effort, and a resource to place a bet that the chest has something that will assist in your adventure.
Many games have developed systems that allow you to interact with the lock in a ton of different ways. Unfortunately, they either lie on the side of “good” because it doesn’t interrupt the flow of gameplay or “bad” because the system is difficult to manage, interrupts gameplay, and attempts to recreate a status-quo where the result doesn’t provide a fun feeling when you need to engage with the mechanism again.
Critically speaking, games present themselves as a whole to us and part of the fun that makes us coming back is the lack of barriers and providing simplicity that reduces the gap between main gameplay elements. The more difficult and annoying something is, the less we want to engage with it, and if the lock picking mechanic is the exact element that should be short, sweet, and quick enough that it places us back into the action. Having a bad lock picking mechanic directly leads to how a critic reviews the rest of the game especially if the mechanic is required to progress through major elements of the story or side content.
Don’t Fix What Isn’t Broken
Each game handles this in a unique way and so far I have only experienced once instance where this didn’t aggravate me till no end and that was in Bethesda’s 2008 smash hit: Fallout 3. Whether it be door or chest, the unlocking mechanic was very easy to understand that almost anyone could pick up. One of your pics would circle around the lock looking for the sweet spot while the other turned the tumbler. You could only do this if you had at least one lock pick set on you, which is an interesting mechanic right up unto later in the game where you start amassing so many lock picks that it doesn’t even matter if you fail, you just try again until you ran out.
This mechanic was so incredibly easy to understand and it paid off in dividends. It became a staple within the game to a point where Bethesda made it a baseline mechanic. then inserted it into Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, Fallout 4, and Obsidian maintained the mechanic in Fallout: New Vegas. This trend did stop with Starfield, which needed to add a bit of variation to the lock picking mechanic. The narrative behind the mechanic from what I could gather is one that makes sense. Locks in the future are most likely super easy to bypass to a point where a new standard had to be created. It’s no different than moving from USB-A ports to a USB-C port. Time passes and things happen to create more efficient systems. It is not exactly recreating the wheel here, but it does add some unique reinforcing to the mechanic.
Nevertheless, the idea of Bethesda’s lock picking mechanic was so strong that other games started to borrow it and add their own unique flavor to it. Currently, modders have been inserting the mechanic into 7 Days to Die and people have been enjoying it for the most part despite some technical issues where the chests they broke into contained nothing. They were just locked empty chests which created anger amongst the fans. This goes against the main pillars of why a chest should be locked, to contain something of value, and when there is nothing the player will begin to second guess the interactions. Or, they will continue to engage with it, huffing levels of hope that would eventually lead to major disappointment and departure from the game entirely when they continue to re-experience the lack of rewards.
The Outlaws Problem
I wrote all of this so I could say that Star Wars Outlaws has one of the worst lock picking mechanics I have ever seen in a modern video game. It doesn’t work mechanically or narratively within the action’s context, but the idea of unlocking a chest does.
In Outlaws, Kay has her own version of a lock pick with she keeps nestled in her hair, a detail that got a good chuckle out of me. She then inserts it into the main port that Star Wars fans are all familiar with, and then a beat-based mini-game occurs. Mechanical dials spin spastically while you’re trying to match the intervals of a yellow flashing light. A blue light beneath it also flashes when you match the beat.
Mechanically, this isn’t much fun. You have to sort of let the beeping and flashing go for a few seconds (to minutes) before you make your attempt to match it. You have to learn the beat and then mirror the beat back to the machine. It doesn’t really work all that well but it prevents you from absolutely nailing it the first go. The idea I can only assume is for the action to become part of a risk/reward system.
While you are engaging with the locking mechanism, NPCs made up of various security forces are still meandering throughout the background. You have to make the conscious decision to break into a chest or a doorway that is most convenient to you. The option to take out the guards is always there which all but guarantees your success. In a way, combat and the execution of foes is almost fully baked into the lock picking mechanic, and if the reward isn’t valuable enough then it becomes a system not worth your time. Outlaws simply has too many literal moving pieces to make the lock picking mechanic worth it. There is a setting that gives you some visual assistance but that doesn’t make it any better.
Accessibility
Cerebral Paul, an accessibility consultant said on Twitter/X: “It took me WAY too long to figure this out. From an accessibility standpoint, even on easy, it’s a fail.”
He’s right. It isn’t a simple mechanic that allows the player the time to properly examine what is going on and engage with it in a simplistic manner. I said before, there are way too many moving parts to make the mechanic worth doing. For those who are fully able-bodied the mechanic could be challenging enough with understanding the timing and trying it over and over again with the potential of experiencing a game over multiple times over, it can get frustrating. Now add a disability into the mix and it becomes an even greater fail of a system.
There is an option to remove the mechanic all together which tells me that they knew that it wasn’t the best but most likely couldn’t come up with anything necessarily better, which is fine. I don’t mind skipping over that mechanic entirely but sometimes a player does want to feel engaged with this lock picking in a valuable way to help immerse themselves in the world. There is a delicate balance to the art of the lock picking mechanic especially for a game that is supposed to accessible to a wide margin of players.
If we go back to the Bethesda lock picking method, the idea is simple but it can get a little challenging as some locks have their dedicated difficulty levels. You have to position the pick in just the right spot to disengage the lock or break your pick. You can easily run through your allotment of lock picks and not even blink. The most important part of this mechanic is how you are the determining factor in all of this. You are not fighting against a clock, or trying to match a beat. Everything up until the satisfying click of the lock disengaging is all on you.
Narrative Ties
You can’t really inject the Bethesda lock picking style into Outlaws, as we have already discussed with Starfield. While the lock itself wouldn’t make sense due to the time period and universe it exists in, but engaging with the locking mechanism with an in-universe tool does.
One aspect of Outlaws is how the idea of engaging with a lock is not a foreign concept. It exists especially considering how often we see R2-D2 engaging with locking mechanics. It is kinda funny to think that he is also unable to properly bypass systems because he’s playing a mixed up version of Guitar Hero. This does, funny enough, provide additional context to those movie moments because of how we engage with it in Outlaws. So, it’s a bit of a give and take here, one piece of media is adding a bit of depth to another, but I digress.
Fixing It
So, how do we create a lock picking mechanism that is both narratively and mechanically sound?
I’ll answer the first part since it is easiest. The mechanic works narratively. It makes sense for Kay Vess to have a lock pick on her at all times and perform the action given her character status as a smuggler and overall ruffian. We have seen droids perform the actions before so we can draw the line of familiarity between the two.
But the mechanic is where the issue persists and we need to look at the principles behind it and reverse engineer it. First, we have to have something of value within the chest or behind the door. It could be resources that can be used immediately to provide a sense of increase of power. It could be another weapon to use, anything that gives a solid tangible reward.
Second, the mechanic should allow the player to engage with it on their own terms. Even the hacking in Cyberpunk gives the player a moment to gauge their approach and execute it despite the timer which is only there to add some stakes to the experience.
Third, there should be some sort of interaction that isn’t overly complex and keeps the second point in mind. Allowing the player to build a strategy and execute with a mini-game that feels smooth and immersive is important to the overall experience. Not every player will agree with what is good and the best way to approach this.
So, what does that leave us with? Honestly, while the Bethesda tumbler in space wouldn’t necessarily make sense, in this case a variation of that would! Look at what the locking mechanism is in Outlaws.
It is circular in presentation from the middle point outward. Inserting the pick will engage with one of the components of the locking mechanism, and you should be able to turn it. There are multiple “wafers” within the mechanism so you could have something as simple as spinning dials to match a pattern or have them spin automatically and you have to hit a key when the “wafer” is within a certain window that locks it in place. You can have one giant “wafer” for easy and then build up to multiple wafers to symbolize various difficulties.
This meets all the prerequisites outline. It allows the player to view the puzzle and approach it on their own terms with tactics in mind. It isn’t overly complex and could be easy for most players to engage with. The only thing that hangs in the balance is the rewards, and that is absolutely up to the developers.
And no, a cool jacket isn’t a real reward.