Does reading Level Up sometimes feel like drinking water from a fire hose? Or surfing a tsunami? Does it ever give you the sensation that you've been buried under an avalanche of words, words, words? (Even the headline above is rather long, isn't it?) Yes, we know that the dizzying length of certain Level Up posts can read more like a manifesto or a jeremiad than a blog entry. For you, we offer the occasional feature "Things You May Have Missed," which will cull compelling excerpts from our more voluminous posts.

This entry comes from the September 17th-20th edition of our Vs. Mode exchange with MTV News reporter Stephen Totilo, wherein we discussed the games BioShock and Metroid Prime 3: Corruption. During our email conversation, Totilo pointed out that the vast majority of videogames don't have memorable landmarks or locations, an observation that has already generated discussion among a couple of our fellow bloggers. We replied that most games also lack memorable openings, and suggested that perhaps the two problems were connected, which led to an interesting chat about the ways in which sequels manage the abilities and the gear that a player character had in the previous game. Read on.

Stephen Totilo: One of the things I'll grumble about with video games is how most locations in them are unoriginal, uninteresting and forgettable....Thirty, forty years in, video games, I am sad to report, are without many famous landmarks and places. N'Gai, can you name a single famous video game building? Princess Peach's castle (and courtyard) from Super Mario 64, maybe? Anything else? Yes I can recall locations in games. For example, I remember the giant vat containing a massive, submarine-sized floating mechanical shark in Banjo Kazooie, and I remember the green hill zone of Sonic: The Hedgehog. But the truly great places--the postcard-worthy ones--include, for me, just the moon in The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask, the big sword bridge in God of War, Sanctuary Fortress in Metroid Prime 2: Echoes, and, not much else. Almost every other spot--even the fun ones--from Dracula's Castle to Vice City--feels generic, familiar, or plain unspectacular.

N'Gai Croal: Here's another thing that many games don't do: create truly memorable openings. Perhaps that's because they're too focused on teaching us the controls, hitting us with a chunk of narrative or both. But regardless of why this occurs, I think these two problems are actually related. Too many games whisk us from environment to environment in a way that doesn't feel particularly connected. The best games figure out how to seamlessly weave narrative, tutorial and setting in a way that, to paraphrase the old Origin Systems motto, creates a world.

Stephen Totilo: One of the most debated styles of opening a game is the one Metroid Prime 3 ditched. We should talk about how the game's development team at Retro Studios altered their approach. Can I coin the technique they used in earlier Metroid Prime games as the "Loss Lead-in"? It comes in a couple of flavors. There's the "Yanked Serving," which gives the starting player a taste of the powers they will achieve later in the game only to take them away after a playable intro (see Metroid Prime, Metroid Prime 2, and, sort of, MGS 3: Snake Eater.) There's the "Revoked License" which lets you start a sequel with the abilities you had in the earlier game, only to strip you of them so you can begin a quest for a new set of powers (see God of War II.) I expected Prime 3 to go with one of these....Instead, the game was designed to open in a more conventional manner. Like many a Zelda game Prime 3 initially equips its lead character with a small set of moves, the rest to be added throughout the game--and never is an ability subtracted.

N'Gai Croal: I'm tired of the License Revoked approach to game design when it comes to sequels where I'm playing the same character.Yes, it's good game design, but only if you assume that the prototypical player is someone who never touched the previous entry. Even if the developers go through some minor contortions to come up with a rationale as to why they've stripped me of my abilities--a damaged power suit; a vengeful god--I still can't help but feel as though what's really at work is a combination of laziness and unquestioned assumptions about how games should be constructed. When Blizzard releases an expansion pack, Level 60 players don't lose their gear or their abilities. Why don't non-MMO games borrow a page from that book?...It's high time developers started designing sequels in a way that properly respects the amount of time that veteran gamers have put into the previous game.

Here endeth our summary. To read the entire four-part exchange, click here.