137 réponses à ce sujet

[Vilegrim]

Allan Schumacher wrote...

Vilegrim wrote...

Peace talks?  A battle? Something of that order, yes.

I guess that would depend on how we classify a "battle?"  Is it simply an obstacle to overcome?

By "boss fight" I am making assumptions that there must be some sort of direct confrontation with an antagonist, and typically it must involve the fighting system utilized by the game.

Battle as in: large numbers of armed troops having a battle, rather than PC party fights gribbly bad guy o'doom face,  PC party are the officers in an army that you have raised to have the showdown with the (insert enemy here) Similar to the companions you left holding the line in DAO, don't go with authority equal buttkicking, the enemy general isn't a super powered death machine, they are just that: a General, a leader, strategist and tactician, the challenge isn't killing them, the challenge is getting into a situation where you could, break the army, countering his tactics with your own etc etc.   But that battle only occurs if you 'fail' (intetionally or not) to place them into a postion of peace talks, and then fail to have those peace talks succeed.  You could very well have decided that you WANT the last battle (and it will be a battle, a siege, an assault somthing of that order) but the challenge isn't Tzzz'thrum'sss'katch the NeverBorn.  It's Lord General clever guy with an army.

Modifié par Vilegrim, 15 décembre 2012 - 03:10 .

[Pedrak]

Allan Schumacher wrote...

I agree that it's important to have a final challenge (of some sort) as part of a climax to a story.

My question is, must it be a boss fight? Or could it be a challenge presented in a different way?

Indeed it can. The ending of Planescape: Torment, where

SPOILERS FOR THOSE WHO HAVEN'T PLAYED IT (for shame, guys)

you can actually defeat the Transcendent One with a philosophical speech

END SPOILERS

was pretty awesome.

[QueenPurpleScrap]

Plaintiff wrote...

QueenPurpleScrap wrote...

Allan Schumacher wrote...

I agree that it's important to have a final challenge (of some sort) as part of a climax to a story.

My question is, must it be a boss fight? Or could it be a challenge presented in a different way?

It's got to be big, to be major. With DAO you have to defeat the Archdemon. . . . . . . . I would be willing to have fewer boss battles if they were more intricate, interesting, difficult, greatly affected by your party members.

I don't think that could make sense, given the story. We know from the beginning of DA2 that war is imminenet. Any attempts at negotiation already failed, the story is just about finding out why.

This was merely an attempt to explain why I don't think the climax of the game has to be a big boss battle. If the writers didn't want a big battle the entire game would have been written differently. I certainly was not trying to suggest DA2 should have been this way.

As long as the story supports the ending, whether it's a battle or something else, and it feels like you've really achieved something and it wasn't too easy then I'm fine with it.

[ElitePinecone]

Allan Schumacher wrote...
There's an obvious implicit analogue to ME3's ending, which lacked an overt boss fight, and many complained about it.

Now, were they upset simply because there wasn't a "boss fight" (go and fight using the combat gameplay and win against a very powerful last foe?), or was the climax resolution simply not sufficient. They would have preferred something more meaningful, even if it wasn't necessarily direct combat with the game's combat gameplay.

I loved the idea of ME3's non-combat 'boss fight', in principle, but the execution seemed a bit confused. For one thing, the Illusive Man was a secondary antagonist to begin with, and setting him up as the final boss was strange. I felt like the Cerberus arc was artificially elevated, and it assumed much more importance to the game's plot than it was worth. We then had basically little to no interactive dialogue with the actual antagonist, and the Reaper storyline which had been building for three games kinda... fizzled.

(A combat-based boss battle, if nothing else, does grant some satisfaction or feeling of accomplishment.)  

By comparison, something like The Walking Dead's dialogue-fight (the one with a character near the end) wouild be excellent. The conversation in TWD used our own past decisions to criticise us, gave players ample opportunities to argue their position with multiple perspectives, and effectively maintained the illusion that player choice deeply influenced the game's plot. That entire last fifteen minutes was absolutely crammed with meaning, pathos and interactivity - it was one of the best endings I've ever played.

Modifié par ElitePinecone, 15 décembre 2012 - 04:50 .

[Fast Jimmy]

Wulfram wrote...

dversion wrote...

I found that the large scale battle at the end of Dragon Age Origins was far more of an climax than the last boss fight. It felt like I was putting all of my work to use when calling in reinforcements.

Bits where your hard work pay off are an important component of end games, yeah.  ME2 does this pretty well, too.

ME3 doesn't do a good enough job of showing the impact - you are getting benefits from all your war assets, but there's barely a hint of that conveyed in the game.

Not to mention the correlation between Krogan ground troops, the Geth battle fleet, Conrad Verner's dark energy Cruciblr enhancements, Zaeed as a lone gunman and a thirty minute match of multiplayer were extremely arbitrary in determining said War Assets score in correlation with how any of your assets were actually used. 

[Kendaric Varkellen]

Allan Schumacher wrote...

I agree that it's important to have a final challenge (of some sort) as part of a climax to a story.

My question is, must it be a boss fight? Or could it be a challenge presented in a different way?

To be honest, the most satisfying "boss encounter" for me was back in Fallout 1 due to having multiple approaches to handle it. In my case, I never fought the boss but convinced him to surrender/self-destruct with a high speechcraft skill.
CRPGs are way too much about combat these days anyway, with very alternate paths if they are included at all.

[Indoctrination]

Allan Schumacher wrote...

I agree that it's important to have a final challenge (of some sort) as part of a climax to a story.

My question is, must it be a boss fight? Or could it be a challenge presented in a different way?

Yes. Battles are the only thing that pose a danger to the player. They're what delivers game overs. If you make it a puzzle, that danger isn't going to be there, and it's anti-climatic.

[Wulfram]

Puzzles can be deadly.

It shoud be possible for dialogue to have a deadly outcome, even if recent Bioware games have avoided it.

[Indoctrination]

Wulfram wrote...

Puzzles can be deadly.

It shoud be possible for dialogue to have a deadly outcome, even if recent Bioware games have avoided it.

Moving the wrong tile on the wall and falling into a bottomless pit as a result isn't quite as exciting as having to fight a powerful enemy attached to the game's storyline.

[Rez275]

I definitely support boss fights, there's just something very intense and euphoric about having them at the close of a major event/chapter.

Gameplay wise, GOOD boss fights are supposed to test your mastery of that game's mechanics. For this to actually happen however, two things must be in place:

1. The game must possess enough depth so that it takes time and effort to master
2. The developers must be creative and hardworking enough to devise situations that put the skills you have learned to the test

When it comes to a climactic boss, end boss, final boss, etc...the requirements jump up in defining what makes it good.

In my opinion, a good, climactic boss fight needs:

1) Conflict, "how much do you want to kick that thing's butt?"
2) Music/Voice Acting/Backdrop "What will make your ears and eyes recognize this moment and set it apart from others?"
3) Desperation "How hard is it to achieve victory? How daunting is the opponent? Are there moments where it feels like you can conceivably lose the fight? What is the impact of your loss?"
4) Gameplay. "is the boss fight fun and challenging?"

A phenomenal final boss fight will have all those, a decent one will have at the very least, one or so.

[In Exile]

Wulfram wrote...
It shoud be possible for dialogue to have a deadly outcome, even if recent Bioware games have avoided it.

Not when you have a whole game based around combat, it isn't. You either have cutscene mandated death (lame) or no possible deadly outcome. 

Unless you mean that by failing at dialogue someone else dies, which, well, ME tried moreso than DA. 

[Wulfram]

In Exile wrote...

Not when you have a whole game based around combat, it isn't. You either have cutscene mandated death (lame) or no possible deadly outcome. 

There are some occasions which you shouldn't just be able to fight your way out of.

Like saying "OK , Demon, I'll let you into my mind, sure."  Or telling the Empress in her throne room that she's a poopyhead.

[Riverdaleswhiteflash]

Wulfram wrote...

In Exile wrote...

Not when you have a whole game based around combat, it isn't. You either have cutscene mandated death (lame) or no possible deadly outcome. 

There are some occasions which you shouldn't just be able to fight your way out of.

Like saying "OK , Demon, I'll let you into my mind, sure."  Or telling the Empress in her throne room that she's a poopyhead.

I believe there was one in Fallout where you agree to hand over your gun to the regional antagonist, and then he shoots you dead with it. That's one where you kind of deserve it for even taking that option, though with a quick enough character you ought to be able to take it back when he makes his intentions clear. It works in real life, albeit not reliably. To have a superhumanly fast character be incapable of it makes no sense at all.

For that matter, the Demon thing should be reverseable, if and only if you are stated beforehand to have a ridiculously strong mind even by the standards of the setting. Or, if you have a high enough perform skill, you make yourself so ridiculous when mouthing off to the Empress that she just laughs it off. (Fools used to make a living this way, getting a laugh out of the king and everyone else by insulting him, because nobody took him seriously.)

Edit: Or, maybe you're just so ridiculously overpowered that she knows better than to make an issue of it. The ending for NWN:HoTU kind of implies that my Rogue/Shadowdancer/Blackguard managed this, at the price of literally the entire world minus his party hating him. But they didn't dare make an issue of it; he'd already beaten the crap out of the final bosses of the three official campaigns.

Modifié par Riverdaleswhiteflash, 15 décembre 2012 - 09:05 .

[Allan Schumacher]

Wulfram wrote...

There are some occasions which you shouldn't just be able to fight your way out of.

Like saying "OK , Demon, I'll let you into my mind, sure."  Or telling the Empress in her throne room that she's a poopyhead.

I agree with this.  I'm actually a big supporter of adding more "fail cases" in our games.  THough I think it needs to be done carefully and somewhat selectively.

[LinksOcarina]

Allan Schumacher wrote...

Wulfram wrote...

There are some occasions which you shouldn't just be able to fight your way out of.

Like saying "OK , Demon, I'll let you into my mind, sure."  Or telling the Empress in her throne room that she's a poopyhead.

I agree with this.  I'm actually a big supporter of adding more "fail cases" in our games.  THough I think it needs to be done carefully and somewhat selectively.

Like attempting to save Tali in Mass effect 3 when she jumps off the cliff? 

[grumpyboobyhead]

Well personally I like a good boss fight, like fighting the you know who on the giant tower with your chosen army trying to hold back the horde of enemies while desperately trying not to get distracted.

And maybe as another user suggested add a fail case for people who like more tension when doing such a thing, like really losing your team when they die.

[David7204]

The final 'fight' in ME 3 is one of the worst fights of the series, I think, for one simple reason. You win it by pressing a button. There's constantly spawning banshees and marauders and the only way to win is to run through them and hit the button to launch the missiles.

It feels like a complete cop-out. All the enemies magically die. Your squadmates are magically back on their feet.

In any other situation, it would be a somewhat minor annoyance at worst. I might not even have considered it a problem at all if the enemies were weak enough that I could assume they were gunned down in the moment between the gameplay ending and the cutscene starting. But this is the last fight Shepard ever fights. And it ends with a whimper.

There's other problems. Unlike ME 1 and ME 2, there's no real foreshadowing that this is the climax of the combat (Likely an effort to surprise the player with what happens next.) The music is mediocre. I'm not terribly fond of the level design. There's no sense of awe at how you've come and what's about to happen next. Again, none of these things would have been a problem if it wasn't the last fight ever fought after 120 hours of gameplay. It should have been knocked out of the park, and it didn't come close.

So yeah, given how horrible the rest of the ending is, I can see how upset people are and understand that they blame the lack of a boss fight for their lack of satisfaction, even if it isn't true. 

Modifié par David7204, 15 décembre 2012 - 10:27 .

[Pelle6666]

As long as they wrap up the story afterwards and not just roll the credits like they did in DA2.

[Pzykozis]

EntropicAngel wrote...

Allan Schumacher wrote...

I agree with this.  I'm actually a big supporter of adding more "fail cases" in our games.  THough I think it needs to be done carefully and somewhat selectively.

What do you mean by "fail cases?" Cases where your actions lead to a failure (the SM)? Or something inevitable (like say Thane's death)?

By what he said it seems like the witcher [attack roche] option in the prologue / insulting the elves and Iorveth constantly in the clearing, whereby you'd fail pretty horribly and get a game over.

[Fawx9]

Give me a cool fight like Gannondorf from almost any of the Zelda games and I don't really care why its there. It's just fun and awesome.

And while talking your way out of some situations might work, it doesn't really always fit. IMO the Saren talk is an example of this. Click upper left 4 times and I win? OK.