137 réponses à ce sujet

[AlanC9]

David7204 wrote...

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.

Note that ME3 does this in a couple of other places, like the end of Priority: Tuchanka. But yeah, the last fight of a series is different. This didn't bother me because I'm no fan of boss fights in the first place. Except for un-fights like Darth Sion from KotOR 2.

Modifié par AlanC9, 15 décembre 2012 - 11:30 .

[labargegrrrl]

i want to see the character i've built resolve the most important climax of the game in a meaningful way. i will have worked to hard and be too invested in her by endgame for anything too anticlimactic. that's why i generally expect a good boss fight. those battles tend to use all those stats, skills, and specs that are fundamental to developing my pc and her companions, and tests all the strategy that i've been putting together throughout the game.


BUT...

i would be ok with the absence of a final boss (i'm assuming there will be plenty of other ones to enjoy anyway) so long as whatever final challenge that occurs utilizes the hard-earned skills and/or character of the pc and her companions. possibly with several intermediate steps (puzzles, difficult minor battles, cutscenes, ordering companions to their deaths, whatever) before the challenge is complete.

because why build an epic pc whose epic-ness i won't be using when it really counts?

[AlanC9]

Indoctrination wrote...
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.

Wait, what? You can get game overs from bad decisions too. Try sleeping with Morinth in ME2.

[someguy1231]

I definitely think there should be a final boss fight. To echo what many others here have said, the purpose of final boss fights is to test all the skills the player has spent the game learning. If combat is the game's primary focus, then yes, players expect to fight a final boss at the end. This is part of why many were disappointed ME3 had no final boss fight. As hokey as ME2's final boss may have been from a story persective, from a gameplay perspective at least it still gave us a difficult test of our abilities.

IMO, the only combat-focused games that can get away with no final boss fight are FPS games set in the modern era with an extreme focus on realism. For example, COD4's "final boss" is taken out in a cutscene with a single shot to the head, and Battlefield 3's is taken out with a quicktime event.

Yes, there are some badly-done final boss fights, but that doesn't mean they're always out of place or that they should be phased out of games. They're one of my favorite features of gaming, and I'd hate to see them pushed aside in a misguided and pretentious attempt to make games "art". Defeating a tough final boss provides both an excellent climax to the game's story and makes the player feel like they've earned their victory.

[Foolsfolly]

Fast Jimmy wrote...

Allan Schumacher wrote...

Having said that, to move the conversation a bit away from that: why do people often not consider conversations to be an aspect of the gameplay system?

I would say because there is no challenge, at least with DA's system.

You can't fail at talking. Its not like, say DE:HR or AP where you can abjectively "lose" a conversation. DA's system is pretty much "dialouge/optional investigate/choice that allows you to input character decision or personality/next set of dialogue."

There's no challenge to that. And, while conversation may be a part of the gameplay, it was never a CHALLENGING part of the gameplay. And that's what the end needs - a challenge.

With ME3's ending, the only challenging part about the end section's dialogue was understanding the hodge-podge logic.

If a game makes conversations loseable (meaning they could be increased in challenge), then that would be different. 

Example: Fallout 1 puts you face to face with The Master. Unless you have a Science skill or Speech skill (and then choose the right options in a number of lists), it will result in a fight. Because it requries you to have a character built in a certain way AND make the right conversation choices, it is acceptable for this to be the end. You can convince The Master to abandon his evil plan not just by choosing an "Auto-win" conversation option available to everyone, but by having a certain character build and an understanding of the NPC's logic and the game world.

Not to mention you had to fight through tons of enemies just to get to his lair anyway, which was a bit of a challenge as well.

I still don't think it would be difficult.

Just having a 'you lose' choice doesn't add difficulty. It just means you lose a dialogue scene. I've played many of the games everyone here is talking about like TW2 or Alpha Protocol. Losing in a dialogue didn't make them challenging. At best you're kinda suprised at an outcome but at worst it's just another load scene.

Good choice, Bad choice, You Die choice doesn't make anything deeper or more meaningful. And it's especially no more challenging than picking something else.

How do you make dialogue challenging? I don't know. Frankly I don't think it matters. How BioWare's let us pick dialogue for over ten years as been fine. Perhaps not all things should be challenging.

And besides first time I played ME1, ME2, ME3, DA:O, and DA2 I was already worried about picking my dialogue choices. I was afraid I'd get people I like killed or pissing off this person or that person. I already know my actions and words have affects outside of the current line of dialogue.

Now back to boss fights... I don't know. Sometimes I talk the bad guy into suicide or for them to pack it up and go home. But most of the time? I kill the bad guy. It's final. It's a fight. It's more satisfying. How many big budget action movies (the closest analogue to modern video games) do you know of where the protagonist tells the bad it's ok to walk away or that they suck so bad that the bad guy jumps off of a cliff?

[Doctoglethorpe]

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?

If you're gonna do another "final convo fight" like illusive man, at least make it challenging and failable.  Make it like a puzzle you have to navigate, like a trial of sorts that you must bring forth all the knowledge you gained through the game, rather then just a standard linear conversation.  Make the stakes higher then the extention of a secondary characters life by half a minute. MUCH higher. 

That I would like.  That would feel like an intense final confrontation without need of a standard boss fight.  That is what ME3 lacked. 

Edit:  And when I say failable, I don't mean game over screen restart from 10 minutes earlier, I mean roll credits you got the ****ty ending fail. 

Modifié par Doctor Moustache, 16 décembre 2012 - 01:31 .

[Foolsfolly]

Actually, and ME3's my least played of the series by far, but I remember an article on Kotaku about how you can fail the Illusive Man dialogue fight.

Lemme....

Here it is. The guy who wrote the article was pissed because Shepard died by the Illusive Man shooting him.

So it is possible to fail that 'dialogue boss fight.' Still doesn't make it any more challenging, deep, or satisfying though does it?

[Doctoglethorpe]

Foolsfolly wrote...

Actually, and ME3's my least played of the series by far, but I remember an article on Kotaku about how you can fail the Illusive Man dialogue fight.

Lemme....

Here it is. The guy who wrote the article was pissed because Shepard died by the Illusive Man shooting him.

So it is possible to fail that 'dialogue boss fight.' Still doesn't make it any more challenging, deep, or satisfying though does it?

That guy was an idiot and misunderstood what the purpose of renegade interupts were.  And again, thats not real failure, thats just a game over screen. 

The conversation was linear and unfailable.  Nobody didn't have the option of that renegade interupt, and I say option but really its just the "win button"  Not using it is like refusing to fire your gun in a regular boss fight.  Now if they did make it so you had the chance of not being given that option and always failing, well that would at least be something.  Horribly implemented, but something. 

[Foolsfolly]

That guy was an idiot and misunderstood what the purpose of renegade interupts were. And again, thats not real failure, thats just a game over screen.

The conversation was linear and unfailable.

Incorrect. You clearly can fail it. It's still a ******-poor climax.

[adam32867]

Foolsfolly wrote...

That guy was an idiot and misunderstood what the purpose of renegade interupts were. And again, thats not real failure, thats just a game over screen.

The conversation was linear and unfailable.

Incorrect. You clearly can fail it. It's still a ******-poor climax.

You pretty much have to try to fail it, a good climax has you trying your hardest to not fail it.

[Estelindis]

To my mind, the things that matter most about a climactic endgame confrontation are drama, complexity and difficulty.

1) Drama: it has to feel dangerous and important; much of what you care about has to be at stake.

2) Complexity: many strands are being brought together at a narrative level, and many of the skills that the player and their team have acquired throughout the story are tested.

3) Difficulty: hopefully, these are all being tested more than they ever were before, which adds to the sense of climax and danger.

In my opinion, the landsmeet at Denerim came close to a conversational boss fight, because it exemplified all these things.  (The only sense in which it wasn't, really, was that it wasn't the final big confrontation of the game.)   It was dramatic in that a huge amount was at stake; vital characters from the story could die as a direct result of what happened and it would determine whether or not the player could go on to help save Ferelden. Surely no one will argue that is was not complex! There were a huge amount of variables involved. And, finally, it was (in my humble opinion) quite difficult: approaching it without metagaming, it was hard to know for sure that any given approach would yield the result that one desired. (And getting Alistair to fight Loghain, which I found thematically appropriate, was much tougher than just having my city elf rogue gut him summarily.)

I think that a problem here is the sense that some combat should be involved. I inherently feel this way myself. However, I don't know how to balance a sense of the conversation's importance with the combat's importance. At times, it feels a little farcical to me that, even after Loghain is indicted by the Landsmeet, he gets a chance to fight and win. How could anyone actually follow him after all that was revealed about him (in a successful Landsmeet), even if he (heroically?!) managed to beat someone with twenty years less combat experience than him? Yet I cannot deny that, in many ways, it feels *right* to face him physically, to have the satisfaction of beating him in a fight after all that's come before.

So yes: how does one make the player feel that the conversational battle matters if it still comes down to a fight at the end? Perhaps some modification to the fight, with bonuses or penalties? Perhaps one fights someone or something else, under different conditions?

Just my few thoughts. :-)

Modifié par Estelindis, 16 décembre 2012 - 02:08 .

[Foolsfolly]

adam32867 wrote...

Foolsfolly wrote...

That guy was an idiot and misunderstood what the purpose of renegade interupts were. And again, thats not real failure, thats just a game over screen.

The conversation was linear and unfailable.

Incorrect. You clearly can fail it. It's still a ******-poor climax.

You pretty much have to try to fail it, a good climax has you trying your hardest to not fail it.

It's a role-playing game! We expect there to be multiple ways out of any mess we find ourselves in. Because that's somewhat standard in the genre and we start these games with that expectation. By making it any more than 'you have to try to fail' you're just presenting a false role-playing choice.

There's an encounter where you're surrounded. You can offer to pay the men double to let you live, you can challenge their leader to a duel, or you can try to sneak away after tossing a smoke bomb.

These are role-playing choices. Choices both vague and specific enough to allow you to figure out how your character would behave in this encounter.

And if you chose to try to sneak out I just killed your character because when the smoke filled the air the leader ordered his men to fire and dozens of crossbow bolts are now protruding out of character's back.

Wasn't that deep and meaningful. And challenging.

[Doctoglethorpe]

The point is, a final confrontation, whatever its form, needs to be challenging and intense, give a sense of accomplishment afterwards. ME3's final convo's did not have those qualities. They were linear and predictable, and yes, unfailable. Choosing not to use a mandatory interrupt is like choosing to just stand still and let a final boss kill you, that doesn't count.

If Bioware want to make the final confrontation a conversation, they need to make it much grander then a standard conversation the same way a final boss fight is much grander then a typical trash fight. I already suggested above how they could do that.

[Foolsfolly]

Doctor Moustache wrote...

The point is, a final confrontation, whatever its form, needs to be challenging and intense, give a sense of accomplishment afterwards. ME3's final convo's did not have those qualities. They were linear and predictable, and yes, unfailable. Choosing not to use a mandatory interrupt is like choosing to just stand still and let a final boss kill you, that doesn't count.

If Bioware want to make the final confrontation a conversation, they need to make it much grander then a standard conversation the same way a final boss fight is much grander then a typical trash fight. I already suggested above how they could do that.

You can still fail it. Yes, no one either you or I know has failed it. And for all I know the writer of that article is the only person to have ever failed that encounter. But that still means you can. Stop saying you cannot fail it.

Because no matter what your opinion of how to do a 'now you die' choice I can counter with the same thing you're saying here. "Choosing to do X means you deserved to die because clearly that would fail."

The alternative is to offer a valid reasonable option... that fails because isn't it cool that dialogue scenes can kill you?

The ME3 ending has so much, metaphorically a moutain sized amount of things wrong with it. But this isn't a lesson to learn from ME3's failings. A 'dialogue battle' if such a thing were to ever be emotional and satisfying will not hinge on whether or not your character can die during it.

Modifié par Foolsfolly, 16 décembre 2012 - 02:56 .

[Doctoglethorpe]

Dude, you're completely missing my point. Completely.

[Doctoglethorpe]

Lemme put it this way, the final convo was like a multiple choice quiz. But every answer was at least partially right, so no matter what you do you can get a passing grade. The only way to fail the quiz is to not turn it in when your finished (thats the renegade interrupt, in case your not following).

That doesn't count. What I mean by failing is to fail based on the choices you made during the conversation. Failing the quiz cause you marked the wrong answers.

And I want the repercussions to be more then a game over screen, I want it to literally lead to a fail ending, roll credits. You failed the final exam, you didn't pass the class.

Modifié par Doctor Moustache, 16 décembre 2012 - 03:06 .

[In Exile]

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

I'm having a hard time seeing how that works, without having to change the entire dynamic of the game from you = badass, or to have obvious power gaps (e.g. Harbinger death beam).

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 can buy the demon line - but the Empress? Pfft. What does she have? A legion of mooks I've murdered to get there?

[AlbinaTekla]

I'm all for cool battles. I just hope that it's well done. Nothing worse than getting stuck at the end of a game!

[Brahox]

As long as its not like fable 2 final encounter. After that I then knew Lionhead Studios lost thier minds along with Peter Molyneux.... For real how in the world did anyone involved with making that game think that was a good idea?

[XX-Pyro]

Boss fights? Dragons Dogma would like a word with you.

[Wulfram]

In Exile wrote...

I'm having a hard time seeing how that works, without having to change the entire dynamic of the game from you = badass, or to have obvious power gaps (e.g. Harbinger death beam).

You should be a badass, but you shouldn't be an invincible god who is more powerful than armies.

I can buy the demon line - but the Empress? Pfft. What does she have? A legion of mooks I've murdered to get there?

The intended scenario wasn't one in which you'd massacred your way there, but that you'd been granted an audience.

In your scenario, either
1.  You have an army of your own backing you up, in which case you've just won a great battle and telling the Empress she's a poopyhead is fair game
or
2.  The game has allowed you to massacre your way to the throne room single handedly, in which case it has already gone stupid.

[Riverdaleswhiteflash]

Wulfram wrote...

In Exile wrote...

I'm having a hard time seeing how that works, without having to change the entire dynamic of the game from you = badass, or to have obvious power gaps (e.g. Harbinger death beam).

You should be a badass, but you shouldn't be an invincible god who is more powerful than armies.

There are worse things. Like being an invincible god who can die of something in a cutscene that he just no-sold ten of in the last fight.

I can buy the demon line - but the Empress? Pfft. What does she have? A legion of mooks I've murdered to get there?

The intended scenario wasn't one in which you'd massacred your way there, but that you'd been granted an audience.

In your scenario, either
1.  You have an army of your own backing you up, in which case you've just won a great battle and telling the Empress she's a poopyhead is fair game
or
2.  The game has allowed you to massacre your way to the throne room single handedly, in which case it has already gone stupid.

It'd be even dumber if after going stupid, it completely ignored the fact that it had gone stupid and you got executed. All I'm saying is that if I'm playing an invincible god, I want to see it. If I'm not, then I guess these can be auto-deaths, though a player would have to be pretty stupid to click on them if there was any chance of an auto-kill.

[QueenPurpleScrap]

Let's say that in addition to uncovering and possibly defeating the unseen force manipulating events in Thedas you have the goal to try and bring the parties together. You can't control the talks of course, you just have the difficult task to get them together. There's going to be more than one obstacle to getting them together. And even before they sit down at the end there is some sort of conversation - you have to introduce the participants to each other and to the mediator (I'm assuming there will be one and that this mediator will be of your choosing).
Every choice you make in the game, possibly even including the companion quests, and every convo with a non-companion influences the outcome. Each choice and convo will have a 'fight' counter. There will be certain key choices, as well.
For instance if you choose X1 and F3 then you have your boss fight with the unseen force but you lose the option for a possible peace conference
Your choice of mediator (and those options can be influenced by previous ones) can precipitate another battle instead of talks
Once inside your diplomatic skills have one more test before you can leave
I said each quest and convo would have a 'fight' counter. This fight counter could also determine whether you get past the unseen force as well as influence what happens afterward (assuming you get there). The higher fight counter the more coercion or diplomatic skill (assuming they can be developed) would be needed to hopefully get the more diplomatic option.
This way you have to use your skills and abilities and your choices matter.

[Arppis]

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?

I actualy haven't finished Wing Commander 4. But I recall my friend telling that the last scenes of that game was in the court room. Why not have battle of wits as the last encounter?

Oh and there has to be choice: *Punch that son of a ****!*

Modifié par Arppis, 16 décembre 2012 - 06:53 .

[Mark of the Dragon]

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.

I most definitely agree that there are some cases where fighting should not be an option. Assaulting the divine for example…”would be bad”…
However I do believe some intense final confrontation is necessary. It doesn’t have to be “typical” but at least interesting and it has to feel satisfying. You mentioned the end of ME3 when Shepard confronted the illusive man earlier as an option and I admit I actually liked that section. It g=felt right for the illusive man’s character. 

I also felt like something was missing in ME3’s ending. It might be that the end of priority earth was just randomly shooting things and for the last battle in such a great saga was a complete let down. Maybe if they had made the end of priority Earth more compelling the final confrontation with the illusive man would have felt better. I will admit that I found the “boos” battle on Rannoch really fun seeing as it held to the reaper lore and it was really different.

This all leads to the reason I started this thread. I feel boss fights are necessary but they also need to be well thought out and different not just a typical beat down. Either way I feel it is mandatory that the final battle in a game take into account all a person has done to build up a character to that point in the game and the fight should make the player feel satisfied.

Honestly I always thought of Loghain as a bigger antagonist in DAO then the archdemon. I also thought it was satisfying to beat him in the landsmeet. It made since in story and character terms. So I guess in the end the fight must be fun, make the player feel satisfied, and make since in the confines of the characters and story. ME3’s Rannoch and DA Legacy’s Coripheus are great examples. Thought honestly what makes me love Rannoch so much I can’t even say..it just feels right.

Modifié par Mark of the Dragon, 16 décembre 2012 - 08:43 .