168 réponses à ce sujet

[Medhia Nox]

@David of Canada: Do any of them say - "You are a loser. You have lost. LOSER." ?

[Fast Jimmy]

Medhia Nox wrote...

@David of Canada: Do any of them say - "You are a loser. You have lost. LOSER." ?

Some of the Persona games are pretty dang close to this. 

[Medhia Nox]

@Fast Jimmy: But otherwise - every game you've ever played gives you some version of: "You win." Yes?

[Maria Caliban]

TheKomandorShepard wrote...

On topic da is dark fantasy so there shouldn't be save everyone and be full of sadistic choices well if you want idealistic story maybe you need buy other game because there is no place for such thing.  

Dragon Age: Inquisition will come with a razor blade so players can slit their wrist once the utter futility of it all comes crashing down upon them. The main theme will naturally be Beck's Last Cause.

[Plaintiff]

Fast Jimmy wrote...

@Plantiff

I wasn't actually the one who used the phrase "difficulty is the driving force of the story" but that's still splitting hairs.

In regards to your other point, would you consider everyone the game holds dear, including the main character, dying as a failure? And I'm not talking about a "your party is dead... Reload?" but full, sad, depressing endings that are optional depending on if the player beat the game on an easier difficutly or if they didn't beat the game fast enough/without dying/without using a save reload/etc.

I wouldn't, no.

Obviously the game considers it a failure, since they're clearly trying to punish the player by bumming them out. But that assumes that players want what the game considers to be the 'best' ending, and they may not. The player might have been trying to achieve a particular ending, in which case they have 'failed' at a personal goal, but that's rather irrelevent.

The failure of the player and the failure of the character are two separate events that have no relation to each other, except for the fact that the game developers have (completely arbitrarily) assigned particular endings to specific gameplay hurdles that have no relevance to the narrative. There's no logical flow of action > consequence. It's like saying that because I ate a banana today instead of an apple, a madman is going to burst into my house and shoot my dog. How is that a failure on my part?

Modifié par Plaintiff, 15 novembre 2013 - 07:19 .

[Inprea]

Fast Jimmy wrote...

Medhia Nox wrote...

@David of Canada: Do any of them say - "You are a loser. You have lost. LOSER." ?

Some of the Persona games are pretty dang close to this. 

I remember that. I forget which Persona it was but it involved people appearing on tv at midnight and if they weren't saved they die. If you execute the wrong person believing they're the main villian the game ends in failure with everyone in the world being turned into monsters.

[Fast Jimmy]

Medhia Nox wrote...

@Fast Jimmy: But otherwise - every game you've ever played gives you some version of: "You win." Yes?

No. Many of the Silent Hill games have multiple endings which involve the main character dying, commiting suicide or, in the case of Silent Hill 2, summoning a dark demon into the world that devours the planet. These endings have as much content as the "good" endings in those games. 

Heck, even ME2 had an "Ultimate Fail" ending that was close to as long as the "Everyone Lives" one. 

[Medhia Nox]

@Maria Caliban: My God! Do you see how dark it is NOW! So much gravitas.... I'm drowning in the deep quagmire of lugubrious hopelessness!

@Fast Jimmy:  And are you forced into those endings?  Or, could you just reload? 

Modifié par Medhia Nox, 15 novembre 2013 - 07:17 .

[Dave of Canada]

Medhia Nox wrote...

@David of Canada: Do any of them say - "You are a loser. You have lost. LOSER." ?

Does the protagonist losing his soul, turning into Dracula and forcing their best friends to hunt them down count?

[Medhia Nox]

@Dave of Canada: And is there also a "Destroy Dracula, get the girl, sunshine and candy canes." ending?

[Dave of Canada]

Medhia Nox wrote...

@Dave of Canada: And is there also a "Destroy Dracula, get the girl, sunshine and candy canes." ending?

"Good ending 1": You stop the cult leader, he promises that Dracula will return and you escape the castle as it's crumbling. It's implied that cultists remain which will try to resurrect Dracula and they'll plague you which leads to the sequel where things go bad to worse.

"Good ending 2": Unlocked by playing the mode which you play as your friends, the game is similar but instead of a cult being the main enemy, it's the reborn Dracula (the protagonist). Your friends kill you as you made them promise, they hope your soul rests in peace and they leave.

Modifié par Dave of Canada, 15 novembre 2013 - 07:31 .

[Fast Jimmy]

Obviously the game considers it a failure, since they're clearly trying to punish the player by bumming them out. But that assumes that players want what the game considers to be the 'best' ending, and they may not. The player might have been trying to achieve that ending, in which case they have 'failed' at a personal goal, but that's rather irrelevent.

The failure of the player and the failure of the character are two separate events that have no relation to each other, except for the fact that the game developers have (completely arbitrarily) assigned particular endings to specific gameplay hurdles that have no relevance to the narrative.

If the player fails to take the character through the game at the correct difficulty, speed or with completing the right objectives and the story changes because of that, how is that not the player determining the narrative?

And how is that saying such sad endings are not "real?" Was the Ultimate Sacrifice ending not real, because it wasn't happy? That's like saying the happiest endings in Crono Trigger aren't real, because you need to beat the game multiple times to uncover them.

An ending is an ending. You can't say it isn't part of the narrative just because it was easier/harder/what-have-you to get to.

Modifié par Fast Jimmy, 15 novembre 2013 - 07:33 .

[Medhia Nox]

@Fast Jimmy: So... you agree then that if you beat it fast enough you should be able to save both?

[Endurium]

Too early to tell yet but I'll probably do my usual thing: play a hero first and see how that turns out, fine tuning it in later playthroughs and making notes of dark paths, then repeat as a dark character who does all the cringe-worthy stuff to perfection. Love doing that in DAO.

[Fast Jimmy]

Medhia Nox wrote...

@Maria Caliban: My God! Do you see how dark it is NOW! So much gravitas.... I'm drowning in the deep quagmire of lugubrious hopelessness!

@Fast Jimmy:  And are you forced into those endings?  Or, could you just reload? 

If by "Reload" you mean go back and play the games and make very different choices (not just in the last five minutes), then I suppose.

It wasn't just a matter of an ultimatum given in the last minute that resulted in a tragically different ending. In some games, you needed to replay the entire game over on a different difficutly. In others, you CAN'T unlock the "good" ending until you've gone through the bad one (or ones, sometimes multiple playthroughs) and then beat it to get a new option to play the game AGAIN, this time with the chance to unlock the happy ending. 

Modifié par Fast Jimmy, 15 novembre 2013 - 07:46 .

[MerinTB]

TurretSyndrome wrote...

MerinTB wrote...
 but once they start inserting hard-coded game features to FORCE or RESTRICT how a gamer chooses to play the game, they are wrong.

Game features such as?

Save points because they want to stop players from save scrumming - not because their game design nor the experience they want to have is, in their opinion, better due to not being able to save whenever - but specificially restricting how often one can save because they want to prevent save scrumming.

In an ongoing game series, making the next game in the series unable to kill all NPCs, even though all the previous versions you COULD kill all the NPCS, not because of concerns about breaking the story or due to game mechanic problems BUT because the designers (old or new) decide they dislike players being able to kill any NPC.

Any feature, either removed or implemented, not the enhance the game but to LIMIT things the player can do that the designers disagree with.

It's not a difficult concept.

You should recognize it, especially from other players, when you get the guy who says "if you don't pick the optimal choices to win combat the easiest, you are playing the game wrong" or the girl who says "if you metagame and make choices in the game that go against your character's knowledge because you, the player, known something and want something specific to happen, you are playing wrong!"  Those are personal views on how to play the game, not universal rules.  Imposing your own personal tastes in how to game on others is wrong.

[Thomas Andresen]

Fast Jimmy wrote...

I'm torn about this.

On one hand, having story outcomes that vary depending on gameplay is something I really like. But, on the other hand, many players will just reload or drop down to easy to get the "best outcome" evey time. If that's the case, where it becomes just tedium that most players realize the ways to game the system to get the happiest outcomes, what is really gained? It isn't a darker story, it is just a game with a happy path that takes some tedium to get and also story content if you fail to get the happy path instead of a "Game Over" screen.

I'm not sure if that's the best way. Then again, binary choices via dialogue may, also, not be the best way.

I agree with all of this. Except for one thing: I only care about what I might do, not what other people might do. And what I might do, and how I might go about doing it, will definitely vary from play-through to play-through. Even more importantly, the reasons for the choices I make and how I make my choices will vary as well. More often than not, especially in early play-throughs, I make choices from a pure role-play perspective. I only start looking at guides and such after several play-throughs, when I start wondering about something I might have missed.

I don't think the developers(in general) should consider restricting choices to limit meta-gaming, which is what you describe.

Relevant opinions: At one time I did a play-through where I would kill Wrex on Virmire(among other things I did differently). When I was finally able to play ME again, which took something like a week, I deleted that save. On the whole, I rather liked the ME3 ending(more so before the EC). The Ultimate Sacrifice in Origins tore me apart at a time when I thought I didn't have more to give, emotionally.

Why are those opinions relevant? Specifically, for endings, I don't really consider the endings of ME3 nor the US ending of Origins to be universally "good" endings, by any means, but I'm perfectly happy with them regardless. I would never reload a game because I was unhappy with the ending. In that case, I'd rather start an entire new game. On the other hand I might reload a game if I was unhappy with a specific choice, but then it'd be because the particular choice didn't sit right with me, for whatever reason; it would have less to do with the consequences of said choice.

[Olivier_dehFanboy]

frankf43 wrote...

Fast Jimmy wrote...

I'm torn about this.

On one hand, having story outcomes that vary depending on gameplay is something I really like. But, on the other hand, many players will just reload or drop down to easy to get the "best outcome" evey time. If that's the case, where it becomes just tedium that most players realize the ways to game the system to get the happiest outcomes, what is really gained? It isn't a darker story, it is just a game with a happy path that takes some tedium to get and also story content if you fail to get the happy path instead of a "Game Over" screen.

I'm not sure if that's the best way. Then again, binary choices via dialogue may, also, not be the best way.

I can't see why the problem with some people reloading the game time and again to get t he best outcome, it is their game play-through and if they want to spend the time getting their happy ever after then why not let them.

If you want to play through once taking the breaks the game gives you good and bad then that is your choice.  I do think that there should be an achievement for playing a game through once on nightmare with no reloads though.

could not have said it better myself. Totally agree.

[Medhia Nox]

@Fast Jimmy: And you think that's good game design?

[Plaintiff]

Fast Jimmy wrote...
If the player fails to take the character through the game at the correct difficulty, speed or with completing the right objectives and the story changes because of that, how is that not the player determining the narrative?

Because none of those things have any relevance to the narrative. There's no reason why they should impact the narrative at all, they exist outside it. Having something like difficulty level impact the ending is just arbitrary nonsense.

And how is that saying such sad endings are not "real?"

What?

Was the Ultimate Sacrifice ending not real, because it wasn't happy? That's like saying the happiest endings in Crono Trigger aren't real, because you need to beat the game multiple times to uncover them.

An ending is an ending. You can't say it isn't part of the narrative just because it was easier/harder/what-have-you to get to.

You seem to have misunderstood my argument. I'm not saying 'Failure' endings aren't real, I'm saying they aren't failures. The only person who decides if the player failed is the player himself, it's not the place of the game to decide that for him. You (and games that employ this practice) keep insisting on the existence of an objectively 'best' ending, that every player obviously desires. But there's no such thing. 'Best' and 'worst' are arbitrary and subjective.

I'm also not saying endings lose their legitimacy by being difficult to obtain, I'm saying they lose their legitimacy when the hurdles required to obtain them have no relevance to the story. Saving progress, for instance is a metagame concept. The characters in the game don't have to save their progress, they don't perceive the process happening at all. This feature exists purely for the benefit of the player, it doesn't impact the characters at all. So why would their level of success be contingent on how often you save the game?

It's not "good storytelling", the story doesn't change, except for the final two minutes. It's just arbitrarily tying extra footage to a gameplay hurdle, to add artificial replay value.

Modifié par Plaintiff, 15 novembre 2013 - 08:10 .

[Dave of Canada]

I just want the option A and B to exist without a C.

So when you're doing the choice between D and E, A and B's consequences change how things go which lead to different solutions / problems down the line.

Did you save the village? Oh no, the keep is lost! How do you intend on holding the territory without the keep fortifying the region?

Do you save the keep? Oh no, the village is lost! How do you intend on supplying the keep without the village?

Rather than solving both with C, leaving A and B with subpar choices with consequences which will never matter since they can't explore D/E because C bypasses the problem completely.

Modifié par Dave of Canada, 15 novembre 2013 - 08:00 .

[Thomas Andresen]

Save points because they want to stop players from save scrumming - not because their game design nor the experience they want to have is, in their opinion, better due to not being able to save whenever - but specificially restricting how often one can save because they want to prevent save scrumming.

I don't really like the concept of save points, at all. I want to be able to save and quit the game at absolutely any point in the game. Mainly because save points requires me to plan ahead for when I should end a play session.

[Fast Jimmy]

Medhia Nox wrote...

@Fast Jimmy: And you think that's good game design?

It's amazing story-telling. And it has kept me playing many of these games to unlock all of the content, both good and bad. I would say it is successful.

But that's not the issue here - many posters here are arguing that "no game does this ever" which is flat out not true. Yes, they may be games Fast Jimmy, or Plantiff, or David, or MedhiaNox may/may not like... but they exist. They have been put out by major developers. They have been successful franchises. I'm not mentioning some indie Flash game only a hundred people have played... they are real games, in the very real market. 

Whether or not I (or you) like them is irrelevant. If people want to amend their statements to "well, I've never played a game like that, but it sounds like something I wouldn't like" then we can have an entirely different discussion. 

But to say a game is not a game or an ending isn't an ending just because it's not the exact same if you play it through  once on Easy and die a billion times versus beating it in ten minutes of Ninja Gaiden Black difficulty is just ignorant. Games exist that do this - saying otherwise is folly. 

Modifié par Fast Jimmy, 15 novembre 2013 - 08:05 .

[Thomas Andresen]

I just want the option A and B to exist without a C.

I wouldn't consider it a bad thing if option C was available as well. Mainly because, for various reasons, I wouldn't always be striving for option C. If someone else might always choose option C, first of all, that's hardly my business, nor is it my loss. Too bad for them.

[TurretSyndrome]

MerinTB wrote...
Save points because they want to stop players from save scrumming - not because their game design nor the experience they want to have is, in their opinion, better due to not being able to save whenever - but specificially restricting how often one can save because they want to prevent save scrumming.

In an ongoing game series, making the next game in the series unable to kill all NPCs, even though all the previous versions you COULD kill all the NPCS, not because of concerns about breaking the story or due to game mechanic problems BUT because the designers (old or new) decide they dislike players being able to kill any NPC.

Any feature, either removed or implemented, not the enhance the game but to LIMIT things the player can do that the designers disagree with.

It's not a difficult concept.

You should recognize it, especially from other players, when you get the guy who says "if you don't pick the optimal choices to win combat the easiest, you are playing the game wrong" or the girl who says "if you metagame and make choices in the game that go against your character's knowledge because you, the player, known something and want something specific to happen, you are playing wrong!"  Those are personal views on how to play the game, not universal rules.  Imposing your own personal tastes in how to game on others is wrong.

Ah, all right. You said features so I got a bit confused. I definitely agree. It shouldn't matter to the developer nor to the player(especially to the player) that someone wishes to load a save to get what they desire.

I'd like to add something to this. Gaming in the end, is just entertainment to us as individuals. How we find that entertainment, or what we find entertaining, is upto us. A developer should be satisfied if his/her game has become the choice medium for entertainment. In the same way, it is not us who define what's fun for others.

Modifié par TurretSyndrome, 15 novembre 2013 - 08:10 .