50 réponses à ce sujet

[Remmirath]

While I would say there's an extent to which it is true that dying in a game (and re-loading) creates some disconnect, I'd also say that I find that preferable to having a game that isn't challenging. I'll be more interested in a big fight in a game where I know that I could fail, as opposed to a game where I really can't. It's very difficult, if not impossible, to strike a balance where everyone will find the game challenging but not have to reload; most of the time, the difficulty falls to the side one way or another.

I'd agree that not dying (or having death end that playthrough) would make sense in a survival horror game, but not so much in other genres.

Just RP "dead is DEAD" and when you die, put the game down and never pick it up again. See? Easy

No-reload playthroughs can be great fun, but I wouldn't try it on the first game. Not only are the consequences more present, but it inclines one to make every combat-related decision much more carefully, and generally play with a more cautious attitude than one normally might.

On the other hand, in any game where I can create the whole party, my preferred way of playing through the game is to declare every dead character to indeed be dead and simply make a new one in the slot in the next town.

[Goth Skunk]

 That type of Alien is a Drone. Wanna know what drones do? They kill foreign life forms so it can begin constructing a nest for the queen. Where's the respectable part of your suggestion? Xenomorphs don't mess around. They don't give you "Reduced health" Love taps. It kills you. That is its BIOLOGICAL Purpose. It would've been more immersion breaking if we had it your way.

 

 

 

What about films with precognitive characters like Snowpiercer? Or time traveling characters like in Terminator or Days of Future Past? Do those films ruin your immersion? It's pretty much the same as the scenario you put forward.

 

 

 

 

Personally, I disagree with your claim that it would be more immersion breaking if Amanda were given the opportunities to break free or escape from the xenomorph's clutches, because I don't believe anything is more immersion breaking than being killed and triggering a fail state. So long as the player is still in control, as long as Ripley is still alive, the immersion is still there. I acknowledge that the xenomorph drone is a superb killing machine. I acknowledge that given the situation with Amanda being unarmed for most of the game, it is not possible for her to engage the drone and come out alive, and I acknowledge that to suggest otherwise would be disrespectful to the drone's killing potential. But in terms of the canon story, we know she survives and lives into her 60's before dying of natural causes.

 

When I eventually beat Alien: Isolation there will be a part of me that thinks, "I beat it, but I died X times because I made X mistakes." Amanda doesn't die in the canon story, so either she made no mistakes at all (unlikely, given the disadvantage she's at) or none of her mistakes were damningly fatal. That mentality, in my opinion, should have translated into the game. You can't kill the xenomorph, so don't even try. But you should at least be able to avoid death and get away from it even if it finds you hiding in a locker.

 

As for precognitive characters, no, that doesn't ruin my immersion because they are precognitive and it plays into the narrative. But when a character who is not precognitive suddenly displays precognitive behaviours (such as in the case of reloading a game to the last checkpoint, and advancing with extra caution knowing there is danger ahead because they died before), that ruins immersion for me.

 

 

 

While I would say there's an extent to which it is true that dying in a game (and re-loading) creates some disconnect, I'd also say that I find that preferable to having a game that isn't challenging. I'll be more interested in a big fight in a game where I know that I could fail, as opposed to a game where I really can't. It's very difficult, if not impossible, to strike a balance where everyone will find the game challenging but not have to reload; most of the time, the difficulty falls to the side one way or another.

I'd agree that not dying (or having death end that playthrough) would make sense in a survival horror game, but not so much in other genres.


No-reload playthroughs can be great fun, but I wouldn't try it on the first game. Not only are the consequences more present, but it inclines one to make every combat-related decision much more carefully, and generally play with a more cautious attitude than one normally might.

On the other hand, in any game where I can create the whole party, my preferred way of playing through the game is to declare every dead character to indeed be dead and simply make a new one in the slot in the next town.

 

Keeping in the theme of Alien universe games, I draw upon something fascinating I noticed in the Alien vs Predator games. First, the two versions of the game developed by Sierra for the PC, and the most recent version of the game that did not do so well critically. In the first two, the PC games, the facehugger was one of the more dangerous enemies. If you didn't kill them right away and they got you, that was it. They jumped at you, attached to your face, and you were dead. Fail state engaged. But in the most recent game, as long as you had a high amount of HP left, your character automatically fought off the facehugger and tossed it to the ground. You took a penalty to health as a result, but you weren't instantly dead. The facehugger could only kill you if your health was dangerously low.

 

In my opinion, that's a good mechanic to adopt.

[Gravisanimi]

I have mentioned something along this vein elsewhere, so I'll just Ctrl+C>V it here with some edits.

 

Games should be games before they are stories, but good story can gloss over bad game play, and a bad story can be excused by good game play.

 

Game play is larger piece however, so the amount it can gloss over is greater than the story can.

 

Alien Isolation's "breaking of the immersion" with dying cannot be avoided. Watching the Alien movies, very rarely did anyone survive a CQC encounter with a Xeno, and the majority of these cases where the person survived were when there was a Queen in place to bring an ulterior motive into play. There is no getting away from a mindless thing perfectly designed to kill.

 

The perfect thing about making death a fail state, it brings investment into the game, it actually has a higher immersion rate than "I can get through this" strategies to gameplay.

 

It makes you want to make the character survive more.

[TheClonesLegacy]

Personally, I disagree with your claim that it would be more immersion breaking if Amanda were given the opportunities to break free or escape from the xenomorph's clutches, because I don't believe anything is more immersion breaking than being killed and triggering a fail state. So long as the player is still in control, as long as Ripley is still alive, the immersion is still there. I acknowledge that the xenomorph drone is a superb killing machine. I acknowledge that given the situation with Amanda being unarmed for most of the game, it is not possible for her to engage the drone and come out alive, and I acknowledge that to suggest otherwise would be disrespectful to the drone's killing potential. But in terms of the canon story, we know she survives and lives into her 60's before dying of natural causes.

So...Completely disregard the Xenos killing potential to make it better for you. What makes Amanda so special? She's the main character? So? What makes her so special she can break free of its grasp? Highly trained and physically stronger marines couldn't do that in other media.

Predators can't do that. And they're way better trained and stronger than Amanda would be.

So now we're in another plothole, what makes Amanda strong enough or nimble enough to break free from its grasp? It's the same problem of breaking canon, but far more ridiculous. Thus ruining the immersion more because it removes the threat the Alien can kill you at any time. Since all it does is give you love taps. Now the Xeno is no longer the boogeyman out to get ya, you know an actual threat. It's a giant phallic symbol that you have QTE out of if it grabs you. Big whoop, I might as well go back to Aliens Colonial Marines if I want love tapping Xenos.

 

Wouldn't Pyramid head have been a much better encounter if he couldn't one hit you?

I mean all his relevance would've diminished and he'd just be this annoying ******* with a dumb helmet. But hey, James would survive.

 

Can't have your cake and eat it too man. I'm sorry.

[Neoleviathan]

Sometimes I felt it would have been nice if Ripley had her own sense of self preservation, & could auto-use a flamethrower or any of the other offensive items as a last resort to keep you going, but with some penalty.

Some of my favorite moments in the game were when I was able to completely fool the alien into stalking a far off corner of the map. Having more options to throw the alien off would have been nice. Sometimes though, I'd just be in the closet forever. Especially when they throw the alien at you in a really confined part of the ship.

[Fast Jimmy]

OP, great thread concept.

 

Games, since the dawn of history, have taught us concepts of loss and limitations. The earliest forms were in the matter of gambling, where goods or items of value were lost based upon the skill of the player. As time passed, inventions of games for entertainment became more common and are now represented in virtual fashion with video games. 

 

But, ultimately, without the concept of loss, risk or danger, the presence of tension is absent. A reload screen is just a temporary setback, a slip or essence of failure is simply a minor inconvenience. In light of those realities, how is the pressure of death real? On the flip side, how do you prevent the player from dying without making the game's difficulty and challenge so simple as to be non-engaging?

 

It is a very hard question to answer.

 

 

As one person suggested, making death permanent is an option. Of course, it means you must make dying so incredibly hard as to suspend disbelief itself, or provide a type of backdoor through narrative, where the main character can repeatedly come back to life, such as through Planescape Torment.

 

Some games have tried to tackle the concept of a "no game over" or even a "no death" mechanic in games. It has been met with limited success. It becomes difficult to give the game a backdoor to continue the story if a player fails in their given task without making the overall story or general coherency of the game suffer. And, regardless, there are usually certain scenarios where the player MUST hit a brick wall or face a reload screen - it is almost inevitable when there is a test of skill, knowledge or even general patience that some players will fail.

 

And, of course, as you said - it is often easy in some games to never encounter a true "death" because of the ease of the encounter design and difficulty. However, what may have been easy enough for one player to have gone through without dying may be something that stymies and annoys a player with different experience and skills.

 

 

 

 

What's the answer? I don't know. As I said earlier, there isn't an easy, clear answer. However, I may have a suggestion - assessment of the player's current success rate. The best games have usually attempted at this is to either A) after multiple reload screens, prompt the player to drop the difficulty level (as a video game Mercy Rule of sort) or level scaling, where the enemies aren't as tough if you character isn't as powerful. Both have serious faults - level scaling working to reward power gamers and penalize sub-optimal builds while also not providing many enemies outside of the player's ability to ever beat at any time (which has a whole load of other issues involved with that) or the fact that a player has to die multiple times before being offered the prompt to change difficulty.

 

If a game were to, instead, assess the player's skill, both in terms of build, application of basic skills, amount of damage received in an encounter, supplies used, etc., and determine, before the player even encountered death, how well they were doing, this might be a step in the right direction. The game could then either automatically adjust aspects of the AI or enemy stats to be a relevant challenge (or to even provide unbeatable foes if the player was in an area they should not be in) or to prompt the player to change difficulty based on their relative success or failure.

 

This is just one idea that would likely be difficult to properly track and implement, but I think it could act as an ongoing challenge to developers to create a game that adapts to the player instead of making the player face the dreaded "game over" screen over and over again, harming the nature of tension and drama in a game. One death in a given encounter is okay - sometimes things get the jump on you. But unless the gimmick of the game is cheap, easy-to-encounter death (like in Dark Souls - not a criticism of the game, it was legitimately designed that way), then death for one particular enemy or area could be avoided, as the game would sense this discrepancy between challenge and skill well before the encounter ever began.

[General TSAR]

 Death, when used as a fail state in video games, is harmful to the player's immersion.

 

So what you're saying is death is a failure of the game design.

[TheClonesLegacy]

So what you're saying is death is a failure of the game design.

 

David Cage? Is that you?
Your games suck!

[mybudgee]

Wait a second; Alien: Isolation has QUICK TIME CRAP??!!

[OdanUrr]

OP, I think there's another issue with the game you chose to use as an example in that, as you say, you can't accurately predict the xenomorph's movements meaning the knowledge you bring with you in every "reborn" state is flawed at best, what can lead to frustration rather than boredom. For instance, watching Angry Joe's review of the game, I noticed that, all things being equal, the xenomorph may or may not discover you in any particular room. Sure, this means that "nowhere is safe" but the novelty can quickly wear thin to the point players may actually feel cheated if their expectations of winning the game are dashed by a completely random system.

 

In most action games, a player's ability to "not die" is dependant upon his skill as a player and as a character (if said options are available), as well as on the 'tools' (guns, explosives, swords, bows, etc.) at his disposal. In 'Alien: Isolation' however, killing the xeno is out of the question and coming heads to heads with it translates into an immediate failure state. Thus, the options available to the player to "not die" and reach a win scenario are already limited to begin with. The xeno can't be killed (so no tools); its movements can't be predicted (so no extrapolation of data); and, in fact, it may actually act differently in the same situation (so no 'reborn knowledge'), meaning there's a high element of chance to the game (so little skill as a player).

 

The issue of 'reborn knowledge,' or metaknowledge, is one common with practically every game. Dark Souls may pride itself on doing this but so does DA:O, and Tomb Raider, and BioShock Infinite, and a plethora of other games, if to varying degrees of depth. We die, we reload, we keep playing, and we enjoy (or not). In your particular case, 'Alien: Isolation' has the more difficult task of sustaining an ambiance of danger throughout that, to my mind, is simply not possible. Regardless of that, and while I agree 'Alien: Isolation' doesn't give the player many choices in how to deal with the xeno, your proposed solution still has the player dying at some point, meaning metaknowledge isn't removed. Alternatively, if the player is immortal, then the danger element is removed.

 

So, let me ask you, is this a problem with games in general or 'Alien: Isolation' in particular?

[Goth Skunk]

So...Completely disregard the Xenos killing potential to make it better for you. What makes Amanda so special? She's the main character? So? What makes her so special she can break free of its grasp? Highly trained and physically stronger marines couldn't do that in other media.

Predators can't do that. And they're way better trained and stronger than Amanda would be.

So now we're in another plothole, what makes Amanda strong enough or nimble enough to break free from its grasp? It's the same problem of breaking canon, but far more ridiculous. Thus ruining the immersion more because it removes the threat the Alien can kill you at any time. Since all it does is give you love taps. Now the Xeno is no longer the boogeyman out to get ya, you know an actual threat. It's a giant phallic symbol that you have QTE out of if it grabs you. Big whoop, I might as well go back to Aliens Colonial Marines if I want love tapping Xenos.

No, I don't want to completely disregard the xeno's killing potential. I'm a fan of the Alien universe and of the xenomorph's themselves. Despite them being fictional creatures, I find them fascinating and alluring. Like Ash in the original movie, I admire them. Disregarding the xeno's killing potential would be disrespectful to them and to the franchise. But I also believe that respect must be paid to the fact that in the canon story, Amanda survives. Even in the face of overwhelming odds against her. I'm not suggesting that a skilled Amanda should be able to escape every single encounter. But I am also not in favour of the xeno getting an instant 'I win!' card every time you lose at hide-and-seek. I'm suggesting that if the xeno discovers Amanda, it should by all means give chase. If it catches her, she takes damage, and unless she fails a skill test, she dies. But if she passes the skill test, she should break free and be given maybe a 5 to 10 second head start. If she fails to lose the xeno in that amount of time, it keeps on giving chase.

 

And on that note, I found it rather frustrating that it wasn't possible to lock doors behind you (at least in the early levels of the game. I haven't beaten it yet) and prevent the xeno from chasing you into rooms.

 

Sometimes I felt it would have been nice if Ripley had her own sense of self preservation, & could auto-use a flamethrower or any of the other offensive items as a last resort to keep you going, but with some penalty.

Some of my favorite moments in the game were when I was able to completely fool the alien into stalking a far off corner of the map. Having more options to throw the alien off would have been nice. Sometimes though, I'd just be in the closet forever. Especially when they throw the alien at you in a really confined part of the ship.

 

This was extremely frustrating for me as well. As I mentioned in my original post, I'm at a part in Alien: Isolation where I just escaped from medical after setting off an evacuation order and thus unlocking a previously locked door. There was a section in that same mission where after viewing a video log by the Sevastopol doctor, my progress was impeded because one of the hallways available to walk down explodes in a wall of flame and prevents access. I must have replayed that section over a dozen times because the game placed the xeno in the opposite hallway, trapping me between an impassable obstacle and an invulnerable enemy. At that point, you may as well quote Private Hudson, reload the game, and hope your luck is better the next time. But by that point, the immersion is killed. At a point like that you are hopelessly trapped and there's not a damn thing you can do about it.

 

So what you're saying is death is a failure of the game design.

 

Such a statement is too broadly encompassing and I don't want to be so general. I think the concern deserves more respect than something so absolute. In games where death is inevitable regardless of the level of skill employed by the player, yes I think death is a failure of the game design. I also think it's flippantly dismissed on account of how easy it is to just respawn back at the most recent checkpoint and try again. And I would point to any Call of Duty or Battlefield single-player game played on the hardest difficulty level, beginning to end, as an example. I genuinely believe it is not possible to do it without dying, and that's not good game design.

 

I also think that a well designed game will give the player a sense of 'well, this will be difficult, but I know what I need to do to succeed.' This way, a player's death is placed squarely on their lack of skill and/or mistakes they made that were completely within their ability not to make.

 

 

Wait a second; Alien: Isolation has QUICK TIME CRAP??!!

 

To the best of my knowledge, no. But keep in mind, I have not yet beaten Alien: Isolation.

 

On a side note, I have no problem with quick-time tests of skill. What I have a problem with is when they're utilized in a 'Press X To Not Die' scenario. God of War's use of Quick-Time tests of skill is much more enjoyable. If you fail the skill test, you don't die, but you have to weaken your enemy down again before you can make another attempt.

 

 

In your particular case, 'Alien: Isolation' has the more difficult task of sustaining an ambiance of danger throughout that, to my mind, is simply not possible. Regardless of that, and while I agree 'Alien: Isolation' doesn't give the player many choices in how to deal with the xeno, your proposed solution still has the player dying at some point, meaning metaknowledge isn't removed. Alternatively, if the player is immortal, then the danger element is removed.

 

So, let me ask you, is this a problem with games in general or 'Alien: Isolation' in particular?

 

This is a problem I find in games in general, and now that I'm older and a more mature gamer (31 years old) I can state my concern with more eloquence than I could when I was in my early 20's. For example, I think the first games I ever beat on the hardest difficulty setting were Mass Effect and Timeshift. After that, I tried beating Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 on the highest difficulty setting and I noticed right away that compared to the aforementioned two games, it was significantly harder to beat. In fact, I don't remember if I ever did. What was most frustrating was how I was very often put in scenarios were I could not possibly manage all of my flanks, and the enemy NPCs just kept coming and coming, and they all seemed to have pin-point accuracy. I spent a great deal of time contemplating why these games all had vastly different difficulty curves despite them all having the same name.

 

I've wanted to talk about this openly for a while, but could never find a forum open enough that I felt would give the opinion the time of day. Additionally, the whole #GamerGate thing has shown me that if I have an opinion, I should speak up, because people are listening. It has thus given me the courage to speak up and talk about some elements of game design that I as a player have a grievance with. Granted, this is not a #GamerGate forum, but nevertheless the movement has inspired me to speak up and encourage dialogue such as this from my fellow hobbyists.

 

I reference Alien: Isolation presently because at this moment it is the best example I can provide where I see this problem. Evil Within is not too far behind, but at least in that game you CAN fight back.

[TheClonesLegacy]

No, I don't want to completely disregard the xeno's killing potential. I'm a fan of the Alien universe and of the xenomorph's themselves. Despite them being fictional creatures, I find them fascinating and alluring. Like Ash in the original movie, I admire them. Disregarding the xeno's killing potential would be disrespectful to them and to the franchise. But I also believe that respect must be paid to the fact that in the canon story, Amanda survives. Even in the face of overwhelming odds against her. I'm not suggesting that a skilled Amanda should be able to escape every single encounter. But I am also not in favour of the xeno getting an instant 'I win!' card every time you lose at hide-and-seek. I'm suggesting that if the xeno discovers Amanda, it should by all means give chase. If it catches her, she takes damage, and unless she fails a skill test, she dies. But if she passes the skill test, she should break free and be given maybe a 5 to 10 second head start. If she fails to lose the xeno in that amount of time, it keeps on giving chase.

First. Just call it a QTE. You know you want too. Unless you want the game to pause so you can roll dice.

Second, now you're just describing Silent Hill Shattered Memories' Otherworld segments.

Otherwise known as the worst part of that game.

[Goth Skunk]

I never played any of the Silent Hill games. Being a fan of survival horror, I realize that must sound crazy. But that has to do with another belief, unrelated to the topic at hand, where I cannot remain immersed in suspense if the game forces me to complete a puzzle in order to progress further.

[TheClonesLegacy]

I'm done.

[A Crusty Knight Of Colour]

I think on some level we need to accept that games are games and ultimately limited. I posted before about how Shadow of Mordor handles death which is quite interesting (and fun), but it's not going to fit on every game.

 

There is also how the new(ish) Prince of Persia games handled death in a way that melded well with it's storytelling.

 

Personally, I reckon QTEs suck, but I am someone who dislikes linear progression being gated via canned sequences with pre-determined button presses. I prefer the randomness and the interaction choice -> open consequence dynamic of games (particularly sandbox, RPG and strategy games).

[Qwib Qwib]

If not death... what else? Think about it. Death is the ultimate way of losing something. In games that involve combat (might I say, there are many of those nowadays) you lose by dying. It is combat after all. But even since the beginning. Good old Mario usually succumbed. 

  But why is that immersion breaking? It is not. But it is. Rather, it only is because of the loading screens. Might seem strange, but if you quickly die in a certain part for multiple parts... you'll want to quickly get back in the action. If you have to wait staring at a still image while watching a little thing spin, you'll get bored. 

   This is true. In the recent wave of ''quick retry games'' such as Hotline Miami... this just doesn't happen. 

 

The problem of death in video-games is the thought of sitting through a loading screen, and not the retrying of a sequence. Hotline Miami is an example of this. 

[mybudgee]

 

 

Personally, I reckon QTEs suck

Agree 100%. They are a festering sore on the face of gaming. They are a lazy way to pander to dumb kids or make a cutscene less... "boring". (ADHD)

 

 

They CAN be used in a creative, clever way. This is maybe 1 or 2% of time, however.

[mybudgee]

Also, this is relevant 

[Lotion Soronarr]

Problem is you cannot really disconnect the player from his knowledge of the game, regardless of the genre.

You learn the weapons.

You learn the abilities.

You learn the strengths and weakneses of enemies.

You learn the level layout.

You learn AI patterns.

 

The only way to "fix" this is to play a comepletely different game each time you die.

[Goth Skunk]

The only way to "fix" this is to play a comepletely different game each time you die.

 

I disagree. That is one solution, but frankly it's the most difficult and strenuous.

 

As I have argued extensively in this thread, pertaining specifically to Alien: Isolation, other solutions are:

Offer more opportunities to escape and evade,

Don't engage an absolute fail state just because the player lost one game of hide-and-seek, I'm sure even Outlast didn't do this except on Nightmare difficulty.

 

If a player does die, they should never feel like it was unavoidable, because if it was, that's poor game design.

[Kaiser Arian XVII]

If a player does die, they should never feel like it was unavoidable, because if it was, that's poor game design.

 

*casts firebolt spell on you*

*you die*

[General TSAR]

Such a statement is too broadly encompassing and I don't want to be so general. I think the concern deserves more respect than something so absolute. In games where death is inevitable regardless of the level of skill employed by the player, yes I think death is a failure of the game design. I also think it's flippantly dismissed on account of how easy it is to just respawn back at the most recent checkpoint and try again. And I would point to any Call of Duty or Battlefield single-player game played on the hardest difficulty level, beginning to end, as an example. I genuinely believe it is not possible to do it without dying, and that's not good game design.

Yeah, you're clearly not a fan of TBFP/SBFP.

 

Anyway, if death is not a consequence then you're left with games like Beyond Two Souls...yuck.

[AventuroLegendary]

Games like Dark Souls and Shadow of Mordor are exceptions to this rule, though. Death is integrated as an acknowledged story element and gameplay mechanic and, for the most part, it isn't that frustrating. 

 

Obviously, not every game will handle it this way. It's up to the player to learn from his/her mistakes and know that each attempt would be like an entirely new experience for the same character (Mario, Lara Croft, yada yada).

[Goth Skunk]

Yeah, you're clearly not a fan of TBFP/SBFP.

 

Anyway, if death is not a consequence then you're left with games like Beyond Two Souls...yuck.

 

I had to google those, so no, I am not. c.c

[Jeremiah12LGeek]

Some games come up with some creative ways of addressing it.

 

In DA:O, they had the whole "wounds" thing... operating on the premise that you were being "knocked out" as opposed to "killed." It's not a perfect solution, but any effort in that area will help improve immersion.

 

Fable 3 used a similar system (if you had the skill to actually get "knocked out" in Fable 3... which I didn't. I played through it twice without it ever happening to me.)