Be Excellent To Each Other

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2012/10 ... s-go-wrong

Yes, RPS. Swallow the vomit.

A good point is made. Dishono(u)red and many other games sell a power fantasy, where you're all but unstoppable and make mincemeat of the hapless mooks you're faced with.

Contrast with ArmA, where you're just a normal human like your opponents. A single bullet could kill you, and while your helicopter or tank might be destroyed, you'd survive only to be vulnerable on foot. Likewise X-COM (any of them), where you have everything to lose and indeed can lose it all very quickly and easily.

I think it all goes even deeper, to the root of gaming itself. The heavily scripted thrill rides that are now de rigeur remove that vulnerability. The entire universe explodes around you in innumerable games (CoD) but you're not actually at risk except from the half dozen enemies in front of you. In a recent preview for the new Tomb Raider, the writer noticed that while Lara made terrified squeals as she attempted to cross a slippery log over a chasm, the illusion faded when it became apparent that you can't actually make her fall off.

With recharging health, so much of the risk (and sense of accomplishment when you do succeed) is gone. Gears of War told a fantastic story and was fun to play but you didn't really come away with any memories of it, because you were swept along and could instantly retry any tough parts immediately, as many times as you wanted.

Could this be why multiplayer modes are being included so much? Ignoring the pre-owned side of things, a developer with some integrity must be thinking that the suits have ordered yet another by-the-numbers scripted single player mode. Therefore, a multiplayer mode might be the only way that the game mechanics they've worked so hard on will get a proper showing.

What do you think?

I often lament the vulnerability being lost from Assassin's Creed. The first one had a nice balance that was lost through the series in the need to give you something new to play with. Totally overpowered by the end.

I've been moaning about it in the Resi 6 thread. It won't let me die!

Yeah, many games these days just don't have any real consequences.

It's OK to lose in a game, it just makes you strive harder to succeed. Too many games have gone too far in the opposite direction, and made it too hard to lose.

I think that's the key thing... too many games do this. It's not that it is a fault in the game, or that one style of game is fundamentally better than the other (although everyone will have their preference of course), it's that there are vast swathes of games that play like Modern Warfare, Gears of War, Dishonoured (apparently) etc which leaves us yearning for the other end of the spectrum.

To expand a bit on what I said before, consider: before, people sunk hours into singleplayer, now they sink the hours into multiplayer. Singleplayer isn't challenging or has very little risk/reward, whereas multiplayer provides that in spades on top of the thrill of unpredictable human opponents.

Remember the very old (PS1 era) TOCA games? They were damned hard but people praised them, because driving the twitchy, powerful cars effectively was the huge risk; and a minor mishap would either result in a huge crash and fucked car, or losing a lot of ground to your opponents. It was thrilling. Only the very fastest cars in Forza offer the same feel, but the huge pack of opponents or dozen-race championship isn't on the line any more.

Two tangents: I think this is why FTL is so infuriating. You come through such an ordeal to get to the final area only to be faced with a cheating opponent that you cannot hope to defeat. Your risk and vulnerability, all the obstacles you had to overcome, they're all thrown away and trivialized in the face of an unstoppable force. Your ship and crew, which you carefully guided through hell, are effortlessly smashed before your eyes and ground underfoot for added insult.

Second: More personally, I've realized this vulnerability is part of what I like about simulators. There's a lot at stake and you need to use all your skill to remain in control of your vehicle or you'll crash and that's it. You need to guide your truck or bus through traffic and challenging road conditions; keep your freight train from running away on a steep gradient; land your airliner in the fog; remain concealed behind a hill in your gunship helicopter. It could go wrong at any moment throughout the whole experience. Finally touching down or pulling into the final stop on your trip is the reward, knowing that overcame the obstacles.

See: How much many people loved Dark Souls & Demons Souls. Partly because they didn't shy away from handing you your arse on a plate when you made a mistake.By the end of a game you should be better at the game than when you started, many games *cough*Skyrim*cough* I don't feel that I've got any more skilled at all.

Yes. The one way of doing it is to give you everything you need/can do from the beginning and it's up to you to figure out which items/abilities you like best and get good at using them.

The second, more modern idea* is to drip feed you perks/unlocks/whatever as you go, and weight the unlock system so you can't really get any ability a) before it's time and b) before the game is ready to offer some sort of counter for it. A variant of this is levelling the opposition, famously in Oblivion, so the bandits clad in sackcloth rags you fight at the beginning are just as challenging to fight as those clad in magical daedric armour at the end.

*I fully accept that the idea of levels and new abilities isn't new, it's a very old pen and paper idea. What I meant was that it's being included into non-RPG games. Dragon Warrior on the NES was my first RPG, and I remember the terror of encountering a MagiDrakee or a Wyvern when I was a low level. Those things would use spells you'd never even heard of to easily pound the crap out of you. I remember looking at the map and knowing that there were areas to the south that would be filled with those monsters; looking at the monster chart and seeing there were two even tougher variants of the Wyvern. It was a while before I could enter those areas. The first, speculative expeditions where I could successfully defeat one or two before I'd burned through my healing goodies and had to retreat. The nearest I've come to this in Skyrim is when Lydia and I stumbled across some ruins inhabited by a number of frost trolls. Very much a 'come back later' situation.