Bioware's New Game

[Tale]

Liara... just give me a chance to shoot her -or let her get a collector missile- in the face in the next game, please.

I'm not alone!

[Malcador]

We should be able to summarily execute any and all party members. Too crowded on my ship.

[Majek]

I want a chance to fail at the end of a bioware game. Not win and die but fail and live to see it.

[Enoch]

I want a chance to fail at the end of a bioware game. Not win and die but fail and live to see it.

I do think that ME2 missed an opportunity to require some sacrifice by the player, making the ending more of a qualified success. But, really, are there any single-player games outside the various "strategy" genres where the player "failing" yeilds anything other than a death screen and a reload?

[Majek]

Maybe some a decade or more ago. But modern AAA games ... no, at best just "evil" endings.

[Tale]

That's a nice concept. Really, it is. I would support anyone who tried to make it. I'm all for ideas that kick players right in the package.

 

But I'm not sure it would go over well with the audience at large. For understandable reasons. Might not even go over well with developers, either. "I'm going to put all this effort into an ending that just makes them hate me and/or reload a save?"

Edited February 18, 2011 by Tale

[mkreku]

Stalker had a bad ending.

[Majek]

Hey, it's your decisions matter kind of ending, could be a secret one.

 

Maybe some Japanese studio will do that.

[Enoch]

Well, there are also a number of indie in-browser games that explore that kind of thing. (e.g., Every Day the Same Dream, You Have One Chance) But they're more participatory thought experiments than they are games. And they're also free and take 10 minutes to play, so the player investment in a successful outcome is minimal.

 

Part of me agrees with Tale, in that the fallout among fans would be spectacular to behold. But there is no way in hell that a major studio would end a 10-30 hour, $60 game like that.

Edited February 18, 2011 by Enoch

[Ice9]

I want a chance to fail at the end of a bioware game. Not win and die but fail and live to see it.

 

Gaming storytelling isn't quite sophisticated enough to pull off this yet, but I long for that day. To be fair, tragic endings aren't even all that common in big budget movies either but to grow as a medium, gaming will eventually need to do stuff like that. The indie medium can, of course, be more adventurous in this regard, but AAA gaming will eventually do it one day too.

Edited February 18, 2011 by Ice9

[Orogun01]

Stalker had a bad ending.

The difference is that it's a bad ending, is conceived as an ending and it brings closure. Losing the game halfway and not playing anymore is not; although I find the concept of a "non-losing" game interesting in the manner in which the story would branch out.

[Majek]

I just remembered that Dungeon Siege 2 and Divinity 2 both had your failure as the ending, sure it was a cliffhanger and the add-on changed that in both cases, but still ...

[Maria Caliban]

What Divinity 2 and Mass Effect 2 taught me is that if you have a failure ending, it has to be good, while an ending where you win can have some problems and still work.

[Niten_Ryu]

Bloodlines had few bad endings. If you ally yourself with certain groups, you might find yourself taking a nap in the bottom of the ocean (one of my all time fav endings in games) or get blown up.

[Nepenthe]

I want a chance to fail at the end of a bioware game. Not win and die but fail and live to see it.

I do think that ME2 missed an opportunity to require some sacrifice by the player, making the ending more of a qualified success. But, really, are there any single-player games outside the various "strategy" genres where the player "failing" yeilds anything other than a death screen and a reload?

So, apart from the no death screen reload bad ending to ME2?

 

Also, I'll reserve my judgment on the ball being dropped or not until we get to see how saving/killing people on the way (wrex, rachni queen, your me2 teammates) affects ME3.

[Tale]

Also, I'll reserve my judgment on the ball being dropped or not until we get to see how saving/killing people on the way (wrex, rachni queen, your me2 teammates) affects ME3.

That is a good point.

[213374U]

Bloodlines had few bad endings. If you ally yourself with certain groups, you might find yourself taking a nap in the bottom of the ocean (one of my all time fav endings in games) or get blown up.

Bloodlines endings were awesome. I swear my jaw dropped after getting the Prince ending.

 

And the only "good" ending in Stalker was the secret one. Good stuff.

[Gromnir]

I want a chance to fail at the end of a bioware game. Not win and die but fail and live to see it.

I do think that ME2 missed an opportunity to require some sacrifice by the player, making the ending more of a qualified success. But, really, are there any single-player games outside the various "strategy" genres where the player "failing" yeilds anything other than a death screen and a reload?

 

the biowarians insist that the Average Gamer cannot handle failure. more than once has it been pointed out to the crpg developers north o' the 49th parallel that heroic stories often include heroic failure. what a story protagonist learns in defeat is often vital to character growth and such missteps is typical more compelling dramatic fodder than the heroic success. nevertheless, biowarian experience tells 'em that you, the gamer, will refuse to accept failure and that you will reload obsessively no matter how clear the developers present their no-win scenario.

 

*shrug*

 

sounds like hokum. me1 were achieving an incremental step in the right direction with the player having to choose between death o' kaiden (sp?) and ashley. were not a significant failure, but the Gamer experienced some loss... a literal sacrifice. there were no mass hysteria resulting from the virmire choice, were there? nevertheless, the "suicide mission" in me2 could be completed without a single fallen comrade. am not suggesting that game failure need necessarily include a body count, but the player (not the character) needs to feel some loss for there to be a meaningful failure.

 

multiple aspects o' me2 were showing developmental regression. sad.

 

HA! Good Fun!

Edited February 18, 2011 by Gromnir

[Zoraptor]

Wing Commander 3 had a losing mission sequence, if you always succeeded in getting the temblor you'd never see them at all. In WC4 it was also possible to lose by messing up the choices at the end.

[213374U]

^I think all the WC games had that branching campaign structure depending on player results, except for Privateer and maybe Prophecy. WC1 had some pretty sweet writing too - the feeling of grief and general morale breakdown as Confed lost ground, as conveyed in conversations with wingmates and the Col. was a very nice touch. Plot interactivity, in a game that's two decades old.

 

Yep, I think I can see the developmental regression alright.

[Nightshape]

I want a chance to fail at the end of a bioware game. Not win and die but fail and live to see it.

I do think that ME2 missed an opportunity to require some sacrifice by the player, making the ending more of a qualified success. But, really, are there any single-player games outside the various "strategy" genres where the player "failing" yeilds anything other than a death screen and a reload?

 

the biowarians insist that the Average Gamer cannot handle failure. more than once has it been pointed out to the crpg developers north o' the 49th parallel that heroic stories often include heroic failure. what a story protagonist learns in defeat is often vital to character growth and such missteps is typical more compelling dramatic fodder than the heroic success. nevertheless, biowarian experience tells 'em that you, the gamer, will refuse to accept failure and that you will reload obsessively no matter how clear the developers present their no-win scenario.

 

*shrug*

 

sounds like hokum. me1 were achieving an incremental step in the right direction with the player having to choose between death o' kaiden (sp?) and ashley. were not a significant failure, but the Gamer experienced some loss... a literal sacrifice. there were no mass hysteria resulting from the virmire choice, were there? nevertheless, the "suicide mission" in me2 could be completed without a single fallen comrade. am not suggesting that game failure need necessarily include a body count, but the player (not the character) needs to feel some loss for there to be a meaningful failure.

 

multiple aspects o' me2 were showing developmental regression. sad.

 

HA! Good Fun!

 

Urgh, the concept of soft failure is awful. There is an obsession with it in the guildford development scene.

[Ice9]

My big issue with Mass Effect 2 is it took the poorly handled Wrex situation and expanded it into a full game.

 

In ME1 if you're nice to Wrex, say the things he wants to hear, and take a time to invest in him by doing his quest, he'll live. If you don't care to take the time and do those things, he dies. So basically, if you like the character enough to invest time in him you're rewarded by keeping him alive and, at least in my mind, are robbed of the emotional impact of being forced to watch him die.

 

ME2 simply compounds the problem by building an entire game on this mechanic. So, if you take the time to talk to your crew, invest in them by doing loyalty missions, and pay attention to pretty obvious clues on how to assign people in the suicide mission, you escape from loss again.

 

Now I don't think that every game needs to have a meaningful character death but I am worried that Bioware is spending too much time in wish fulfillment at the expense of telling an emotionally engaging (their buzzwords) story. One thing is certain - if there was hidden meter that kept track of your relationship with Aeris that would determine if she was killed by Sephiroth, Final Fantasy 7 would have been a substantially worse game.

[Nepenthe]

Well, with Wrex you didn't have a huge sign telling you to do his quest before going to Virmire - something that you CAN do at an early stage, and Wrex's mission can be a pain to locate without metagame knowledge. Also, doing the mission is not required to keep him alive, you can do it also by having either of the persuade skills really close to max.

 

Just saying that it's not a binary choice like you make it out here. Certainly not without significant metagaming.

 

I don't think there's a fundamental problem with the mechanic, just that (at least for now - without the benefit of knowing how the trilogy ends), it doesn't make for very compelling story-telling.

[Ice9]

I agree that I simplified things. When playing an RPG I tend to do all the sidequests first before going onto the main plot out of fear for missing stuff. My general operational assumption is that most people do that to. That could be horribly wrong.

 

But if you're doing Virmire early there is probably an increased likelihood that you haven't spent much time with Wrex. If you haven't spent a significant part of the game learning to care about Wrex, his death will mean less. On the other hand, those players that care about him enough to rush to his aid and find that armor armor are never going to see that death scene. The tragedy is that the players most likely to be affected by his death are the least likely to see it.

[Nepenthe]

Even completionists might end up doing things in the "wrong" order - and as the leaked info from Bioware's data mining program pretty much confirmed, most people aren't completionists, in fact the opposite.

 

Or to clarify, when you are getting deluged by side quests in the way ME1 does, I for one space them out between the mission "steps". Because it starts feeling like work otherwise, and I have plenty of that available to me without starting up a game.

Edited February 19, 2011 by Nepenthe