henke on 13/11/2009 at 08:18
This is a tangent on a discussion we were having in "What are you playing?", but rather than fag up that thread anymore I decided this topic was interesting enough to deserve it's own thread.
I believe that stories need setbacks for the hero in order to bring tension, but in games these setbacks can often feel incongruous or grate with the rest of the experience because they are usually out of your controll. And no matter how many times you replay the game you never can steer away from them despite knowing that they're imminent. Sometimes it's by pitting the player against an unbeatable foe, like Gunther in Deus Ex, or your first encounter with that Evil Sithdude in Jedi Outcast. The other way games normally do it is by having a cutscene where the hero is captured/knocked out. After you've just mowed down hundreds of baddies and taken several gunshots to the head in the process, getting caught off guard by one of them in a cutscene grates.
So what, in your opinion, is the best way of doing setbacks in game-narratives and what games do these setbacks well/seamlessly?
EvaUnit02 on 13/11/2009 at 08:25
I quite like the long running Metroid tradition of giving you a taste of your character at full power at the very start of the game, but they quickly lose all of their abilities and have to gradually build it all back up over the course of the game. Assassin's Creed also used this trope.
Volitions Advocate on 13/11/2009 at 08:26
I"ll mention one that really grated on me.
The first level of F.E.A.R. when fettel bludgeons you in the head. the scripting was great and I didn't expect it. It feels like an organic part of the game, but the fact that I put 2 bullets into his head in the time it took for him to swing and hit me and that it did nothing to him really sucked.
EDIT: Re EvaUnit02
Shadow Complex does this as well in the prologue. You play a character with full power armour and a machine gun w/ a grenade launcher for the first 5 minutes. Rather than being stripped of your gear, you just end up playing the real main character once the game actually starts.
EvaUnit02 on 13/11/2009 at 08:30
I hated the bit in HL2 at the Citadel where you have no choice but to strap yourself into the conveyer belt thing that takes you straight to Breen's office.
Oh yeah, let's not forget the idiot Bioshock protagonist injecting an unknown substance into his arm and then backing himself off a balcony.
Thirith on 13/11/2009 at 08:35
Quote Posted by EvaUnit02
Oh yeah, let's not forget the idiot Bioshock protagonist injecting an unknown substance into his arm and then backing himself off a balcony.
Wasn't that one explained by the "Would you kindly...?", making the protagonist less of an idiot? Not that this worked all that well IMO - it was too much too early, so it came across less like a moment of suspicion and more like a moment of sheer idiocy.
doctorfrog on 13/11/2009 at 08:52
Quote Posted by Thirith
Wasn't that one explained by the "Would you kindly...?", making the protagonist less of an idiot? Not that this worked all that well IMO - it was too much too early, so it came across less like a moment of suspicion and more like a moment of sheer idiocy.
Even worse than this for me was the "you must fuck yourself up beyond all recognition to become a big daddy to get through this door." I could swallow "would you kindly inject yourself," but: mangle my voice, permanently bolt a dive suit to my body, genetically make myself stink so I'm attractive to little sisters, all so I can spend ten seconds passing through a door? There's no way around? What about a harder, more dangerous side mission where I don a dive suit, pick up a welder, and attempt to break my way through underwater? No choice, eh?
You can have your sunken city with your crazy guy. I'm going to find another way around or the nearest bathysphere to the surface.
Fortunately, by then I was so desperate for the game to be over I didn't care.
EDIT: Is there a place for race game rubberbanding in here? Race games don't have much of a narrative, but the irritation is similar. "Here, have an arbitrary setback: all your opponents now have unlimited NO2."
gunsmoke on 13/11/2009 at 09:01
Two words: San Andreas. When CJ was dumped off in the sticks by Tenpenny, I loved it. Even though I lost all of the progress I made, it just made me want to fight harder. Very polarizing, a lot of people were irritated, but ballsy and effective.
Thirith on 13/11/2009 at 09:02
I'm not sure this fits exactly what you're talking about, henke, but I very much liked the way Prince of Persia: Sands of Time handles death. Since the Prince is telling the story to Farah after the fact, he clearly didn't die, so the game-over screen has him saying things along the lines of, "Hang on, that's not what happened." A nicely metafictional way of addressing that most frequent and most meaningless player setback, in-game death.
While I don't remember the specifics (it's been too long since I played it), I think that System Shock handled setbacks very well in that Shodan was always (but credibly) one step ahead of you. Think you can escape this way or vanquish her that way? Chances are she's already thought of it. Done badly, this comes across as one of the worst clichés; handled well, it's a very effective narrative tool.
doctorfrog on 13/11/2009 at 09:36
While we're at it, we may as well mention the ways that Planescape Torment handles death.
Angel Dust on 13/11/2009 at 10:32
Quote Posted by doctorfrog
Even worse than this for me was the "you must fuck yourself up beyond all recognition to become a big daddy to get through this door." I could swallow "would you kindly inject yourself," but: mangle my voice, permanently bolt a dive suit to my body, genetically make myself stink so I'm attractive to little sisters, all so I can spend ten seconds passing through a door? There's no way around? What about a harder, more dangerous side mission where I don a dive suit, pick up a welder, and attempt to break my way through underwater? No choice, eh?
I actually think that, in theory, the 'becoming a Big Daddy' was a great idea. In order to save the Little Sisters you have to sacrafice yourself, an action that runs counter to philopsophy of Rapture but is just as extreme and throwing in the option of simply saving your own ass would have made it even more interesting. Of course they cocked it up by doing it so half-assed and not really selling it narratively at all.
And that is really the problem with setbacks in games, they are often there more for gameplay variation than as the natural outcome of the narrative. Good writing and characterisation go a long way to selling even the oldest tricks in the book. For example when the titular sands are taken from you in
Prince of Persia: Sands of Time it doesn't feel arbitrary or contrived because the comprimising situation that the Prince gets into with Farah is totally believable due to development of their relationship over the course of the game.
Once you have good writing you don't even need gameplay restrictions to create a setback. Things like betrayal, the death of a character, consequences of a choice etc would be emotional setbacks and you would feel like you are on the back foot even though you haven't necessarily lost any powers/weapons.
