Dead Ends

[Punky]

While this can probably be shelved under "Things Brian Fargo Already Knows" but I figure it's probably worth saying anyway: No dead ends. While I am ALL IN FAVOR of choices with concrete consequences, that consequence should never be "You can't finish the game." Fail the quest? Sure. Fail to finish the game? No.

I don't mean "You can't beat the last boss because you suck at the game." I don't feel any sympathy for that guy, especially in the age of GameFaqs. I mean "I made a choice near the middle of the game, and it was 'wrong' in the eyes of the development team so now the game is unfinishable." That is infuriating and it definitely creates a "right" way to play the game which sucks.

Again, it probably didn't need to be said, but there it is.

[Lucius]

I'd have to say this sort of thing is the types of advancements over the years that have improved gaming. I'd hate to make a decision or kill someone and 10 hours later find out I can't beat the game because of that. If nothing else, they should put a warning on anything that would mess the game up or make it painfully obvious in some other way.

[Equidistant]

I was actually on the verge of listing this in an earlier post on "fake difficulty." Making a bad choice and dying? Fine. Making a bad choice and finding out hours later you've completely screwed yourself? Not fun. Unintended consequences are cool, but when they rise to the "How was I to know that one choice was infinitely worse than the others?" then that's a design issue.

[StarkeRealm]

As much as I'm a fan of the old school "opportunity to screw yourself" that we've lost, I'm honestly here as well. At least, as a game over state.

I'm fine with it being possible to screw over or botch quests, and I'm actually fine with being screwed out of a "good" ending over something I did. A decision, a mistake, whatever.

The Fallout equivalent that comes to mind is from the end of FO2, where you can (somewhat deliberately) never find the GECK, you still get an ending where you win, but it's a Pyrrhic victory. That I can get behind if it is actually a player's choice, or a lack of attention on their part.

In contrast, the STALKER games (Shadow of Chernobyl and Call of Pripyat) have sort of a good and bad version of this.

Shadow of Chernobyl will give you a "false ending" (actually one of about seven false endings) if you don't pay attention to what you're doing. You'll stumble right past the opportunity to access the two "true endings", and get snared in a trap set up for you. That said, SoC did a rather poor job of communicating to you that you had received a "false ending," and a lot of players (who followed the quest markers without keeping track of what they should be doing) labeled it a BS ending all around.

The other side is Call of Pripyat. The quality of the ending is dependent on a lot of combat outcomes, many of which the player doesn't really have direct control over. There are two long drawn out combat sequences near the end of the game where you need to save every NPC present to get the best possible ending, but it is also a rather brutally lethal FPS where keeping everyone alive is more about luck than preparation or skill.

I'm fine with the Fallout 2/Shadow of Chernobyl "dead ends" (though, the SoC route would need to have a clearer communication to the player to really work), I'm not at all in favor of the CoP luck based route or the, you screwed yourself over and can never finish the game now route.

That said, one other possible example comes to mind as an option: Morrowind. In Morrowind you could gleefully kill off plot critical NPCs and still complete the game, it would just necessitate discovering a back-channel route to the same goal. A dead end like that could actually be pretty interesting, and isn't something we see a lot of these days.

[bloodyDziq]

If nothing else, they should put a warning on anything that would mess the game up or make it painfully obvious in some other way.

Warnings? What, why! This is an RPG you can do whatever you want, even kill every one in sight, but still after that it should be possible to finish the game.

[Phaederuss]

If nothing else, they should put a warning on anything that would mess the game up or make it painfully obvious in some other way.

Warnings? What, why! This is an RPG you can do whatever you want, even kill every one in sight, but still after that it should be possible to finish the game.

Umm no. If you kill the guy that has to give you the important item at the end, you're screwed.

[StarkeRealm]

If nothing else, they should put a warning on anything that would mess the game up or make it painfully obvious in some other way.

Warnings? What, why! This is an RPG you can do whatever you want, even kill every one in sight, but still after that it should be possible to finish the game.

Umm no. If you kill the guy that has to give you the important item at the end, you're screwed.

Unless you can loot the item off his corpse, or loot the key to the footlocker where he stuffed the penultimate macgufffin of doom.

[Phaederuss]

Umm no. If you kill the guy that has to give you the important item at the end, you're screwed.

Unless you can loot the item off his corpse, or loot the key to the footlocker where he stuffed the penultimate macgufffin of doom.

True that.

[Mandemon]

I like how the Morrowind dealt with it. Anyone can die(even local demigod). However, if someone important to the main plot dies, for one reason or another, game gives you a heads up and advices to revert to earlier save or continue play in the world that is essentially screwed.

Of course, there is a backdoor that is not told to you... And you can screw that one up too, but you don't get a pop-up from it since it's not exactly clear was the backdoor even intended in the first place... Maybe, maybe not, but it surely is not the way you are supposed to go.

[StarkeRealm]

I like how the Morrowind dealt with it. Anyone can die(even local demigod). However, if someone important to the main plot dies, for one reason or another, game gives you a heads up and advices to revert to earlier save or continue play in the world that is essentially screwed.

Of course, there is a backdoor that is not told to you... And you can screw that one up too, but you don't get a pop-up from it since it's not exactly clear was the backdoor even intended in the first place... Maybe, maybe not, but it surely is not the way you are supposed to go.

Given that it's mentioned in the strat guide, and very hard to foul up? Yeah, it was almost certainly intentional.

Morrowind is a nice model though. It has a storyline. You're not likely to accidentally break the game unless you go psychopathic on entire cities. Even if you do kill plot critical characters you can still finish the game. (With I think one exception.)

[Mandemon]

I like how the Morrowind dealt with it. Anyone can die(even local demigod). However, if someone important to the main plot dies, for one reason or another, game gives you a heads up and advices to revert to earlier save or continue play in the world that is essentially screwed.

Of course, there is a backdoor that is not told to you... And you can screw that one up too, but you don't get a pop-up from it since it's not exactly clear was the backdoor even intended in the first place... Maybe, maybe not, but it surely is not the way you are supposed to go.

Given that it's mentioned in the strat guide, and very hard to foul up? Yeah, it was almost certainly intentional.

Morrowind is a nice model though. It has a storyline. You're not likely to accidentally break the game unless you go psychopathic on entire cities. Even if you do kill plot critical characters you can still finish the game. (With I think one exception.)

Yeah, to make dead end in Morrowind you must actively seek the worst possible situation that game can offer and still work. You don't end up in dead end by accident...

[groundwalker]

This seems in direct conflict with something else many people (not me necessarily, but the discussion for that belongs elsewhere) seem to REALLY want which is the ability to kill absolutely everyone at any time so long as you can win the combat.

This game is supposed to be all about moral choices and consequences of our actions shaping the world. Well sometimes the consequences of killing someone is that you don't get to find out what (s)he would have said if you hadn't killed them. This may include a quest, or if you choose the right person/people, information required for the main quest.

Having the corpse/surroundings of every quest giver contain everything required to do the quest anyway regardless of whether that makes any sense or not would actually be a huge step backward in terms of immersiveness, consequences-based gameplay, etc in my opinion, and for that reason I'm strongly against it.

The game should avoid putting players in situations where deadends are possible in the course of normal play, but if you decide to kill a bunch of your direct superiors in the Ranger chain of command (without it being a plot point that he is corrupt/attacking you/etc) and you get caught, I really don't think you can reasonably expect to get any more quests out of the rangers (which assumedly would include the main quest in at least some parts of the game) other than the generic quest of not getting killed by the rangers.

[StarkeRealm]

This seems in direct conflict with something else many people (not me necessarily, but the discussion for that belongs elsewhere) seem to REALLY want which is the ability to kill absolutely everyone at any time so long as you can win the combat.

The only ways I can think to reconcile this is either if you can actually access the ending of the game without doing quests (which conflicts with the "don't want to be able to finish it in 10 minutes" complaint) so that if you do go absolutely homicidal, you can still patch back together access to the endgame, and the role of quests is actually, just to point you in the right directions to pick up the plot thread. OR A wildly branching story where you could turn on your own faction and sign on with another, or set up your own.

For example, turning on the Rangers may give you the ability to sign on with a rival faction, who has their own main quest line. Set up two or three of these as backups and you could potentially get around any serious dead end from killing off quest givers, short of a dedicated campaign to break the game.

That said, it would take a lot more work.

[Equidistant]

The game should avoid putting players in situations where deadends are possible in the course of normal play, but if you decide to kill a bunch of your direct superiors in the Ranger chain of command (without it being a plot point that he is corrupt/attacking you/etc) and you get caught, I really don't think you can reasonably expect to get any more quests out of the rangers (which assumedly would include the main quest in at least some parts of the game) other than the generic quest of not getting killed by the rangers.

I completely agree. If you can screw yourself accidentally on the basis of incomplete information, that's a huge design flaw. If you choose to slaughter your way through friendly and neutral people, it's not exactly surprising that it'll have a drastic impact on your results at the end. I don't think the kind of player who experiments with an omnicidal run is going to complain if they don't get to complete the main "save the world" plotline while doing so.

[BlackGauntlet]

Warnings? What, why! This is an RPG you can do whatever you want, even kill every one in sight, but still after that it should be possible to finish the game.

Actually, you have a point there. If everyone is dead, game is already finished, isn't it?

[Clockwork Knight]

Of course, there is a backdoor that is not told to you... And you can screw that one up too, but you don't get a pop-up from it since it's not exactly clear was the backdoor even intended in the first place... Maybe, maybe not, but it surely is not the way you are supposed to go.

It was intended, but there's no need for a popup since you already messed up the main path, so if you mess up again you are probably ruining it on purpose.

[Fed]

They always say "we can do it the easy way or the hard way"... I mean - what kind of choice is that?! (c)

What I want to say is - how can you make tough moral choices when you know the exact consequences when you do the choice?
If you know the consequences you just have to weight them on your scale and choose the one you like the most.
Loosing money - bad; child sick but not dying - meh... = no money for this sick child.
Tough moral choice is when you need the money and meet a sick child who might die if you don't give him the money... but he also might not die if you don't give him the money, or he might die even if you give him the money. Not when you know exactly what will happen to the child an case of any of your actions.

The more transparent the future is, the more obvious is the right choice (the choice that is right for you = gives the outcome you feel is best)... The less choices you have.

I want A and B
1) results C
2) results A
3) results B
4) results A and C
5) results B and C
6) results A and B
7) results A, B and C
Hm-m-m... What do I choose? So many choices... Well... Actually there is only one "choice" here - is C a "good" thing or a "bad" thing?
It's not the choice - it's the ability to decide what do you want.

On the topic of dead ends - I hope there will be several ways to complete the main quest and you'll have to work hard to screw this up.

[Vryheid]

While this can probably be shelved under "Things Brian Fargo Already Knows" but I figure it's probably worth saying anyway: No dead ends. While I am ALL IN FAVOR of choices with concrete consequences, that consequence should never be "You can't finish the game." Fail the quest? Sure. Fail to finish the game? No.

I don't mean "You can't beat the last boss because you suck at the game." I don't feel any sympathy for that guy, especially in the age of GameFaqs. I mean "I made a choice near the middle of the game, and it was 'wrong' in the eyes of the development team so now the game is unfinishable." That is infuriating and it definitely creates a "right" way to play the game which sucks.

Again, it probably didn't need to be said, but there it is.

Yep, this is pretty much common sense and something that RPGs have always had difficulty dealing with properly. If I somehow screw the whole world up I should at least get an ending showing what happens, not to just be stuck in a time loop because some plot-critical character was killed.

[TΛPETRVE]

While many are not a fan of timed quests, I think in-game history should actually advance regardless of what you do, and if you screw up your main quest for whatever reason, life should just go on, and be it in an even more wasted wasteland where you are constantly encountered by enemy robots dragging off people for organic fuel production or whatever.

[Rimak]

I do thik that a dead end situations may occur, but there should be a way out of them, only it will cost you.
Like you get yourself trapped in a cave with a bear and no weapons, so you sacrifice your friend and run for your life.