Pyrian on 2/1/2017 at 04:23

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Yeah, I get frustrated when immortal NPC's get themselves killed, too. :D

Pyrian on 2/1/2017 at 18:53

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I think quests - main and otherwise - should be fail-able (and if you fail a main quest, say by killing a key NPC, that's game over). Which isn't to say that I want raw STALKER's obnoxious "every time I go in this zone I have to save them from the mutants or they go away". But this whole "every task can be done if you just don't die" not only greatly strains credulity, it also eliminates any narrative tension.

FTL was a breath of fresh air to me - that big ol' enemy fleet really is coming.

EDIT: Let me expand on this a little bit. I'm not advocating for stupid near-impossible escort missions with suicidal VIP's. I'm not advocating for sudden death with no warning from an unseen timer. In fact I'm not advocating for anything that simply happens to the player. When I bring up that HL1 example, most people have never seen it. I never saw it in gameplay. You had to try to make it happen, you had to deliberately murder one or more helpful NPC's. That's what I'm talking about. If a player decides to eff around and deliberately screw over a quest by launching a MIRV into a settlement, let them succeed. It's neither necessary nor beneficial to create artificial boundaries to stymie a player who's actively trying to wreck precisely the things you're trying to magically protect.

BTW, another game that handles things "my" way is Dark Messiah, which clearly announces that certain characters in certain situations are fail-states if they die or even become hostile.

Sulphur on 26/1/2017 at 06:41

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Every time I see a game set on a space station/random man-made space construction, I have to wonder who thought it'd be a good idea to bring projectile weapons and laser guns on board. At the very least, it should be incredibly hard to access any of those considering a single unfortunately aimed shot could depressurise the whole enterprise.

Sulphur on 26/1/2017 at 07:46

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Oh, I can suspend my disbelief - large structures with glass window panes, lack of precautions for artificial gravity failures, magic artificial gravity, etc. It's just that every now and then common sense shouldn't also take a holiday while we're at it, you know? Survival in space is far more difficult than it is on Earth (to say the least), so giving that the respect it's due would be nice for the feeling of internal coherency, at least.

Sulphur on 26/1/2017 at 14:15

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Good point; they did have skyscrapers on the ocean floor for some reason. Maybe I'm assuming too much verisimilitude in a sci-fi game about shapeshifting aliens where the protagonist can morph into a coffee mug.

I'm still going to hold my ground that a shout-out to utilitarian design and basic environmental safety would be a welcome part of a game's design, partly because I'm stubborn as all get out and these are just words on the internet, and partly because it'd make for a nice amount of (literal) worldbuilding for any semi-serious video games dealing with settlements created in a hostile environment.