LogFAQs > #977655939

adjl posted...

One boss fight that you still one-shot but that then goes into a scripted loss "ruins the fantasy" of one-shotting everything else before and after that?

Yes absolutely. It literally just takes one. The moment the illusion of my power in the game is gone, it's gone. I'm no longer a character progressing through the world, I'm a viewer of a story sitting in my chair in my room. All of my investment in getting stronger is gone and if I'm already stronger it retroactively makes it feel like it was a waste of time.

adjl posted...

If nothing ever goes wrong for the protagonist, you've got yourself a Mary Sue.

I mean, thats what the main character of a video game is for the most part. You are self inserted into the game making all or at least most of the decisions and given the very overpowered ability of reloading the save whenever you make a mistake. You are literally so overpowered that the only way to lose is to give up. That is obviously constraining when telling a story but them's the breaks. You chose to make a game, not write a book.

adjl posted...

To suggest that the narrative should support that, however, would be silly.

To suggest that the gameplay and story be married is silly? That's how games are supposed to work. That's the unique edge games have as a storytelling medium. It's the only edge they have. Any game not doing that is wasting it's story on a game instead of using another medium.
adjl posted...

If you lose winnable fights, you fail to progress the story.

Not always. Of course this does depend on the game but there are a fair few games where the story diverges on win or loss. There's no games that let me win the fight when I lose the fight, at least that I've played.
adjl posted...

That's not a failure, it's just progress where your gratification gets delayed a bit.

My gratification isn't beating the big bad, it's not losing to anything. A loss is something that needs to be undone, something possible in most scenarios by reloading a save and trying again or worst case coming back later.