LogFAQs > #977658961

adjl posted...

Despite the fact that you did one-shot them, you just didn't get a cutscene patting you on the back for doing so? The cutscene validation is that important for you?

Yep. All of the stuff I'm doing in the gameplay is to avoid that loss, so when it can't be done, it makes my investment in the gameplay pointless and it just becomes busywork in the way of a static story that could be better told in a different medium.

adjl posted...

Hence you don't actually "lose" when you lose an unwinnable boss fight.

I disagree. It makes the loss feel contrived. In fact, it's really made me realize how similar it is to something else I almost always hate, which is time travel stories, because time travel is such an insane power, that it's virtually impossible to threaten the character that can do it without contrivance and it becomes that much harder when the time travel can happen even after death like in a video game.

adjl posted...

To the point of stripping out every part of the story except "once upon a time there was a dude who won the end"?

As I mentioned, there are many ways to give the character a setback without a combat loss. Even in a story where the main character never loses, theres a lot of stuff you can still say. In fact, a lot of these rpgs with forced losses would be good stories if they literally just didn't have that part in it. You don't have to follow the heroes journey trope and force a low point on me in act 2 every single time.

Conflict does not require failure. Two sides want two different things, one side achieves it at the expense of the other. That is conflict and none of it requires the winning side to lose at some point. To put it in video games, the bad guy threatens things I don't like, I stop him. Done and dusted. You can still tell a great story that follows that outline.

adjl posted...

Hate to break it to you, but sometimes, stories aren't all perfect happy endings at every step of the way

Yeah, thats why I'm complaining about it. Feel free to add alternate routes that have plenty of the player failing, but leave me one that doesn't punish me despite success. If I don't lose in the gameplay, I shouldn't lose in the cutscene. I imagine that feels dissonant to most players, even ones that struggled through the fight and barely won.
adjl posted...

That's really just how life in general works: You can't change the past, so you instead change the future so the past doesn't matter.

Yeah and life sucks. I'm playing a video game to escape it.