LogFAQs > #977747547

adjl posted...

Right. So test yourself with the game and be rewarded with the story.

The game isn't just the gameplay, it's the story too. Anyway we are going in circles in about this.

adjl posted...

Assuming it is indeed as bad as you're describing and you didn't just miss plot points that made it more justifiable (which seems unlikely because I don't think justifying that final boss nonsense is even possible), it sounds like that was an example of scripted losses done poorly and I'd likely share your frustration in your position.

I'm leaving out a little bit but not enough to make a difference. Specifically, you are going around to various temples getting the blessings left by the gods that were killed by the pope 10 years prior with the understanding you'll be able to defeat him and stop genocide when you get them all. You gather the blessings, beat the pope, but then find out the pope was being gifted his power by the guardian of one of the temples that secretly rebelled, You fight him (a dark dragon) and win in the gameplay and then lose in the cutscene and then the gods descend, revived by you having all the blessings finally (he was guarding the last one) and effortlessly obliterate the dark dragon after talking about how bad he was for trying to hatch this plan for thousands of years. They explain that they let themselves be killed (resulting in genocide and cruel human experiments), so that you could later revive them and they could beat the dark dragon they could already beat 10 years ago, Something about wanting to leave things to the newer generation, except then they didn't do that at all and beat the bad guy themselves which was their plan all along so they just allowed him to commit genocide for 10 years killing almost an entire race as well as hundreds of innocent humans to accomplish nothing.

adjl posted...

A story in which nothing ever goes wrong for the protagonist so long as you win every fight is Pokemon levels of non-story.

It's really not. Most of these games have you win like 90% of the time. The story is usually fine in those parts. Just keep that going. I ranted before about the episode 11 problem with many anime and it's the same thing. Pokemon's nonstory isn't even because of the plot structure, they just traditionally don't actually have enough dialogue or scenes to make a real story. And honestly, the arvan story in scarlet/violet was pretty good and a nice example of how you can still explore characters and story despite not losing. Granted the team star storyline was awful and the normal pokemon league part was standard pokemon nonstory.

In fact arvan's story is probably a pretty easy way to do it. It has something bad in the story, but it happens before we arrive (before the game even starts in this case), and we just work to heal the damage.

Working around the constraint of not punishing the character when the player does well is certainly not impossible. If the game I'd just been playing let me collect all the blessings and then beat the guy, 95% of the story would have been the same and the whole thing would have been enjoyable.
I_Abibde posted...

Got a game from a five-dollar eroge bundle that solved the problem of bad dialogue in sex scenes by having all of the potential partners be NPCs that are only allowed to say their one line they always say, regardless of what is happening. Points for creative thinking.

That's pretty funny. It makes me think of the NPC party member in SAO abridged that they stole from the tutorial. Although I wasn't aware that was a problem to begin with. If I'm playing an eroge over just watching porn, I'm probably doing it FOR the dialogue.