Poll of the Day > Anime, Manga, VN, JRPG, Related Things Discussion Topic CI

(+) Yeah! (+)

I've read tons of 18+ western "VN"s. There's really a pretty stark contrast in style but one thing I do really appreciate is that a lot of times you have way more frequent choices in western renpy stuff. It's a lot more immersive IMO to be making all the decisions for my character. JP VNs tend to be a much more polished package but also often times only have like 3-5 meaningful choices in the entire game.

Both do that annoying thing though where the choice is just who to hang out with during free time between sessions. I dislike that greatly and feel like just including all the options in a single playthrough doesn't really take away anything.

Honestly my ideal game would be somewhere in the middle. Anime style with frequent choices.

Entity13 posted...

"I'm in Love with the Villainess."

It's been a pretty ok anime this season. I do feel like the central joke has gotten a bit stale by this point but the plot is moving places so I guess the writer realized that too.

YoukaiSlayer posted...

JP VNs tend to be a much more polished package but also often times only have like 3-5 meaningful choices in the entire game.

I feel like this is pushback from back when there were way too many fucking choices in games and we've reverted back to "ok which route do you wanna do". Kagetsu Tohya (Tsukihime sequel/fandisc), Clannad, and Steins;gate all had choice flowcharts that were so convoluted they looked like memes.

Kagetsu Tohya: https://imgur.com/tpku4nE (it's not that bad but it's a pretty ancient example)
Clannad: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Morlok8k/Clannad_VN_Flowcharts/master/Clannad_VN_Flowchart.png (this is mostly for seeing 100% of scenes, because there's a lot of minor variations on gags that reoccur throughout the route depending on what you select)
Steins;gate: https://imgur.com/a/evXE2 (this hurts my brain and I always used a strict guide for it)

YoukaiSlayer posted...

It's been a pretty ok anime this season. I do feel like the central joke has gotten a bit stale by this point but the plot is moving places so I guess the writer realized that too.

Considering how long the original novels are, I think the author realized the singular joke would get old fast, yes. I mean, I have read up to chapter 36 of the manga (we're a couple weeks from 37), and episode 8 of the anime stops in the middle of chapter 18, and the next arc in the story, the one I suspect will end the anime season, will see the joke more or less be put to rest. Don't get me wrong, Claire will still be a tsundere and thorny rose, but... chapter 25 has her admit her feelings for Rei in a way not even Claire was expecting, and it also marks when Claire starts calling Rei by name and holding her hand. The story indeed moves on from there, never petering out from overusing its original premise.

I will give the show and manga points for being cute, for tackling real life lgbt+ issues in a more respectable manner than too many shows even these days, and for having characters with defined personality flaws and legit growth. I will also give the localization team points for hiring a trans person to play a trans character. If anything, I'd knock the manga (and I guess novels) for giving lesbians the Super Saiya-jin treatment*, and for making the ONE heterosexual relationship thus far incestual.

Worth a watch or read at least once, but probably something I'd only actively recommend to the percentage of anime/manga fans who happen to be lgbt+ or close allies, and otherwise passively recommend to others.

*Note: This is coming from a Touhou fangirl who ships Reimu with Miyoi, Marisa with Alice, Tenshi with Shion, Maribel/Yukari with both Renko and Yuyuko, and sometimes Mokou with Kaguya albeit as an unhappily married couple who mostly just fight to pass the time. Maybe also Sakuya and Meiling. That's thirteenish characters out of close to 200, not counting a certain eggplant girl from Hell who canonically has it bad for her boss.

Finished Attack on Titan. Overall I find it quite good and it had the result I was hoping for at the end. When they announced that the founder's power could alter the Eldians as a whole, it got me thinking they should just alter them to get rid of the titan abilities. Eren got there too late imo, but did get there. I would've also have liked to have seen a fat bellied Annie even if only for one scene at the end. Hange not surviving to the end was a huge bummer she was my favorite character.

Don't think it's something I'll rewatch though tbh.

Not technically anime but I just watched blue eye samurai. It had some solid potential but IMO became trash. There was so much wrong with every later fight scene. People punching when they could have just stabbed them, people throwing the enemy when they had them completely beaten and were choking them, the bad guy just putting away his sword and never using it again half way through the fight. One or two of these things would be annoying but they were just constant. The plot around akemi also felt completely pointless and out of place for the setting. The comic relief no finger guy also served zero purpose.

It's like the show wanted to be samurai kill bill but also kung fu panda and sort ruined both aspects by poorly marrying the two which is a shame because there were great moments and pretty good fights in parts of the show. If they had just picked one tone and stuck to it, it could have been great.

agesboy posted...

I've never heard anything bad about I'm In Love With The Villainess "going off the deep end", everyone I've seen who liked the earlier segments ends up liking the later bits just as much

So I went and read the translated web novel version up to the end of the second volume. It's definitely a good place to end the story, and even has a happy epilogue. I am still pinching my brow over the number one issue I have with the series, though.

The supply of VTubers appears to be bottomless. New ones keep appearing in my Reddit feed.

Trying to remember the last VN I played, and, to be honest, I have not touched the genre in a long time, and the recommendations I see nowadays are for things like Maggot Baits and Dona Dona.

I_Abibde posted...

The supply of VTubers appears to be bottomless. New ones keep appearing in my Reddit feed.

lol speaking of vtubers, the craziest dismissal just happened recently. she banged her manager, met fans irl in exchange for money, and did drugs on stream

https://twitter.com/idol_corp/status/1729591027323838844?t=DiH0yplSuc1-DYMPO-UpQg

There are so many VTubers out there that there's one for everyone at this point.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1958220/WitchSpring_R/

This game was unexpected and is exceeding my expectations.

I've fallen way behind on the less great anime this season. Just so many of them and I haven't been in as much of an anime mood lately. Season is still pretty great though and I am still keeping up with like 10-15 shows, thats just down from 31 at the start of the season.
Judgmenl posted...

This game was unexpected and is exceeding my expectations.

Just snagged it and will try it out soon probably. A nice change of pace from all the calamity terraria and end game nioh 2 I've been playing lately.

Been taking a small anime break since I finished Attack on Titan. Rewatched True Detective season 1, then I watched the second season and I've two eps left of the third season. First season still my favorite. Have several anime to choose from after I finish off s3. Feels like the September season just barely ended, yet here we are in December already.

I finally gave Apothecary Diaries a try. The chibi moments are a little jarring, but the overall show is decent. Now, going from January to now, I'm thinking it might be the third best anime I've watched this year; behind Frieren and "I'm in Love with the Villainess," but ahead of "Spy x Family" season 2 and "Onii Chan is Done For."

I've been loving apothecary diaries which was somewhat unexpected. I feel like it's miles ahead of in love with the villainess and right up there with frieren.

YoukaiSlayer posted...

Just snagged it and will try it out soon probably. A nice change of pace from all the calamity terraria and end game nioh 2 I've been playing lately.

Following up on this, I've played through chapter 1 and I'm loving it. I beat everything you can possibly fight in the forest so far which was pretty tough (especially the bull). Couldn't figure out if theres a way to reach the dragon on the beach by the crab miniboss. I feel like the combat strikes a very good balance between fast and complex. I often times have to actually think about what move to choose to best take advantage of turn order and cooldowns but it all still goes by quite quickly. I also just really enjoy games with infinite (if slow) access to permanent stat increases outside of leveling up. So far physical training level 3, mental 1, combat 2 but almost 3 and life staff 3rd or 4th upgrade (can't remember, but max I can get so far). Also got all 3 pets I could find. The fox one was tricky to figure out and get. I wish I could ride on it.

YoukaiSlayer posted...

calamity terraria

aw hell yes

i can't play vanilla anymore, calamity + magic storage is too good

agesboy posted...

i can't play vanilla anymore, calamity + magic storage is too good

I agree. Recently played through calamity for the first time and did it on revengence with only utility mods like magic storage and magic builder and fargo and ore excavator. Did that as melee and beat everything. Then I had so much fun I immediately started again this time adding stars above and thorium which both felt pitiful compared to calamity stuff. Stars above has some really cool weapons and abilities though. Did that run as a summoner, also on revengence. Oh I also used summoners association because default summoner gameplay is pretty annoying. Kinda wish they'd rework summons as a whole.

I couldn't imagine playing terraria without calamity anymore. It's like mount and blade warband's prophesy of pendor mod in that it's effectively the unofficial sequel to the game made by modders.

YoukaiSlayer posted...

It's like mount and blade warband's prophesy of pendor mod

also incredibly based

the only time I don't run pendor is when I'm trying out some other conversion mod

Judgmenl posted...

There are so many VTubers out there that there's one for everyone at this point.

I will admit to watching kitty_moco face hordes of zombies occasionally.

Nebi Nebu has been a roller coaster of insanity since she debuted. Has not been a vtuber in forever that I have watched almost every one of their streams.

Started watching Lv1 Maou to One Room Yuusha. I don't know why I do this to myself. Shows that are billed mainly comedy aren't good very often, yet a couple of times a year I start having forgotten the last debacle.

dragon504 posted...

Started watching Lv1 Maou to One Room Yuusha. I don't know why I do this to myself. Shows that are billed mainly comedy aren't good very often, yet a couple of times a year I start having forgotten the last debacle.

I quite liked that one. Although I tend to like comedies in general.

agesboy posted...

lol speaking of vtubers, the craziest dismissal just happened recently. she banged her manager, met fans irl in exchange for money, and did drugs on stream

https://twitter.com/idol_corp/status/1729591027323838844?t=DiH0yplSuc1-DYMPO-UpQg

*sighs*

Oh yes, because god forbid women celebrities in japan have a life and do things that make them happy. Nope, can't have that! They exist to make the company look good, and sell merchandise, and for nothing else.

Parasyte Vol 5-10 by Iwaaki Hitoshi(Finished it, Great, Fast Paced 1988 Horror Action Fantasy Manga, Afternoon)

This was great, wasn't scary perse, but very dark, and absolutely worth my time.

As for what it's about: These alien parasites invade earth, killing people and invading their minds, this one alien fails to get into the MCs mind, and takes over his arm, so they're forced to co-exist.

===

Blood On The Tracks Vol 1 #1-7 (God and Win, Well paced psychological horror manga, Big Comic Superior)

It's about a young kid and their psychotically overprotective mother! God and win art too!

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/forum/6/6eeb57c0.jpg

Chapter 6 spoilers:

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/forum/f/f69f1b50.jpg

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/forum/7/75ef82c5.jpg

EchoBaz posted...

Oh yes, because god forbid women celebrities in japan have a life and do things that make them happy. Nope, can't have that! They exist to make the company look good, and sell merchandise, and for nothing else.

she was offering to take "silly pills" on stream for $250 donations while representing her agency

she was explicitly using her identity as a vtuber to arrange irl meetups for cash

it was preeeeeeeeetty bad and male vtubers have been canned for a LOT less

EchoBaz posted...

Oh yes, because god forbid women celebrities in japan have a life and do things that make them happy. Nope, can't have that! They exist to make the company look good, and sell merchandise, and for nothing else.

Idol is an Israeli company and I'm pretty sure Riro is not Japanese (I do not follow Idol very closely).
What she did was very, very dumb and she will continue doing that very dumb shit as before Idol she already had a large following.

EchoBaz posted...

*sighs*

Oh yes, because god forbid women celebrities in japan have a life and do things that make them happy. Nope, can't have that! They exist to make the company look good, and sell merchandise, and for nothing else.

don't think you realize that there are stipulations of things they cannot do as part of their contract, and if you break the contract, you get fired

like, y'know, what happens with every job.

and she broke a whole lot of the rules and got fired.

EchoBaz posted...

This was great, wasn't scary perse, but very dark, and absolutely worth my time.

The anime of it from like a decade back was pretty good.

YoukaiSlayer posted...

I quite liked that one. Although I tend to like comedies in general.

The character and setting are fine, it just feels like a problem with pacing.

I finally got to watch that Suzume Movie. I liked it, but there was a part around the 4/5 that felt off. Also I think it had few too many characters

While watching the movie, as they were traveling I looked up to see the areas they stopped on Google maps. Never bothered with that before, so it was very cool how accurate everything was

this new black clover gacha game is essentially just honkai star rail

i fully expect to see this thing come to a console at some point, the production quality is kinda nuts

Woohoo yuri fanservice in 100 girlfriends. I hope that becomes a full on running gag.

Judgmenl posted...

Idol is an Israeli company and I'm pretty sure Riro is not Japanese (I do not follow Idol very closely).

My bad. I imagine that Isreal is much worse here.

#IStandWithPalestine

YoukaiSlayer posted...

Woohoo yuri fanservice in 100 girlfriends. I hope that becomes a full on running gag.

*ears go up*

Ugh, why is it so damn hard for RPG makers to not have me lose in the cutscene, especially to people far far far weaker than my character. I'm sitting here with knightmare the super sword from beating the hardest optional boss that I've enhanced and nourished both to +20, maxed out combat, physical, and mental, over 2k hp and 5k attack and the best crafted armor, but no, I've gotta lose in the cutscene twice in a row and get captured just to be saved by someone I obliterated in 1 hit. The main character also acting like they are weak without their magic. I haven't used a magic spell since like the first quarter of the game. What's the point of the growth mechanics and optional bosses if they mean nothing? This didn't even accomplish anything meaningful to the plot. They could have just not had this section of the game (which also included a lame forced stealth section).

Finished witch spring r. It was ok. Stronger start than finish IMO. Kinda feels like it's missing what should be a middle section.

YoukaiSlayer posted...

Finished witch spring r. It was ok. Stronger start than finish IMO. Kinda feels like it's missing what should be a middle section.

I'll plait some more when I have time during my two day vacation. That's a shame because it started off really good.

YoukaiSlayer posted...

Ugh, why is it so damn hard for RPG makers to not have me lose in the cutscene, especially to people far far far weaker than my character.

Because losing creates desirable dramatic tension, but they want to tune the boss to a "typical" player power level so it feels more like they're legitimately losing the fight. That means players that have gone out of their way to push significantly past that power level are going to mess with it, but those players have already made a conscious decision to mess with the game's balance, and in doing so they've chosen to change the difficulty they experience so it doesn't line up with the narrative, so they can't really complain.

Mostly, it's an inevitable consequence of having a static narrative laid over a variable gameplay experience. They could avoid it by just not having scripted losses, and there are certainly cases where scripted losses are done poorly (like it's fairly easy to "win" even at the expected power level, or you get a game over if you don't lose at the "right" point), but it's such a common bit of ludonarrative dissonance at this point that I certainly have no issues looking past it.

adjl posted...

Because losing creates desirable dramatic tension

At the cost of destroying the gameplay fantasy. What is the goal of rpg gameplay? It is to become powerful. If I succeed at that goal by performing the gameplay well, I should never feel disempowered. I should never be punished in a game unless I make a mistake.

Plenty of people don't care in RPGs because they simply don't care about the gameplay to begin with. It's just filler between story bits for them, but it's frustrating when the gameplay goals and the story goals conflict if you actually care about both.

adjl posted...

They could avoid it by just not having scripted losses

Which is what they should do in a game.

adjl posted...

That means players that have gone out of their way to push significantly past that power level are going to mess with it, but those players have already made a conscious decision to mess with the game's balance, and in doing so they've chosen to change the difficulty they experience so it doesn't line up with the narrative, so they can't really complain.

But what IS the intended power level? Is it not doing any side content? Avoiding all enemy encounters? The game in question here is very open ended and I simply engaged with all the systems and beat optional fights as they opened up. If they don't want me to become powerful by that point in the game, then don't let me.

I think too many rpg makers forget that they are making a game, not just telling a story.

YoukaiSlayer posted...

Plenty of people don't care in RPGs because they simply don't care about the gameplay to begin with. It's just filler between story bits for them, but it's frustrating when the gameplay goals and the story goals conflict if you actually care about both.

It's honestly my least favorite thing about Star Ocean 2. Moreso than the slow start or the limitations to party recruitment. There are a few fights you cannot win without cheating, and the game doesn't let you proceed unless you lose, for forced narrative reasons. It's like a DM in a tabletop game who cannot accept that a level 5 party defeated the BBEG and has to pivot the situation accordingly.

Also, if devs were to go the approach of limiting your growth heavily, like in FFXIII, or actively punishing you for growing, like FFVIII, then you're just going to anger a lot of people whose mindset are that bigger numbers are better or that you should be free to take on challenges and be rewarded for them.

I've seen better-designed hentai games, for all their simplistic game designs. <_<

YoukaiSlayer posted...

At the cost of destroying the gameplay fantasy. What is the goal of rpg gameplay? It is to become powerful.

And having a scripted loss as part of the story is part of that. Losing gives you a baseline to compare yourself against. When you later become powerful enough to beat the thing that beat you before, you feel a greater sense of accomplishment than if you just beat it outright.

Does it always work? No, particularly in cases where the player actively tries to become much more powerful than a typical player would be at that point. Sometimes, the loss just feels contrived and can do more harm than good to the power fantasy. It's particularly frustrating when you blow a bunch of consumables with limited availability on the fight trying to win it, only to find out you were never expected to. Generally, though, it doesn't interrupt my power fantasy so much as it reinforces it by making me laugh at how the only way the game could beat me is by cheating.

YoukaiSlayer posted...

Which is what they should do in a game.

"The protagonist never loses" is exceedingly limiting, narratively speaking. You can make it so that every loss is a cutscene with no battle attached to it without subjecting yourself to that narrative limitation, but then you fall into the issue that the player's going to see that loss coming if they don't get a chance to fight (unless you also get a bunch of cutscene victories, ). Properly balanced scripted losses keep the tension up by making you believe there's a chance of winning right up until your struggle ends in failure, at which point the plot joins you in that failure.

YoukaiSlayer posted...

But what IS the intended power level?

Depends on the game. Generally speaking, it's not going to be balanced around people who have done all the side content. If it were, that wouldn't be side content. It's also often not going to be balanced around doing no side content, since that's not an overly realistic scenario. Usually, that's something you figure out with playtesting, getting a sense for how much side content players tend to do and tuning the bosses and side content rewards around that (this is something you do with any content, really, not just scripted losses).

YoukaiSlayer posted...

If they don't want me to become powerful by that point in the game, then don't let me.

You've gotta take some responsibility for that yourself. You know full well that games aren't (and never will be) balanced around 100% completion and whatever power level that gives you, especially in games that are relatively open-ended and let you go off on wild adventures before advancing the story. You should expect that doing so is going to give you a power level that's inconsistent with the story. If you don't like being more powerful than the story expects you to be, don't deliberately seek out every available optional power-up opportunity before advancing the story.

Entity13 posted...

It's like a DM in a tabletop game who cannot accept that a level 5 party defeated the BBEG and has to pivot the situation accordingly.

To be fair, that's just inextricably inherent in video RPGs. Some offer more narrative flexibility than others, but there's always going to be a limit on how flexible the story can be when the only available possibilities will be those explicitly added to the game files. JRPGs in particular are generally quite static, narratively speaking, and by now that's just what's expected of them. It's CRPGs that fill the niche of offering more narrative flexibility.

adjl posted...

Losing gives you a baseline to compare yourself against. When you later become powerful enough to beat the thing that beat you before, you feel a greater sense of accomplishment than if you just beat it outright.

Maybe if these scripted losses were happening early in act 1. It's usually around the 2/3rds mark into these rpgs. And as for being narritively limiting, it's a game, that IS narritively limiting. You cannot (or should not) tell the same kind of story in a game that you would in a non interactive fiction. It'd be like if a teacher just gave out only 0s on the mid term because it makes a better comeback story when you study hard enough to ace the final exam.

A game is testing the player, if the player never fails, the player should never be punished. In an rpg, the player takes the ROLE of the character and thus punishing the character is also punishing the player.

Every jrpg I can think of that has these autolosses could have written things in a way that explores the same themes without forced losses or at the very least, don't make those losses a direct loss at combat. Have it be something like hostages or something tragic happening when the player isn't around to protect them.

adjl posted...

You've gotta take some responsibility for that yourself. You know full well that games aren't (and never will be) balanced around 100% completion and whatever power level that gives you, especially in games that are relatively open-ended and let you go off on wild adventures before advancing the story. You should expect that doing so is going to give you a power level that's inconsistent with the story. If you don't like being more powerful than the story expects you to be, don't deliberately seek out every available optional power-up opportunity before advancing the story.

Then who is that option for? If you expect players to not do 100% of the side content, then just cut down the side content amount until the average player does complete 100% and you can stay consistent with the narrative. Instead you leave players like me in an annoying middle ground where not doing everything feels bad but then doing everything leads to dissonance with the story and also feels bad. At the very least, you can make the higher difficulties factor in doing all the side content. The game I was just playing and complaining about does indeed have multiple difficulties as do most rpgs I can think of.

YoukaiSlayer posted...

Maybe if these scripted losses were happening early in act 1.

Not at all. "Oh no I'm weak at the beginning" is kind of a given. "I've gotten so powerful but it's still not enough" comes as a surprise, an opportunity for the character to grow in a different direction, or a reveal about the true power of the antagonist. That's used to kick off a new story arc; a scripted loss at the beginning just kicks off the story as a whole.

YoukaiSlayer posted...

A game is testing the player, if the player never fails, the player should never be punished.

You're not being punished. From a gameplay perspective, the reward for playing well enough in an RPG is advancing the story. In this case, "well enough" is a very low bar because you don't actually need to win the fight to get that reward, but either way you're being rewarded with story progress. That the story takes a negative turn doesn't turn that reward into a "punishment." You're not "punished" for turning the page if a character dies in a book you're reading.

YoukaiSlayer posted...

Then who is that option for?

People who want to overpower the core game content. That can be a bit of an issue when the side content rewards you with interesting story content as well as gameplay rewards that mess with the balance of the game (this is one of Xenobalde 3's biggest flaws, for example, since its sidequests are amazing story-wise but overlevel you such that developing classes becomes hard), since then you have to choose whether you value side stories or proper balance more, but it's still a pretty universally accepted truth that if you do all of the side content, you're going to have an easier time than intended with core content.

YoukaiSlayer posted...

doing everything leads to dissonance with the story

Realistically, this is always going to be the case regardless of how well-balanced the rewards are (or if there's a system like Xenoblade DE's expert mode where you can store exp from sidequests to level/delevel at will). Unless there's no urgency whatsoever in the main story, deviating from it to do side quests is inescapably going to come with some dissonance. "The world is in grave peril and will be destroyed any minute!" "Hang on, this lady wants some eggs." You can sometimes mitigate that by doing sidequests during a lull in story tension, and some games manage to tie sidequests into the broader story in a way that helps further, but inherent in the very idea of side quests is the choice to spend your time doing something low-stakes and optional instead of the higher-stakes main quest. By choosing to do side quests in the first place, you've already made a conscious decision to play the game in a manner that's dissonant from the main story, so what's a little dissonance in power level going to hurt?

adjl posted...

"I've gotten so powerful but it's still not enough"

Well therein lies the problem. It usually IS enough, they just won't let me win yet. Usually by these points in the game you are already strong enough to beat the final boss.

adjl posted...

From a gameplay perspective, the reward for playing well enough in an RPG is advancing the story.

The reward for playing well is winning the fights. Very observable because if I play poorly enough, I lose the fights. Separating the gameplay and story so heavily that success in one doesn't positively influence the other is bad IMO.

adjl posted...

You're not "punished" for turning the page if a character dies in a book you're reading.

That's because a book is passive. It is not testing your skill at something. If you were to have a choose your own adventure book but no matter what you do at a certain junction, the story only takes negative turns, then why make it a choose your own adventure in the first place? Just make it a static story. If someone wants to tell a story where the story has ups and downs, tell it by itself, don't randomly sandwich it between unrelated gameplay segments or again, at least get creative in how a negative part happens. You can kill off important characters by having my party not be in place to save them for instance.

adjl posted...

People who want to overpower the core game content

So me, except it's not for me because they just ruin the fantasy of that anyway. That's my point. Who is actually benefiting here? I think it's a fictional type of player.

adjl posted...

so what's a little dissonance in power level going to hurt?

A lot clearly. Not to mention, a lot of times the story only plays out completely if you do all the side content. Otherwise important characters end up underdeveloped. I understand that is the current "meta" of rpgs, I'm just saying that meta is shit and should change.

YoukaiSlayer posted...

Well therein lies the problem. It usually IS enough, they just won't let me win yet. Usually by these points in the game you are already strong enough to beat the final boss.

Mechanically, sure, but not narratively. Mechanically, you can beat most final bosses at level 1 with no gear (or whatever state is analogous to that for the game you're playing) if you really know what you're doing. To suggest that the narrative should support that, however, would be silly.

YoukaiSlayer posted...

The reward for playing well is winning the fights. Very observable because if I play poorly enough, I lose the fights. Separating the gameplay and story so heavily that success in one doesn't positively influence the other is bad IMO.

If you lose winnable fights, you fail to progress the story. If you lose unwinnable fights, you progress the story. Winning boss fights is not inherently its own reward, it's a prerequisite for accessing later content and ultimately completing the game. Losing an unwinnable boss fight robs you of that immediate satisfaction, but it's still a success in the sense that you're moving the game forward to your ultimate victory. Scripted losses are (virtually) never a matter of "you lost, game over." They're always just one step toward the ultimate success of beating the game. That's not a failure, it's just progress where your gratification gets delayed a bit.

YoukaiSlayer posted...

If you were to have a choose your own adventure book but no matter what you do at a certain junction, the story only takes negative turns, then why make it a choose your own adventure in the first place?

Because you want to write a CYOA, but don't feel the need to make absolutely every story beat be a positive one. "Negative turns" does not mean the story ends in failure. It just means something goes wrong for the protagonist. If nothing ever goes wrong for the protagonist, you've got yourself a Mary Sue.

YoukaiSlayer posted...

So me, except it's not for me because they just ruin the fantasy of that anyway.

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? Despite that failure not setting you back in any way?

If a scripted loss actually undoes your grinding or anything like that, yeah, that's a problem. But developing your character to a point where you overpower the core game content just means you remove any challenge left in progressing through the core game. Losing in a battle that's a scripted loss doesn't impact that at all, because the scripted loss never actually had any challenge in the first place (which is the biggest problem with them: people look forward to boss fights because they want to be challenged, scripted fights deny that and should therefore be used sparingly). You lose, the cutscene plays, and you keep roflstomping every other enemy between you and the next cutscene. The loss doesn't reintroduce challenge.

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.

YoukaiSlayer posted...

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.

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?

YoukaiSlayer posted...

You are literally so overpowered that the only way to lose is to give up.

Hence you don't actually "lose" when you lose an unwinnable boss fight. The character just suffers a setback. Being guaranteed eventual success doesn't mean nothing can ever go wrong along the way, nor should it.

YoukaiSlayer posted...

To suggest that the gameplay and story be married is silly?

To the point of stripping out every part of the story except "once upon a time there was a dude who won the end"? Absolutely. You need some kind of conflict to make a story worth telling. Abandoning that just because a handful of people might cheese the game so hard that the gameplay side of things no longer reflects that conflict

Obviously, that's an extreme, but that's the logical endpoint of the idea that the story needs to reflect the player's mechanical strength in every capacity. There need to be limits on that mentality, and those limits are going to be set according to a typical first playthrough rather than a completionist one or one by somebody that's already mastered the game.

YoukaiSlayer posted...

My gratification isn't beating the big bad, it's not losing to anything.

Hate to break it to you, but sometimes, stories aren't all perfect happy endings at every step of the way, regardless of the medium. They're never going to be, so if that's the kind of gratification you're looking for, you might want to steer clear of games (or any piece of storytelling media) that actually try to tell interesting stories.

YoukaiSlayer posted...

A loss is something that needs to be undone

And, generally speaking, the narrative direction after that loss does exactly that. It may not make it so you never lost, but it makes it so that loss never mattered, which is generally more of an interesting story than "nothing ever went wrong now you win yay!". 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.

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.

YoukaiSlayer posted...

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.

Your investment in the gameplay is always just busywork used to move through a static story, in games with static stories. That's true regardless of how many times the protagonist fails over the course of that story. And in every game, there are going to be things you can't beat regardless of how powerful you get, so this notion that you're grinding to win every single time is inherently flawed.

Failing to win a fight against an unbeatable boss is functionally no different from failing to win a fight against the ground: It's not a real fight. That's not a loss that should bother you.

YoukaiSlayer posted...

Conflict does not require failure.

It requires something to go wrong, which by extension constitutes a failure to prevent that thing from having gone wrong.

YoukaiSlayer posted...

Feel free to add alternate routes that have plenty of the player failing, but leave me one that doesn't punish me despite success.

You want the developers of every game whose story you have a problem with to put in all the necessary work to rewrite the story, animate, and potentially voice a brand new cutscene just to pat you on the back for becoming overpowered? You think that's more reasonable than, say, getting over yourself and not thinking in terms of being "punished" by the existence of a story that doesn't fellate you at every possible turn?

YoukaiSlayer posted...

I imagine that feels dissonant to most players, even ones that struggled through the fight and barely won.

And most of them respond to that dissonance by shrugging it off as a consequence of having a static story in a variable game. If they acknowledge it, it's to be amused by the fact that they've become so overpowered that the game had to cheat, not to get upset that their power fantasy is "ruined." That's not to say there aren't scripted losses that are totally bullshit or otherwise more frustrating than they ought to be, but as a concept most players accept it as a minor annoyance in service of a more robust story, rather than being personally offended by it.

adjl posted...

Your investment in the gameplay is always just busywork

Here is the core of our disagreement. I don't think this is true. If anything I'm more invested in the gameplay than the story. There's a reason pokemon with it's dogshit story has the highest selling console exclusive of all time. It's the gameplay, the fantasy of in that case raising your pokemon to become powerful.

adjl posted...

And in every game, there are going to be things you can't beat regardless of how powerful you get

Factually untrue. In fact I'd argue most games let you beat every enemy in every encounter. It's usually only an issue in rpgs where they don't let you.

adjl posted...

It requires something to go wrong, which by extension constitutes a failure to prevent that thing from having gone wrong.

Not really. It just requires the threat of something going wrong. You could argue the threat itself was failure to prevent the threat from existing I guess, but you can solve the threat before any damage is done.

adjl posted...

You want the developers of every game whose story you have a problem with to put in all the necessary work to rewrite the story, animate, and potentially voice a brand new cutscene just to pat you on the back for becoming overpowered?

I don't expect them to do it retroactively but I definitely want them to do it going forward and if thats too much work, then just make the only path the one where I don't lose.
adjl posted...

And most of them respond to that dissonance by shrugging it off as a consequence of having a static story in a variable game. If they acknowledge it, it's to be amused by the fact that they've become so overpowered that the game had to cheat, not to get upset that their power fantasy is "ruined."

I've seen quite a few people voice annoyance with the "win in the gameplay, lose in the cutscene" thing. Even people that don't do any sidequests. Off the top of my head I remember dunkey complaining about it in one of his xenoblade reviews.
adjl posted...

Failing to win a fight against an unbeatable boss is functionally no different from failing to win a fight against the ground: It's not a real fight. That's not a loss that should bother you.

It's a fight for my character. Assuming I'm invested in both the gameplay and the characters/story, it very much IS a real fight.

YoukaiSlayer posted...

Here is the core of our disagreement. I don't think this is true. If anything I'm more invested in the gameplay than the story. There's a reason pokemon with it's dogs*** story has the highest selling console exclusive of all time. It's the gameplay, the fantasy of in that case raising your pokemon to become powerful.

And that investment in the gameplay always comes with the caveat that the story generally will not support you becoming as powerful as the game permits, a caveat which most people accept as an inevitability of a static story. Even without considering scripted losses, if you invest more heavily in developing your character than you're expected to, you're going to get some dissonance between how powerful the story says a boss is and how powerful you find it. You grind out bonus content and overlevel yourself because you like exceeding expectations like that. Fundamentally, you easily finishing a boss fight and the characters saying "that was hard" in a cutscene is no different from you easily finishing a boss fight and the characters losing in a custcene: it's all just the story being unable to reflect your gameplay because it's a static product.

YoukaiSlayer posted...

Factually untrue. In fact I'd argue most games let you beat every enemy in every encounter. It's usually only an issue in rpgs where they don't let you.

Every *enemy*. Very few games let you beat, say, the ground, or a river, or a house. Scripted boss fights aren't real enemies. They're plot devices disguised as enemies.

YoukaiSlayer posted...

Not really. It just requires the threat of something going wrong. You could argue the threat itself was failure to prevent the threat from existing I guess, but you can solve the threat before any damage is done.

That's generally a pretty boring plot. Some guy rolls into town and says "I'm going to destroy the world in a week muahahaha" and then you go beat him up before the end of the week? That's not an overly compelling villain. Villains (and threats that are less clearly personified) are significantly more interesting when you actually see what they're capable of and when they've actually caused harm, and plots are significantly more interesting when you get some twists and turns as far as the antagonists' actual plans and motivations are.

YoukaiSlayer posted...

I don't expect them to do it retroactively but I definitely want them to do it going forward and if thats too much work, then just make the only path the one where I don't lose.

And that's needlessly limiting and absurdly egocentric. Round and round we go.

YoukaiSlayer posted...

I've seen quite a few people voice annoyance with the "win in the gameplay, lose in the cutscene" thing. Even people that don't do any sidequests.

If people who haven't done an unusual amount of sidequests are finding it to be a problem, that's a scripted loss that's been done poorly. Done correctly, a player who does a typical amount of sidequests (generally, any that don't involve going too far out of the way and/or look at first glance like they're going to be particularly interesting) should either get nearly one-shotted (if the devs want to go the surprise route), or be fighting desperately for their life in a battle they ultimately lose (if the devs want the player to experience the same despair as the characters). If the typical player finds it easy to "win" the fight, then that fails to communicate the intended point, which is a bad thing (and yes, many games do miss the mark in this regard).

YoukaiSlayer posted...

Off the top of my head I remember dunkey complaining about it in one of his xenoblade reviews.

Xenoblade 1 did it pretty well. Scripted losses stopped at 50% HP before being stopped by the boss saying something to the effect of "Enough! Time for me to take you seriously!" before unleashing a party wipe (which is very stereotypically shounen, but that's JRPGs for you), so even if you were strong enough to not lose normally, the fight actually went the way the story suggested.

2, however, was indeed bad for it. Notably, 2 didn't have scripted losses, it had boss fights that you had to win, but that were still followed by cutscene losses (or at least something going wrong in the cutscene in a way that would have been more consistent with losing the boss battle). That was dumb.

3 was in a weird place. It handled scripted/cutscene losses the same way that 1 did (triggering a cutscene interruption at 50%), which was fine, but because such a massive percentage of the party's damage was back-loaded into chain attacks that typically got triggered before the 50% mark and those chain attacks weren't interrupted the way regular fighting would have been, a competent, appropriately-levelled player can pretty easily blow up the whole remaining health bar without giving the cutscene a chance to trigger. That definitely felt weird.