Poll of the Day > What is the most blatant example of ludonarrative dissonance you can think of?

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JigsawTDC
10/22/20 9:15:34 PM
#1:


For those unaware:

"Ludonarrative dissonance is the conflict between a video game's narrative told through the story and the narrative told through the gameplay. "

So like in Uncharted when you slaughter hoardes of mercenaries and in story it's never really addressed or commented upon and there are no consequences for it. What are some of the most blatant examples you can think of? Conversely, what are some games that have little to no ludonarrative dissonance?
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SpeedDemon20
10/22/20 9:20:34 PM
#2:


You mean like in Bastion how the narrator comments on nearly everything you do? Or The Stanley Parable?

And then like The Legend of Zelda where NPCs mostly never commentate on how you destroyed their things and robbed them?

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JigsawTDC
10/22/20 9:23:24 PM
#3:


SpeedDemon20 posted...
You mean like in Bastion how the narrator comments on nearly everything you do? Or The Stanley Parable?

And then like The Legend of Zelda where NPCs mostly never commentate on how you destroyed their things and robbed them?

The former two examples sound like the opposite of ludonarrative dissonance, and answers my last question! I have played Bastion, but it's been years and I don't remember it too well. I've never heard of The Stanley Parable.

Robbing and destroying property in Legend of Zelda is definitely a great example of ludonarrative dissonance.
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ParanoidObsessive
10/22/20 9:32:12 PM
#4:


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XCxVf2l8OLk
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argonautweakend
10/22/20 9:45:07 PM
#5:


Any game where you can choose light/dark side or good/evil yet can still loot without consequence on either side.
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DirtBasedSoap
10/22/20 9:47:14 PM
#6:


I came in to this thread to say Uncharted. I think 4 has a trophy called ludonarrative dissonance.

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ParanoidObsessive
10/22/20 9:53:49 PM
#7:


argonautweakend posted...
Any game where you can choose light/dark side or good/evil yet can still loot without consequence on either side.

So every game ever made other than Ultima, then.
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Lokarin
10/22/20 9:55:16 PM
#8:


How did this one pound slime drop a 16ton reactor?

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JigsawTDC
10/22/20 9:56:21 PM
#9:


DirtBasedSoap posted...
I came in to this thread to say Uncharted. I think 4 has a trophy called ludonarrative dissonance.

Yeah, I used Uncharted as an example because I've seen the term most often brought up in regards to it. I'm not sure if Last of Us directly addressed ludonarrative dissonance because Uncharted was associated with it, or that Last of Us addressing it retroactively made people hyperaware of it in Uncharted.
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dedbus
10/22/20 10:04:16 PM
#10:


Blowing up sniperwolf with 30 guided missiles followed by a heartfelt death scene.
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Rotpar
10/22/20 10:08:00 PM
#11:


Isn't the Tomb Raider reboot supposed to be pretty bad with it? Long scene of killing a man is a huge, traumatic experience that Lara was forced into, followed by gunning down mooks for ten hours?

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argonautweakend
10/22/20 10:16:50 PM
#12:


Super heroes. Sworn to protect the city but have you seen the carnage happening in the fights with the villians
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RoboXgp89
10/22/20 11:25:06 PM
#13:


in Cod when you're fighting terrorist but the entire country is attacking you lol

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Kungfu Kenobi
10/22/20 11:26:57 PM
#14:


Rotpar posted...
Isn't the Tomb Raider reboot supposed to be pretty bad with it? Long scene of killing a man is a huge, traumatic experience that Lara was forced into, followed by gunning down mooks for ten hours?

It's pretty fucked up, yeah.

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WhiskeyDisk
10/22/20 11:27:04 PM
#15:


despite my stack of 99 Phoenix Downs, that one girl dies in my arms in a cutscene.

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Sahuagin
10/22/20 11:28:06 PM
#16:


RPG plot deaths when resurrection is a thing in the world

WhiskeyDisk posted...
despite my stack of 99 Phoenix Downs, that one girl dies in my arms in a cutscene.
yes, that

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JigsawTDC
10/22/20 11:30:45 PM
#17:


WhiskeyDisk posted...
despite my stack of 99 Phoenix Downs, that one girl dies in my arms in a cutscene.

Sahuagin posted...
RPG plot deaths when resurrection is a thing in the world

One of the few examples I can think of that is the exception to this is in Final Fantasy V. One of the main characters starts using magic that they don't even have access to at that point, when their MP is already depleted. Your party actually tries to use various restorative items to bring them back, to no avail.

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WhiskeyDisk
10/22/20 11:38:49 PM
#18:


JigsawTDC posted...
One of the few examples I can think of that is the exception to this is in Final Fantasy V. One of the main characters starts using magic that they don't even have access to at that point, when their MP is already depleted. Your party actually tries to use various restorative items to bring them back, to no avail.


yeah, but in that particular case, one can at least make the argument that the really dead, not at all temporarily dead character completely overextended themselves. and stretched their soul too thin to revive or something.

the girl standing knee deep in water getting speared with 3 or 4 party members within earshot should have totally been revived by a simple toss of a Phoenix Down in their general direction and have one land.

fuck, the *next* game in that series had the actual and literal protagonist get impaled thru several major and important organs, and everything that happens afterwards is totally canon and not at all a DMT-death hallucination, no matter how little sense anything that happens after that point is.

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joemodda
10/22/20 11:43:58 PM
#19:


Definitely Borderlands 2

Fuckin' Roland gets one-shotted in the chest by a weapon that was probably a white-loot pistol and doesn't even respawn, No shield too lmao

Also related to Uncharted 2, I think there is a cutscene where Drake literally survives a tank blast point-blank. Not really narrative-related, but definitely a head-scratcher

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ParanoidObsessive
10/22/20 11:48:53 PM
#20:


Kungfu Kenobi posted...
It's pretty fucked up, yeah.

To be fair, the point in Tomb Raider is supposed to be that she starts out relatively "normal" and traumatized by killing, but is slowly growing more and more desensitized as the game goes on and she's forced to keep doing it to survive (and save her friends).

It's supposed to be presenting the arc of a more realistic Lara slowly turning into the much more callous, cold, ruthless version of Lara we saw in the original Tomb Raider games. You could almost see it as a spiritual prequel of sorts, meant to say "This is why she can gun down hundreds of dudes (and T-Rexes) without flinching."

In practice, it kind of skips ahead a bit, with the shift happening very quickly in the first game. But it's an underlying part of the narrative, as opposed to Uncharted where Nathan mostly just snarks and kills and doesn't really seem to ever process just how many corpses he's leaving in his wake.

Or Far Cry 3, which is trying to show the slow descent of someone forced to fight and kill, who can't go back to being the person they were before, but which mostly devolves into a massive bloodbath almost immediately.
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Lokarin
10/22/20 11:49:39 PM
#21:


joemodda posted...
Definitely Borderlands 2

Thing is, there's a ludo-canon reasoning they could have used that they completely overlooked... which is weird since there's a quest about it in both the 1st and 2nd games

...you have to be unregistered from the cloning system if you wanna have kids, so he was probably trying for a Siren baby

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YoukaiSlayer
10/22/20 11:49:42 PM
#22:


Xenoblade 1 when they reveal that there are homs piloting the faces where your characters freak out despite murdering every form of sentient life including clearly intelligent mechons.

Vesperia has a similar issue where you make a big deal about executing villains but make no mention of the countless goons and sentient life you smash your way through to get there.

Every jrpg where you can grind up to be a god but constantly lose or draw in the cutscenes. Goddamn that pisses me off. Xenoblade 2 comes to mind.

I guess technically dynasty warriors for an unusal example. The cutscenes would have you think you are killing hordes of goons but in that game you get KOs and not kills outside a couple of scripted deaths.

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ParanoidObsessive
10/23/20 12:02:35 AM
#23:


Lokarin posted...
Thing is, there's a ludo-canon reasoning they could have used that they completely overlooked... which is weird since there's a quest about it in both the 1st and 2nd games

There's also an even simpler answer - the New-U stations are run by Hyperion. If Jack wants someone dead for real, he can probably delete their data out of the system whenever he wants.

Of course, then you can ask "Why does Jack leave the BL2 Vault Hunters' data in the system and allow them to keep respawning?", to which there are basically three answers:

Early on, you are literally part of his plan - he NEEDS you alive. Once you help him attack Sanctuary, he no longer cares about you at all, and doesn't really see you as much of a threat, so doesn't bother doing it. And then, after you attack the bunker and kill Angel, he really hates you - at which point he doesn't WANT you to die to some random scrub or asshole bandit. He wants you to survive, and suffer, so he can kill you himself after he "wins". Because he's the hero, after all. In his eyes, you basically become the end boss.

His only flaw is being too arrogant to realize you might manage to kill him in the final battle. He figures he'll just raise the Warrior and win, but is so wrapped up in his triumph that he forgets to disable the respawn.

The real question is why didn't HE respawn himself (and/or Nisha). That's the real plot hole.

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Wanded
10/23/20 12:14:24 AM
#24:


Last of us 2

the whole game was about how killing and revenge is bad yet you keep plenty of people along the way and no one cares

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Kungfu Kenobi
10/23/20 4:35:42 AM
#25:


ParanoidObsessive posted...
To be fair, the point in Tomb Raider is supposed to be that she starts out relatively "normal" and traumatized by killing, but is slowly growing more and more desensitized as the game goes on and she's forced to keep doing it to survive (and save her friends).

It's supposed to be presenting the arc of a more realistic Lara slowly turning into the much more callous, cold, ruthless version of Lara we saw in the original Tomb Raider games. You could almost see it as a spiritual prequel of sorts, meant to say "This is why she can gun down hundreds of dudes (and T-Rexes) without flinching."

In practice, it kind of skips ahead a bit, with the shift happening very quickly in the first game. But it's an underlying part of the narrative, as opposed to Uncharted where Nathan mostly just snarks and kills and doesn't really seem to ever process just how many corpses he's leaving in his wake.

Or Far Cry 3, which is trying to show the slow descent of someone forced to fight and kill, who can't go back to being the person they were before, but which mostly devolves into a massive bloodbath almost immediately.

I think where they went wrong with TR2013 in the low-res big-picture sense, is that it was an action adventure game, and not a survival horror. The action adventure formula is fundemtanlly at odds with the story they were trying and mostly failing to tell. You literally can't (and this is a fact not my personal opinion) have someone who's that graceful under fire, never fumbles a reload, never struggles with sights, and who's a doe-eyed deer in the headlights at their first rodeo struggling to get through it. These. are. incompatible.

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ParanoidObsessive
10/23/20 4:54:16 AM
#26:


Kungfu Kenobi posted...
I think where they went wrong with TR2013 in the low-res big-picture sense, is that it was an action adventure game, and not a survival horror. The action adventure formula is fundamentally at odds with the story they were trying and mostly failing to tell.

I think you could tell that story. But the problem is whether or not you trust your audience.

Basically, you need to keep combat very minimal for a LONG time. Focus on exploration early, have the story emphasize just how hard things are for her. Once combat does commence, have it occur in very small, very isolated pockets. Give time between fights for Lara to emote her reactions. Establish the arc. Then, accelerate the pace... and slowly desensitize her. By the end, give her a thousand-yard stare as she's picking off baddie after baddie and make it clear that something inside of her is very much broken now. You can GET to the action game you want, but you have to earn it.

The problem is that a) if your audience is going to spend most of that time going "So when do I get to shoot the guns?" or b) you don't trust your audience enough to assume they're not going to do that, then that kind of structure is going to result in a very boring game (at least early on, which is where most players will quit out of boredom, never seeing what happens later), that most players are going to hate because they don't care about your artistic pretensions as much as they care about playing the game they expected to play (and previous Tomb Raider games had given most people a very clear mental image of what Tomb Raider SHOULD be).

Arguably, it's a similar problem to what Spec Ops was trying to do (how effective is a "You're a drone and a killer" storyline in an FPS entirely built around following orders and shooting literally everything?), and I think that game handled it well. There ARE ways around the limitations, but you have to work at it, you have to trust your audience, and you have to be willing to suffer the potential loss of sales.

In other words, you can't be working for Squeenix, who will say that your 4 million sales (at the time) were a disappointment because their vastly ignorant and unrealistic expectations were way too high in the first place. You need to be in a position where you can accept lower sales for higher critical praise - and if you're very lucky, the critical praise will help fuel your sales (see also, Undertale).

Ironically, the other game that springs to mind for me when it comes to a developer trying to tell a story that the audience is simply not interested in hearing is Last of Us II. A LOT of the backlash basically boils down to the audience wanting more Joel and Elly bonding adventures and the developer very much unwilling to provide that. If anything, it almost seems to be deliberately shitting on players who enjoyed the first game for enjoying it. So in that sense, it kind of has the spiritual influence of games like Spec Ops - it just handles it much, much, MUCH more poorly.
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Kungfu Kenobi
10/23/20 8:03:49 AM
#27:


ParanoidObsessive posted...
Basically, you need to keep combat very minimal for a LONG time. Focus on exploration early, have the story emphasize just how hard things are for her. Once combat does commence, have it occur in very small, very isolated pockets. Give time between fights for Lara to emote her reactions. Establish the arc.

You mean like in a Tomb Raider game? :|

I can understand the idea of Legend and Underworld as setting more action oriented expectations, but Underworld in particular under performed, so doubling down on the action format wasn't a slam dunk. Granted Anniversary did abysmal, so a return to form classic Tomb Raider game was also out. Then again the marketing for Anniversary was something like, "We remade Tomb Raider 1 in our spare time using the new engine" so it was never regarded as a full entry to the series.

ParanoidObsessive posted...
In other words, you can't be working for Squeenix, who will say that your 4 million sales (at the time) were a disappointment because their vastly ignorant and unrealistic expectations were way too high in the first place. You need to be in a position where you can accept lower sales for higher critical praise - and if you're very lucky, the critical praise will help fuel your sales (see also, Undertale).

I agree with that, but go in a completely different direction. They could have made good money on just those sales, numbers that were by no means out of whack for a Tomb Raider game, if they stuck to the sort of budgets Tomb Raider games had traditionally been made at. Coincidentally, that's the sort of budget that would make for a very decent survival horror game. AFAIK The Evil Within did similar sales to TR2013 on a budget in line with an older Tomb Raider game. What was unrealistic was that they could get Final Fantasy sales on a Final Fantasy budget with a game that wasn't Final Fantasy.

I see the parallels you're drawing with Spec Ops, but they were in a unique position. For no good reason at all the publisher doled out a decent budget and an unusual amount of creative freedom to the Spec Ops team, then left them to do their thing. I think it might have been a case of just throwing stuff at the wall to see if it stuck. It was the revival no one asked for of a franchise no one wanted in the first place. Spec Ops was also perceived as nearly impossible to market correctly due to the nature of it. I say perceived because in hindsight a lot of people only became aware of Spec Ops The Line due to its deconstruction of military shooters. That brings me to Tomb Raider: The Line, the game I would have preferred they made. The marketing was already in line with a game of that tone and character, and it sold 4 million anyway.

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streamofthesky
10/23/20 10:42:46 AM
#28:


Easily the Last of Us 2. Like, the entire game and concept.

YoukaiSlayer posted...
Xenoblade 1 when they reveal that there are homs piloting the faces where your characters freak out despite murdering every form of sentient life including clearly intelligent mechons.
WTF? This is completely wrong....
You DO NOT spend the game murdering "every form of sentient life", literally just mechon and animals/beasts (and the non-face mechon are effectively the animals/beasts of Mechonis). You never once in the story kill a sentient life form from Bionis until the very end of the game, aside from Xord...who they didn't know at the time was a Homs. Hell, he technically killed himself, too.

Now something from the game that *is* an example of this, and pretty much the only time you are killing sentient life before the end is in Agniratha when you encounter face units and can fight and kill them without any moral issues/guilt at all. It's still self-defense, they're pretty damn aggressive and attack on sight, but you'd think it'd bother Shulk.
Still pretty minor compared to a lot of other games mentioned.

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kukukupo
10/23/20 10:53:12 AM
#29:


I think Ultima 4: Quest of the avatar is a good anti-example.
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Funcoland
10/23/20 10:59:45 AM
#30:


WhiskeyDisk posted...
despite my stack of 99 Phoenix Downs, that one girl dies in my arms in a cutscene.

This really isn't that much of a disconnect when you understand that usually in Fina Fantasy games, 0hp isn't usually dead but disabled. Phoenix Downs and Life spells only work on those at the brink of death. That one girl doesn't die in your arms; she's killed instantly. Some games even state as much.


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streamofthesky
10/23/20 11:08:04 AM
#31:


Funcoland posted...
This really isn't that much of a disconnect when you understand that usually in Fina Fantasy games, 0hp isn't usually dead but disabled. Phoenix Downs and Life spells only work on those at the brink of death. That one girl doesn't die in your arms; she's killed instantly. Some games even state as much.
Yeah.
I'm not a big fan of FF7, but this has got to be one of the biggest false dilemmas in gaming. It makes sense just fine, quit acting like it doesn't. (though the games undercut this a bit when they let you use Phoenix Downs to insta-destroy undead enemies)
Also people should quit acting like her death is some big emotional and sad moment, it's really not. Shocking, maybe. But tons of other deaths in games were much sadder and better done.
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adjl
10/23/20 12:08:29 PM
#32:


streamofthesky posted...
WTF? This is completely wrong....
You DO NOT spend the game murdering "every form of sentient life", literally just mechon and animals/beasts (and the non-face mechon are effectively the animals/beasts of Mechonis). You never once in the story kill a sentient life form from Bionis until the very end of the game, aside from Xord...who they didn't know at the time was a Homs. Hell, he technically killed himself, too.

Technically, there's also Telethia to consider as well, though they aren't exactly sentient anymore and the fact that they're former High Entia isn't revealed until very late in the game, at which point killing them is viewed as more of a tragic necessity than a callous disregard for sentient life.


streamofthesky posted...
Now something from the game that *is* an example of this, and pretty much the only time you are killing sentient life before the end is in Agniratha when you encounter face units and can fight and kill them without any moral issues/guilt at all. It's still self-defense, they're pretty damn aggressive and attack on sight, but you'd think it'd bother Shulk.

Hypothetically, you could say that they aren't actually killed, just given the Metal Face treatment off-screen (that is, beaten until they're unable to fight anymore, then spared). There's no concrete reason to presume that, but it wouldn't be the first time games have used such a pretense to explain random battles, and it would be more consistent with the characters.

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streamofthesky
10/23/20 12:12:00 PM
#33:


adjl posted...
Technically, there's also Telethia to consider as well, though they aren't exactly sentient anymore and the fact that they're former High Entia isn't revealed until very late in the game, at which point killing them is viewed as more of a tragic necessity than a callous disregard for sentient life.

Yeah, so while interesting to note, I don't think it counts for this topic.

Hypothetically, you could say that they aren't actually killed, just given the Metal Face treatment off-screen (that is, beaten until they're unable to fight anymore, then spared). There's no concrete reason to presume that, but it wouldn't be the first time games have used such a pretense to explain random battles, and it would be more consistent with the characters.
Yup. It's unclear. Maybe you just disable them, so it's a minor example. The item they drop makes me wonder, but it has literally no purpose and you can't see a pic of what it even is, so who knows?
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Shadowbird_RH
10/23/20 12:43:54 PM
#34:


YoukaiSlayer posted...
Xenoblade 1 when they reveal that there are homs piloting the faces where your characters freak out despite murdering every form of sentient life including clearly intelligent mechons.
It's mentioned in the game that the mechon enemies (the non-Face units) are machines designed and manufactured for hunting Bionis life for the sake of starving the Bionis of the ether it needs to thrive. They're literal robots, not even an equivalent to Bionis animals, they are but unthinking, unquestioning machines built for no purpose save for the facilitation of a battle of attrition. As for the mass-produced Face units, they drop a loot item that quite clearly indicates that the party did indeed just kill a Homs. "Bloody Face" I think it was called, the flavor text makes it doubtless.

streamofthesky posted...
You never once in the story kill a sentient life form from Bionis until the very end of the game, aside from Xord...who they didn't know at the time was a Homs.
That isn't quite right either. In addition to the various Bionis wildlife, there are other tribal peoples beyond just the Nopon. The hood wearing Hode, the Tirkin bird people, the Igna lizard people, and their offshoots all demonstrate at least some degree of culture that easily places them above the many animal species that survive only by means of their own biology, and all of which at some point find themselves on the wrong end of the Monado.

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YoukaiSlayer
10/23/20 6:15:02 PM
#35:


streamofthesky posted...
WTF? This is completely wrong....
I thought the normal goons and some of the animals were sentient enough but perhaps I forgot. Regardless, the face units are sentient right from the start and he is hellbent on killing them. What's inside should make no difference and his freak out ruined his character for me.

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Metalsonic66
10/23/20 6:37:39 PM
#36:


Wanded posted...
Last of us 2

the whole game was about how killing and revenge is bad yet you keep plenty of people along the way and no one cares
Stretching

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adjl
10/23/20 6:55:22 PM
#37:


Shadowbird_RH posted...
That isn't quite right either. In addition to the various Bionis wildlife, there are other tribal peoples beyond just the Nopon. The hood wearing Hode, the Tirkin bird people, the Igna lizard people, and their offshoots all demonstrate at least some degree of culture that easily places them above the many animal species that survive only by means of their own biology, and all of which at some point find themselves on the wrong end of the Monado.

So... let's just say it's fitting that they gave Shulk a British accent >.>

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Zareth
10/23/20 7:55:20 PM
#38:


ParanoidObsessive posted...
So every game ever made other than Ultima, then.
I thought Garriot said they only did that in one game, and people just stopped doing it in future games because they thought it would hurt them then too?

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agesboy
10/24/20 12:37:46 AM
#39:


yakuza games are really silly like this

it's a plot point in yakuza 0 that kiryu would never kill anyone, yet he's also shooting down helicopters and using others as shields when others try to shoot him

same for majima whose typical knife antics would easily kill anyone caught on the receiving end

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PMarth2002
10/24/20 10:11:07 AM
#40:


How does anyone step five feet outside of a town in a jrpg with random battles without dying horribly? Especially if they live in an end-game area. You walk to a different city and you're looking at fighting fifty monsters at least.

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Shinebolt
10/24/20 1:09:40 PM
#41:


There was a Youtuber I used to watch that had a pretty great reaction in a Let's Play video of a game called Schoolgirl Zombie Hunter. Unfortunately she deleted all of her videos and left Youtube so I can't link it, but the basic situation was this:

Your friend wants help finding her Kendo stick to fend off the zombies. The second the mission starts your friend opens fire on a horde of zombies with an infinite ammo assault rifle.
Edit: Also, not really related but I do want to mention this part of the video as well. The friend was such an amazing AI partner that the person playing just let her do all the work. It turned into a reverse-escort mission, lol.

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Metalsonic66
10/24/20 4:18:57 PM
#42:


PMarth2002 posted...
How does anyone step five feet outside of a town in a jrpg with random battles without dying horribly? Especially if they live in an end-game area. You walk to a different city and you're looking at fighting fifty monsters at least.
Monster repellent

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Sahuagin
10/24/20 7:52:43 PM
#43:


actually, now that I think of it, I think *the* most blatant one is similar to the borderlands one. in almost every game you can either respawn or time-travel.

I'll always remember, a few days before Interplay was forcibly shutdown by the government and the forums disappeared forever, I had written a thread about Sendai in BG2:ToB. There are cutscenes as you attack her fortress and she gets progressively more and more concerned the further in you get. It struck me, especially the second time doing that, how silly it was for Sendai not to realize that the "true" source of my character's power is the fact that I have infinite saving and loading. You basically have full access to a form of time travel, or most games would be close to impossible.

The boss character thinks she has tricks up her sleeve, but with time-travel, on my 10th or so try, I already know all her tricks, and it's just a matter of time for me to be able to win. Even if I wasn't strong enough, I could leave and come back.

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Unbridled9
10/24/20 7:56:52 PM
#44:


Any game which tries to claim 'violence is wrong' and such while having the player engaging IN said violence, especially if it's against wild animals, bandits, and the like, in order to 'make the world a better place'. I get the idea behind the narrative, but if violence, directly or indirectly, is what makes me strong enough to save the world and the reason the bad guy is winning is because he's so strong he can win at violence with no one able to oppose him and the like... It seems like violence can be good or at least neutral!

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ParanoidObsessive
10/24/20 10:33:58 PM
#45:


agesboy posted...
would never kill anyone, yet he's also shooting down helicopters and using others as shields when others try to shoot him

Like in Arkham Knight, where Batman has an iron-clad "no kill" rule, but he's driving around running over pedestrians in the Batmobile and electrocuting people.
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LuciferSage
10/25/20 2:56:18 AM
#46:


PMarth2002 posted...
How does anyone step five feet outside of a town in a jrpg with random battles without dying horribly? Especially if they live in an end-game area. You walk to a different city and you're looking at fighting fifty monsters at least.


How is it that the last merchant before the point of no return when everyone in the world knows who the hero is, and that he's the chosen one still charge ludicrous prices for the items and gear when the obvious thing to do is give him or her what ever they need to beat the big baddie?

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Unbridled9
10/25/20 7:49:06 AM
#47:


LuciferSage posted...
How is it that the last merchant before the point of no return when everyone in the world knows who the hero is, and that he's the chosen one still charge ludicrous prices for the items and gear when the obvious thing to do is give him or her what ever they need to beat the big baddie?

Because they have complete faith in your immanent victory of course!

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I am the gentle hand who heals, the happy smile who shields, and the foot that will kick your ***! - White Mage
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TaKun782
10/25/20 7:56:05 AM
#48:


Hrmm...well, one game that does the complete opposite would be Bioshock. I mean hell... there is even a fucking explanation if you die. I thought that was super cool.
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argonautweakend
10/25/20 11:10:31 AM
#49:


This isnt LD but I always get annoyed in some RPGs first towns:

"ohhh dont go outside! the scary monters will kill you! THE MIST!"

*goes outside and slaughters hoardes of level one enemines"

...the fuck you talking about random filler dialog npc?
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Shinebolt
10/25/20 11:28:37 AM
#50:


LuciferSage posted...
How is it that the last merchant before the point of no return when everyone in the world knows who the hero is, and that he's the chosen one still charge ludicrous prices for the items and gear when the obvious thing to do is give him or her what ever they need to beat the big baddie?

To be fair, you're usually carrying around hundreds of thousands of whatever currency the game world uses. Most of which you got from the "dangerous" monsters. I'm sure those infinitely respawning black wolves that give 22k a kill didn't lead to an economic collapse or anything either...

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