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

(+) Yeah! (+)

adjl posted...

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

Then why tell that story as a game in the first place? Why not use a medium that takes advantage of that by being able to control the pacing, like almost every other medium. Most jrpg plots should be anime/manga and not games. And just because most people accept that, it doesn't mean it isn't bad. Let's also not pretend jrpgs are rife with amazing stories to begin with. Most of them are b tier shonen garbage that probably wouldn't cut it as passive media recycling the exact same tropes and plots with a story that usually has a simple solution the characters ignore because the author couldn't think of a way to make the setting and story make sense.

Ultimately, the thing being talked about here is a game so the gameplay should come first. That makes a weak story somewhat excusable provided it doesn't hinder the gameplay. But you suggest the opposite should be the case, that the gameplay is just busywork so we can see a static story. Why do the work then? Why not just watch all the cutscenes on youtube?

adjl posted...

Fundamentally, you easily finishing a boss fight and the characters saying "that was hard" in a cutscene

That too is quite annoying. This doesn't even require overleveling. Often times the enemies that are supposed to be tough just aren't as tough as some other enemies that are supposed to be average. That should be avoided as much as possible. You need to think of the fact you are making a game, not just writing a book.

adjl posted...

Very few games let you beat, say, the ground, or a river, or a house.

If the ground or a river start kicking my ass, I'll complain too, especially if my character has tools to beat them like being able to fly/swim. Like imagine how annoying it'd be in a game if your character falls off a cliff and injures himself on the ground in a cutscene but your character can fly. And I'm clearly talking about in combat here. There is a difference. I've said over and over I don't mind them causing indirect problems to my character, so long as they don't lose at whatever the gameplay is in the story (generally combat, but it could always be something else, like cooking or crafting or something). That requires some modicum of writing skill though, to set up a scenario where the villain can cause problems in a way other than just brute forcing down your party.

adjl posted...

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?

I was refuting your point but you can have him roll into town saying he will destroy your town and he's already destroyed the last 15 towns and you've been dealing with his lackey's and refugees from the previous towns if you want an example that can easily work and not be boring.

Or the lazy but classic he comes to town and destroys it while you are gone. You come back to burning rubble and dying loved ones and vow to either get revenge or stop him from doing this to anyone else.

adjl posted...

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).

It doesn't have to be easy. Even if you brutally struggle through, if you won, you expect to actually win. It's frustrating when that doesn't happen.

adjl posted...

which is very stereotypically shounen, but that's JRPGs for you

This is the level of writing we are trying to protect?

Woohoo, they announced a 4th season of Honzuki.

YoukaiSlayer posted...

Then why tell that story as a game in the first place?

Because they want to. Simple as that.

YoukaiSlayer posted...

Ultimately, the thing being talked about here is a game so the gameplay should come first.

And you're complaining about entirely the opposite of that: That the story needs to validate the gameplay at all times. If gameplay comes first, gameplay is its own reward and you shouldn't need the story to remind you that your numbers have gotten big. You yourself said (to paraphrase) "if the story doesn't constantly tell me how awesome I am, all that gameplay in which I became awesome was just pointless busywork in the way of that story."

YoukaiSlayer posted...

That too is quite annoying. This doesn't even require overleveling. Often times the enemies that are supposed to be tough just aren't as tough as some other enemies that are supposed to be average. That should be avoided as much as possible. You need to think of the fact you are making a game, not just writing a book.

Avoiding that either means creating different cutscenes based on your performance in each fight (which is ridiculously labour-intensive), never having the party respond to how difficult a battle was (boring, interferes with establishing the stakes well enough for battles to feel meaningful), or taking away the player's ability to grow at their own pace (which means it stops being an RPG altogether). Alternatively, you can just accept - as most players do - that sometimes you'll get inconsistencies and move on with your life knowing that that's just a quirk of the medium. Given that anything other than the latter would be extremely limiting, I'm happy to go with that.

YoukaiSlayer posted...

If the ground or a river start kicking my ass, I'll complain too

What do you think walking around a mountain or having to find a bridge is? You walk around the mountain because you're too weak to go through it. You look for a bridge because you can't swim well enough to cross the river without one. And you lose to unbeatable bosses because you're not strong enough to beat a plot device. It's a static part of the game that you'll never be able to beat. Failing to beat it therefore isn't a real loss any more than you should feel humiliated by having to find a bridge.

YoukaiSlayer posted...

I was refuting your point but you can have him roll into town saying he will destroy your town and he's already destroyed the last 15 towns and you've been dealing with his lackey's and refugees from the previous towns if you want an example that can easily work and not be boring.

Or the lazy but classic he comes to town and destroys it while you are gone. You come back to burning rubble and dying loved ones and vow to either get revenge or stop him from doing this to anyone else.

And those are both failures on the protagonist's part, so we're back to protagonist failure being essential for an interesting story.

YoukaiSlayer posted...

It doesn't have to be easy. Even if you brutally struggle through, if you won, you expect to actually win. It's frustrating when that doesn't happen.

Properly balanced, you won't win unless you've deliberately broken that balance somehow (in which case, that's on you). Not all games with scripted losses balance them properly, and there are examples like Xenoblade 2 where you actually have to win the fight but the cutscene still plays out like you lost, but those are examples of it being done poorly and I'm not trying to defend those.

YoukaiSlayer posted...

This is the level of writing we are trying to protect?

Well, yeah. This is an anime/manga/JRPG topic, after all. The trope of fighting the big bad and getting an edge over him, only for him to say "I guess it's time to start taking you seriously" and immediately winning isn't exactly original, but it does help to establish the big bad as a legitimate threat at a personal scale instead of just some nebulously powerful evil hiding in a distant castle. I don't mind that. Not every story has to be completely original and avoid cliches at every possible turn.

adjl posted...

That the story needs to validate the gameplay at all times.

Thats what the gameplay coming first means. Everything in the game should support the gameplay. If anything has to be sacrificed it should be anything other than the gameplay, whether that be story or realism or character development or world building. The gameplay should be the cornerstone everything else is built around. The gameplay in an rpg sets up the fantasy of power for the characters.

adjl posted...

Avoiding that either means creating different cutscenes based on your performance in each fight (which is ridiculously labour-intensive)

It's really not that labor intensive in most cases. A few variations on voice lines and the characters standing instead of on one knee wincing in pain. A lot of games have similar minor variations in scenes that are self contained or maybe have 1 or 2 brief references later in the game. I'm not asking for every game to be baldur's gate 3 levels of variety.

adjl posted...

(boring, interferes with establishing the stakes well enough for battles to feel meaningful)

Worth it. Avoiding gameplay dissonance is more important than setting the stakes and plenty of games set the stakes without that. Like look at melania in elden ring. The latest populer "super hard" boss out there. The lore sets up her power, the opening cutscene sets up her power, and the gameplay reinforces those examples. What happens after the fight? She gives a death monologue and disappears. No player exhausted and panting or collapsing right after the fight or saying how difficult it was. The gameplay already told us how difficult it was and the lore and cutscene told us how meaningful it was.

Ideally in something with more defined player characters, they would be commenting mid battle on how difficult it is based on how the fight is going, something that only costs voice lines to do. Stuff like tales and xenoblade do this already, albeit fairly poorly and usually non specifically.

Basically the video game version of show don't tell.

adjl posted...

And you lose to unbeatable bosses because you're not strong enough to beat a plot device. It's a static part of the game that you'll never be able to beat. Failing to beat it therefore isn't a real loss any more than you should feel humiliated by having to find a bridge.

If my character has the power (and reason) to go through the maintain, or jump over the river, then I will complain about them finding a bridge or way around the mountain. In fact, one of my biggest story complaints in xenoblade 2 is rex not jumping over the relatively small gap in the space station. Something he canonically should be able to do with ease at the point. It was incredibly frustrating and completely took me out of the scene.

adjl posted...

And those are both failures on the protagonist's part, so we're back to protagonist failure being essential for an interesting story.

Failure maybe, but not combat failure. These things didn't happen because of a lack of ability to defeat someone in a fight. And realistically the story of me as a player dealing with the enemies is probably more interesting than the static story being told. I'm really hard pressed to think of any jrpg stories that are good, even divorcing them from the games they are a part of. I think more evidence to back this up is anytime we get anime adaptations, even really good ones (like tales of zesteria), they fail miserably.

adjl posted...

Well, yeah. This is an anime/manga/JRPG topic, after all

There's more to those things than b tier shonen tropes and none of them are worth ludonarritive dissonance.

You talk about how constraining what I want to do is while endorsing them sticking to the same exact formula every single time. That's far more constraining than what I propose even. You are just protecting bad writers and bad game design for I guess the sake of it.

adjl posted...

Because they want to. Simple as that.

As a piece of commercial entertainment, this is not a good enough reason for me, or at least not a reason for it to be beyond criticism. And if you really wanna make it simple, then I want them not to, simple as that.

YoukaiSlayer posted...

Thats what the gameplay coming first means. Everything in the game should support the gameplay.

No, it means that you strive to make enjoyable gameplay even if that creates some inconsistencies with other elements. Trying to be consistent is still good, but putting gameplay first just means that your first priority is making enjoyable gameplay.

YoukaiSlayer posted...

If anything has to be sacrificed it should be anything other than the gameplay, whether that be story or realism or character development or world building.

And in cases like this (again, where it's done properly, not poorly), the sacrifice made is that moment of ludonarrative consistency for a small handful of players who have already been deliberately deviating from the narrative for the sake of indulging in more gameplay. That moment of inconsistency - experienced only in edge cases where the player has already been introducing other inconsistencies - is a much more reasonable sacrifice than taking chunks out of anything else in a way that will make them less enjoyable in their own rights for the vast majority of players.

YoukaiSlayer posted...

Worth it. Avoiding gameplay dissonance is more important than setting the stakes

It really isn't. Establishing meaningful stakes is a fundamental requirement of having a story worth caring about. A moment of dissonance for a handful of players who already shouldn't mind that dissonance because they've deliberately created it (reminder: if you're doing side quests, that's you saying "hang on, immediate world-ending threat, I want to go collect some pickles for this dude") is very much not worse than stripping out the stakes that make a story worth getting invested in.

YoukaiSlayer posted...

If my character has the power (and reason) to go through the maintain, or jump over the river, then I will complain about them finding a bridge or way around the mountain.

And they don't, in this case. That's the point: The grinding you've done does not establish a canonical power level. It can't, because you're dealing with a static story that can't change in response to you. Canonically, you're too weak to win the fight in question.

YoukaiSlayer posted...

In fact, one of my biggest story complaints in xenoblade 2 is rex not jumping over the relatively small gap in the space station. Something he canonically should be able to do with ease at the point.

Using the grappling hook that they showed failing, or using the power of the sword waifu who was deliberately withholding that power in that moment? Neither of the abilities Rex had that gave him that kind of jumping power were available to him in that moment (and, extended further, it stands to reason that any other blades that might have helped would also have refused once they realized the situation). Moreover, even if he had figured out some sort of contrived way to get across, it wouldn't have changed the outcome of the scene, so why contrive one?

YoukaiSlayer posted...

You talk about how constraining what I want to do is while endorsing them sticking to the same exact formula every single time. That's far more constraining than what I propose even.

"You should never put X in a story" is always going to be infinitely more constraining than "it's okay if you put Y in a story," no matter what X and Y are, by simple virtue of the fact that the former is a constraint and the latter is not.

YoukaiSlayer posted...

As a piece of commercial entertainment, this is not a good enough reason for me, or at least not a reason for it to be beyond criticism. And if you really wanna make it simple, then I want them not to, simple as that.

And that's fine, but your position of "the protagonist should never lose in the story" is taking that opinion to an unreasonable extent. You asked why developers insist on putting scripted losses in games where it's possible to overpower the fight and contradict the story. The answer is that losing can make stories interesting, being able to become overpowered is interesting, and provided the scripted loss is balanced such that the only people that overpower the fight are those that have deliberately engineered that contradiction (and therefore accepted the dissonance in all other aspects of the game), that contradiction isn't a big enough deal to be worth sacrificing the story they want to tell or the game they want to make. If one plot loss makes you upset enough to ruin the whole experience for you, that's on you and you can't expect people to give up writing interesting stories to cater to that.

If you want to move past that dissonance, try framing the scripted loss as a plot device instead of a real fight. You know you haven't failed as a player by losing the fight. Just hold on to that knowledge and enjoy one-shotting the next thing you fight.

adjl posted...

No, it means that you strive to make enjoyable gameplay even if that creates some inconsistencies with other elements. Trying to be consistent is still good, but putting gameplay first just means that your first priority is making enjoyable gameplay.

The gameplay should be there, and then the story should be written around it. Besides you are arguing semantics, my point is still the same. You can obviously disagree with it, but it's not really the type of thing that even could be refuted. Creating an inconsistency that damages the gameplay fantasy would necessitate putting something above the gameplay.

adjl posted...

And in cases like this (again, where it's done properly, not poorly), the sacrifice made is that moment of ludonarrative consistency for a small handful of players who have already been deliberately deviating from the narrative for the sake of indulging in more gameplay

It's going to be inconsistent for the vast majority of players, even if they aren't oneshotting. Winning in the gameplay and losing in the cutscene is always going to feel bad, no matter how close or tough the fight was. You are going to think "why isn't this second part of the fight gameplay that I could try to win?".

If the boss kills them in the gameplay with some sort of super move, and then somehow doesn't have that same level of power in the actual final fight against it, thats more dissonance.

adjl posted...

The grinding you've done does not establish a canonical power level. It can't, because you're dealing with a static story that can't change in response to you. Canonically, you're too weak to win the fight in question.

If the gameplay is non canon, why is it even attached to the story? And of course, if you always win, there is no dissonance. The player that struggled through the fight underleveled, the speedrunner cheesing it in two seconds, the person who did all the side content, and the person who grinded incessantly all have no dissonance if you just win the fight.

And I just have to go out onto a new tangent but when the villain can beat you, and you don't die, the villain is incompetent. It's actually almost always terrible character building. The stakes immediately plummet when you can actually lose to the bad guy, get captured, and escape with your life. It only even makes rational sense if the villain is stupid and cocky beyond reason, but thats not a very compelling or scary antagonist. This isn't why I hate this trope, but if my current problem disappeared, this would be making me annoyed instead.

adjl posted...

Neither of the abilities Rex had that gave him that kind of jumping power were available to him in that moment (and, extended further, it stands to reason that any other blades that might have helped would also have refused once they realized the situation).

Really? All of the blades would have chosen not to help? All 39 rare blades with their different personalities and values wouldn't have helped him close the gap? And it would have completely made their attempted sacrifice to protect rex impossible if rex was able to jump the gap. Rex doesn't even TRY to do it.

adjl posted...

"You should never put X in a story" is always going to be infinitely more constraining than "it's okay if you put Y in a story," no matter what X and Y are, by simple virtue of the fact that the former is a constraint and the latter is not.

Their constraint is to keep telling the same story in the same way with superficial differences. You are endorsing them to keep doing what they are doing. Any criticism written away with "it's shonen".

adjl posted...

If one plot loss makes you upset enough to ruin the whole experience for you, that's on you and you can't expect people to give up writing interesting stories to cater to that.

Maybe if any of them were actually writing interesting stories you'd have more of a leg to stand on, but even then, go ahead and write that story, but in a medium that is appropriate for it.

YoukaiSlayer posted...

Creating an inconsistency that damages the gameplay fantasy would necessitate putting something above the gameplay.

Damages, but doesn't destroy. The damage is brief and not unexpected for those that have deliberately broken the game. Choosing to momentarily damage the gameplay instead of completely gutting the story isn't putting the story above the gameplay, it's minimizing the total harm done. Even more so where it doesn't damage the gameplay itself, only the power fantasy, and even then only for people that need every aspect of the game to reinforce that fantasy at all times.

YoukaiSlayer posted...

If the gameplay is non canon, why is it even attached to the story?

Because people like grinding to become overpowered in RPGs. Limiting that for the sake of the story takes that away from them. And limiting the story for the sake of making sure everyone is validated for whatever grinding they do creates weaker stories. The compromise is to expect people who grind to become overpowered to be satisfied with the validation the gameplay already provides them, which is pretty reasonable.

Note that I'm not saying that all gameplay is non-canon. Just gameplay that involves deliberately deviating from the story, which is by definition always going to be non-canon because you're deliberately deviating from the canon.

YoukaiSlayer posted...

Really? All of the blades would have chosen not to help? All 39 rare blades with their different personalities and values wouldn't have helped him close the gap?

Canonically, Rex's only blades are Pyra/Mythra, Roc, and that one common wind knuckle blade he gets in chapter 2 (and also Nia, but that's a bit different). Roc doesn't have the Leaping field skill (note that every time you jump a large gap in the field, it's a combo of Wind Mastery and Leaping), and the common one's abilities are randomized and therefore non-canon, so canonically, no magic flying powers.

YoukaiSlayer posted...

And it would have completely made their attempted sacrifice to protect rex impossible if rex was able to jump the gap. Rex doesn't even TRY to do it.

Really? Putting aside the fact that Rex *does* try (he tries the grapplling hook, then asks Poppi for help and is refused, then is talked down before he can try anything else), think that one through: Pneuma tells Rex that she needs to stay behind to annihilate the world tree to prevent it from destroying the world (not just saving Rex). Rex jumps over to her. She then... tells Rex to go back? Rex being over there doesn't eliminate the need to save the world, nor is he going to change her mind. The best he's going to accomplish is to sacrifice himself with her, and it stands to reason that she and the rest of the party would have talked him out of that, so why bother spelling out that exchange? The only issue with that sacrifice was that it was immediately rendered moot by Pyra and Mythra coming back (which is something they should have mentioned to convince Rex to leave, further cementing that it was an afterthought that got tacked on after finishing the rest of the ending). *That's* what made it feel stupid and contrived, not the fact that Rex wasn't able to stop them.

YoukaiSlayer posted...

Their constraint is to keep telling the same story in the same way with superficial differences.

That's their choice. That's not being constrained, that's just being lazy and unoriginal. Insisting that they be allowed to be lazy and unoriginal is the exact opposite of a constraint. You can then subsequently criticize them for being lazy and unoriginal, but that's very different from outright saying "you're not allowed to put X in a story."

YoukaiSlayer posted...

Maybe if any of them were actually writing interesting stories you'd have more of a leg to stand on

If they aren't interesting, why care about them so much? Why not just skip the cutscenes and eliminate the whole issue?

adjl posted...

Damages, but doesn't destroy.

Doesn't matter. Damaging it means putting something else above it and it does destroy the gameplay fantasy. It also wouldn't gut the vast majority of these stories that would still function just fine if that section of the game was straight up removed, much less altered. If you want the boss to feel threatening, make it threatening in the gameplay. And again, getting captured and not killed by the boss already makes them far less threatening. Any story with high stakes doesn't allow for a loss.

adjl posted...

Because people like grinding to become overpowered in RPGs.

Why though? It's because they want the fantasy of their character being overpowered. Something immediately destroyed when ludonarrative dissonance shatters the illusion of agency that they had. You talk as if you know all of the people that like to be overpowered in these games, but I don't think you do. I'm pretty sure more of them are like me than you suspect.

adjl posted...

Canonically, Rex's only blades are Pyra/Mythra, Roc, and that one common wind knuckle blade he gets in chapter 2 (and also Nia, but that's a bit different). Roc doesn't have the Leaping field skill (note that every time you jump a large gap in the field, it's a combo of Wind Mastery and Leaping), and the common one's abilities are randomized and therefore non-canon, so canonically, no magic flying powers.

Ah, more of "90% of the game is non canon IN the game". It's such a stupid argument. It's not even ludonarrative dissonance at that point, it's just straight up narrative dissonance. It's even worse than non canon movies for long running series. It's more like if episodes 2-11 were non canon in a typical 12 episode season. "Ah, the audience is only expected to watch the first and last episode".

adjl posted...

If they aren't interesting, why care about them so much? Why not just skip the cutscenes and eliminate the whole issue?

That's often times not an option. Even when it is, not telling interesting stories doesn't mean not having interesting or entertaining characters. The tales series is my premier example with some of the dumbest and worst executed plots in gaming but usually really fun and interesting characters with good dynamics fleshed out through the skits. Sadly this only really applies to the party. Other than mythos from symphonia, it's hard to actually even remember who the bad guys were in a lot of these games. I know Duke was the final boss in vesperia but I don't remember at all why or what he did since the real bad guy is just a natural phenomenon that can't be directly fought. Can't remember zesterias at all or graces f. You also get captured and thrown in prison in every one of those games. Wow, it's almost as if that doesn't do a good job of establishing the bad guy as interesting.

Meanwhile I can easily remember the final boss of dark souls despite gwyn having like 5 lines in the game, all during his one and only fight.

On the other hand I remember almost all of the party members pretty well from all those tales games and outside of solaire and patches, I don't remember any NPC in dark souls.

So if the writers can't even be bothered to make good plots in these jrpgs, the least they can do is stay out of their own way, develop the party, and not cause dissonance for the player.

Xenoblade 3 is like the prime example here where if the main story was just weak and out of the way, it'd be a godlike game, but the story couldn't do that. Somehow every side story was well written and interesting endearing me to like 50 named characters and a ton of places but the main plot was a nightmare of inconsistently applied themes, poorly motivated bad guys, and so many contrivances. Also has maybe the worst boss fight in the series being very long and scripted and supposedly if you lose you have to start all over from the beginning.

I feel very similarly about the episode 11 problem in comedy anime. The authors just feel the need to end on a dramatic climax even if the strong suit of their show is in not being dramatic. The currently airing in love with the villainess is doing that right now and what a surprise the comments are full of complaints. I think the vast majority of people don't like this kind of plot element. Come to think of it, the last yuri anime I remember did the same thing. The revolutionary princess one. People didn't like it there either but the authors just can't help themselves, they have to the love interests misunderstand each other and fight as if thats the only way for a relationship to form. I'm getting off topic here though.

adjl posted...

Pneuma tells Rex that she needs to stay behind to annihilate the world tree to prevent it from destroying the world (not just saving Rex).

It was blowing up anyway. She wasn't even the only person to stay behind to do it. And honestly, yeah, if they really had to be sacrificed, it would have been better if they'd gone out together instead of completely trampling the main characters will.

You also don't need leaping and wind magic, they could just throw you. These things smack down giants, they've surely got the power. Given the moves rex makes in combat and cutscenes, I wouldn't be surprised if he could just jump the gap all by himself as well.

The bigger issue though is why make it require a sacrifice to begin with? That wasn't inherent in the problem. They didn't go up there on a suicide mission expecting to sacrifice someone. The author just made it that way at the last second to have contrived drama and then fortunately changed his mind with an even more contrived "just kidding". The themes of the game aren't about sacrifice and moving on or anything like that. It serves no purpose narratively other than to upset the viewer.

I'd also LIKE the stories to be good. Not at the cost of gameplay but theres no reason we can't have both. A lot of these stories even have interesting concepts and could be salvaged by a better writer with a better understanding of the point of a video game.

Again, tales is such a great example. Tales of vesperia has vigilante justice, a very interesting concept. The situation between Yuri and Flynn is very similar to the dynamic between lelouch and suzaku in code geass. However, rather than confronting the issue correctly and allowing Flynn to get some real by the book wins over the bad guys, the game presents a case where it's literally let a child murderer kill more children right in front of you, or take matters into your own hands. There's no dilemma. You would be downright responsible for the childrens deaths if you didn't act. And meanwhile it's shown Flynn has zero ability to affect positive change at all. This is in stark contrast to code geass where suzaku's methods actually bear some fruit making the choices of the two characters interesting.

Berseria is even worse though. It picks a fun morale dilemma to frame it's plot around. What if one of the sacrifices required to make things better was the only person you truly cared about? Could you accept their loss for the greater good, or would you seek vengeance? Do you have the right to get vengeance? Does those ends justify the means used? Well none of that matters because ACTUALLY the bad guy is secretly a genocidal maniac rendering the entire morale dilemma moot. Also all those bad things you did to get revenge happened to not actually cause a single innocent casualty and you can just take back every bad thing you did. Sickening.

YoukaiSlayer posted...

It also wouldn't gut the vast majority of these stories that would still function just fine if that section of the game was straight up removed, much less altered.

Most stories would be pretty significantly altered if an instance where the antagonist won was removed.

YoukaiSlayer posted...

If you want the boss to feel threatening, make it threatening in the gameplay.

They do, unless you deliberately break the game such that they aren't.

YoukaiSlayer posted...

And again, getting captured and not killed by the boss already makes them far less threatening. Any story with high stakes doesn't allow for a loss.

Sure it does. Being captured is usually a lazy cop-out, I agree, but last-minute escapes or saves allow for losses despite the boss being a genuine, high-stakes threat, especially if getting away and being unable to stop them causes them to destroy whatever you failed to protect.

YoukaiSlayer posted...

You talk as if you know all of the people that like to be overpowered in these games, but I don't think you do. I'm pretty sure more of them are like me than you suspect.

Obviously I don't know all of the people of any given subpopulation, by virtue of there being a lot of people in the world, but the vast majority I've observed are happy to shrug inconsistencies like this off as a minor annoyance, not feel as if the entire game has been ripped out from under them because one time a cutscene told them they weren't omnipotent.

YoukaiSlayer posted...

Ah, more of "90% of the game is non canon IN the game". It's such a stupid argument. It's not even ludonarrative dissonance at that point, it's just straight up narrative dissonance.

it's kind of inevitable with how Xenoblade 2 was designed. To have a different version of each cutscene for every possible combination of those 39 randomized rare blades, you'd need more cutscenes than there are stars in the universe (squared). Does that mean the game's core gameplay design was a mistake? Arguably, but given that this one instance of "he could have used one of their powers to jump over there and not actually change anything about the situation except needing to jump back in a minute or two" is the only point where it actually caused a "problem," completely overhauling the core gameplay design to fix that "problem" would be pretty silly.

YoukaiSlayer posted...

It was blowing up anyway.

It was collapsing. The debris from a space elevator/station hitting the ground would have been apocalyptic (which is why every other Gundam series does some variant of it >.>), hence the need to annihilate as much of the column as possible to allow the station to drift free.

YoukaiSlayer posted...

She wasn't even the only person to stay behind to do it.

She used Aion to do it. In the entirety of Alrest, there were exactly two individuals that could operate Aion, and the party had just finished killing one of them. I'm not even sure who you're trying to suggest could have done it, because this is just straight up false.

YoukaiSlayer posted...
"And honestly, yeah, if they really had to be sacrificed, it would have been better if they'd gone out together instead of completely trampling the main characters will."

Absolutely nothing about Pyra or Mythra's characters as presented prior to that moment suggests that they would have been okay with Rex throwing his life away for no reason, nor would any of the other party members.

YoukaiSlayer posted...
"The bigger issue though is why make it require a sacrifice to begin with? That wasn't inherent in the problem. They didn't go up there on a suicide mission expecting to sacrifice someone."

You can end up having to sacrifice someone without the characters planning to do so. In this case, the station's collapse was foreshadowed by a couple of side conversations (one of which I believe requires KOS-MOS, so it's not exactly the most accessible), plus simple physics.

YoukaiSlayer posted...
"The themes of the game aren't about sacrifice and moving on or anything like that."

The only piece of actual character development Rex gets is learning to accept that he can fail to help somebody without losing his entire identity (specifically, in chapter 7 after Pyra is taken and he gets all mopey but eventually everyone talks him into trying again). Being willing to let Pneuma sacrifice herself instead of putting the entire world at risk trying to come up with a solution that makes him feel less like a failure is 100% consistent with that growth. This also sets him up as a foil to Jin, whose inability to move on from Lora's death pushed him to the point of seeking absolute oblivion by ending the world, and in turn establishes a parallel between Pneuma's and Malos' characters (Pneuma wanted to save the world because Rex loved it, Malos wanted to destroy it because Jin hated it). Amalthus' entire motivation as a villain also boiled down to being unable to accept that bad things were happening in the world, so again, Rex being able to accept losing Pneuma sets him up as a foil to Amalthus as well.

2 had themes other than that, certainly, but characters' response to loss and hardship was a major one, shaping most of the main character and especially villain arcs. With that in mind, Rex losing Pneuma (to a semi-voluntary sacrifice or otherwise) and still being willing to move forward is 100% consistent with one of the game's major themes. Heck, I might even go so far as to suggest that Pneuma sacrificing herself without telling Rex that she would be reborn a few minutes later could have been part of the Architect's plan, as a final test to ensure that Alrest would be safe in the hands of Rex and his friends because they wouldn't fall to the same nihilistic despair that defined Amalthus, but that's reading pretty deeply between the lines.

So uh.. my manga posts on Imgur are finally getting pretty popular. I can't say I'm actually creating any content, but it's still cool having so many people (and over 150 regular followers now) taking an interest in the stuff that I like.

I'm not liking the direction Jujustsu kasien is going. The fights are cool but the main characters are suffering from lack of screen time. The characters are not getting developed so all we're getting are fights with no change afterwards. It's hard to even feel sad for kugisaki because we hardly saw her with Yuji. And their relationship didn't develop because Yuji was supposedly dead for a bug chunk of season 1. I'm just getting any theme out of this.

YoukaiSlayer posted...

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

One of my best friends dmed me last night about 100 girlfriends:

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/forum/b/b48e4b80.jpg

God this sucks. God forbid an anime not get gross.

16bit Sensation is an anime.
It is the Serial Experiments Lain of the 2020s.

adjl posted...

Most stories would be pretty significantly altered if an instance where the antagonist won was removed.

They really wouldn't. Xenoblade 3 would change a lot (probably for the better) but most of the time it doesn't really change any motivations or goals. These story arcs are borderline self contained and once you escape, you are doing exactly what you were doing before hand.

About the xenoblade 2 stuff, I'm aware the need for a sacrifice CAN come up unexpectedly, but it doesn't NEED to and the plot would have been totally fine if that just didn't happen. If they just escape the space station thats already blowing up anyway.

You also wouldn't necessarily need as many different scenes as possible. The way optional characters are typically handled is their lines are written and just not said if they aren't there. You only really need variance if something would produce a different result, like in this case, but even then you can probably use all of the characters interchangeably. Even the default wind blade could probably chuck you across the gap for that matter.

Not to mention it's a game, I already won, why aren't you giving me the happy ending I earned? I mean, I guess they technically do in xenoblade 2, but we both agree that part is poor writing. I should be resolving the conflict IN the final boss fight. Assuming I win, I shouldn't be getting a bittersweet outcome.

And that theme of accepting not saving doesn't make any sense at all. You said he accepted he couldn't save her, and then...went to save her. Classic unevenly applied xenoblade themes. If he really wanted to accept his limitations, he would just do nothing I guess even though that too was a really stupid plot point because he dies if he does nothing. He didn't have the option of giving up and going back to his previous life like he was trying to do. Thats where the story fell apart for me in the first place. He was such a surprisingly enjoyable character up to that point.

adjl posted...

She used Aion to do it. In the entirety of Alrest, there were exactly two individuals that could operate Aion, and the party had just finished killing one of them. I'm not even sure who you're trying to suggest could have done it, because this is just straight up false.

I was a little fuzzy on how the ending went down and rewatched it. I for some reason was remembering malos staying behind to do it after the fight. Rewatching it was quite frustrating though. Pneuma just activates a 5 minute self destruct. Could have just left after initiating that. And why would a space station designed to be automated and work by itself for thousands of years not be designed with a way to deal with the world tree falling on the planet? For that matter, why would it just collapse without power in the first place? It should just remain dormant. No, I'm getting ahead of myself, theres no reason to discuss xenoblade 2 anymore.

All in all I don't think this discussion is going to get anywhere. I remain completely unswayed and so do you. A person who merely sees the gameplay as busywork for the static story is just never going to see eye to eye with me.

EchoBaz posted...

God this sucks. God forbid an anime not get gross.

I mean, the anime is a comedy first and it was pretty funny when that happened. I also would have preferred it didn't though. The first 4 feel girls feel like the ideal group and everything after that probably reduces the enjoyability of it slightly.

Judgmenl posted...

It is the Serial Experiments Lain of the 2020s.

That seems really hard to believe. I suppose I should catch up with it.

I am exaggerating a bit.
This episode had some uhh shall we say "moments" that truly looked like it was being an introspection of the state of current technology.

YoukaiSlayer posted...

most of the time it doesn't really change any motivations or goals.

Off the top of my head, none of Xenoblade 1 would have happened if Metal Face lost the first fight against him, none of the entire Golden Sun series would have happened if Isaac and Garet beat Saturos and Menardi in that first fight, the first fight against Yggdrasil in Tales of Symphonia is unavoidable from a story perspective and would have made the whole game a lot shorter if you won then... It was even critical to Xenoblade 3's story and themes (most notably, Noah's development into a protagonist that could actually win), though that's not nearly as obvious at face value because very little of Xenoblade 3's story and themes are obvious at face value and you were too upset about the game to bother digging further into understanding it. There are certainly many cases where it's just a lazy way to write a transition into the obligatory JRPG jail scene, but it's still ridiculous to suggest that antagonist victories aren't significant to the plot, especially because even those lazy examples usually end up being an opportunity to explore more about the villain's motivations and/or the nature of the world you're trying to save.

YoukaiSlayer posted...

About the xenoblade 2 stuff, I'm aware the need for a sacrifice CAN come up unexpectedly, but it doesn't NEED to and the plot would have been totally fine if that just didn't happen. If they just escape the space station thats already blowing up anyway.

Most of any given story doesn't NEED to happen. Heck, the game didn't NEED to be made in the first place, if we want to talk about genuine necessity. That was, however, the story they wanted to tell, and within that story, the World Tree collapsing after the Conduit stopped powering the station and that presenting an apocalyptic threat to the world below was entirely consistent and reasonably foreshadowed.

YoukaiSlayer posted...

You also wouldn't necessarily need as many different scenes as possible. The way optional characters are typically handled is their lines are written and just not said if they aren't there. You only really need variance if something would produce a different result, like in this case, but even then you can probably use all of the characters interchangeably. Even the default wind blade could probably chuck you across the gap for that matter.

You might not actually need 2e46 (39!) copies of each scene, but that's still a significant amount of variability to put in. Given how much easier it is to just write a story that doesn't need to acknowledge any other rare blades than to put that kind of variability in, I'm not remotely surprised they went with the former.

And again, it's entirely a moot point. Pneuma wasn't going to change her mind either way, so the only thing that would change about the scene is that Rex got talked down on her side instead of with the rest of the party. Even then, I don't think even that would have happened, because as I mentioned before, he *did* try to cross: He tried his grappling hook, he asked Poppi, and it stands to reason that he would have tried other blades if he hadn't been talked down following Poppi's refusal. What you're proposing is that he should have ignored every person in the party telling him to listen to Pneuma and thrown a tantrum of trying every blade he could until he made it across (to, again, accomplish nothing), which is... just a bad idea. Forget talking about plot consistency or whether that's fitting for the character, that'd just be a terrible scene.

YoukaiSlayer posted...

Not to mention it's a game, I already won, why aren't you giving me the happy ending I earned?

Because that's not how stories work. Not every story ends with "and they all lived happily ever after the end," nor should you expect them to because restricting yourself to that is just lazy writing.

YoukaiSlayer posted...

And that theme of accepting not saving doesn't make any sense at all. You said he accepted he couldn't save her, and then...went to save her.

It's accepting that he could fail to save her without compromising his identity. His identity up to that point was pretty thoroughly just a generic unflappable shounen protagonist: He helped everyone he met and everyone's life was better for it. When he completely failed Pyra like that and couldn't see a way forward, he just wanted to dissociate from the whole situation because he couldn't handle facing such a failure. He moved past that after everyone punched him in the face and found the motivation to go find Pneuma's sword, and that development subsequently got showcased by him accepting that the last moments of the game were an instance where he couldn't save Pneuma (and, in doing so, demonstrating that he was strong enough to carry Alrest into the future without being discouraged by the inevitable failures along the way).

In chapter 7, it wasn't a matter of accepting that he couldn't save her, it was a matter of finding the motivation to try again after failing. He found it(/had it knocked into him), then he saved her. Then when Pneuma sacrificed herself at the end, he was able to draw on that growth to find the motivation to build a world without her instead of sinking into despair.

YoukaiSlayer posted...

Pneuma just activates a 5 minute self destruct. Could have just left after initiating that.

I expect Aion can only run with one of the two Aegises inside, hence Malos stayed in it for the final fight instead of just setting it loose to nuke everything while he chilled in Elysium.

YoukaiSlayer posted...

And why would a space station designed to be automated and work by itself for thousands of years not be designed with a way to deal with the world tree falling on the planet? For that matter, why would it just collapse without power in the first place? It should just remain dormant.

I'm pretty comfortable accepting that the original designers didn't plan for all of humanity to be wiped out in a genesis event that forced Earth into a parallel dimension, leaving the Beanstalk to run autonomously for tens of thousands of years before eventually the omnipotent power source keeping it all going vanished into another dimension. That's a little beyond what most building codes expect engineers to consider,. I'm also pretty comfortable accepting that the station relied on some active stabilization to keep it orbiting in the correct position, which would have relied on the Conduit's power and therefore failed catastrophically when the it vanished. From there, it makes sense that it would escape orbit if the "trunk" were severed (and this is explicitly mentioned in a side conversation), and in turn that it would fall if the "trunk" were pulling on it.

YoukaiSlayer posted...
A person who merely sees the gameplay as busywork for the static story is just never going to see eye to eye with me.

That was your logic, not mine. I see plenty of value in gameplay. I just don't get upset and ignore all of that value when a cutscene exists that doesn't tell me I'm doing a good job. The melting health bars do enough of that to satisfy my ego.

adjl posted...

Your investment in the gameplay is always just busywork used to move through a static story, in games with static stories.

Your words, not mine. A person that can honestly say that will just never see eye to eye with me. Our values are too fundamentally different. We've already had the xenoblade discussions before and I don't feel like retreading it. It won't get anywhere anyway.

"Because that's not how stories work. Not every story ends with "and they all lived happily ever after the end," nor should you expect them to because restricting yourself to that is just lazy writing."

Yes but is how every GAME should end. The same way every test you perform perfectly on should result in a passing grade.

YoukaiSlayer posted...

Your words, not mine.

YoukaiSlayer posted...

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 was just the continuation of your logic. If the plot not going your way is enough to make you consider your investment in the gameplay busywork in the service of a story, that means you're only ever viewing your investment in the gameplay to be busywork in the service of a story that you hope goes your way.

Enjoyable gameplay is its own reward. Embrace that instead of expecting immutable stories to twist themselves to heap more rewards on you. You'll have a much better time that way.

YoukaiSlayer posted...

Yes but is how every GAME should end.

And that's just lazy writing. Why even bother having a story at all if you're going to insist that every possible story beat goes in the party's favour so long as the player does well enough to move forward in the story? At that point, you might as well just be playing Mario: If you win, you save the princess, otherwise you get nothing. Why bother with greater depth than that if the only thing you want from the story is a pat on the back for winning?

YoukaiSlayer posted...

The same way every test you perform perfectly on should result in a passing grade.

I can't think of a single game ending that wouldn't constitute at least a "passing grade." Not games that actually have endings, at least. I don't think we need to count blatant sequel bait or otherwise unfinished stories in that.

Moreover, stories aren't tests. Even in games with variable stories and impactful choices, those choices and/or your performance are more about shaping the story than securing some sort of absolute perfect win where nothing has gone wrong. The handful of stories that actually treat it like that tend to be pretty lame, with no interesting twists or developments because you can see everything coming.

adjl posted...

I don't think we need to count blatant sequel bait or otherwise unfinished stories in that.

golden sun dark dawn................................................

also speaking on tales of symphonia specifically on this discussion, I'm pretty certain there actually are alternate lines for winning unwinnable fights because they planned around ng+... and they're all 2-3 line throwaways where you lose anyways in cutscenes. they felt way more dissonant than if i'd just gotten the loss cutscene afterwards imo

i think if you metagame and beat a fight before you're supposed to (or on ng+), the reward should also be metagame-y like stat boosters or accessories. story concessions should be made if reasonable, but in a LOT of them, they're foundational

adjl posted...

If the plot not going your way is enough to make you consider your investment in the gameplay busywork in the service of a story, that means you're only ever viewing your investment in the gameplay to be busywork in the service of a story that you hope goes your way.

Enjoyable gameplay is its own reward. Embrace that instead of expecting immutable stories to twist themselves to heap more rewards on you. You'll have a much better time that way.

That doesn't make sense. The two are related. That's the whole point. Gameplay and story aren't (or at least shouldn't be) separate. They BOTH have to go the same way and it's the gameplay part that should be immutable as opposed to literally every other medium that only has to worry about the story. As soon as they are separated, it becomes a problem.
adjl posted...

And that's just lazy writing.

We already have lazy writing and writing with a difficult constraint isn't lazy. Finding a way to make the story interesting while adhering to the limitations of it being a game that can be won requires effort and skill. It stops you from just regurgitating the same poor plot as the rest of the games and calling it a day.

adjl posted...

Why bother with greater depth than that if the only thing you want from the story is a pat on the back for winning?

Frankly, I don't need greater depth. A lot of games guilty of this aren't very deep. The game I was playing that prompted this was light hearted fun until you autolose in the cutscene, twice, get captured by the bad guy that has no reason to keep you alive, escape, immediately attack the bad guy without any new power ups from when you lost last time, beat him, beat the real final boss in the gemaply, but then lose in the cutscene AGAIN just for the gods to come down and beat it for you. The end. Wtf was I even there for?

We don't actually get the middle ground games I'm fine with, outside of MAYBE atelier games (although the ones I've played still follow this). We either get pokemons level of nonstory or this exact same heroes journey that forces you into a low point, usually due to a loss and capture at around the 60-70% mark.

If I had dozens of jrpg alternatives that do what I want, I probably wouldn't be complaining, although I still would about xenoblade and tales because I like the gameplay and the character and the side content and world building, I just hate the plot.

adjl posted...

Moreover, stories aren't tests.

But games ARE. We just disagree here fundamentally.

agesboy posted...

story concessions should be made if reasonable, but in a LOT of them, they're foundational

This assumes we have the story written before the gameplay and we just add in a throwaway line or item afterwards. The story should be written initially in a way that losses aren't foundational to the story. At least thats my position.

My eyes started glazing as soon as I attempted to read that ongoing discussion, so allow me to scroll past it and contribute a lizard-brain post:

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.

agesboy posted...

golden sun dark dawn................................................

Xenoblade X was the first one to come to mind for me, but Dark Dawn is also up there. At least there's some hope for a Xenoblade Y, but I've pretty much given up on Golden Sun at this point.

agesboy posted...

i think if you metagame and beat a fight before you're supposed to (or on ng+), the reward should also be metagame-y like stat boosters or accessories. story concessions should be made if reasonable, but in a LOT of them, they're foundational

It's fun when that happens, but I'd consider that more of an easter egg than something I would ever expect. It kind of hinges on the intended loss being relatively low-stakes so you don't end up undermining the story by removing it. I also very much expect dissonance on NG+, because NG+ is generally meant to be a matter of trivializing the gameplay so you can rush through the story again, so I don't particularly mind it there.

YoukaiSlayer posted...

That doesn't make sense. The two are related.

"Related" doesn't have to mean "perfectly consistent at all times." They should try to be consistent whenever possible, but the occasional failure in that regard isn't the end of the world.

YoukaiSlayer posted...

Frankly, I don't need greater depth.

That's fine. Many would disagree. Deeper stories are great, even if that's not something you particularly value.

YoukaiSlayer posted...

The game I was playing that prompted this was light hearted fun until you autolose in the cutscene, twice, get captured by the bad guy that has no reason to keep you alive, escape, immediately attack the bad guy without any new power ups from when you lost last time, beat him, beat the real final boss in the gemaply, but then lose in the cutscene AGAIN just for the gods to come down and beat it for you. The end. Wtf was I even there for?

That does indeed sound silly. 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.

YoukaiSlayer posted...

We don't actually get the middle ground games I'm fine with, outside of MAYBE atelier games (although the ones I've played still follow this). We either get pokemons level of nonstory or this exact same heroes journey that forces you into a low point, usually due to a loss and capture at around the 60-70% mark.

That's the thing: A story in which nothing ever goes wrong for the protagonist so long as you win every fight is Pokemon levels of non-story. You aren't going to get stories that satisfy your insistence on never having a narrative failure without stripping out so much depth that they stop being interesting. Exceptions are always going to be very rare because it's hard to do anything surprising or compelling with "I win all the time."

YoukaiSlayer posted...

But games ARE.

Right. So test yourself with the game and be rewarded with the story. If you don't like the story you're rewarded with, that's just the nature of surprise rewards like that, so you've just gotta roll with it and let that guide future purchasing decisions (namely, avoid games from franchises that have a history of stories you dislike).

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.

Hey guise what's happeni---

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/forum/7/7fa22752.jpg

Metalsonic66 posted...

Hey guise what's happeni---

I haven't read any of those posts and this is more or less my reaction as well.

Finally nearing the end of the season. Getting a little worried about s-rank daughter because I don't see how they can possibly wrap up whats going on in just the one episode they have left, but it's also not enough to make another season out of just that. Feel like it's gonna end up either rushed or ending on a cliffhanger just as things heat up.

Been too sick for games today so I think I might catch up on some of the shows I fell behind on this season like undead unluck.

Anybody check out the new Yu Yu Hakusho?

I just.. can't bring myself to do it. YYH is perfect as is, and I never wanted to see any kind of continuation or remake of it. I doubt I'll watch it unless it gets universal praise, which is unlikely.

I watched the first episode and enjoyed it.

I may give it a shot down the road because it's still one of my favorites

YoukaiSlayer posted...

I'm leaving out a little bit but not enough to make a difference...

Yeah, that sounds stupid. As I've made clear, I don't mind scripted losses as a way to use failure as an interesting story element, particularly when a typical playthrough isn't going to encounter any ludonarrative dissonance in the process because it's been balanced properly, but that just sounds like a story where the player character's involvement doesn't actually make a difference, and that's just plain bad writing. Stories in games should at least make some effort to involve the player, even if they don't perfectly reflect the player's actions at every turn. Otherwise, there's no investment in the story.

YoukaiSlayer posted...

It's really not. Most of these games have you win like 90% of the time.

And it's that other 10% that shakes things up. I'm not about to suggest that the whole story should be an alternating series of failures and triumphs, just that having failures and major challenges in there is more interesting than winning 100% of the time.

YoukaiSlayer posted...

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.

It was good as a long-running side quest (which is kind of how all three "Roads" were framed, actually), but if you gave me a game where the entire main plot was "Meet dude, find out dude's dog is sick, collect items to cure dog," I'm not going to praise that game for having a good story (and not just because sad dogs are often a really lazy way to add emotional impact to a story). It's a compelling side plot and he and his dad's backstory made for interesting characters and world-building, but it's just too limited to be good as a main story.

Building on that example, though, it wouldn't have ruined the story if the dog actually ended up dying despite your best sandwiches. Pokemon would never go there, of course, but that would pivot the story into helping Arven grow as a person past the loss of that proxy for his father. That's still a worthwhile story (if perhaps not very original, given that that's the plot of pretty much any young adult novel with a dog on the cover that's won any sort of literature prize), even considering that you lose out on the gratification of saving the dog that you were hoping for. You still end up ultimately winning, which is the ultimate goal of the game. Victory just doesn't necessarily look like you expected it to.

Metalsonic66 posted...

I may give it a shot down the road because it's still one of my favorites

Keep in mind I've only ever watched a couple episodes of the anime so I only roughly remember the characters and their personalities (also always remember that my taste in things, especially television are heavily vibes based).

That being said, I've watched the first 3 episodes (and will watch the other two tomorrow) and am enjoying it for what it is. The main cast (more specifically Yuusuke + Kuwabara) are carrying the show for me. Also I don't think the show is following the anime at all, which you might not like.

adjl posted...

And it's that other 10% that shakes things up

But you don't need to shake things up with the story. If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

adjl posted...

It was good as a long-running side quest (which is kind of how all three "Roads" were framed, actually), but if you gave me a game where the entire main plot was "Meet dude, find out dude's dog is sick, collect items to cure dog," I'm not going to praise that game for having a good story (and not just because sad dogs are often a really lazy way to add emotional impact to a story). It's a compelling side plot and he and his dad's backstory made for interesting characters and world-building, but it's just too limited to be good as a main story.

I disagree. I think it could have been a fine main story. Obviously the scope of that game would be shorter but thats fine. I would have been very pissed if my getting the sandwiches ultimately made no difference in the dogs health. Hell, I'd be pissed watching that in an anime. Don't waste my time on story beats that ultimately come to nothing. Reminds me of katanagatari, a show where 95% of the anime might as well not have happened because both parties actually started the show with all the tools they needed to win. The journey was entirely invalidated.

To shift it again though, how do you feel about freiren airing right now? That's a show that realistically has no need for the characters to ever fail a combat encounter and it has quite a good story. I think it's even rated #1 on MAL right now, largely because of the emotional story. There's far more ways to tell a good story than just following the classic heroes journey. Hell, iyashikei anime has proven people can enjoy a story with no conflict whatsoever, internal or external. Just pure pleasant escapism. Something fantasy rpg video games are even more suited to.

YoukaiSlayer posted...

But you don't need to shake things up with the story. If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

If the story never gets shaken up, it is broke, or at least not very good. A completely predictable story can be serviceable, in a context where you don't particularly need a good story (like Pokemon or Mario), but it's generally not very interesting, and a story-focused game should have an interesting story.

YoukaiSlayer posted...

I would have been very pissed if my getting the sandwiches ultimately made no difference in the dogs health. Hell, I'd be pissed watching that in an anime. Don't waste my time on story beats that ultimately come to nothing.

But it doesn't come to nothing. It forms part of the characters' development in the grander scheme of things. Arven would be a different person for having tried and failed to save the dog than if he had just given up from the outset, and that would be the focus of a story where the dog died (again, not exactly original, but a well-established idea for an emotionally evocative story). Again, you'd eventually succeed, victory just might not look like you thought it would, which in a lot of ways is a significantly more uplifting experience than everything just going well all the time.

YoukaiSlayer posted...

To shift it again though, how do you feel about freiren airing right now? That's a show that realistically has no need for the characters to ever fail a combat encounter and it has quite a good story. I think it's even rated #1 on MAL right now, largely because of the emotional story.

Haven't seen it (or any anime in like 10 years, actually >.>), but I'm loosely familiar with the premise, and I'm sure it's doing a fine job without anyone getting beaten up. Combat failure isn't necessary to tell an interesting, compelling story, it's just one tool available to do so. I'm not about to suggest that every story should have a token failure to add dramatic tension, just that having failure isn't a bad thing and there's no reason to categorically rule it out.

YoukaiSlayer posted...

Hell, iyashikei anime has proven people can enjoy a story with no conflict whatsoever, internal or external. Just pure pleasant escapism.

That's not so much enjoying a story, though, as it is enjoying that banal escapism. Even putting aside for a moment that there often is conflict (just nothing high-stakes) because that's critical to have any sort of plot whatsoever, people watching slice-of-life do so because they just want to chill out and laugh at characters dealing with boring everyday lives in ways that are kind of funny and/or charming. Nobody watches K-On or Lucky Star for the plot, much the same way that nobody plays Animal Crossing or Stardew Valley for the plot. Media that is more story-focused, however, does need to be held to a higher standard and its writers should strive to make their stories interesting. That generally means higher-stakes conflicts and unpredictability.

YoukaiSlayer posted...

Something fantasy rpg video games are even more suited to.

Depends on the game. Something like Fantasy Life (which you'd probably enjoy, though that recommendation isn't very helpful with the 3DS eShop dead and the Switch sequel 6-8 months out) expressly bills itself as being a slice of life RPG, and accordingly it's a pretty chill, banal story where you're mostly just messing around with fun characters. That's exactly what it should be. Something like Xenoblade, Final Fantasy, or Tales, though, is presented as being an epic fantasy adventure, with the fate of the world on the line and deep secrets about its true nature to uncover. Give one of those a low-stakes story with minimal conflict, and you've got a problem. Those need higher-stakes conflict, unpredictable twists, and a genuine threat of failure, otherwise you end up with a story that lacks the credibility needed to hold up that pretense. "Fantasy RPG video game" covers a pretty broad spectrum of styles and themes. In some of them, scripted losses are indeed inappropriate and just serve to artificially lengthen the game in a way that feels contrived and awkward. In others, they're a useful tool for developing dramatic tension and preventing the story from becoming predictable.

adjl posted...

But it doesn't come to nothing. It forms part of the characters' development in the grander scheme of things. Arven would be a different person for having tried and failed to save the dog than if he had just given up from the outset, and that would be the focus of a story where the dog died (again, not exactly original, but a well-established idea for an emotionally evocative story). Again, you'd eventually succeed, victory just might not look like you thought it would, which in a lot of ways is a significantly more uplifting experience than everything just going well all the time.

One of my favorite anime is a perfect example of this- huge spoilers, it's Your Lie in April. The female lead dies in the last episode in an operation that could have succeeded and the resolution to the love story is bittersweet, but the main character is able to move on and live a much happier life than if he'd never met her at all.

"Top 10 anime that will absolutely destroy a person" along side A Silent Voice and I want to eat your Pancreas.

agesboy posted...

One of my favorite anime is a perfect example of this

Yeah but the story isn't about collecting mcguffins to allow that operation to succeed. If it instead followed a doctor friend as they train for years to be able to do the operation and then it still ended in failure, it'd be a lot more frustrating. The story was never about saving her life to begin with.

I don't wanna watch someone struggle to do something for the majority of the screen time in the anime and then fail or worse just have it be irrelevant. You COULD tell a powerful story that way, but it's going to make me hate the author for doing that to me, especially as there are many ways to tell powerful stories that don't leave me bitter and frustrated.

Although perhaps I'm really just bitter about poor execution. Edgerunners has a virtually pointless journey but I loved it. They effectively established that the path taken was reasonable which I feel like most stories don't do without feeling contrived. When characters make mistakes, they are actually supposed to be mistakes, and it's believable they'd make them. The character motivations and the setting both lined up correctly for a tragic ending, something I honestly didn't expect from trigger who I generally see as all style, no substance.

Went and saw The Boy and the Heron today; it's really good. There were only two things I didn't care for; it had a strange way of panning the camera across scenery that would bother me physically, especially since I was watching in a theater. And also the ending was really abrupt, particularly when you consider how long the movie was. Actually most of act three seemed a little rushed; if it had ten more minutes it could have been a lot smoother, but I'm guessing there were executive constraints in play.

they spent all their budget on the poop scene

The beginning of the end of this anime season has finally started. MF Ghost and Berserk of Gluttony (how did I manage to keep watching this) just ended. MF Ghost didn't really end though. Must be a split-core cause it stops mid qualifier. Pretty poor decision IMO but the show was pretty enjoyable. Bit of a slow start though.

Berserk of Gluttony wouldn't surprise me if it turned out to be AI generated. Would be cool to have a game with the stat steal+transfer system the main character and his sword has though. That was basically the only unique thing in the entire show.

Any good isekai realeased lately?

Pakpatiq posted...

Any good isekai realeased lately?

I want to say "I'm in Love with the Villainess" if you're good with non-H yuri content. I want to say that, but I'm all too aware of a certain plot twist in the latter light novels that sweeps the isekai thing under the rug and reveals it's the same world all along. It's good, though, and for the current points of the manga and anime, it actually handles LGBT+ issues in a down-to-Earth manner, not even shying from one character asking the mc if she's gay.

Pakpatiq posted...

Any good isekai realeased lately?

We actually didn't get many actual isekai this season. There's a lot of "jrpg style" fantasy of varying quality. Frieren is definitely the best of those. If VRMMO fantasy anime counts then shangri-la frontier is quite good. And of course, eminence in shadow season 2 is great but you presumably already know about that show.

YoukaiSlayer posted...

Yeah but the story isn't about collecting mcguffins to allow that operation to succeed. If it instead followed a doctor friend as they train for years to be able to do the operation and then it still ended in failure, it'd be a lot more frustrating. The story was never about saving her life to begin with.

Therein lies the twist: The story isn't actually what the characters thought it was at face value. By extension, the player playing the role of those characters also believes there's a different story being told until it turns out that they were working toward something else, sharing in the ignorance or deception that misled the protagonist and therefore in however they react to the surprise (and games are arguably better as a storytelling medium in that regard because the player is more invested in the characters' experience and will therefore react more strongly to major events). Many stories start out with a goal that ends up changing as you learn more about the world and what's going on, often invalidating the work you put toward the initial goal if you choose to frame it strictly in terms of immediate cause and effect, but on a broader scale that work ends up being progress toward realizing the truth of the initial goal and unravelling the rest of the story, progress that can't really be skipped because there's no other way to figure out the truth than to see the lie to its endpoint. That's all still consistent with playing the role of the character as they journey through the story.

That's not to say every such twist is automatically good, and there should be at least some foreshadowing to support it instead of pulling the twist out of nowhere (to return to a hypothetical variant where Arven's dog dies, that story should include finding some lore that casts doubt on the Herba Mystica's healing abilities or something that plants the suspicion that nothing could cure the dog, and throughout that Arven should be expressing those worries and talking about what the dog means to him and generally laying the framework for the story to actually be about processing his grief, not just say "Hey we're collecting mcguffins to cure the dog OOPS HE DIED BE SAD NOW"), but the bottom line remains that expecting all gameplay progress to work toward immediate success instead of encountering some stumbling blocks along the way to a grander victory is exceedingly limiting. That's not a good thing. Off the top of my head, I can think of several JRPGs where a twist like that played a huge role in making the story interesting (and one where it could have made the story really interesting, but the rest of the writing kind of ignored that the twist happened for some reason. Three guesses which game that is) and I wouldn't dream of gutting those stories just to more immediately reward players (except maybe that one).

adjl posted...

Many stories start out with a goal that ends up changing as you learn more about the world and what's going on, often invalidating the work you put toward the initial goal

I don't think thats really necessary in a lot of these cases and it does depend on how certain the goals are to begin with. If your goal is to go save a town from some impending disaster and then you learn that actually the whole world is in greater danger, theres really no reason to put that reveal before saving the town. You can have your cake and eat it to.

In the cases where you are actively pursing a lie the whole time, ie, the town was never actually in danger and the person who sent you to save it is the actual bad guy that just wants you out of the way to destroy your town, I feel thats almost always pretty contrived. It's very difficult to tell that story as a game very well, because again, I AM the character. What happens if I am smarter than they are letting my character be and I suspect that guy the whole time but theres nothing I can do about it? I try to return to town immediately but my character doesn't let me and gives me some text box "the town in danger isn't that way". That sucks. Tell me that story in a setting where I'm not that character.

Arvan's story would be a bit of a middle ground. After all, my character might know it probably won't work, but Arvan just won't listen and give up. If my character doing the actions knows they are pointless in achieving the goal, it could be fine. If I were to play that same story AS Arvan though, I'd hate that.

adjl posted...

I can think of several JRPGs where a twist like that played a huge role in making the story interesting

I can't think of several jrpgs that even have an interesting story, annoying twist or not. A lot of times much less important gameplay decisions negatively impact the story, like needing to visit every set piece location.

adjl posted...

instead of encountering some stumbling blocks along the way to a grander victory is exceedingly limiting

The stumbling blocks should all be gameplay solvable. Thats why it's a game.

The only jrpg (sort of) that I can think of that has a pretty good story for most of it's run (the last part is pretty nonsensical) is FFT:WotL and it's story hinders the gameplay which also hinders the story. Both are excellent individually but the whole is less than the sum of it's parts. As soon as you get invested in one part, the other part shows up and halts all that momentum. Thats something that really would have just been better as a stand alone story not tied to a video game.

Finished up some more anime.

In love with a villainess was pretty good I guess. I feel like the last arc lowered my opinion of Claire a fair bit. Like, she easily could have resolved just about everything multiple times and just doesn't leaving Rae to do all the work fixing things. She complains about not wanting to be a trophy but then she just does nothing to actually stop it. Given how the show was willing to just talk things out rationally earlier in the show, I feel like there was a similar better way to accomplish the same thing this time. Eh, I guess it's a better ending than most yuri (sadly). Certainly better than magical revolution from a few seasons back.

Finished demon sword master which was pretty trash. Possibly worse than berserk of gluttony.

Finished VRMMO life and it too was pretty trash. Up to the last episode it was kind of easy to watch trash but the ending was pretty shit and kinda makes me hope there's no season 2.

YoukaiSlayer posted...

It's very difficult to tell that story as a game very well, because again, I AM the character.

Not really. You're choosing to play the role of a mostly static, pre-existing character. If you want a game where the character is actually a reflection of whatever you want them to be, go play D&D or another RPG that actually claims to offer that kind of freedom. You're not going to get that from a JRPG or other RPG where the characters and story are largely fixed, nor will you ever because that's just not the kind of game they try to be.

YoukaiSlayer posted...

What happens if I am smarter than they are letting my character be and I suspect that guy the whole time but theres nothing I can do about it?

What would you do? Stab him in front of all the townsfolk that believe he's innocent and get executed for murder? Insist to all the townsfolk that are pleading with you to save the neighbouring town that they're all stupid and you need to stay there and play Sitting on Your Ass Simulator 2023 so the BBEG doesn't get a chance to destroy yours? Start a fight with somebody who will almost certainly mop the floor with you unless you've been metagaming hard enough that you're in no position to complain that your metagaming isn't reflected in the canon?

If you actually do find a plausible alternative? Give yourself a pat on the back for being tremendously clever and go on with your life, letting the story play out as intended. It's not really a big deal unless the story gets really contrived.

YoukaiSlayer posted...

If I were to play that same story AS Arvan though, I'd hate that

It's consistent. You're playing as him clinging to the hope that what you're collecting will work. Maybe it won't, and maybe you figure out that it probably won't, but you still hope that it will. No matter how much writing you read on the wall, you're never going to be certain that it won't work (at least, presuming the foreshadowing is just hinting that it might not and not outright telling you, since that would be bad foreshadowing), so putting yourself in Arven's shoes and hoping it will is perfectly plausible. It's still going to feel bad if the dog dies, because dogs dying always feels bad, but a story about a dog dying isn't exactly meant to be good feelings all the way.

YoukaiSlayer posted...

I can't think of several jrpgs that even have an interesting story, annoying twist or not.

Yeah, but you get upset if the story doesn't go exactly the way you think it should, so I'm not sure you're the best judge of that.

Xenoblade 1 is one of the best examples that comes to mind: You spend most of the game believing Mechonis and the mechon to be the enemy, but gradually learn that the Machina exist and that the people of Mechonis are also victims of this ancient war, ultimately culminating in forgiving Egil to break the cycle of violence and the reveal that the Bionis has been the real enemy of the world all along. At no point is it actually an option to *not* fight Egil and the mechon, given how much of a threat they pose, but as soon as you think the world is safe because the mechon have been neutralized, Zanza shows his hand and the pieces of foreshadowing you've been collecting all fall into place to reveal that everything you've done to date has not been working toward beating the real Big Bad. Most of that foreshadowing has been subtle enough to not give the whole thing away (though I will say I'm not a huge fan of Dickson's periodic "I sure do feel bad about being secretly evil lol" asides, given how hamfistedly they beat the player over the head with the idea that there's more to him than meets the eye), but it's all there and it all makes sense once you've got a bit of context to support it. Despite the truth of the world invalidating everything done to that point, however, it does not make that progress feel pointless, because everything led up to that revelation and to Shulk developing in a way that forced Zanza to take matters into his own hands.

YoukaiSlayer posted...

A lot of times much less important gameplay decisions negatively impact the story, like needing to visit every set piece location.

Yes, blatant padding can mess with story pacing a lot. Side quests also often do this, but I'm inclined to give them a pass because they're optional.

YoukaiSlayer posted...

The stumbling blocks should all be gameplay solvable. Thats why it's a game.

Or it's a game because the author felt that worked better for pacing and audience investment purposes than another medium would have, and limiting the story by removing all possibility of failure would be silly.

games absolutely don't have to be 100% solvable by definition; some games don't even have actual win or loss conditions

the goal of a game is entertainment or fulfilment in a broad sense, and the form that takes can be as different as any other form of media. linear narrative can be blended with variable gameplay just fine

also 500