Comments on: Quest Ideas

By: Lampica

Lampica — Mon, 25 Jul 2011 04:40:32 +0000

Great ideas. I have always been partial to the permanent death philosophy. But in a game that is non-linear enough that starting over will not be repetitive.

NOLF did some things really well that relate to this concept in some ways. Some things I loved about the original No One Lives Forever that combined to create a fantastic experience I have yet to find in any other game. No health pickups. You could replenish your armor but your health was non-replenish-able during the course of any missions. No death traps that you had no way of being prepared for and re-acting fast enough unless you had already been the victim at least once. Many games often throw things at you that you will almost certainly be killed by at least the first time. Only after you have reloaded a save or come back from a checkpoint armed with foresight of what you are about to face will you stand much of a chance. Even with no health pickups, and even without it being an excessively easy game, I was able to play through all of NOLF the first time without dying. There were a couple exceptions to this though. The fat lady viking opera singer on the rooftop was a stupid puzzle boss that was setup so you would likely die many times until you figured out the trick, the stealth level where you had to get something from the offices without hurting anyone was a a re-load fest. But aside from those two instances the whole game could be played through as one continuous, exceeding well paced action adventure that did an exceptional job of immersing the player in the roll of their character. Getting through mission after mission without picking up health packs, or regenerating, and without dying and reloading really took the level of immersion to a level I have seldom experienced in video games.

Ok, but onto my thoughts on your Invincibles concept. I think it must be key to make the failures work and not temp people to start over or make them feel annoyed, or inspire trainers to hack the autosave functionality to allow manual saving, or cause people to make backups of saves before the game can delete them.

I think a good way to make that work is to make failure just as engaging as success. With great cut-scenes, interaction with the environment which should be distinctly effected by both success and failure. Easter eggs which can only be found through failure, but have some that can only be found through success as well. Like maybe even have some things that could happen differently in a mission 3 levels later because of a failure earlier. Like you must stop some villain from derailing a train by destroying his his super-magnetic gauntlet. He gets away whether you succeed or not. But if you fail he gets away with his gauntlet intact. Then much later, you have an opportunity to get that gauntlet for yourself, because of that earlier failure.

The rewards system would be even better if it was randomized to some degree. So it would not become common knowledge on msg boards that if you want the magnetic gauntlet you should fail the 4th mission. If he gets away the gauntlets might appear in several different situations later in game, but they might not. And when you face that guy the first time, he enters the scen from a random directions, so based on that and how the battle moves around there could be a couple chances to use something in the environment to sever his arm without damaging the gauntlet.

Also things like news that plays on TVs in the background environment here and there could be effected by successes or failures. A failure here could be used as material in some stand up comics routine in a scene much later.

There could be other superheroes at work in the world. You might help them in some places and some of them may come to your aid at times. They would not always succeed either. Maybe one of them would give up on being a super hero and turn bad because they failed. Again it could be random which one because of which failure. Maybe in one playthrough it could be because of a failure where you came to their aid and that you could have prevented. Later you will have to fight them because they turned bad and it was partly your fault. But on another playthrough it's different hero that turn bad because of a different failure that you only heard about.

The point is that if it is well done, immersive enough, and dynamic enough, then failure will be just as engaging as success and continue to drive the player onwards...

By: Superhero Games – Some Ideas | Pc Gaming | Gaming Daily

Superhero Games – Some Ideas | Pc Gaming | Gaming Daily — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 21:29:12 +0000

[...] people he’s failed. The solution? Well it’s not mine I’m afraid, a while back Tom Francis wrote an excellent idea for a game in which you play as an invincible hero. You can’t die, [...]

By: Alex

Alex — Tue, 18 May 2010 23:05:32 +0000

heavy rain, anyone?

By: Mobba

Mobba — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 10:47:47 +0000

I didn't read all comments, but I know for a fact with only one save game, I'd get stuck in a clipping 2 days into the game and have to start over. Otherwise I like the rest of the argument.

By: Jason L

Jason L — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 17:09:19 +0000

Courtesy of one of the PCG Podcasts, Champions Online has some portion of The Invincibles. You create both your hero and his archnemesis who keeps coming back in all the big quests...

By: McFiggy

McFiggy — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 22:26:19 +0000

This would make a fantastic game, reminiscent somewhat of Dr.Who (in terms of callousness, relative invincibility etc)

By: Malagate

Malagate — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 09:04:54 +0000

Sounds like the action game equivalent of Animal Crossing, you might have to include a way for the game to recognise when you've quitted without saving (i.e. just unplugged it) so that it can do something about it. It would have to be nothing too bad though, as it would suck to either have a system crash or some other kind of power related accident and come back to find out that the mission you were doing is auto-failed and everyone hates you.

By: Ledundead

Ledundead — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 01:51:52 +0000

The Invincibles? Is that your prototype name?

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Thu, 27 Dec 2007 13:55:42 +0000

lknu

By: Pentadact

Pentadact — Sat, 30 Dec 2006 22:50:05 +0000

Heh. But Blood Money allows you to save, then deletes the save when you quit the game, thus screwing you over if you want to do something else and come back. The Invincibles would always save when you quit, specifically so that you can come back to it later. It would only 'delete' in so far as it would replace that savegame with a more up-to-date one the next time you quit. From the 'too busy to play for hours at a time' perspective, it's the opposite philosophy.

By: Jason L

Jason L — Sat, 30 Dec 2006 22:26:22 +0000

Much later: Re time and limiting: Number None's upcoming Braid. Almost certainly woo! This just occurred to me on a reread - in the original proposal, we see the suggestion that Das Ubermensch should try to prevent/hide/delete savegames behind the scenes. In the later post about Hitman: Blood Money, we see that Hitman's developers "should do jail time" for preventing/deleting saves. "Woe unto ye, hypocrites" etc. :)

By: Pentadact

Pentadact — Mon, 28 Aug 2006 19:17:23 +0000

Oy gevalt! Why always with the limiting, mainstream game developers? Eh?

By: Jason L

Jason L — Mon, 28 Aug 2006 18:50:36 +0000

They boned it, of course - now, to limit everything, Superman has a *stamina bar*. Genius.

By: Pentadact

Pentadact — Mon, 20 Feb 2006 09:42:00 +0000

Heheh. Honestly, I'd just like to play a game like this. But being Superman kind of ruins the choose-your-own-hero possibilities.

By: Jason L

Jason L — Sat, 18 Feb 2006 03:17:37 +0000

Sue 'em, Tom, sue 'em!

By: Fat Zombie

Fat Zombie — Mon, 07 Nov 2005 19:02:07 +0000

Lugaru DOES have those dynamic recovery thingies. It works very well, although it's usuallly to fast to see.

I like your idea. That game would be AWESOME. Now we just need a character creation process, and it would be the offline equal to City of Heroes. What the hell; Equal? BETTER!

By: Pentadact

Pentadact — Tue, 06 Sep 2005 06:21:32 +0000

Lugaru is nuts, but a good point - I'd forgotten how it worked. I've always wanted people getting up from ragdoll knock-downs, and apparently Oblivion had it when my friend on X-Box World went to see it. They weren't sure if they could polish it up enough to keep it for the full version, but it looked good to him.

I fixed your leaking tag.

By: Jason L

Jason L — Tue, 06 Sep 2005 00:06:40 +0000

Veering back vaguely on topic, I was on an indie-game-downloading jag today when I found this. While it is oh so very crappy in many ways, it claims, and seems, to include many of the features on the combat wishlist for Das Ubermensch - physical hits, dynamic recoveries... I think the recoveries from knockdowns are still scripted, though. In any case, a possible prototype.

By: Jason L

Jason L — Fri, 26 Aug 2005 16:17:42 +0000

I thought players couldn't get gibbed, just mobs? I need to go back and check now.

Well, with sawblades you already have to deal with the headcrab afterwards - which I find annoying, so I only use them for multi-kills, headshots, or as a last resort anyway. With explosions, they already burn the headcrab. No change. Zombies which block your way are suddenly an actual threat? You'd rather avoid them? Yes! :) Finally, I was wrong to specify yellow crab headshots only. For some crazy reason my brain at that time thought they were the only ones that coupled to the head. Coupleable hissers would be less distinctive, I admit - though given decent head-defensive skill their poison would still be a factor.

By: Pentadact

Pentadact — Fri, 26 Aug 2005 15:34:44 +0000

Half-Life had gibs, I recall - they were horrible. Organs, bones and everything. The mounted guns would shred marines into bloodied messes. HL2 had the zombie bisection death, too, so both 'support' alternative demises. I did always want to see proper headcrab posession, though - not just set pieces where it happens. If any headcrab could possess a combine or rebel, there'd be an interesting 'tide' to battles.

The only problem with buffing headcrabs is that it makes saw blades and explosions inviable ways of killing zombies - both turn it into a much greater threat than before, so you'd be better off just squeezing past them politely. It'd also make the black headcrabs rather an anti-climax.