Noooooooo!

“Only those who dare to fail greatly can ever achieve greatly.”

I was thinking...I want more grief, I want unhappy endings.

All the best superheroes/villains are born out of tragedy and misfortune, what if the game offered some more of this. What I’d like to see is more missions that you fail at, and not just being kicked out of the map. After all winning all the time is boring right? I know the game has a few elements of this but I’d love to see more, all the best characters are fallible after all.

Simply make specific arcs/missions which are set up to end in failure and script them in such a way where heroes can feel a sense of injustice and likewise villains feel a sense of justice. This could be done in many ways without any real major game changes other than making new arcs, I’m not suggesting multiple endings or anything.

For example:

Arcs/missions could feature escorts or allies that you simply cannot save at the end (no this doesn’t have to mean death, perhaps the npc is lost forever or turns into a villain/hero), perhaps stories could be a NPC is your No1 fan/ex team-mate or perhaps a wanna be sidekick but importantly your hero/team will fail to save them at the end (of course normal mission xp etc will still apply). Villain missions could mean that they are double-crossed or perhaps...dare I say it, do something good by mistake. Perhaps subsequent arcs/missions could follow some of this up with badges or some reward if you finally avenge or get revenge!. There are a so many ways that you could go with this.

It could even go further as perhaps at mission exit your toon gets a temporally debuff (due to the emotional distress), or perhaps a tough ambush awaits them due to the perceived crossing of the line – “there’s Night Hornet, get him”

NPC chatter could help set the mood, along the lines of “leave Night Hornet alone he’s had a bad day” etc.

Of course some of this could be done in MA, but being out there in the game world - now that would be good. Maybe...just maybe there’s some of this in GR?

Only if it's written well. And even then, only if it absolutely has to be done.

Forced failure is not, in my opinion, fun. It's like the stupid timed mission in Tina's arc in PI, where you have like a five minute mission. Even if you bust a gasket and manage to complete it..oh look! You STILL failed!
That sort of thing is disheartening, and not in a 'I shall have vengeance!' kind of way, more 'F this, I'm going to go get a drink and watch a film..." sort of vibe.

Character death that serves a point and tugs a few emotional heartstrings, yes. Like Aerith in Final Fantasy 7. And...oh, damn...the man who got a statue outside Kings Row yellow line station, who was in the CoX comics...
But not failure for the sake of saying 'Hey, even after all this time, you still screw stuff up! Nyaaah!'. Because that's really dull and irritating.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Zwillinger GG, I would tell you that "I am killing you with my mind", but I couldn't find an emoticon to properly express my sentiment.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Captain_Photon NOTE: The Incarnate System is basically farming for IOs on a larger scale, and with more obtrusive lore.

The Terra Conspiracy story arc from Ginger Yates ends on a decidedly "failed" note. There are others though I can't think of them off-hand. Lots of villain arcs end with you having been a patsy to do something good or against your own interests such as Captain Petrovich (save the Iron Widow) and Darrin Wade (Midnight Draws Near/suicidal mission that helps a plot to free Rularuu which IS suicide) but there are others.

I brought up the ones we have to say basically "we already have enough of these" (especially villain-side). I don't think we need more (or at least not many more) stories of this sort either.

To be honest though, it is different from a movie in that the story of your Character goes on after the story of the Contact ends. And having one or two failed missions over a career, despite our best efforts at the time, adds depth to a character. It becomes the thing(s) that haunt the apparently successful super-hero. The irritating interviewers bring up the Tanya Tylers and Captain Indomitables you failed to save to get a rise out of you but all the fans have forgiven you and say it makes you more human.

However, while it works from a character-building stand-point, it fails from an entertainment stand-point so it should be fairly rare.

I also wouldn't be surprised if some of the new GR stories are exactly of this type. It's hard to tell a story of resistance against an overwhelming enemy that doesn't have at least a few failed or at least thwarted missions. It would be pretty unrealistic not to for one thing, but it also adds to the dark and scrappy feeling of being a freedom fighter/terrorist. You can't win every fight but you keep fighting the war. Gaining inches you hope will eventually win out in the end... maybe not for you but perhaps for a future generation.

Just my opinion though.

To be fair, if you read my post I wasn't suggesting a mission fail in the true sense. I merely suggested it might be interesting to have some different spins on missions. Meaning that well written missions/arcs could perhaps add some sense of drama.

It could work, it could fail miserably. It really depends upon the story.

I'm typically more accepting of a 'bitter-sweet' ending. A real hero might screw up along the way, but he's not just going to tuck in his cape in go home either. It's not realistic, to me, that after the villian blows up the school bus, I would just be like "Well darn!" unless I am also dead. It would irritate me to no end if the story just forced me into not going after the villian or doing anything at all.

After we get the villian, play up all the horrible atrocities he committed, and then force us to question if we couldn't have done better. But don't just force me to quit.

I'd like a few more stories like this too. But as others have said, they need to be written well. I like the arc that Alpha mentioned. The one with Cyrus Thompson in it. The ending left me touched, and he became one of my favourite heroes in the game.

For similar reasons, I was also left emotionally moved by a couple of other arcs in the game, too. One of the early peacebringer arcs includes a kheldian that you were just too late to save. It was the first real negative turn I'd seen in-game, and I took a moment to realise what had actually happened. It really was a dreadful thing to me at the time.

However, without spoiling anything, the two arcs that move me most are the tales of Pyriss and Tanya Tyler. Tanya's made me feel really very sympathic, but Pyriss was something else. I felt guilty. That was my fault. No other story thus far has really made me feel so strongly for an arc I did in a video game.

For those who haven't played Pyriss's out story, I highly recommend it. While it made me feel awful, I really found it to be a good play.
The first arc is Peter Themari's 'Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge', levels 10-14.
The second is Vernon von Grun's 'Von Grun's Science', levels 45-50.
The gap between them is pretty big, but the progression in time is part of the story.

How about more failable missions where the mission is particularly difficult? Not that stupid 10 minute mission where even if you succeed you still fail, but a mission where if you succeed... you succeed, but you really have to go all out TO succeed. There's a fair amount of missions that are very failable, such as the mission in the LGTF where most choose to kill the crazy girl who won't shut up. And then there's General Pistolwhip in that other RWZ mission.

What we need is missions where failure is an option and the penalty for failure is not "oh, he teleported away just in time so all is good" but instead "He's dead. You failed to save her and she lost her life." That is, we need missions in which FAILURE AND SUCCESS HAVE DIFFERENT STORY OUTCOMES.

That's my point here. I feel a lot less attachment to a loss that I'm not given the option to fight to protect. This is one of my favorite things about Suikoden: Most of your 108 characters can die, but if you play the game perfectly they're all alive and well at endgame.

Crono Trigger's a great example, too. At the part of the game where the main character dies... he only dies if you lose. The battle is semi-scripted, in that the opponent is 10-20 levels stronger than what you're really prepared to face, but it IS possible to /beat the game right there/ instead of having Crono die.

I'm all for stories where the Hero/Villain isn't exactly triumphant but which give a sense of achievement. Blueside there are several (older) arcs which do this, most of them having already been mentioned. The Iron Hand one also features as that kind of arc. And the failure really sits with the contact who, for the purposes of the story, didn't get a Hero involved in time to 'save' the guy.

What I'm not for is sudden shifts in story that suddenly make everything you've done so far redundant and result in an Epic Fail. I place these in the 'I woke up and it was all a dream' category (i.e. bad writing).

There are some of these in the MA but I don't believe I've come across any in the canon. Perhaps I've just been lucky.

I am also against contacts who never shift their opinion of you, especially those who constantly treat the player character like a moron. There's quite a few of those too in the MA, including one Guest Author arc.

I'd like to see more contacts who are, well, a little pathetic. Their own self doubt prevented them from seeking help and so by the actions of the Hero/Villain they can hope to have some closure or redeem themselves a little and be very grateful for the player character's assistance. Even if it all ends in tragedy, at least the contact will realise that it is not the player character's fault but their own inaction (I suppose in literary terms this could be dubbed a 'Hamlet Scenario', but then I'm just being pretentious ) that caused the outcome.

As long as there is reward (in story terms, XP-wise it's all the same) of some kind then I think it can be done very well.

Maybe not have a failed mission, as if it comes up with mission failed when you exit, but as the story is written to not go to plan.

A good idea for this could be done in MA, you could have a save ally which was set as a minion and had a taunt aura so it was precariously hard to save them, but if it could be set so when they are defeated a new task was set then that would be the cherry on top =)

That was a good story

Way to break the flow.

First off, I love Neil Gaiman.

That being said, a game is NOT a story. A GAME is something in which you can succeed or fail based on luck and/or skill, usually with a heavier reliance on skill. A STORY is something in which you cannot affect the outcome. City isn't a Massively multiplayer online STORY. It's a game, which means that any serious success or failure needs to be in the hands of the guy playing the game.

While I'm all for drama if a hero fails, I am entirely opposed to the idea of a player character being forced to fail. As a long time Dungeon Master, I know that it breaks immersion and really annoys players. (That's right, breaks immersion. Why? Because to really make a forced fail instead of just an overpower fail, something's got to happen that makes the player say, 'But I could have X. Why didn't you let me X?' My most notable example is fighting a boss once who had apparently set off some sort of attack to Defeat us that we weren't allowed to avoid... except I had a readied action and a Scroll of Time Stop, and the DM just said no.)

I'm all for stories that expect the player to fail, and I'm all for dramatic hits when that happens, but if failure is the only option AND it's a dramatic failure, then it's just annoying in a game where you're supposed to be the hero.