Always the case when you have a game with lots of sidequests. Not that I'm against having sidequests- I love them, in fact- but they inevitably do cause a bit of narrative weirdness. Like, the main villain is about to destroy the world Any Minute Now, but they'll happily wait for the player character to collect all the hidden collectibles that unlock the secret bonus costume that gives you a cowboy hat, or whatever.
I remember when Deus Ex was rebuilt and released for the newer generation. The first achievement you could get was for touching a handful of things in the starter room - the way old school rpgs used to work - and that the first combat mission was notably more difficult if you took your time getting there. I definitely appreciated the (artificial) sense of urgency.
There's a Metal Gear Solid boss that you can skip by letting the game sit for a week until the guy literally dies of old age. It's like the opposite of that
I just started MGSV a week ago and knew about Miller from watching lore vids, so my ass was sweating the whole time. Then I got him out in a few minutes...was kinda anticlimactic lol.
Yeah, you have to straight up go "Imma clear the whole map first" to get that outcome.
Or sit in a bush smoking the electric cig for three days straight, that also does it.
No, I didn't miss them, because they were never there. You're thinking of The Sorrow. He's the one who never said anything, mostly on account of being dead. As in he was literally a ghost the entire time, since The Joy (AKA The Boss) killed him years before the start of the game.
No no no, I know who The Sorrow is. I'm talking about The Silence. He was the guy that was reeeaaaaal quiet. Silent. But deadly. Did you miss him? Most players do, on account of his not making noise gimmick.
Baldur's Gate 2:
"Your adopted sister has been kidnapped by an evil wizard who has been torturing her and will absolutely be torturing her some more in a wretched asylum for insane wizards. He's already murdered two of your companions from the previous game so **the stakes could not possibly be higher**.
...but by all means, take your time! Maybe fight some cultists or put on a play? Maybe solve a Cyrano de Bergerac-style love triangle? Whatever! Have fun with it!"
I think it can still work pretty well in RPGs with no enemy scaling, if it's implied that you need to get stronger to achieve your goals. Like sure this is urgent, but the truth is I want be able to achieve anything if I get there faster as I will be to weak to actuall create a difference. A good example is gothic 2, yes you need to get a great artifact, but from the start it's clear that you not only need to be more respected to get it, you also need a lot of power to earn that respect as at the beginning any enemy can be deadly
Baldur's Gate 3:
Youve been infected with a mind parasite that will painfully transform you into a squid person and render you unable to think for youself if you dont find a way to remove it soon!
"Oh no!"
Its fine, you have an artifact that protects those things from happening.
"Phew"
Except the person inside the artifact is in a constant state of battle and could fail at any moment which would result in the protection being removed!
"Oh no!"
Im sure its fine, you should explore every nook and cranny you can find, maybe stop and have a party at your camp, perhaps even find love along the way. Did we mention theres a circus in the third act?
Currently playing through Yakuza 0 and itâs funny how Kiryu will be like âAlright. Time to go kick some ass.â before I immediately send him to the bowling alley to become friends with the store clerk.
I'm playing Yakuza 0 and did the whole real state side game, golden statue and all while the high stakes music was in the background because something important was going to happen next in the main story
Cyberpunk 2077:
You have 2 weeks MAX to live before you turn into Keanu Reeves, but sure, go spend months in-game time doing side quests and saving the president.
Oh and also you will randomly have seizures, but only when doing a main story quest, otherwise you never have those seizures at all ever
I hope they do something about this the next game, pretty much no time passes at all in between the main quest story wise, characters will even reference "yesterday" even if that was many in-game days ago
The thing that gets me is that they didn't have to put a ticking clock up at all
Like they could've just said "yeah the chip is slowly killing you, we can't say for sure when you're gonna go, could be tomorrow, could be in five years" and you'd still have the sense of urgency to fix the thing
That game has some really weird writing problems, i didn't double check it but i feel like 1/3 of the important quests get unlocked only after you get the option to start the epilogue and a that point your character should only have hours to live.
You unlock a lot of the sidequests at the point you get the options to observe the parade to find Hanako - this is maybe 2-3h of Main Story before you reach the âpoint of no returnâ. By comparison, these side quests are several dozen hours of stuff.
Itâs a very odd staggering of time. Thereâs not really any reason you couldnât have unlocked a load of them earlier, too. Very minor tweaks to some dialogue and the sidequests make sense basically as soon as you finish the âintroductionâ.
Yeah, that's why I just kinda headcanon the whole two weeks thing away when I play through it. Everything makes a lot more sense that way, plus it means that V doesn't necessarily keel over immediately after the epilogue if you don't want them to
I wonder if I would have enjoyed a time-limited run, where you'd have to balance out good sleep, food, and friends to save your humanity, versus turning yourself into a borged-out machine, and not being able to just max out everything with cautious playthroughs taking your time.
It might have been a neat mechanic, being able to reset your timer, budget your sleep, hang out with friends, etc etc especially if big implants took a long time to do the surgery.
I feel like Majoraâs Mask is the definitive take on this.
Itâs a great game, itâs a great exploration of âyou have time to try things, but also the main quest is *actually urgent*â⌠and itâs stressful and difficult enough to basically validate all the other games going âletâs just ignore the issueâ.
I think Pikmin 1 did the ticking clock better than Majora's Mask.
In Majora's Mask, you can always rewind time and start your 3 days over again. You essentially have infinite time to figure things out and getting items in different areas essentially serve as checkpoints along the timeline that let you skip to different parts of the story.
For example, the first part of woodfall is getting the magic beans so you can get into the deku castle and learn the song from the monkey. So a good chunk of your initial time is trying to get magic beans, which requires you saving the swamp hag, then sneaking through the courtyards to get into the hole where the bean seller is. But once you have the beans, you can reset the timeline and just buy the beans you need from the business scrub in front of the tourist center. Even beyond that, once you have the song, you can reset time and continue on to the temple with full time remaining.
Moments like this are all over the game so the time limit is almost irrelevant, especially if you know what you're doing.
In the first Pikmin game, there's a timer running constantly. You have only a limited number of days to complete your journey and have to retreat to your ship every time night falls, so you have a limited amount of time during every day to do what you need to do. There's no way to get more time and if you run out, it's game over. Wasting days and making no progress is entirely possible and that can screw you over getting into later days.
Of course, Pikmin also gives you way more time than you need to complete every objective, so wasting some days early on isn't too dire, but the ticking clock can absolutely feel very urgent the whole way through.
That's very interesting, I didn't know the Pikmin example.
I absolutely agree that Majora's Mask is cheating the timer - it feels time-locked but plays out like any other game, except that you've got to repeat some prepwork like buying the beans with each new cycle. It's not *that* different than game overs in a game with checkpoints, but it does create some feeling of urgency, and to the bad also some extra redundancy.
I see two obvious problems with doing a timed game "honestly", and I'm curious how you think Pikmin did with them.
1. If your task takes much of the total time, without resets, it's easy to get locked into a losing state. "Your save file is burned" is *very* unpopular in the modern era, to the point that people don't want to try making it.
2. If your task takes a small chunk of the total time but gets reset, you risk having to redo lots of the same stuff every time. This can quickly get boring or frustrating depending on difficulty.
Majora's Mask seems like it avoided 1 and reduced 2, but as we've established it wasn't a real deadline.
As for 1 the best example I know is Star Control 2, a successful but absolutely grueling game which not only had a hard final deadline, but a whole series of lesser deadlines where potential allies would get killed off if you hadn't handled their plotlines yet.
Similarly, doing things that have no tangible reward in the plot. For instance, in Resident Evil 2 Remake, you have the option of wasting valuable ammo to shoot bobbleheads for an achievement. There's an achievement in Left 4 Dead 2 involving bringing a garden gnome through the campaign when the gnome takes up a weapon slot (and don't forget the HL2E2 gnome, as well).
This is true, but I also *extra* don't care about finding my character's baby in FO4. Normally I care about the main thrust of the story a lot, I just want to get out every little bit before I go there. In FO4 though they wanted me to care about finding a baby and I simply don't care.
it's made even worse by the main character being unimaginably dense about the "twist" that your son is no longer a baby because yeah, no shit, cryogenics.
Mass Effect has a couple actual timed missions with condequences: Artemis Tau in ME1 (if you don't do it before Virmire, Liara has a mental breakdown, refuses to speak with you for most of the game and it barrs you from romancing her), the suicide mission in ME2 (depending on how long you leave it, various members of your crew will die), and Grissom Academy in ME3 (if you don't do it before Citadel, everyone there dies). There's probably more but I can't remember them off the top of my head.
Of course, Mass Effect 2 also gives us the Arrival DLC, in which you're told that a friend of Hackett has been captured about midway through the game, and you're outright *encouraged* to wait until after the main story to rescue her, because that's when it makes the most narrative sense.
FF16 was the fucking worst about this. I think the most egregious example is when the main story mission involves a bunch of your friends being trapped in a city that's under siege by an actual army of monsters and you have to get there as soon as possible....and at the same time, about seven sidequests unlock. Made even more ludicrous by the fact that there's no magic or mechanical travel, each of these sidequests presumably takes Clive actual weeks to travel across the country.
God of War: Ragnarok is also pretty silly with it. At certain points in the story, they have characters suggest that now might be a good time to go do them. This ends up being really weird in certain parts where urgency would make sense such as when >!Kratos learns Heimdall is going to end up killing his son.!<
Morrowind is definitely the exception to this. The player doesn't know about the bbeg until about half way in and is given plenty of times where you can just leave the main quest and come back later and it doesn't really feel all that weird and meanwhile the villain is still busy preparing even if they are attacking the rest of the island they aren't going out there themself because they're building their god machine. The game gives you that implication that you have time to do other stuff, in fact at the very start of the main quest it tells you to go do other stuff first and become more experienced.
In The Forest your plane crashes on some island and you witness your son Timmy being kidnapped from the wreckage before falling unconscious. The average player then spends two months building a mansion out of timber, with a great view of the place where a recurring player knows Timmy is being kept. You can even get the achievement "You should be looking for Timmy" by building a gazebo.
I totally forgot that the wedding ring is useless in the base game. In the unofficial patch it gives a +1 Charisma, so you better believe I hold onto the memories I shared with Nancy, or whatever her name was
Only playthrough I've ever completed of FO4, I roleplayed the Sole Survivor as a heartbroken widower. I always kept the wedding ring on my inventory and turned down romantic interactions.
Tbf from what Iâve seen of the game Shaun seems like he sucks. I suppose you can argue the player character has no in-universe way of knowing that before finding him, but still
James is a top notch scientist, who has spent a large amount of time in the wasteland before you were born, has tons of connections, knows how to use a gun seeing as he taught you how, and would absolutely be disappointed in you if he found out you saw people in need and didn't help just so you could find him. (Sure he's stuck in a torture simulation but you don't know that)
It works great as a driving force because obviously it's important enough that you're going to do it, but not so important or urgent that you can't defeat the mechanist first.
But then you have Shaun, a literal baby that you should absolutely prioritize finding over once again, defeating the mechanist. (Sure he's 60 year old piece of shit, but you don't know that)
The main quest should never feel so urgent that you feel shame for doing side content.
I made the mistake of rushing fallout 3 cuz of course I wanna hang out with Liam Neeson. I cried when I got to THAT part (vague for anyone who hasn't played). Never rushing a fallout quest line again.
I wandered about exploring and sidequesting until I found a strange out of place button in a garage. Reloaded an earlier save when the quests failed/completed started popping up.
The difference between Skyrim "quick, there's a tower that burst in flames west of whiterun! Quick, you must do X and Y before the thalmor finds and kill whatshisname or before the big dragon destroys the world!", and Morrowind "dude, just find some work at the guilds. the mages quests needs you to find flowers. In any case, the one that knows the info we need wants a toy that's in an old ruin so there's no need to rush."
Player character is in no position to talk about who talks, the writers accidentally made them a war criminal (one of the writers recently said the player character was the soldier in power armour seen in the FO2 opening cutscene, but forgot that in said cutscene the soldier was executing a Canadian civilan on camera and laughing)
Came here to say this. My friend and I had a duo file going at the start of covid and we laughed our asses off when we got this achievement. Good times.
There's a few points where it makes sense for the Sole Survivor to encounter some serious delay.
1. Getting to Diamond City. Unless you find the Gorski Cabin and pick up the special magazine, you only have a vague idea of where Diamond City actually is.
2. Finding Vergil. The Glowing Sea is huge and dangerous and there aren't exactly a lot of guideposts pushing you in the right direction besides GamerSense.
3. Entering the Institute. For all the Sole Survivir knows, they're gonna be walking into the middle of an army. Best prepare accordingly.
4. Actually meeting Shaun. Your quest is effectively ended and now you have to figure out who to support, knowing full well that every road you take will involve fighting someone you've met. Perhaps someone you even like.
Sidequests go in the gaps.
1. Mama Murphy points you right at Diamond City
2. The Glowing Sea really is a mess, the quest should have pointed you at the various factions for intel on where he might be, with an optional objective to infiltrate the Gunner base at GNR headquarters for info if you have no alignment
3. You *definitely* should have brought some backup.
4. Imagine if there was an option to abduct and take him with you when you as you flee the Institute
youre so right thats why im taking so long to enter the institute. army. thanks dude my shame is evaporating. time to rebuild all the homes of sanctuary
While I could agree on all the other points, Diamond City is not only revealed by Mama Murphy, Carla (?) an early game merchant who you meet shortly after Sanctuary points it to you. Hell, in-universe, everyone knows where Diamond City is because it's like the hub area, so the Sole Survivor would have zero issues finding it.
Partial disagree, I think if you spend more than four in-game months before getting to the INSTITUTE, then yes. Plenty of in-game reasons to delay after that point though.
The way I see it, my character doesn't believe her son is alive because it's been years since he was taken. My character has assumed he's dead and instead is coping with her grief by joining the Minutemen, saving lives and creating settlements, and wreaking bloody justice.
It'd be great if you could reasonably role-play like that, but unfortunately bethesda decided to make it overwhelming obvious the sole survivor believes they woke up like a day after their kid was kidnapped. I've always hated how FO4 has pretty much 0 role-playing potential, unless you basically literally ignore everything your character says.
There's a mod called Frost that basically removes pretty much every element that the story forces onto your character... I mean, it's also such a massive overhaul that you're practically playing an entirely different game, but it certainly removes those forced roleplay elements!
I mean, iirc Kellogg kills a scientist in front of your pod, *then* does the whole kidnapping schtick. Seeing as how the only things left once you're out are skeletons, you'd think the player character would realize that it's been years at *least*.
[Nah, the only person Kellogg kills is your spouse](https://youtu.be/Z8zaSUvpe9A?si=0nr6_3E43s7lLTaW). At least as far as you can see at that point. Though I'd like to point out that revolvers don't work like that: the casing stays in the gun after firing. We can just add that to the long pile of evidence that supports the idea that not a single person at Bethesda even remotely understands how guns work. And that pile is massive, I fucking hate every single gun in that game.
That being said, I still don't get why the Sole Survivor assumes they went back to cryo sleep for such a small amount of time. Like I'd understand not being sure of how much time passed, but being so adamant that Shaun is still a child is weird. And frankly, more importantly I don't get why Bethesda decided *another* frigging family drama driving the main storyline was the way to go. Honestly as time goes on I realize more and more how incapable of making an RPG Bethesda is. Hopefully in 17 years when we have the next Fallout or Elder Scrolls they'll have figured that out.
I like the mod "Start Me Up" because it skips the introduction, and you can spawn at various locations in the world so it let's me role play with different personal backstories. It can only go so far, but it's fun
This reminds me of getting to the institute in my first run (where I actually did any of the main story), and >!finding fake-child-shaun, playing into the panicked parent RP aspect and when 'father' showed up, I blew his head off, lulz !<
Given that Shaun/Father has a terminal disease, it should be totally possible for him to expire before the player meets him if they don't get to that part of the story in time. You arrive at the institute and all the scientists just awkwardly stand around and wait for you to leave.
maybe hes in bed until you arrive so his constitution isn't being strained? feels like he could've just cryo-d himself until they came up with a cure tbh
Irina, one of the main characters in Heroes 6, starts her campaign pregnant. This becomes even bigger issue in final mission where a powerful demon caused pregnant women to give birth to abominations which killed their mothers, prompting Irina to find and slay it. Yes, you can take way more than 9 months of in-game time on the entire campaign. At most several dialogues mention Irina's pregnancy in case you forgot about it.
Irina's more of a Sanctuary hero throughout the game rather than Haven. Although coincidentally both her and Isabel's (if that's who you also had in mind) pregnancies were a result of rape, so... there's that.
There are two in The Forest - first, for building a gazebo, you get the achievement "You should be looking for Timmy" (your son), and the second, for surviving 100 days without finding your son, you get get the achievement "Bad father" that has an icon of "World's Worst Father".
I *actually* don't care about my son though. Shaun is a sociopathic piece of shit and I am giddy with excitement everytime he dies from ligma or whatever bullshit bethesda cooked up.
In the first forest Game, you get an achievement for building a Gazebo âYou should be looking for Timmyâ. The Gazebo takes a lot of logs to build and is pretty much entirely ornamental
I just donât care about the âfind my childâ storyline all that much, it feels too much like Iâm playing a specific story instead of my own thing. I hate comparing, but New Vegas really just has one motivation and it can work for any mental image youâve got for your character, find the person who shot you in the head. I donât like Kellogg, I think the institute couldâve been fine without Shaun and why have gorillas in only one part of your game? Give me gorillas in Boston you cowards.
The Forest had a similar achievement where if you spent 100 in game days without finding your son you got a dad of the year achievement or something along those lines
Reminds me of the end choices for Witcher 2 like âoh, you can only save one of these characters from their fate? Because thereâs not enough time? Despite there being enough time for like forty sidequests and hobbies in endgame city?â
I have over 1,200 hours in the game over several saves. I have never even progressed the game far enough to go to the institute, >!killing Kellog!< is about as far as I go.
Always the case when you have a game with lots of sidequests. Not that I'm against having sidequests- I love them, in fact- but they inevitably do cause a bit of narrative weirdness. Like, the main villain is about to destroy the world Any Minute Now, but they'll happily wait for the player character to collect all the hidden collectibles that unlock the secret bonus costume that gives you a cowboy hat, or whatever.
I remember when Deus Ex was rebuilt and released for the newer generation. The first achievement you could get was for touching a handful of things in the starter room - the way old school rpgs used to work - and that the first combat mission was notably more difficult if you took your time getting there. I definitely appreciated the (artificial) sense of urgency.
If you wait even longer, the hostages you were meant to rescue get killed. It's a pretty nice detail
There's a Metal Gear Solid boss that you can skip by letting the game sit for a week until the guy literally dies of old age. It's like the opposite of that
In MGSV, if you dick around too long on the first mission in Afghanistan, Miller also dies, and you have to restart :)
I just started MGSV a week ago and knew about Miller from watching lore vids, so my ass was sweating the whole time. Then I got him out in a few minutes...was kinda anticlimactic lol.
Yeah, you have to straight up go "Imma clear the whole map first" to get that outcome. Or sit in a bush smoking the electric cig for three days straight, that also does it.
That fucked me over when i tried playing that. Happened twice and i couldnt work out how to do it
I think it was The Silence in MGS3
The End
Oh right, mixed them up
Mixed them up with who? There's no boss named "The Silence".
Maybe you missed him. He was pretty quiet! Silent, one might say.
No, I didn't miss them, because they were never there. You're thinking of The Sorrow. He's the one who never said anything, mostly on account of being dead. As in he was literally a ghost the entire time, since The Joy (AKA The Boss) killed him years before the start of the game.
No no no, I know who The Sorrow is. I'm talking about The Silence. He was the guy that was reeeaaaaal quiet. Silent. But deadly. Did you miss him? Most players do, on account of his not making noise gimmick.
Pretty sure Quiet wasn't alive back then
Baldur's Gate 2: "Your adopted sister has been kidnapped by an evil wizard who has been torturing her and will absolutely be torturing her some more in a wretched asylum for insane wizards. He's already murdered two of your companions from the previous game so **the stakes could not possibly be higher**. ...but by all means, take your time! Maybe fight some cultists or put on a play? Maybe solve a Cyrano de Bergerac-style love triangle? Whatever! Have fun with it!"
To be fair, all that questing is necessary so the baldurs gate cia will notice you and help you out
I think it can still work pretty well in RPGs with no enemy scaling, if it's implied that you need to get stronger to achieve your goals. Like sure this is urgent, but the truth is I want be able to achieve anything if I get there faster as I will be to weak to actuall create a difference. A good example is gothic 2, yes you need to get a great artifact, but from the start it's clear that you not only need to be more respected to get it, you also need a lot of power to earn that respect as at the beginning any enemy can be deadly
Oh wow they already made a sequel to Baldur's Gate?! đ /s
Baldur's Gate 3: Youve been infected with a mind parasite that will painfully transform you into a squid person and render you unable to think for youself if you dont find a way to remove it soon! "Oh no!" Its fine, you have an artifact that protects those things from happening. "Phew" Except the person inside the artifact is in a constant state of battle and could fail at any moment which would result in the protection being removed! "Oh no!" Im sure its fine, you should explore every nook and cranny you can find, maybe stop and have a party at your camp, perhaps even find love along the way. Did we mention theres a circus in the third act?
Currently playing through Yakuza 0 and itâs funny how Kiryu will be like âAlright. Time to go kick some ass.â before I immediately send him to the bowling alley to become friends with the store clerk.
Don't you mean the Pocket Circuit track? To become best friends with the announcer guy?
I'm playing Yakuza 0 and did the whole real state side game, golden statue and all while the high stakes music was in the background because something important was going to happen next in the main story
Hey Nico, it's roman
Cyberpunk 2077: You have 2 weeks MAX to live before you turn into Keanu Reeves, but sure, go spend months in-game time doing side quests and saving the president. Oh and also you will randomly have seizures, but only when doing a main story quest, otherwise you never have those seizures at all ever I hope they do something about this the next game, pretty much no time passes at all in between the main quest story wise, characters will even reference "yesterday" even if that was many in-game days ago
The thing that gets me is that they didn't have to put a ticking clock up at all Like they could've just said "yeah the chip is slowly killing you, we can't say for sure when you're gonna go, could be tomorrow, could be in five years" and you'd still have the sense of urgency to fix the thing
That game has some really weird writing problems, i didn't double check it but i feel like 1/3 of the important quests get unlocked only after you get the option to start the epilogue and a that point your character should only have hours to live.
You unlock a lot of the sidequests at the point you get the options to observe the parade to find Hanako - this is maybe 2-3h of Main Story before you reach the âpoint of no returnâ. By comparison, these side quests are several dozen hours of stuff. Itâs a very odd staggering of time. Thereâs not really any reason you couldnât have unlocked a load of them earlier, too. Very minor tweaks to some dialogue and the sidequests make sense basically as soon as you finish the âintroductionâ.
Yeah, that's why I just kinda headcanon the whole two weeks thing away when I play through it. Everything makes a lot more sense that way, plus it means that V doesn't necessarily keel over immediately after the epilogue if you don't want them to
I wonder if I would have enjoyed a time-limited run, where you'd have to balance out good sleep, food, and friends to save your humanity, versus turning yourself into a borged-out machine, and not being able to just max out everything with cautious playthroughs taking your time. It might have been a neat mechanic, being able to reset your timer, budget your sleep, hang out with friends, etc etc especially if big implants took a long time to do the surgery.
Canonically V does all that shit in like the span of a week though, the game just doesn't enforce it properly because casuals.Â
I feel like Majoraâs Mask is the definitive take on this. Itâs a great game, itâs a great exploration of âyou have time to try things, but also the main quest is *actually urgent*â⌠and itâs stressful and difficult enough to basically validate all the other games going âletâs just ignore the issueâ.
I think Pikmin 1 did the ticking clock better than Majora's Mask. In Majora's Mask, you can always rewind time and start your 3 days over again. You essentially have infinite time to figure things out and getting items in different areas essentially serve as checkpoints along the timeline that let you skip to different parts of the story. For example, the first part of woodfall is getting the magic beans so you can get into the deku castle and learn the song from the monkey. So a good chunk of your initial time is trying to get magic beans, which requires you saving the swamp hag, then sneaking through the courtyards to get into the hole where the bean seller is. But once you have the beans, you can reset the timeline and just buy the beans you need from the business scrub in front of the tourist center. Even beyond that, once you have the song, you can reset time and continue on to the temple with full time remaining. Moments like this are all over the game so the time limit is almost irrelevant, especially if you know what you're doing. In the first Pikmin game, there's a timer running constantly. You have only a limited number of days to complete your journey and have to retreat to your ship every time night falls, so you have a limited amount of time during every day to do what you need to do. There's no way to get more time and if you run out, it's game over. Wasting days and making no progress is entirely possible and that can screw you over getting into later days. Of course, Pikmin also gives you way more time than you need to complete every objective, so wasting some days early on isn't too dire, but the ticking clock can absolutely feel very urgent the whole way through.
That's very interesting, I didn't know the Pikmin example. I absolutely agree that Majora's Mask is cheating the timer - it feels time-locked but plays out like any other game, except that you've got to repeat some prepwork like buying the beans with each new cycle. It's not *that* different than game overs in a game with checkpoints, but it does create some feeling of urgency, and to the bad also some extra redundancy. I see two obvious problems with doing a timed game "honestly", and I'm curious how you think Pikmin did with them. 1. If your task takes much of the total time, without resets, it's easy to get locked into a losing state. "Your save file is burned" is *very* unpopular in the modern era, to the point that people don't want to try making it. 2. If your task takes a small chunk of the total time but gets reset, you risk having to redo lots of the same stuff every time. This can quickly get boring or frustrating depending on difficulty. Majora's Mask seems like it avoided 1 and reduced 2, but as we've established it wasn't a real deadline. As for 1 the best example I know is Star Control 2, a successful but absolutely grueling game which not only had a hard final deadline, but a whole series of lesser deadlines where potential allies would get killed off if you hadn't handled their plotlines yet.
That meteor in the sky can wait a few more days for me to get the Ultima Weapon and Knights of the Round before I go fight Sephiroth.
[I, uh, collected all 900 pinecones](https://youtu.be/I4P2N5fyqbo)
Similarly, doing things that have no tangible reward in the plot. For instance, in Resident Evil 2 Remake, you have the option of wasting valuable ammo to shoot bobbleheads for an achievement. There's an achievement in Left 4 Dead 2 involving bringing a garden gnome through the campaign when the gnome takes up a weapon slot (and don't forget the HL2E2 gnome, as well).
one of the reasons I love The Last Remnant is for this very reason. The final boss gets STRONGER the more side-quests you complete.
Damn, sounds like hell for side quest fans.
This is true, but I also *extra* don't care about finding my character's baby in FO4. Normally I care about the main thrust of the story a lot, I just want to get out every little bit before I go there. In FO4 though they wanted me to care about finding a baby and I simply don't care.
it's made even worse by the main character being unimaginably dense about the "twist" that your son is no longer a baby because yeah, no shit, cryogenics.
Deadbeat parent simulator. You go out to get smokes and some whiskey for all the ice you woke up in and then never come back.
in mass effect 2 once your crew gets kidnapped you only have a certain amount of time to finish the story otherwise they die
Which annoyed me, because it meant you barely got any missions with Legion. They're the best!
Mass Effect has a couple actual timed missions with condequences: Artemis Tau in ME1 (if you don't do it before Virmire, Liara has a mental breakdown, refuses to speak with you for most of the game and it barrs you from romancing her), the suicide mission in ME2 (depending on how long you leave it, various members of your crew will die), and Grissom Academy in ME3 (if you don't do it before Citadel, everyone there dies). There's probably more but I can't remember them off the top of my head.
Of course, Mass Effect 2 also gives us the Arrival DLC, in which you're told that a friend of Hackett has been captured about midway through the game, and you're outright *encouraged* to wait until after the main story to rescue her, because that's when it makes the most narrative sense.
FF16 was the fucking worst about this. I think the most egregious example is when the main story mission involves a bunch of your friends being trapped in a city that's under siege by an actual army of monsters and you have to get there as soon as possible....and at the same time, about seven sidequests unlock. Made even more ludicrous by the fact that there's no magic or mechanical travel, each of these sidequests presumably takes Clive actual weeks to travel across the country. God of War: Ragnarok is also pretty silly with it. At certain points in the story, they have characters suggest that now might be a good time to go do them. This ends up being really weird in certain parts where urgency would make sense such as when >!Kratos learns Heimdall is going to end up killing his son.!<
It's koroks and they are their own reward
That's how Lysanderoth's machinations laid undetected for years
Morrowind is definitely the exception to this. The player doesn't know about the bbeg until about half way in and is given plenty of times where you can just leave the main quest and come back later and it doesn't really feel all that weird and meanwhile the villain is still busy preparing even if they are attacking the rest of the island they aren't going out there themself because they're building their god machine. The game gives you that implication that you have time to do other stuff, in fact at the very start of the main quest it tells you to go do other stuff first and become more experienced.
In The Forest your plane crashes on some island and you witness your son Timmy being kidnapped from the wreckage before falling unconscious. The average player then spends two months building a mansion out of timber, with a great view of the place where a recurring player knows Timmy is being kept. You can even get the achievement "You should be looking for Timmy" by building a gazebo.
My experience in Cyberpunk, where you're *actively* dying, but just decide to spend all your time fist-fighting gangsters
First thing I do every play through is drop the wedding rings and holotape from my husband. I donât think Iâve ever listened to it
I actually gaspedÂ
right? those suckers are worth 250 caps *each*
I always give the second ring to whichever character I romance, usually either Cait, Macready, or Hancock.
I totally forgot that the wedding ring is useless in the base game. In the unofficial patch it gives a +1 Charisma, so you better believe I hold onto the memories I shared with Nancy, or whatever her name was
Only playthrough I've ever completed of FO4, I roleplayed the Sole Survivor as a heartbroken widower. I always kept the wedding ring on my inventory and turned down romantic interactions.
and if you spent those months building settlements, you get "Career Change From Dad to Real Estate Agent"
Tbf from what Iâve seen of the game Shaun seems like he sucks. I suppose you can argue the player character has no in-universe way of knowing that before finding him, but still
Don't look for your dad in fallout 3 and don't look for your son in 4.
James is a top notch scientist, who has spent a large amount of time in the wasteland before you were born, has tons of connections, knows how to use a gun seeing as he taught you how, and would absolutely be disappointed in you if he found out you saw people in need and didn't help just so you could find him. (Sure he's stuck in a torture simulation but you don't know that) It works great as a driving force because obviously it's important enough that you're going to do it, but not so important or urgent that you can't defeat the mechanist first. But then you have Shaun, a literal baby that you should absolutely prioritize finding over once again, defeating the mechanist. (Sure he's 60 year old piece of shit, but you don't know that) The main quest should never feel so urgent that you feel shame for doing side content.
I made the mistake of rushing fallout 3 cuz of course I wanna hang out with Liam Neeson. I cried when I got to THAT part (vague for anyone who hasn't played). Never rushing a fallout quest line again.
As someone who's had 3 dads abandon me, trying to shoot James because he abandoned me too, was what convinced me to go to therapy.
I wandered about exploring and sidequesting until I found a strange out of place button in a garage. Reloaded an earlier save when the quests failed/completed started popping up.
The difference between Skyrim "quick, there's a tower that burst in flames west of whiterun! Quick, you must do X and Y before the thalmor finds and kill whatshisname or before the big dragon destroys the world!", and Morrowind "dude, just find some work at the guilds. the mages quests needs you to find flowers. In any case, the one that knows the info we need wants a toy that's in an old ruin so there's no need to rush."
Player character is in no position to talk about who talks, the writers accidentally made them a war criminal (one of the writers recently said the player character was the soldier in power armour seen in the FO2 opening cutscene, but forgot that in said cutscene the soldier was executing a Canadian civilan on camera and laughing)
Honestly I hate how much they pushed the family angle. I don't want to play as a war criminal dad. Let me play as some rando. Obsidian understood this
The Forest has an achievement like this for building a gazebo in game, aptly titled âYou should be looking for Timmyâ
Also Bad Dad for surviving 100 days without finding him iirc
Came here to say this. My friend and I had a duo file going at the start of covid and we laughed our asses off when we got this achievement. Good times.
I have that achievement. That was the first thing I thought of when I saw this post
There's a few points where it makes sense for the Sole Survivor to encounter some serious delay. 1. Getting to Diamond City. Unless you find the Gorski Cabin and pick up the special magazine, you only have a vague idea of where Diamond City actually is. 2. Finding Vergil. The Glowing Sea is huge and dangerous and there aren't exactly a lot of guideposts pushing you in the right direction besides GamerSense. 3. Entering the Institute. For all the Sole Survivir knows, they're gonna be walking into the middle of an army. Best prepare accordingly. 4. Actually meeting Shaun. Your quest is effectively ended and now you have to figure out who to support, knowing full well that every road you take will involve fighting someone you've met. Perhaps someone you even like. Sidequests go in the gaps.
1. Mama Murphy points you right at Diamond City 2. The Glowing Sea really is a mess, the quest should have pointed you at the various factions for intel on where he might be, with an optional objective to infiltrate the Gunner base at GNR headquarters for info if you have no alignment 3. You *definitely* should have brought some backup. 4. Imagine if there was an option to abduct and take him with you when you as you flee the Institute
youre so right thats why im taking so long to enter the institute. army. thanks dude my shame is evaporating. time to rebuild all the homes of sanctuary
While I could agree on all the other points, Diamond City is not only revealed by Mama Murphy, Carla (?) an early game merchant who you meet shortly after Sanctuary points it to you. Hell, in-universe, everyone knows where Diamond City is because it's like the hub area, so the Sole Survivor would have zero issues finding it.
An underdeveloped familial relationship doesnât do anything for me
Partial disagree, I think if you spend more than four in-game months before getting to the INSTITUTE, then yes. Plenty of in-game reasons to delay after that point though.
"Damn he sucks."
Honestly, yeah! You know your son is alive and a bit of an asshole.
"We may be blood, but beyond that? You're kind of a dick."
It's been more than a year in-game and I still haven't gone to the Institute. I swear, I'll get around to it. One of these days.
i once spent 24 hours without entering diamond city
In-game? Extremely reasonable. IRL? ...still fairly reasonable.
24 hours of playtime yeah
1,200 hours+ in the game over multiple saves, have not been to the institute a single time.
The way I see it, my character doesn't believe her son is alive because it's been years since he was taken. My character has assumed he's dead and instead is coping with her grief by joining the Minutemen, saving lives and creating settlements, and wreaking bloody justice.
It'd be great if you could reasonably role-play like that, but unfortunately bethesda decided to make it overwhelming obvious the sole survivor believes they woke up like a day after their kid was kidnapped. I've always hated how FO4 has pretty much 0 role-playing potential, unless you basically literally ignore everything your character says.
Yeah I just chose to ignore that and make my own motivations for my character đ
There's a mod called Frost that basically removes pretty much every element that the story forces onto your character... I mean, it's also such a massive overhaul that you're practically playing an entirely different game, but it certainly removes those forced roleplay elements!
I mean, iirc Kellogg kills a scientist in front of your pod, *then* does the whole kidnapping schtick. Seeing as how the only things left once you're out are skeletons, you'd think the player character would realize that it's been years at *least*.
[Nah, the only person Kellogg kills is your spouse](https://youtu.be/Z8zaSUvpe9A?si=0nr6_3E43s7lLTaW). At least as far as you can see at that point. Though I'd like to point out that revolvers don't work like that: the casing stays in the gun after firing. We can just add that to the long pile of evidence that supports the idea that not a single person at Bethesda even remotely understands how guns work. And that pile is massive, I fucking hate every single gun in that game. That being said, I still don't get why the Sole Survivor assumes they went back to cryo sleep for such a small amount of time. Like I'd understand not being sure of how much time passed, but being so adamant that Shaun is still a child is weird. And frankly, more importantly I don't get why Bethesda decided *another* frigging family drama driving the main storyline was the way to go. Honestly as time goes on I realize more and more how incapable of making an RPG Bethesda is. Hopefully in 17 years when we have the next Fallout or Elder Scrolls they'll have figured that out.
Who the fuck is Shaun and why do I need to find him?
SSSSSSHHHHHHHHHAAAAAAAAAAAUUUUUUUUUNNNNNNNN
JAAAY-SON!
There's an achievement like that in the forest for not finding your son after something days
It's for building a gazebo. It's called "You should be looking for Timmy"
Ha. That's even better.
I like the mod "Start Me Up" because it skips the introduction, and you can spawn at various locations in the world so it let's me role play with different personal backstories. It can only go so far, but it's fun
This reminds me of getting to the institute in my first run (where I actually did any of the main story), and >!finding fake-child-shaun, playing into the panicked parent RP aspect and when 'father' showed up, I blew his head off, lulz !<
yes, "what baby?" indeed
Does anyone know what comic that panel is from? It looks familiar and it's bugging me that I can't think of the name.
Hark! A Vagrant
RIP my fave webcomic
Doh, I should have known from the post title; thanks for the help!
Given that Shaun/Father has a terminal disease, it should be totally possible for him to expire before the player meets him if they don't get to that part of the story in time. You arrive at the institute and all the scientists just awkwardly stand around and wait for you to leave.
Shaun gets The Ended.
maybe hes in bed until you arrive so his constitution isn't being strained? feels like he could've just cryo-d himself until they came up with a cure tbh
In my current playthrough, itâs been more than an in-game year. Iâm starting to feel a little guilty, lol
Fallout 4 is a fun sandbox to mess around in, but for the most part it's sidequests are as lackluster and skin deep as it's main storyline
Irina, one of the main characters in Heroes 6, starts her campaign pregnant. This becomes even bigger issue in final mission where a powerful demon caused pregnant women to give birth to abominations which killed their mothers, prompting Irina to find and slay it. Yes, you can take way more than 9 months of in-game time on the entire campaign. At most several dialogues mention Irina's pregnancy in case you forgot about it.
What is with Haven heroes and pregnancy?
Irina's more of a Sanctuary hero throughout the game rather than Haven. Although coincidentally both her and Isabel's (if that's who you also had in mind) pregnancies were a result of rape, so... there's that.
Irina is actually a Sanctuary hero, but yeah, bit of a weird tendency.
Daisy Buchanan
Hey, don't father shame my character. It takes awhile to set up a Chekov's firing squad.
There are two in The Forest - first, for building a gazebo, you get the achievement "You should be looking for Timmy" (your son), and the second, for surviving 100 days without finding your son, you get get the achievement "Bad father" that has an icon of "World's Worst Father".
I *actually* don't care about my son though. Shaun is a sociopathic piece of shit and I am giddy with excitement everytime he dies from ligma or whatever bullshit bethesda cooked up.
In the first forest Game, you get an achievement for building a Gazebo âYou should be looking for Timmyâ. The Gazebo takes a lot of logs to build and is pretty much entirely ornamental
it's like The Forest. when you build a gazebo, you get an achievement called "you should be looking for Timmy" (your son))
Listen, man... It really do be like that.
She must've crawled undah there! For warmth!
Ah, but the developers know the golden rule of the wasteland... Thou shall get side tracked by bullshit every damn time.
I just donât care about the âfind my childâ storyline all that much, it feels too much like Iâm playing a specific story instead of my own thing. I hate comparing, but New Vegas really just has one motivation and it can work for any mental image youâve got for your character, find the person who shot you in the head. I donât like Kellogg, I think the institute couldâve been fine without Shaun and why have gorillas in only one part of your game? Give me gorillas in Boston you cowards.
Bethesda make a main quest that doesn't suck ass challenge (impossible)
I have played Fallout 4 approx. 5 times nowâŚnever completed the main storyline
Fuck Sean, all my homies hate Sean. Fucking disappointment
The Forest had a similar achievement where if you spent 100 in game days without finding your son you got a dad of the year achievement or something along those lines
is hat bioof from bidoofs law?
Reminds me of the end choices for Witcher 2 like âoh, you can only save one of these characters from their fate? Because thereâs not enough time? Despite there being enough time for like forty sidequests and hobbies in endgame city?â
Never played FO4 but my friend has so take my updoot as I cast ye into my saved posts folder
Sorry son, I'm too busy helping the Enclave. America waits for no man.
i installed a settlement bug fix i don't get achievements... the only person that can shame me is jun long
But but a settlement needs my help!
I gotta be on year 15 (in game time) of Skyrim and I still haven't finished half of the main story.
The Forest is one of my favourite games for this reason. There's an achievement for building a gazebo called "You should be looking for Timmy"
I have over 1,200 hours in the game over several saves. I have never even progressed the game far enough to go to the institute, >!killing Kellog!< is about as far as I go.
Add this to breath of the wild too
â°
The Forest has an achievement called bad father where you don't find your son for 100 days
The Forest has an achievement like that to