The RPG Sanctum - #10: Game Over

[Rosestorm]

Are game-overs still a good idea, or should games do something more creative than a simple boot back to the title screen? Our panelists will kill their characters to build their opinions on the almighty game over screen.

Listen: http://www.rpgamer.com/rpgsanctum/sanctum10.mp3
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itunes: http://itunes.apple.com/podcast/the-...um/id416583261

Be sure to leave any feedback for us on this thread and leave some reviews on itunes. The next show topic is our pre-E3 show? If you want to submit content, e-mail me a mp3 file to rosestorm90@gmail.com, if you need instructions on how to make one e-mail me and I will be more than willing to help. If you have any ideas for future shows topics or formats ideas feel free to post them here or e-mail me.

Let me know what you guys think of the remixed opening and closing music for this episode, our music person Garret Lindquist is working composing a completely original opening for the Sanctum.

[GaijinMonogatari]

I wish my computer could play these right without massive lag... -_- I'll listen when I have free time on another computer this Saturday.

One of my favorite Game Over situations in a game would have to be FFL2/SaGa 2, where Odin gives you the option of retrying any battle right up to the point where you have to fight Odin himself as part of the game's story. After that, no freebies at all.

[Retrovertigo]

Not had a chance to listen to the podcast yet - but of current games in general, I think the Lego games handle it best. You never die as such, you just lose your little peg things that you collect.

Maybe RPG's need to start just taking away exp and cash. Make cash harder to gather in-game and give it more importance (make armour and weapons actually be a significant investment. Make the player have to think hard about what they want/need to buy). Then when you "die", you lose some money and so need to grind a little (would probably be better to not die as such, just show that you lost a particular battle and just carry on your journey - has any RPG had you losing fights but be able to carry on as normal with any kind of punishment?). After all, everyone single person just jumps right back into a game after a game over screen, and in an RPG taking you out of the game to a game over screen takes you our of the experience and spoils the flow of the story.

[Spartakus]

I don't mind game over but then you should be able to get right back in where you failed without having to go through the company logos and menu screen each time. I really hate it when the game just resets and you have to watch a lot of pointless screens before you get to the point where you can actually load your game.

I liked how they did it in Final Fantasy XIII, where you're just thrown back in right before where you messed up, regardless of save points. This way you're spared the chore of repeating all the stuff you did prior to the lethal encounter, which is one of the main reasons why I stop playing some games. If you know you can right back in it you are more willing to take risks and the devs don't have to hold back on the challenge, making the whole experience a lot more intense.

[Glowing Hyren]

Haven't had a chance to listen yet, but I liked how they handled game overs in Radiant Historia; where you're transported back to Historia and the guide guys tell you to man up and then just send you back to the beginning of the chapter.

[EmeraldSuzaku]

Not had a chance to listen to the podcast yet - but of current games in general, I think the Lego games handle it best. You never die as such, you just lose your little peg things that you collect.

Maybe RPG's need to start just taking away exp and cash. Make cash harder to gather in-game and give it more importance (make armour and weapons actually be a significant investment. Make the player have to think hard about what they want/need to buy). Then when you "die", you lose some money and so need to grind a little (would probably be better to not die as such, just show that you lost a particular battle and just carry on your journey - has any RPG had you losing fights but be able to carry on as normal with any kind of punishment?). After all, everyone single person just jumps right back into a game after a game over screen, and in an RPG taking you out of the game to a game over screen takes you our of the experience and spoils the flow of the story.

That's how classic Dragon Quest did it. Lose half your gold that you didn't have in the bank, and you revive at the castle.

[silktail]

I have played few Dragon Quest games, but it also seemed that they weren't actually very grindy games. But just had good options for grinding if you did feel like it. E.g. Hunt a few Metal slimes, instead of beating easy monsters for hours.

Subsequently I tended to reload if I did die, because I was always felt short on money while having sufficient levels (although I was usually under leveled).


As for save anywhere, I feel that they probably have to make the game artificially harder just to counteract the ease it creates.
I think I would prefer a system that lets you make permanent saves at a safe haven and temporary quick-save anywhere you like, including mid-battle. (Basically a Pause screen which lets you turn off the game.)

I wish my computer could play these right without massive lag... -_-

Are you playing it on your web browser? I always download the MP3 file in the background and play it later.

Maybe RPG's need to start just taking away exp and cash. Make cash harder to gather in-game and give it more importance (make armour and weapons actually be a significant investment.

You were making me think of MMORPGs
Actually I surprised they didn't cover them as generally the game isn't over when you die, so they have to handle it differently.


I guess something like the Zelda series could work as well. I.e. you start back at the start of the area, with low health. But had opened up shortcuts to get back to where you died quickly.

I don't mind game over but then you should be able to get right back in where you failed without having to go through the company logos and menu screen each time.

Yeah, it's better when the Game Over screen has an option to reload, or to restart the battle. Or even to restart the battle on easy mode (for those with adjustable difficulty).

[EmperorZorn]

The Witcher 2 has an interesting option, a hardcore mode.

If you select the highest difficulty and your character dies at some point in the game, its permanently GAME OVER.
You have to start the whole game from the beginning again.
In my opinion this ultra-realism goes a bit too far, but I see how interesting the challenge can be.

I believe this mode was already present in some early Diablo game.

[Ocelot]

The Witcher 2 is a pretty difficult game to begin with, and combat can be quite deadly on higher difficulty modes (hell, it's pretty easy to die even on easy and normal if you make a boo-boo). I'd love to hear from somebody who actually tried the hardcore mode, and how far they were able to get.

[galendo]

Okay, since no one seems to have done it yet, I'll try to explain how Breath of Fire: Dragon Quarter dealt with saves.

The game tried to encourage the player to start over. Or perhaps it just expected the player to need to start over, I'm not sure. Regardless, it gave the player a sort of New Game+ style bonus for starting over, but you didn't have to beat the game first. (It wasn't done very well, either way. I never started over my first time through, save once right at the beginning, so I could see the cut scenes that weren't available during the first playthrough.)

Restart bonuses included: extra cut scenes, a limited amount of bonus experience (not really enough to matter, but enough for you to plow through some early enemies with ease), and, most importantly, whatever weapons and items you had equipped or stored in the storage locker (although space was quite limited).

Why would you want to start over? Well, to begin with, the amount of experience/gold obtained in a single playthrough is finite (at least, without spamming restore tricks taking advantage of the game's save system; I'm assuming a first-time player wouldn't figure this out on his own). Once an enemy is killed, it's dead for good. And some of the later bosses are really hard. As in, you-can't-damage-me hard (without reverting to a dragon transformation, that is. I'll get to that momentarily). And the number of hard saves (as opposed to quicksaves, which are infinite) is limited by how many save tokens you had at the moment, which was not always nonzero. Long story short, sometimes you couldn't proceed, so you had to New Game+.

Now you might think, given what I said you got to take with you when you restarted in this fashion (your equipment, a small bit of experience, a few items), that you'd replay the game, get to the same boss with exactly the same equipment and a very similar level, and be just as stuck. And you'd be right, except for one thing: the dragon transformation. This is a Breath of Fire game, so of course Ryu gets to transform into a dragon. After a plot point, Ryu gains the ability to transform into an exceedingly powerful dragon/human hybrid. At the same time, he also gets a percent gauge which is strictly non-decreasing. Every dragon ability has a percent cost: 1 percent to transform, 1 percent for each turn he remains in dragon form, 1 percent for a basic attack, 3 percent for a strong attack, etc. If the percent gauge ever reaches 100%, it's game over, period, no exceptions.

Now when I said this dragon form was powerful, I wasn't kidding. Remember that oh-so-tough boss I mentioned earlier? The one that you couldn't even damage, at least not significantly? In dragon form, you can annihilate him. For about 10% off of your gauge, Ryu can single-handedly curb stomp any boss in the main game (often, it won't even take 10%). So after restarting, when you get to that boss again, you won't have needed to use the dragon form as much on previous bosses (because you'll have better equipment this time around for that point in the game), so you'll still have 10% or more remaining, so you'll be able to beat this previously impossible boss and move on.

So if you were stuck, you could always restart and get unstuck. The other ways this game handled game overs were much less innovative: you had the option of starting back where you had last hard saved, but you lost all your perishable items (i.e., everything but your equipment). I think maybe you got to keep the money and experience you had earned, but it didn't really matter. Healing items are so vital in this game that stockpiling them was mandatory and losing them was nothing more than a delayed death-sentence. So basically, a game over in this sense gave you the choice-that-wasn't-a-choice losing your recently acquired experience and gold, or losing your items. Unless you were going to restart the entire game soon, losing your perishable items wasn't usually a valid option, so in practice you lost your progress since your last hard save instead.

Hope that helps clarify how game overs worked in this game. You could start from you last save point, losing your progress but keeping your perishable items. You could start from your last save point, losing your items but keeping (at least some of) your progress. Or you could start over, losing your items and your progress through the game, but keeping your equipment, a few key items of your choice, and reset your dragon percentage back to 0%.

Let me know if anyone wants clarification. I like this game, despite its bad graphics, story, and characters (okay, I just like the battle system. Sue me), so I don't mind talking about it.

[DarkRPGMaster]

That's one of the reasons why Dragon Quarter is one of my favorite Breath of Fire games, and almost tops BoF3 as my favorite. I just wish the game had been longer, or we had got some backstory. If they make another BoF game (I really hope so) they should probably use the battle system again, but mix it up a bit (like maybe enemies doing more damage to Ryu depending on whether he's dragon or not).

[watcher]

Another thing you got on the DQ restarts was all the skills/spells that you had learned, which is huge.

[Zeboyd Games]

Best thing about the BoF: DQ restart system was that it was completely unnecessary if you knew what you were doing. A couple years ago, I started a new game completely from scratch (nothing carried over) and I was able to beat the game without restarting once because I knew how to deal with the various enemies and I did my best to group enemies together for greater XP.

[Just Doug]

I listened to this a little late (after #11 came out), but I totally relate to the whole far-and-few saves curbing risk-tasking idea. I'm a very cautious (and often thorough) player, since I don't want to, gee whiz, lose a fight and have to start over from last save point, losing however much progress (and subsequently worry about finding all the goodies I found the first time through). And that caution or dare I say timidity is certainly reinforced when game-overs are an all-or-nothing, go back to your last hard save deal.

FFXIII was actually refreshing in the sense that if I wanted to try something wild, or if I just wanted to see if I could actually defeat something, my only punishment was the time I wasted on the actual battle. I could take risks because they cost me next to nothing. I rather liked it. Of course, I eventually used that mechanic just to see how badly I'd get curb-stomped by the first Adamantoise I saw in the game. And I literally did get stomped!