I’m a casual gamer so perhaps this has been made hundreds of times and I just ignore it.
So let’s say you play your game, things don’t go well so you go back and reload a save. Now, with your current knowledge you can get things right and that’s usually how it goes with games.
Is there any game that takes this into the plot as something necessary by design (say for example, the main character is supposed to be clairvoyant or something)? You play, your character gets things wrong the first time, but now when you reload your character will obviously do everything right, almost as if they were clairvoyant/psychic/etc because that’s exactly what your character is. The only way to beat the game is to explore a variety of outcomes in order to gather information until you get it right, but instead of this being immersion breaking it’s actually supported by the plot itself.
Not sure if I’m making sense here or maybe I ate the wrong kind of cookies, you tell me…
This game has a game mechanic that is similar to what you describe: https://store.steampowered.com/app/311240/Zero_Escape_Zero_Time_Dilemma/
You are faced with lots of challenging and deadly traps/puzzle that almost always end with your death. But you can jump back to earlier times in the story and with your new knowledge you can make better choices.
Isn’t that just Undertale and Deltarune?
I don’t know, you tell me. Never played either
Yes.
Yep, narratively Undertale uses the exact concept you’re talking about.
It’s not much of a mechanic for most parts of the game though.
Yes, IIRC Undertale it will only taunt you a bit at first, you have to play almost to the end before you really notice. But then it masterfully beats you against the 4th wall, hard, several times. (Speaking about eating the wrong cookies, yes it does feel like that.)
And then, when you start a second play-through, the 4th wall stays broken. (Personally I didn’t care enough for the game for a second play-through, but if you read it up it’s a whole thing, the game will not simply reset.)
Thanks for providing some context! I’m definitely intrigued now, I’ll keep this one for my wishlist
This.
Most rougelites kind of do this.
For “big” FPS games Deathloop kind of does it. You and the main villain are aware of a reset that happens when you die or the two day timer runs out.
Every loop you gain more knowledge, and every miniboss gives more power.
But to actually beat the game, you need to do a bunch of tasks in the right order in the right timeslots.
I don’t think I ever finished it, but it was a fun concept
You should finish Deathloop. I have two major issues with it, and the first is that it’s too short. By the time you really get going you’re about done. My second issue is there’s only one correct solution. There’s a lot of alternative solutions that allow you to accomplish different goals, but, for completing the game, there’s only one path.
It’s sad that Arkane made Prey (which is one of the best games ever made) and then Deathloop (which is a very good concept, if flawed), and then we’re forced to make Redfall. I think they lost most of their talent over that, so I don’t suspect we’ll ever get anything like those again from that studio.
I would have never thought of a roguelike… Are we talking about stuff like shattered pixel dungeon? Hardly enough depth of plot and definitely a different run every time so repeating is nearly impossible.
As for Deathloop, that sounds really cool! That would fit the bill, cheers!
Hades is a great example of this. You start out as the son of Hades, lord of the underworld. You want to escape his realm, so you try to fight your way out. Along the way, you will die and fail, and you just get sent back down to your father’s house, and he gives you a bit of a hard time about how weak and ineffectual you are.
The plot unfolds as you interact with various gods and other figures in the underworld, over the course of your many attempts. Saving and reloading isn’t really a thing, as such, but the plot continues to unfold, even as you die over and over over and over.
Edit:
This is a great time for me to rave about how much I love the storytelling in Hades. In a book or in a totally linear game, the story looks like this:
You start at the beginning, you proceed directly to the end. You have no choices in how the plot progresses. This is fine in a book, and I’m sure there are some games where it works okay, too.
Most games with “choices” go like this:
You might make a few choices, but a lot of them either end in a false ending or take you right back to the ending that the writers planned all along. It can give the illusion of meaningful choice, but it can also start to feel hollow once you see where the railroad tracks are.
Hades works like this:
All of the characters in the game (and there are a lot of them) have their own linear plot that is unfolding as you play the game, and you are learning about any one of them at any given time. You don’t have many meaningful choices to make, but it still reads as a very compelling plot because all of your interactions deepen your relationship with each character in turn. It saves us all from the fake choices that a lot of games stick us with. It’s genius.
Okay, belated thanks for your artwork. You are a good visual communicator. I think I read your comment before you added the images. I’m intrigued now
In Fable 2 when you purchase shops that earn you money it accrues in real time. If I plugged in my 360 I’d probably have 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 gold or something now haha
It likely uses the Internal clock. Just set it to the year 3000 and retire.
There was an upper limit on how much you could earn like this. I know, because you could also just disconnect from the internet and set the clock forward.
Kind of a primitive example, but in the old text-adventure Planetfall you had a robot sidekick named Floyd who, when you saved the game would occasionally comment, “oh boy, are we going to do something dangerous now?”
Never heard of this one, but clearly a inspiration for Sierra’s Space Quest.
It did make me think of Planet’s Edge which was a fabolous space exploration/crew management/rpg.
Oh, Floyd. That’s a name I’ve not heard in a long time.
Inscryption
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1092790/Inscryption/
Don’t read into it too too much. It’s better experienced knowing as little as possible, but things are absolutely not as they seem
This one rings a bell… I can’t remember much but I’ve heard it’s a good game
Undertale.
The Demon/Dark Souls formula is essentially this. The idea that (depending on the game and boss) you actually canonically tried and failed countless times before finally winning. I want to say there is an indie game that is approaching that from the perspective of the boss (Many a True Nerd did a video on it. it looked “fine”).
Warframe has also played with this in a different way. The 1999 update is about a time loop where you get to know (and romance) the characters involved. And over KIM (like AIM but legally distinct!) they outright acknowledge that they don’t know how many loops have occurred but trust you about it and blah blah blah.
And Undertale/Deltarune and Doki Doki Literature Club (among many others) also play with this to some degree.
But ACTUALLY keeping track of when you reload a save? I am not aware of any. Mostly because it would make the mechanisms that save files work by MUCH more complicated.
No, I’m not saying keeping track of when you reload a save but simply have the NPCs and maybe even the main avatar acknowledge they know exactly what would happen if they did things differently, because they’ve already experienced it in another timeline.
You wouldn’t need to keep track of saves, just leave some dialogue lines that vaguely address this after the fact.
This gimmick instantly reminds me of The Stanley Parable. It isn’t really related to saving and loading but it does “reset” you all the time. I find it an absolute gem of a game.
Never heard of it… Will keep in mind!
Shadow of Mordor and it’s sequel, Shadow of War. The nemesis system makes death a part of the game, so a random orc that kills you gets a promotion.
Okay and then what happens with your character? Does it resurrect or you spawn a different one?
You ”resurrect” at a spawn tower I guess would be the best way to put it.
Tap for spoiler
the game has a hierarchy system where you go against different types of warlords, each with their own abilities and weaknesses, if you bring a warlord down to a certain health you can ”infect/command” them and utilize them to go into combat, breach castles or fight other warlords, gather enough warlords and you’ll see them roaming the map and help you if they see you in combat.
It’s quite a unique mechanic and I’m pretty sure Warner Bro’s copywriten/trademarked it or something along those lines.
This. It happens in the opening cut scene, so i don’t think I’m spoiling anything. You get inhabited by a elf ghost, and the mechanic is that when you die, you go to like a spirit realm, then come back, and time has passed.
Not an RPG, but the ancient civ-like Output would have a “news” article pop up whenever you loaded a save game. “Entire colony plunged back in time - scientists baffled” or something like that.
It’s been a long while but IIRC in one of the early Metal Gear Solid games there was a baddie who would threaten to (and could) corrupt your save file, completely breaking the fourth wall in the process.
Psycho Mantis! You had to switch your controller to the other port so he couldn’t read your mind! 😂
Psycho Mantis didn’t corrupt your save file, but he would read your memory card and reference other games you’d played. Given the creepy vibes of the scene to begin with, this freaked out many an unsuspecting player.
Closer to OP’s question, there was a villain in Metal Gear Solid 3 named The End, a sniper who was a very old man. If you saved your game during the fight and then waited over a week (in real-world time) before loading the save again, when you returned to the fight you’d find he’d died of old age while waiting for you to do anything.
Oh, yes, that was it! Good times!
What?! That’s awesome haha
Katana Zero does this. You have precognition and work out how to win an encounter before you actually do it. Later, it explores more interesting concepts like, “what if your opponent also has the same ability”. The story is really good, so i won’t go into it too much, but I highly recommend.
Nice, I haven’t heard about this one either. Thanks!
Note that it’s not an RPG, though.
There’s a game where the best way to experience it is to go blind and discover everything, I think you might enjoy it, it’s called Outer Wilds, and it’s one of the best games I’ve ever played.
Yes the best game I’ve ever played. I wish I could do back and play it again
Alright, exploring, I like that, I take there is something about it that relates to my original question as well, will keep in mind. Thanks for the suggestion!
Gonna second this, judging from your other comments, you will very much like this game (just don’t confuse it with Outer Worlds). Go in as blind as you can, but if you feel like you’re just not “getting” it and at risk of bouncing off, this video might help you: https://youtu.be/msABa06aiT0
It does, it’s not a very large spoiler, so if you want to I can let you know. But without spoiling anything, I can tell you it’s very close to what you’re describing.
I have tried over and over to get into this since everyone says that. I get bored or frustrated long before anything interesting happens and quit.
How do I push through to care enough to keep going?
Just do it, you just push through and the story will drag you kicking and screaming to the end.
The end scene has been my desktop background for years now
Learn patience? :p
Ain’t got time for that.
Try again in 10 years
Obvious spoilers for people who’re still playing, but: Push through what exactly? Have you gotten to the main game loop? Do you know what’s the mechanic I’m hinting at on my original answer? Does 22minutes mean anything to you?
I’m going to assume yes (if not, push through until this makes sense). Now you have a whole solar system to explore. One thing that I didn’t noticed at the beginning and made me frustrated, there’s a computer on your ship, you have log entries there, sometimes reading those logs might give you a push onto what to explore next. That being said, this game is all about exploration, every planet has interesting things to explore, I’m not going to spoil too much, but it’s all about exploring and figuring out stuff, if you’re getting bored you don’t know what to do, if you’re getting frustrated you might be trying to solve a problem without all of the puzzle pieces, go out, explotó other places and you might find something that helps you.
I get bored and annoyed long before the ship. I think I made it there once.
Then there’s nothing I can tell you. You haven’t even finished the game tutorial. I just found a video on YouTube of someone playing, the tutorial is around 20 minutes, after that you get into the game proper, once you get to the ship that’s when the game starts.
Sorry I replied earlier but to the wrong person.
I did want to thank you for the response. Yeah the tutorial drove me nuts wandering around and then tying to get where I needed to go, and finding the places on the map just bored me.
But I will save your response, and when I give it a go again if I need to go with the spoiler I will.
Thanks.
Man you really gotta get on the ship, once you’re on that the world is your oyster.
Except for the place with the fish don’t go there
This might not be quite what you’re looking for, since it’s an MMO, but there’s a lot of unique quest dialogue in Runescape for those who know what they need beforehand - whether because they’ve done it before or because they’re following a guide.
For example - Doric’s Quest - a simple early game quest where he asks for some items:
Player: You know, it’s funny you should require those exact things!
Doric: What do you mean?
Player: I can usually fit 28 things in my backpack and in a world full of quite literally limitless possibilities, a complete coincidence has occurred!
Doric: I don’t quite understand what you’re saying?
Player: Well, out of pure coincidence, despite definitely not knowing what you were about to request, I just so happened to have carried those exact items!
Doric: Oh my, that is a coincidence! Pass them here, please. I can spare you some coins for your trouble, and please use my anvils any time you want.
There’s even an extra line about having the exact quantities of the items if you aren’t carrying anything extra.
Lol good old RuneScape
