7 ms·

I think that was fairly common with sierra games, happened a lot less with Lucas ones.

stavros 2y ago
That seems like a horrible design choice, though. It just randomly and gratuitously punishes the player for something they couldn't even have foreseen.
- ethbr1 2y ago
  It was (for modern games), and it wasn't (for games of the time). Given media storage capacity and computational limits, a lack of internet, and the scheduling dictates of boxed software... I remember playing games much longer, before the next one was available. Consequently, design choices that seem sadistic now were part of the replayability. In the same way that shmups, bullet hell, and insane platformers (and more recently *Souls) all have their own fanbases.
  - stavros 2y ago
    It's not the same. I still remember playing Grim Fandango all the way to one scene before the end, getting hit by a bug that meant I couldn't trigger the final scene, thinking "fuck this" and quitting. I never did finish the game, even though it was the only game I'd have in a few months. Injustice is injustice, and players resent it.
    - ethbr1 2y ago
      It's worth distinguishing bugs from intentional design. The latter at least had a different flavor of "Well, I shouldn't have done that." Even if unknowable at the time of choice. Itself probably a legacy of sadistic DnD DMing, where players survived despite the odds. Though I too remember quite a few games having out-and-out bugs that locked their primitive progression state machines.
      - stavros 2y ago
        Did Sierra games explain their reasoning? Was it "well, you didn't give me information when we first met two years ago, so I won't tell you who my boss is now", or was it indistinguishable from a bug?
        ethbr1 2y ago
        From memory, and it's been a few years, Sierra games had both bugs and severe plot-related consequences. Usually of the "This thing happened because you did / didn't do that thing" format. E.g. the infamous bomb detonating your police car, if you didn't first walk around it to complete an inspection (something no one would have thought of the first time) or the myriad of ways to arbitrarily die in Kings Quest by walking onto the wrong screen If you played Sierra adventure games... that was just part of the schtick tho.
  - sillywalk 2y ago
    > Given media storage capacity I wonder what percentage of that was given to death scenes in Sierra games? In e.g. Space Quest 3, there were a lot of gruesome, unexpected ways to die.
    - ethbr1 2y ago
      I meant it from the perspective that games had to be made longer (in terms of playthrough) without using more bytes. And killing the player and making them replay the game adds a LOT of playtime. Also, and probably more importantly, I feel like gamers' attention spans and tolerance for bullshit was higher. We mostly played games because we were bored. If not {game}, then what? We didn't have access to the everything, whenever, wherever post-mobile-internet, on-demand world. The web was slow, static, and sucked for ~1980-2005. (Flash was a poor substitute for real games) That's a fascinating question though... how much disk space did death scenes take up?! I know in Another World it's non-negligible. :D
xirdstl 2y ago
Could almost call it a staple of Sierra games.
tiltowait 2y ago
While frustrating, obtuse, absurd, and a plethora of other adjectives aside, those (early, at least) Sierra games had the benefit of being pretty short. If you screwed yourself because you walked over the bridge one time extra in King’s Quest 2, a restart only cost you somewhere in the neighborhood of half an hour. (I’m not sure about later games, though. Maybe they were worse?)
glimshe 2y ago
It didn't happen at all after the first couple Lucas Arts game. The made it impossible to get stuck as a design principle.
selcuka 2y ago
There was even a gag about it in the Curse of Monkey Island (Lucas) where your character (Guybrush) seemingly dies and credits start to roll, but the narrator recognises that it is not a Sierra game, credits start rolling backwards and the game resumes.

That seems like a horrible design choice, though. It just randomly and gratuitously punishes the player for something they couldn't even have foreseen.

ethbr1 2y ago
It was (for modern games), and it wasn't (for games of the time). Given media storage capacity and computational limits, a lack of internet, and the scheduling dictates of boxed software... I remember playing games much longer, before the next one was available. Consequently, design choices that seem sadistic now were part of the replayability. In the same way that shmups, bullet hell, and insane platformers (and more recently *Souls) all have their own fanbases.
- stavros 2y ago
  It's not the same. I still remember playing Grim Fandango all the way to one scene before the end, getting hit by a bug that meant I couldn't trigger the final scene, thinking "fuck this" and quitting. I never did finish the game, even though it was the only game I'd have in a few months. Injustice is injustice, and players resent it.
  - ethbr1 2y ago
    It's worth distinguishing bugs from intentional design. The latter at least had a different flavor of "Well, I shouldn't have done that." Even if unknowable at the time of choice. Itself probably a legacy of sadistic DnD DMing, where players survived despite the odds. Though I too remember quite a few games having out-and-out bugs that locked their primitive progression state machines.
    - stavros 2y ago
      Did Sierra games explain their reasoning? Was it "well, you didn't give me information when we first met two years ago, so I won't tell you who my boss is now", or was it indistinguishable from a bug?
      - ethbr1 2y ago
        From memory, and it's been a few years, Sierra games had both bugs and severe plot-related consequences. Usually of the "This thing happened because you did / didn't do that thing" format. E.g. the infamous bomb detonating your police car, if you didn't first walk around it to complete an inspection (something no one would have thought of the first time) or the myriad of ways to arbitrarily die in Kings Quest by walking onto the wrong screen If you played Sierra adventure games... that was just part of the schtick tho.
- sillywalk 2y ago
  > Given media storage capacity I wonder what percentage of that was given to death scenes in Sierra games? In e.g. Space Quest 3, there were a lot of gruesome, unexpected ways to die.
  - ethbr1 2y ago
    I meant it from the perspective that games had to be made longer (in terms of playthrough) without using more bytes. And killing the player and making them replay the game adds a LOT of playtime. Also, and probably more importantly, I feel like gamers' attention spans and tolerance for bullshit was higher. We mostly played games because we were bored. If not {game}, then what? We didn't have access to the everything, whenever, wherever post-mobile-internet, on-demand world. The web was slow, static, and sucked for ~1980-2005. (Flash was a poor substitute for real games) That's a fascinating question though... how much disk space did death scenes take up?! I know in Another World it's non-negligible. :D

xirdstl 2y ago

Could almost call it a staple of Sierra games.

tiltowait 2y ago

While frustrating, obtuse, absurd, and a plethora of other adjectives aside, those (early, at least) Sierra games had the benefit of being pretty short. If you screwed yourself because you walked over the bridge one time extra in King’s Quest 2, a restart only cost you somewhere in the neighborhood of half an hour. (I’m not sure about later games, though. Maybe they were worse?)

glimshe 2y ago

It didn't happen at all after the first couple Lucas Arts game. The made it impossible to get stuck as a design principle.

selcuka 2y ago

There was even a gag about it in the Curse of Monkey Island (Lucas) where your character (Guybrush) seemingly dies and credits start to roll, but the narrator recognises that it is not a Sierra game, credits start rolling backwards and the game resumes.