Jason Pargin posted a reel on Facebook in which he pointed out that an action scene that is not the climax of a story should always derail the hero's plan, and even the final action scene shouldn't go perfectly. As an example, take the opening of Star-Crossed. Gryphon has a plan - buy the SPARTAN laser, fly it back to Eight-Ball One, go on with his Exile life. Then he gets ambushed outside Omega, the hyperdrive gets damaged, and he crash-lands. I've reviewed the story in my memory, and as far as I can tell, every action scene derails his plans. He gets things, but they're never what he wants.

The problem is, this doesn't translate to games. Midnight Suns tries it constantly, while missing the point that the action sequence has to be won. Everything that goes against the player has to be driven from outside the action segments by an existing mechanic, not editorial declaration.

Peter Eng
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Insert humorous comment here.

I think my main complaint is that often losing in a cutscenes has three central common failures:
1) It makes the antagonist look stupid for not finishing you off when they have you at their mercy (barring the gambiting antagonists who are counting on the party being alive later to do something else for their master plan)
2) It makes the protagonists look like chumps only alive because of their opponent's stupidity or laziness, or constantly getting bailed out by someone else
3) It frustrates the player if they are actually good at the game mechanically if they trivially defeat the boss in the game but then lose in the cutscene

What really super sucks is that it's never 'you can just lose this battle because you lose it canonically anyway'.

It's always 'You need to absolutely crush the enemy, just slap them around and make them call you mommy. THEN you can get your shit pushed in in the cutscene because you didn't actually do any of the shit you just had to play through for the last forty five minutes and all of that was actually just padding to make this game longer so you won't/can't refund it.'

Losing in the cutscene when it is directly connected to an ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY victory is absolutely intolerable, and any writer who says it has to be done doesn't know how to write interactive media and I might even argue doesn't know what actual interactive media is.

>3) It frustrates the player if they are actually good at the game
>mechanically if they trivially defeat the boss in the game but then
>lose in the cutscene

Oh I hate this one the most. Especially when Fate/Grand Order pulls it, because they have two demonstrated "can't win" scenarios they could use to show that you're outmatched but sometimes they just put out a relatively generic battle that you can utterly crush and then play the "just kidding, you lose" card afterward.

F/GO has an annoying corollary to this: when the solution to the "impossible" enemy isn't rooted in the game's mechanics but Insane Troll Logic, something like if you have to kill Achilles, your answer isn't a really good archer, but in fact a cobbler to analyze his shoes so you can shoot through them. Or just cue up Hercules and beat his face off (this is generally good advice for F/GO no matter the situation).

For all that I complain, I don't actually *hate* F/GO, I just don't think I'd recommend it for someone looking for a gacha game, unless they really like the Fate world or like the "small girl who is also a planet-buster" trope.

"This is probably a stupid question, but . . ."

>>3) It frustrates the player if they are actually good at the game
>>mechanically if they trivially defeat the boss in the game but then
>>lose in the cutscene
>
>Oh I hate this one the most. Especially when Fate/Grand Order pulls
>it, because they have two demonstrated "can't win" scenarios
>they could use to show that you're outmatched but sometimes they just
>put out a relatively generic battle that you can utterly crush and
>then play the "just kidding, you lose" card afterward.

As someone who also hates this mechanic with every fiber of his being (it drove me crazy in Marvel Midnight Suns), I'd just like to note a sort of corollary to this. I've played a few games in which they let you get into a battle you have to lose and then forces you to lose during the fight. The one I can think of specifically at the moment is your first encounter with the Big Bad in Skies of Arcadia, but there are many others, particularly in JRPGs. That version annoys me, sometimes intensely, but I think it's at least more narratively acceptable.

(Pretty sure that's the kind of thing you're talking about, but I haven't played FGO so I don't know for sure that it matches.)

--G.
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Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
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Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

Yep, that's what I was thinking of. FGO either does the "you lose, but that's what we wanted, story continues", or "there's so much HP you can't possibly win, so hold out till they use their ultimate move, then story continues".

"This is probably a stupid question, but . . ."

>I've played a few games in
>which they let you get into a battle you have to lose and then
>forces you to lose during the fight. T
>

I can't name any like that, mostly because I quit the games with extreme prejudice.

If I'm expected to lose in the fight, I'd rather have a change of objectives. The battle should start with "Win This Fight," then the developers can cutscene in some change of conditions, and have my allies say, "Oh, crap, we can't win, call in our evac, we'll just have to survive until they get here." Then the objective becomes, "Survive Ten Turns and Board The Evac Unit."

That way, I technically lose, but I get the objectives, so I feel like I've won as much as can be allowed. Objectively, it's still a cheap way to program it, but emotionally, it's the better result.

Peter Eng
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Insert humorous comment here.

> I can't name any like that, mostly because I quit the games
> with extreme prejudice.

Most of the games I've played that do this "You win but actually when the cutscene starts you've just gotten your ass kicked" thing, if you lose in the gameplay section, you get a game over. Those suck.

It's not even that hard to structure the cutscenes and writing so that it accounts for both possibilities, it's just laziness, not caring, or programming limitations (Which I'd say in most cases also counts for laziness or not caring).

I found Flash Storm (the Ghost Bear DLC for Mechwarrior 5 Clans) frustrating because of the final event.

Narratively, it works.

The problem is, the forces shown are not enough to overwhelm the endgame forces. It's small enough that in some cases players may have beaten such units.

I believe they should have allowed it to be a last stand, escalating until you lose, no matter how ridiculous it is. That would be something people would be competitive about.

Not a cutscene that says 80% of the force died in a holding action without showing overwhelming numbers.

OBJECTIVE: SURVIVE

Sure it steals from another game, but come on.

Maybe they wanted to leave room to use the character(s) usable later, which is why they said 80% instead of a complete rout?

To be more clear:

There are five playable characters in the game. Before the final mission, the older four send the fifth away before making a final stand. So there's a clear canon of which member survives.

Now there could be a case of not wanting to run a mission for four when there could be five players running multiplayer, but other DLC (Solaris Showdown for Mechwarrior 5: Mercs) have had individual missions for 1 player even in multiplayer, so I don't think it's that.