What do you think about invulnerability tags on enemies?

[Clockwork Knight]

Doesn't he dominate you into doing stuff for him? I imagine that includes not killing him.

 

[Dionysus]

Doesn't he dominate you into doing stuff for him? I imagine that includes not killing him.

Then he decides not to do it at the end while you destroy his organization. Maybe he forgot. Maybe it magically doesn't work anymore even though you didn't invest a single point into willpower. Either way, it's awful railroading.

Fallout made sense. The devs assumed that you gave a shit about Vault 13 and there was no reason to kill the Overseer until he screwed you over at the end. I'm OK with the fact that the Overseer was practically invincible. Trying to kill him before the end of the game is really just fucking around. No reasonable character would do it. In Bloodlines, LaCroix has been screwing with you and threatening you for the entire game and you know it.

 

[DraQ]

Doesn't he dominate you into doing stuff for him?

Kinky.

 

[Clockwork Knight]

I don't think a reasonable character would try to kill the prince just because he's a cunt. He's probably strong enough to kill you alone, and he's the prince while you're a guy who became a vampire like 5 minutes ago

That'd be like going into the white house and punching the president on the face because he sent you to a war

Kinky.

boss I brought the gimp

 

[Sceptic]

I can stomach it as long as the devs are protecting plot-essential characters from the game rather than the player.

This makes me think of a good reason to make an NPC invulnerable: if you use a stupid system like "Radiant" AI and have your NPCs wander in the countryside and get randomly killed by mudcrabs. Ironically this is where Bethesda decided to NOT make the NPCs essential, so you could be heading somewhere and suddenly be told that you failed the quest.

 

[Clockwork Knight]

I remember unlocking the door to the skooma den (because two npcs are stuck outside), then following those two when it was time for them to go back to the imperial city, because I was curious about how they would fare in combat. I was around level 3, so there were only timber wolves and tiny black bears on the roads.

After a while, I got bored of their snailpace and went inside a cave nearby. After some hours, I go out and follow the road, only to find one of them dead like 50m away from the cave. BABYSITTAN GAEMS


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more on topic, yesterday I was playing Lionheart and tried to see what happens if you kill important people.

The game has a *gasp* Failed Quests tab, so whenever I killed a somewhat important guy I got a "you can't join this guild anymore or "Now shakespeare will never finish his play", etc.

Then I attacked DaVinci.

Turns out his teleporting powers aren't useful only for escaping; he just went "*sigh*" and sent me to the astral plane. I just had to kill a few githyanki goblins to escape, but it was p. cool.


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sorta related, 'tutorial invencibility". During the intro, assassins break into the prison and demand to know my location. The spirit tells me to "Escape. Now.". This being a rpg, I naturally ignore him and get on my ass to see what the skills do.

Then, after 2 minutes, an assassin finds my cell and kills me.

 

[Droog White Smile]

Do you have nothing better to do than play motherfuckin' Lionheart? FFS Jesus Christ.

BTW, I totally hated that you couldn't join the Anarchs in VtM:B, if you express your desire to join them, they just say something like "cool, but you're better off working for Lactroix and spying on him". Come to think of it, Bloodlines was a really linear game with lots of fake choices.

 

[Clockwork Knight]

*squints eyes to read teleprompter*

Says...the guy...who played...Falout 3 to death.

*canned laughter*

 

[Droog White Smile]

Yeah, I'm one of the hundreds of thousands of people who enjoyed Fallout 3.

Must be something hella wrong with me.

Also, you forgot to tell me how Arcanum is better than Fallout 3. I'd really like to hear that, because the quest design in Fallout 3 is clearly superior.

 

[Clockwork Knight]

Except I never played Arcanum past Tarant and am playing through Fallout 3 right now, cunt. Liking something doesn't mean I can't see it's several, massive flaws.

Having also played Oblivion, I think I got you topped on the banalshitboring department.

btw, what's wrong with Lionheart? I read that it gets shit after Barcelona, what happens? Grindan?

 

[Pliskin]

BTW, I totally hated that you couldn't join the Anarchs in VtM:B, if you express your desire to join them, they just say something like "cool, but you're better off working for Lactroix and spying on him". Come to think of it, Bloodlines was a really linear game with lots of fake choices.

Actually a valid point. The Anarchs were in sole control of LA until only recently, when LaCroix and the Camarilla moved in. It would make sense to set up the Anarchs as an alternative quest-giver to LaCroix. But then, that would involve a whole shit-load more coding, and given Troika's Oh-Shit-Hurry-Up-Release-Game ending, that obviously wasn't going to happen.

Games with decent story / plot tend to be linear, because the medium inherently needs to control the progress of the player to advance the story in a coherent manner. Sandbox games tend to have shitty-to-none story / plot, but the player is given the illusion of control --- even though there is rarely any consequences to actions taken. If all you want to do is run around and ass-rape NPC's, maybe you should be playing FPS.