Unrealistic story-driven mechanics (Topic)

We recently wrote about dissonances in games that arise when you perceive a plot. There we remembered that quite often we have to put up with the game conventions when the game asks us to close our eyes to some things. For example, when in Far Cry you are impaled with lead, and your hero sets his broken finger - and you are healthy. But sometimes developers find ways to make good sense of this.

On Quora, users just raised the topic of gaming conventions and remembered how some developers explain unrealistic game mechanics. We selected and translated from the discussion all the most interesting, and also remembered good examples of how unrealistic game mechanics are explained by the plot.

Rationale for death for the player

For us, the death mechanic is an integral part of any game. It is hard to imagine a project in which after death you will not come back to life from the last save. And this is very logical. If the game gave us only one life to play through, it would be some kind of dystopia. Despite the fact that this is almost the most important mechanic, it is very unrealistic. 90% of developers do not even think to explain the reason why we were able to resurrect and fight again, but some decided.

Quora user Stephanie Smith remembered the explanation for death in Final Fantasy XIV. In the game, the main character has the "Echo" ability, which helps to look into other realities. Every time you die, it doesn't really happen. Before dying, the hero seems to see how he in another reality made a wrong action due to which he died, and returning to his reality, he can avoid this mistake.

One of the users remembers how the authors of the Rogue Legacy "roguelike" got out, where after each death the adventure is continued not by your character, but by his son or daughter. He / she inherits money from the deceased relative, as well as part of the equipment.

Ubisoft managed to explain death much more logically and easier in two of its games. The first part of the Prince of Persia series allows us to cheat death in principle. The prince wields a dagger, thanks to which he can turn back time, which he successfully does and does on the verge of death, saving his life. However, the beauty is different. According to the plot, the entire gameplay is the story of our GG story to Princess Fare. And if we do die, then this is attributed to the fact that the Prince made a reservation. After each death, we hear him in the background say: "Wait, everything was wrong, let me start over" or "Sorry, I made a little slip."

But more ingeniously, the French justified death in Assassin's Creed. We, playing for Desmond, lie in the animus and view the memories of his ancestors. And for the memories to be clear, we must synchronize our actions, movements and deeds with what the ancestor did. When we die, this is not death, but desynchronization. After all, our ancestor did not die at that moment, we made a mistake and start from the moment where the synchronization was maximum (that is, from the checkpoint).

By the way, the animus automatically translates conversations from the past into the language of the person who is in it. This explains why everyone speaks English.

Strange boost

Do you have any questions about how it is explained that you are pumping this or that skill, and your hero can instantly start using it? Here's a user Michael Dvorok appeared, and he remembered pumping in Deus Ex: Human Revolution.

He says that in many RPGs, pumping is very unrealistic, for example, your armor was noisy, and after a second you pumped and as if on the silk of a switch they stopped doing it. In Deus Ex it is. The hero already has all the ability switches. All improvements are built into it, however, they cannot be applied immediately, since the character's body will not withstand. He has to turn them on one by one and wait out the moments of adaptation of the body to his new skills.

Another of the strange pumping mechanics is the fact that in many RPGs, item prices rise with your level. As the user Harmony Wood says on Quora, the logic was given in Xenoblade Chronicles X. The game has very developed corporations that track the skills, requests of characters and create more advanced weapons and equipment for them. Accordingly, the price for them becomes higher.

Infinite inventory

Someone simply does not bother to explain why your hero can carry a maximum weight of 250 units, but at the same time carry vases the size of your body, at least a bunch of weapons, armor and artifacts that well cannot fit into your pockets, do not exceed the main limit. Someone, like Capcom in their Resident Evil, simply limits the inventory to make it look as compact as possible, but it is still not clear how the weapon emerges from thin air when replaced. Star Trek: Voyager - Elite Force, recalls developer Ben Sinclair, is an example of how such a convention was sensibly explained. Our character carries a teleporter with him, which allows him to take items stored in his personal warehouse and use.

Death and MMOs

If we talked about death in single games and found out that it is possible to justify respawn, then with MMO it is becoming more and more difficult. The action takes place in real time. There are always a lot of players with you who will not load until the moment you were alive. And to do this in such games is impossible. The player is simply resurrected in real time. EVE Online explains everything. According to its plot, the so-called capsuleers are on the spaceships - clones placed in capsules and controlling the ships.

If the ship is destroyed, we gain control over the capsule, and if they destroy it, then this is not scary, because in a matter of seconds the capsuleer's consciousness is read out and sent to another clone, which is located on the space station. These clones are full copies of the original and even more - they remember their death.

Lots of bullets and zero holes

If we talk about treatment, this is also a convention. It is hard to believe that after 10 bullets or several powerful blows with a sword, the hero is safe and sound, and the box with a cross will completely heal him. And how to be here? As the programmer Vladislav Zorov recalled on the same Quora, the creators of Uncharted solved this. Not so long ago, they said that Nathan Drake was always one-shot, and what we thought was a hit was a waste of "luck." That is, our hero is lucky, but he loses it, and each next bullet whistling near our ear may be the last.

This is what we and a Quora user remembered from unrealistic game mechanics. Write in the comments what similar mechanics you remember.

The Topic of Article: Unrealistic story-driven mechanics.
Author: Jake Pinkman