I was playing For Honor when I got a silly helmet for my Gladiator, it made him look like a fish so I ran around screaming "I AM FISHMAN! FEAR MY POWER!". I was basically a fish super hero. I named all my moves something dumb like "Strike of a Thousand Piranhas" or "Salmon Slam". About halfway through my 3rd match as Fish Man, I kept getting killed by a Shinobi, and from that match forward, that Shinobi was my arch-nemesis "Fisher's Hook" and I wouldn't stop playing until I bested him. Finally after like 6 or 7 matches I managed to kill him multiple times without dying once to him, it was a great feeling of relief and victory.
The thing about permanant death in games is that in can indeed break immersion. Not just because the players gets frustrated about having to restart, but also because when a game is too hard, players stop immersing themselves so that they can get the best loot.
It depends on how much flexibility it gives you in developing your character's abilities. In a roguelike like Stone Soup the longer my character survives the more unique their skillset becomes and the more I become attached to them. By the time I'm down to the vaults I have some kind of glaive-wielding vampire enchantress and like hell am I going to let her die by taking dumb risks.
Yes, I hate permanent death in games, it ruins the whole thing, on Steam, I have Magicite, and it's super fun! but they ruined it with permanent death...
Actually it's quite the opposite, permanent death makes each play-through almost like a self-contained story with a clear beginning and an end, i made countless stories for my XCOM soldiers and their heroic deeds and deaths, same with Darkest Dungeon, Don't Starve also makes each play-though feel like a personal struggle to survive unimaginable odds, it feels like a genuine role-playing experience, every action i made the character do i would have done myself if i was in the same situation because the stakes feel very real and tangible.
TheHunterWolf Well, a lt of games depend of skillset on permanent death, and some people tolerate more grinding than others, some people find it relaxing mainwhile others find it frustating.
I remember playing League of Legends and everyone in my game got really into character. After about an hour of playing the game and both teams banter back and forth as we thought the champions would, someone on the enemy team pitched an idea. Since we were all full build and max level, the enemy Lissandra suggested we should implement a perma-death style method of game play. Since we were at pretty much a standstill with both teams repelling each other easily at each push, it seemed like the only way to make them game end. If a player died, they sat at fountain and did nothing but offer banter the rest of the match. If a team lost all of it's players, they would agree to surrender. This added so much tension to the game. Every brush became deadly, every space in the fog of war terrifying, knowing death was one five man death bush away. After about five minutes we were down to three players on my team while the enemy still had their full roster. I was one of the last surviving players on my team and I knew that the next fight would come down to mechanical skill alone to determine the winner. So I got my remaining teammates to hop in a Skype call with me so we would be able to effectively communicate the next fight. When it finally came time, we led one last push Zulu style with our Poppy charging at the enemy straight down the mid lane as they pushed, and our Brand and myself (Ashe with Guinsoo's and a Ruunans~) flanking from either side of the river. I was the first to die off but I managed to take two of the enemy with me and burn Lissandra's ultimate so the rest of my team wouldn't have to worry about it. Once Brand got a good Pillar of Flame off the enemy minion wave was decimated and he got one good ult to kill the rest of the team while Poppy did her best to peel for him. The enemy team surrendered and I've been great friends with the lot of them since. It's surprising how much fun one can have roleplaying in a MOBA when all ten players are having a good day and feel like having a bit of friendly RP, and how tense the game can become.
+Dylan Stearns I've never played LoL, but I play a lot of Smite and I agree, roleplaying in a MOBA can be so much fun. Since all the heroes in Smite are gods and other mythological characters it's a lot of fun roleplaying them. You can adopt the personality of your character and have fun with the relationships between the characters. For example, if you play as Thor and Odin is on your team as well, you can roleplay and call him "father" while he calls you "son". It can be a lot of fun when you get a whole family of gods on the same team.
Not having your choices labeled as "good and bad" or "blue and red" or "paragon and renegade" really helps the immersion. Most people would probably project themselves as the good/blue/paragon character. Just look at the statistics for inFamous 2, for example. This leaning toward good really break the immersion, because you are constantly looking for a way to get that "good ending".
It also makes people only play the bad path because they want to get the mileage off the game, thus the game misses any sense of nuance to the decisions.
The way that the KotoR games did it, through not letting you know which choices you'd made until after the conversation was over, was great for me. It led you to actually think through what each choice meant, and the companion influence could only be changed through these dialogue options. This meant you had to juggle keeping them liking you while staying true to the path you want, while never being told which options did which. You could argue this broke immersion by 'gaming' the sequences but for me it gave weight to each response, and made the characters seem more real and genuine. They didn't just fall in love with you cause you gave them a hand mirror once.
I never minded the quick-time action buttons for renegade and paragon in Mass Effect. Totally fine with me. I just wish that it wasn't paragon answer is upper right and renegade answer is lower right. I want to pick what I want to say, and let the game tell me later if it was renegade/paragon. Sometimes, I was so mad at the characters that I wanted to say the renegade thing, but the lower right knowledge discouraged me.
I played a game of Civ 5 a while back where I fairly early on used two catapults to take over Babylon. One survived, was upgraded to a Trebuchet and helped take Amsterdam. More than two thousand years later and that unit, now a rocket artillery, helps to break the defenses of Berlin granting me a Conquest victory. In my head they were a family of siege engineers that generation after generation served my nation in conquering the world.
I like it. I usually play way too militaristic in Civ 5 to get that kind of individual story. Every war a few die, but dozens take their place for the next one. My hero units get buried in the masses in the late game.
I found meta-RP on a PVP server in WoW. I had leveled my rogue back in the day when Thousand Needles was not shit and while I was there I had been constantly harassed by enemy players. So when I made it to level cap, I came back to Thousand Needles and acted as a guardian angel for the horde playing there. I would stealth around watching people level, if they were going to die, Horde or Alliance alike, I would leap out of the shadows and slaughter the mobs that were about to kill them then vanish into the dusty winds of the salt flats. As long as players didn't harass each others, I was helpful. However when I saw higher level players or groups of enemy players ganking lowbies I descended on them like the angel of death and over time that place became *my* territory. People would message me when ever they were getting ganked, even total strangers, and ask me to come defend them because it was MY God damn race track and no one got ganked on my land. I also got really into the RP aspect of Alterac valley back in the day. I use to TORMENT the alliance by stealthing into the towers and stealing them right out from under the guard's noses. I got reported for hacking so many times that I had to make a video about it to show what I was doing so that when the admins contacted me I could just point them to the video and show them how I was doing the seemingly impossible. It's still up on youtube called "Surprise's Rogue Guide to AV". Again, my Rogue became semi-legendary because I picked this one thing I was really good at and made it into my art. The horde rarely lost when I was with them because I gave them all the time in the world to win by resetting all the enemy timers over and over. I became a ninja-saboteur, insuring my army's victory through the use of stealth and guile. All meta-gameplay but it was fun!
I did a more vengeful npc version of this. During the Beta, there was this giant albino bat in Tirisfal Glades that snuck up when I wasn't expecting it and killed me a couple times, so I made it my mission to kill it back to get my revenge. Unfortunately, it was so much higher level than me (and Elite) that I never managed to kill it before the Beta ended. Approaching 10 years later, I finally found that bat again after getting that character to max level. I thought "Finally, I get to have my revenge!" But many changes had happened in the full release and the years and expansions since then, including the bat being delevelled and losing its elite status. What I saw was a decrepit, feeble creature, ravaged by age and time, no match for my now max level character, who reluctantly put the creature out of its misery, feeling sadness and pity in his cold, unbeating heart that until now had craved only revenge.
I was playing Pokémon Y a few years back. I took a right turn and found myself at victory road and caught myself a baby lucario. That lucario was X. He was my friend. We challenged every gym together, every event, and beat the elite four. We caught every Pokémon and he never left my team. Every time he shed a tear and shook off a killing blow to keep fighting I felt proud. I equipped him with the moves he needed to cover ANY fight. And at the end of it all I cried when I put it down for the last time. I know he’s still there, waiting in our home. Waiting for the kid that caught him and built him into a proud lucario. He never needed the mega stone to win a fight, so I never gave it to him.
Oddly enough, my favorite moment came in a turn-based strategy game: Alpha Centauri. Early on I engaged in a land grab that put me in conflict with another civilization, which eventually lead to war. He had been colonizing some land that I had already established myself on, and I quickly started winning the land battle. He was a aquatic-focused civ, so he could have weathered that for a long while, but he offered peace terms where he'd give me some tech, pay some money, and give me one of the cities on that continent we were contending, so I took the deal. After that, relations improved; he soon became friendly, and later we became allies. I was a little shocked at this, since most strategy games once you go to war with someone it never ends in a lasting peace, but this time it did. We became strong allies with trade and research agreements, both carefully planning our settlements not to encroach on what we perceived as the other's territory. This was an AI-run civ, I'll remind you. Later on, I got embroiled in a war with another civ that proved to be mostly a naval battle, which I was not at all prepared to fight. So, I went to coordinate with my ally, and he gave me 50 Needlejets, which more than quadrupled my air forces at the time, and shared plans that he was going to attack a specific city. At the time, this all made sense to me. I sent him some tanks (since his ground forces were less than mine) and we proceeded to conduct a coordinated war against our foe, later joined by his ally. We won that war, and we continued like that for the rest of the game, steadily expanding, trading units back and forth, and coordinating attacks. The relationship never soured. I even ended the game early so that we wouldn't have to come to conflict on who was the 'real' winner. On reflection that one relationship has been my favorite moment of roleplaying and strategy at the same time, and I've never been able to replicate it. Most modern strategy games have enemies stay as enemies for the rest of the game; any reconciliation is token and temporary. When I play turn-based strategy games I always plan on going in as the victorious loner; one who can do no wrong in the long run and will have no permanent friends, only temporary non-enemies. But for one solitary game of Alpha Centauri, I feel like I actually made a friend, and they certainly had a friend in me, even though we started as enemies.
Playing civilization. A unit lived with a sliver of health. The last survivor defending my country from a hostile invasion. Later the unit became a veteran and I got to rename it. This made that unit legendary for ages. When it finally did fall It was right in the feels. Lol 😆
those soldiers' descendants got continuously upgraded and promoted all the way to modern times (or until the unit died), becoming the celebrated uber elite celebrity warriors of your country, then? :D
One of my runs in Rimworld gave me the most tragic story. Started tribal, two people, a muffalo, and a pet wolf. We start out okay, getting set up, nothing too bad. My colonists fall in love! And then immediately after one of them gets the plague. I only have herbal medicine and know that despite my best efforts...she's going to die. On her deathbed, my other colonist proposes to her. Literally minutes later she passes away. Her pet muffalo goes wild with grief and starts attacking everything, beating the pet wolf until it can't move, then my other colonist. After this, while both are still disabled...a wild wolf comes up and kills and eats the pet wolf, all within mere inches of my fallen colonist, forcing him to watch. He slowly starves to death, mere feet away from the entrance to their little home and safety and food. It has been probably 2 years since that scenario plays out and it STILL gets to me.
I know this whole story is gonna sound childish but I was playing Minecraft on hardcore. Ya know, delete the save when I die. Every step and every action I made was careful and calculated. My goal? Build a medieval castle in survival. I did and I was so proud. I was walking around in game in my garden one day and thought to myself “aww heck, why not make a flagship and a fleet?” So I got the materials and got ready. A few seconds too long underwater and I drown. I straight up cried because I had gotten absorbed into being the kindly lord of that town that I forgot I was on hardcore.
I remember playing Doom 3 in my friends basement late at night. It was dark, we had this sense of being in a place we shouldn’t be because it was probably 1 or 2 in the morning. Every sound, every sight could just as easily be in the game or right there next to us in the basement. I remember several times having to pause and rip the headphones off because it was just too real. Like I was the one chainsawing demons and running away from monsters rather than the character.
The one time I was playing Halo 2, and I was on a beach on the mission called "Day at the Beach" I'm fairly certain. I was in a Warthog (Which is just a cool jeep with a gun on it) and had 2 marines in it with me. At one point I was driving along, awesome music playing in the background, the guy in the turret going at it like crazy, and enemies falling all around me. A pretty awesome show either way, but then, When my Gunner died and I was going to replace him with the other marine so we could survive, I went on a jump very strangely. I ended up flipping the hog, and it ended a little ways away from me. Instantly I started running to the hog, and I crouched behind it since it was now destroyed, and used it as cover. The marine was as well, each of us taking one side of the hog to shoot from behind. And then there was a line of explosions coming up to the hog, suddenly the area around me went black, and everything seemed to explode. All I heard other than the boom was a scream. A scream of the man next to me. Everything went silent after that, since the warthog shifted and I was now completely covered from the enemies so they didn't fire. The body of the marine was laying in front of me, the crater from the explosion that killed him, and his blood a short distance away. It was chaotic, and kinda meaningful, since those two marines fought to the end to defeat the covies and help save Earth. It was awesome.
A good example of permanent death would be Shadow of Mordor. In the game, when you died, you came back to life because you are a wraith. But everytime you die, the orc that killed you will grow stronger and more powerful, harder to kill and more likely to cause problems for you later in the game. Orcs also remember you if they kill you and your choices effect them if the run away or kill you. This way, you had to research each individual orc, what their fears and strengths were, so you could defeat them and prevent them from fighting you again or make them run away and loose their power. This also gave more character to the Orcs more than the books ever could have. Because there are more Orcs than humans or any others, you cherish the human, elf, dwarf and halflings that you do run into.
Me and my friend went through an entire campaign of XCOM on the PS3, where every single member to join our forces and surviving their first outing received their own full backstory and complete interaction with the other members of our main crew. One of them, Wagner, died on his first mission, but was the best friend of our silent, heroic sniper Xiao who saved many a campaign. At the end, we had about 10 A4 pages of notes written about our different characters. Because of this, we refused to use the save and reload system, a dead character was dead, and it's one of the best campaigns of XCOM I played, fully abiding to the Ironman condition without playing on Ironman mode.
I think it'd be interesting if an RPG kept all the skills and abilities completely under the hood; a game where you don't get to see what your character is capable of, and at the same time, the more you do things, the better you get. You wouldn't get to see the mechanical effect, but you would know that your abilities in the game have improved through doing.
I like the idea, but it would need some clever means of making you use the abilities so you know you can do them. It seems like it would lend itself easily to FOO Strategies.
maybe an entry section where you have to do most of it at the start. Like having to run and jump to get to a part where you can hide, then you get to an armory where you can choose weapons that you like and start using them. something like that.
jesternario so an organic tutorial, maybe not showing skills you can get until just before you chose them(if you use a skill tree), of course hiding the morality bar(bars if you want it to be better) or even better not having it . Of course this sound really risky and difficult to properly execute.
It would be, and it might fail, but it would be worth trying. As far as morality, I'd prefer there to forgo the binary style most games use and replace it with nothing but shades of gray, where there are no good guys, but no villains either
This is exactly what I want to do in my game :D!! I've been trying to think up ways for the player to have really simple controls at first glance, but as they learn more about the world and themselves they also learn to use those controls in more ways to create more complex moves/skills. It's all conceptual right now (till I learn how to code or something lol) but its a delicate balancing act... What do you think about having that same concept for leveling as well? I personally think you need a UI with all that stuff telling you your level and stats, but admittedly, having an xp bar (and health and stuff) is a big psychological motivational factor so I am not sure how to make it more subtle...
When I first played Bastion, and I got to the very last level, the game gave me a decision. It was simple, straightforward, and entirely binary, but no right or wrong or good and bad. Bring Zulf back to the Bastion. The game had no moral choice system prior to know, and it caught me entirely by surprise. I considered everything about this character, what he's done for me, what he's done for my character, and whether I could trust him. And what followed after that was eye-opening, and even more so when I saw the alternative in my next playthrough.
Bastion's choices were great, all the more so for being unexpected. That game did a great job surprising the player a few times; the Singer was another good example.
I never played Bastion in full, but I did play the demo. What got to me was being on that first island, surrounded by pots and the inky void. True to gamer instinct, I started smashing pots, to see if there was loot inside. At some point while I was smashing them, the narrator piped up, saying something to the effect of, "he lashed out in anger". The game had turned some moment of experimentation into a character moment. That my protagonist was overcome by the emotions of the end of the world, and was reacting with blind, directionless fury. It's a moment that stuck with me even now.
Bastion is great for giving context to your character's actions And I think that's what is important. Even if you aren't rping as the kid, you have to admire the teams ability to give context and meaning to your actions through the narrator, and I believe that is what makes bsation such a great narrative because your game play effects the narrative that is given most of the game. Bastion did choice great in that your choices aren't discret and are instead subtle, saving the larger choices until later in the game. In truth, there is very little consquence other than the consequence of context being added to your actions as you play. Sometimes context, not consequence, is all a player needs to understand how a character feels, even if they are silent. Tying consequence and context into our gameplay can mean the difference from having a simple game experience to a narrative experience. Gameplay can provide narrative, it just has to be done correctly. And Bastion does that phenomonally.
Here's a story. So i was playing a game of civ 5 as Polynesia. I settled my city, built my army, the usual stuff. But, right after I spit out my first new settler, I lost my capital to barbarians. At that point, I was at war with three nations around me. I had a settler, an archer, three warriors and a scout. That whole game I couldn't find a place to settle. The game went from a complex strategy game to a story of a nomadic tribe fighting for survival.
One of my best and most immersive gaming experiences came from Napoleon: Total War. I was playing as Prussia, and I had to command my weakest army against three full-stack revolutionary armies. Being composed of mostly veteran Landwehr (Militia) and a few standard Line Infantry, I knew I didn't stand a chance, so I decided that I would bleed them white in their assault! I placed my Landwehr on top of a small hill, where I knew they'd have a height advantage (as well as extra momentum if I ever need to have them to charge) and kept by Line Infantry behind for reserve. Surprisingly, my Landwehr put up a good fight! More than I expected, as the revolutionary force's Line Infantry (the filthy traitors!) marched closer to the hill, they fired volley after volley, covering the base of the hill with smoke! And once I could see that the enemy started to waver, I ordered a bayonet charge, and the first wave was routed, much to my delight! The next treat was the cavalry, my Landwehr weren't disciplined enough to form into square formation, so I had them shift ranks with my Line Infantry. However, the enemy launched a surprisingly coordinated assault, combining cavalry charges followed up with lines of infantry to cover their retreat! Having to fight coordination with coordination, I spent most of the battle in intense micromanagement, shifting Landwehr and Line Infantry to maintain my height advantage. As the muskets silenced and the men retreated, we were victorious - But for the last time. My units were tattered and fatigued, my general had fallen, and the enemy still had fresh reserves, which were being brought to the front. No amount of tactics or micromanagement could save them now. Sensing the moment of truth, I had what was left of the army form a line on the base of the hill, and once the enemy was close enough, ordered one last bayonet charge. They fought tooth and nail for their lives, but they too had reached their limit. The battle was lost, my forces either dead or routed. It was a costly victory for the enemy, however! Most of their regiments were tattered and fatigued, and one of their generals had fallen. My remaining forces had been more than a match for them after that, and the rebel scum were crushed under the heels of the king! I still fondly remember the regiments that fought in that battle: 27th Landwehr 28th Landwehr 29th Landwehr 30th Landwehr (This one was the most veteran of their peers, and routed two units during a bayonet charge!) 31st Landwehr 32nd Landwehr (This one had felled a general!) 15th Regiment of Foot 16th Regiment of Foot (They were part of the climax of the battle - Fought to the last!) 17th Regiment of Foot 22nd Hussars 23rd Hussars While you couldn't actually do it in-game, I always liked to think that there was a statue erected in their honor at the site of the battle.
Oh man, Nuzlockes... I was playing FireRed (a Kanto remake for GBA) as "Chai" and did food-based names. Squirtle "Soup" and Pidgey "Chicken" were a favorite duo for a while. Then I caught a male Nidoran. I LOVE Nidoking, so I was ecstatic! I named him Carrot and he stayed on my team as much as possible. He even solo'd Sabrina, a psychic user! Well, I was heading up to the Elite Four when Gary-MF-Oak showed up. I thought "Okay. We got this. Come on, team!" It was tough. I was winning, but most of my Pokemon were on low health. He sent out his Alakazam, so I weighed my options. Carrot was at full health, and a high level to boot. Sure, he was a Poison-type, but he'd solo'd Sabrina. This punk Alakazam was nothing to his boosted speed and attack. Except it went first. And it crit. I can't remember who avenged him, only that I'd won but wasn't happy. My husband was cooking dinner and had to turn down the heat to give me a hug, I was crying like a fool. I lost Carrot. He suggested that I just trade him to another game instead of releasing him or to just continue using him because he was my favorite, but that just felt wrong - like necromancy or something - and I'd gone that far with following all of the rules. Chai would have buried him with honor. So, still teary-eyed, I released him. Then that left me with a hole in my party at the very tail-end of the game. I didn't want to go through grinding again, not that late in the game, but no one was really strong enough to go into the Elite Four with any hope for survival. Then there was Tofu. He was the Hitmonlee I got at the fighting dojo in Saffron after beating Sabrina, and he had already survived a decent amount of level-grinding so he wouldn't take too long to catch up. He still went into the Elite Four a little early, but I was hopeful. I blazed through the Elites, but then got to Gary-MF-Oak again. It was tough. I lost a lot of Pokemon, used up almost all of my Potions. We were each down to one. He had an Arcanine, I had Tofu, and very little hope. Extremespeed is a bitch. They traded blows back and forth. Then came the choice: How did I want to lose? If I healed, it would get me another turn, but I'd still get hit and I'd be right here again. If I attacked, I'd be too slow because of Extremespeed, and worse, the best attack I could use had a decent miss-chance. Unless he didn't use Extremespeed, or didn't attack at all, or my hit landed... Longshots, but I'd come this far and it was the final moment. I couldn't just turn around and call it quits. I finally just kinda looked at the little sprite on my screen, nodded, and issued the command to attack. Extremespeed hit first. But Tofu clung to life with a single hit point and struck true, finishing off the offending Arcanine with a risky Hi-Jump Kick! Dinner tasted better than usual that night.
I remember playing skyrim with a mod that removed all the invincible essential character stuff. as well as another that made dragons way more powerfull and far rarer to run into.I had been playing as a sort of bounty hunter character. once I went into the Silver Blood Inn in Markarth and sat down at the bar for a drink I spoke to the innkeep if he had work and told me about a bounty I for some bandits the usual. then I talked to some of the other NPCS in the inn I eventually found some guy who wanted a drink I gave him one and recruited him as a follower. me and this guy went all around skyrim taking bounties for like a whole 6 in game months. then on my way to turn in a bounty in Dawnstar the first random dragon encounter happened because of the mod it was extremely powerfull. he use fire breath and I was able to block it with a ward but my drunkard follower of course didn't so he was incinerated instantly. he had died before but I usually would immediately go to a previous save but I hadn't saved in an hour and with dragon encourage term so rare I needed to kill this dragon to unlock my next shout. so I let him die then defeated the dragon afterward I role played to think about what my character would do next, and it hit me. on most of my character I never touch the main question I haven't played it since I was playing skyrim on console so I decided idea do the main question for the first time in forever and I though that my character would be doing it all to avenge his friend who had fought beside him sorry so long. THIS IS WHY SKYRIM WITH MODS IS FREE KING AMAZING.
First time I played Skyrim: It was the first game I'd ever really played, so I had no idea about the conventions such as dungeons, loot and the like. So when I walked by the stables of Whiterun and saw there was a horse I could buy, I went back to Riverwood and spent days chopping wood because that's the only way I knew how to make money. I loved that horse and it was incredibly precious me since I'd done hard honest work earning the money to buy it. I left it in towns before heading into dungeons so that it wouldn't be hurt in the wild and ran away from conflicts I could have won so it wouldn't die.
The time I cite for my falling in love with video games was when my courier in Fallout: New Vegas started collecting pre-war books and cartons of cigarettes, and leaving them in every mailbox he could find across the Mojave. Something about the moment of his actual character developing made the hundreds of hours I spent with him after that point (and losing his file right before finishing the game) worth it and forever changed the way I play games.
I roleplay because of Extra History, Every time I play a strategy game (ck2, civ, eu4 ect.) I imagine Dan's voice narrating the entire journey, it feels like I'm making an episode of EH. Cheers extra credits.
I remember a section in Bayonetta were you have to defend Cereza(little girl) from the evil angels trying to kill her. I defended her with crazy combos and an adrenaline rush you only get from jack and slash games; more when you have an objective to keep fighting for. When it was over I got a trophy called a mother’s love. That attached me to that little girl for the rest of the game in the most maternal video game way there is; even though I’m a dude...
Yeah, I'd note that Bayonetta and the like are actually a lot better for "Role playing" at least to the extent of character and mechanics intertwining. You see a cutscene of Bayonetta putting off crazy combos, and then get to do similar combos in the actual gameplay.
My best _stories_ from gaming came from Rome: Total War, especially my one unit of Hastati (basic fighting unit), reduced to 17 men, without a leader after a Pyrrhic victory, stuck on the open road in the Swiss Alps, journeying to meet up with reinforcements... They were caught by another, healthier and more veteran unit of Hastati led by an actual general. I cared about those 17 men (they had been through multiple battles, and for a while had been "the 33 men"). I saw the enemy coming to kill my men, and swore I would give them _such a fight, that those 17 would be remembered._ It was in the Alps so there were mountains in the battlefields. I put my men on top of the highest peak and waited for the enemy to come to them - tiring them out a bit. Hastati throw three javelins before charging, so there was a volley, back and forth, javelins up, javelins down, and my men had the high ground advantage. By the time they were ready to charge, their energy and morale were up, and they poured down from that peak and cut down the enemy _and_ their general. All 17 survived, and one was promoted to general. That unit had a place of honor in my armies for the rest of my career (and that general married one of my own daughters).
So, I was playing Fallout New Vegas, (I believe it was for the first time), and I was patrolling the surrounding area of the town to see what was nearby. All of a sudden, a Mierlirk started chasing me. I didn't have anything useful on me at the time, and I was on the hardest difficulty, so it did more damage. I ran like hell, trying to slow it down with my 10mm, to no avail. This thing chased me all the way back into goodsprings, where I ran to the bar for shelter, at the last second, before I entered, I turned to see the first NPC I had talked to other than the doctor from the beginning of the game, the guy who had better helped me understand the world I had entered into only a mere hours ago, Easy Pete, distracting the Mirelirk so I could get inside. I had hurriedly looped around to the back of the bar to go make sure Easy Pete was still okay. I then crept back to the front of the building to see what had happened to Pete. The good news was that the Mirelirk had wandered off just far enough for me to sneak by without him noticing. The bad news was that Easy Pete's corpse laid by the entrance to the bar. Sneaking by the Mirelirk, I took Pete's body to the cemetery nearby atop a hill and buried him in the grave I was supposed to be buried in from the start of the game where I was almost killed. After a moment of solidarity, I left Pete, (where his body remains still), but not before taking his iconic hat, which I have not unequipped from my character to this day, in honor of the man who saved my life.
Once in Shadow of War, there was this one orc who I just couldn't beat. He just kept on showing up and kicking my ass, following me from region to region. Each time, he wouldn't kill me. He'd only demand I give him a better fight next time. I managed to lose him in Nurn, and ended up forgetting all about him for most of my game. Only after I finished the main questline did he reappear, around 20 levels lower than me, and once again managed to actually kick my ass. Like always, he refused to kill me and instead basically just said how I hadn't become nearly as powerful as I thought. I was truly humbled, so when I inevitably chased him down and beat him, with the element of surprise no longer on my side, I decided to let him go rather than kill him. I then sent a series of low level minions for him to kill and level up, until he was finally of equivalent level to me. Then, I dueled him in single combat, refusing to use any bullshit and OP Wraith powers, and decapitated him. I don't know if this 100% counts as role-playing, but I felt a rather personal attachment to the fight.
Another example is undertale with it's (literally) game breaking revelations about the consequences of your actions, it shows you how your actions can affect other people and even if you can restart, those actions can still carry consequences because everything you do can affect your life in different ways.
This is the story of my first nuzlocke, it was of pokemon white. My run started when I encountered and caught a lillipup and named her “Lolla” on route 1. I then lost my starter to the first rival battle, and Lolla became my new starter. Throughout the play through I had lost most of my pokemon. One time I almost had a full team wipe against Skyla, only Lolla and an Escavalier I had named “Night” survived and I had to rebuild my team. I added a Vanillite named “Strawberry” to my team. Those three pokemon stuck with me through the game until the final battle against Ghetsis, when all of my other team members seemed to change every other route. During this final battle, half of my team was dead, Strawberry and Lolla were in red health, and I didn’t have anymore healing items. Ghesis sent out his final pokemon, his hydreigon. I sent out Night. Hydreigon used fire blast and watched as Night’s health dropped from 100% to 0%, and like that, one of my longest surviving pokemon died in one hit. I sent out Lolla because I didn’t trust Strawberry to out speed, and Lolla had more speed. It didn’t matter because Lolla didn’t out speed, and hydreigon used focus blast. It missed and Lolla avenged Night with retaliate. I won my first nuzlocke with only two pokemon in red health.
This is from Panzer Blitz, a board game: Once, after i finished a massive battle, i totalled up all the "dead" units and calculated that they had over 1,000 men. Moreover, seeing all the "wreck" counters on the board where tank platoons had died made me imagine the real battlefield, littered with burning tanks, destroyed guns, and dead and injured men. It made me feel for the men who fought the real Battle of Porohzvka (the climax of the Kursk Campaign). During the game, i was busy moving cardboard pieces, calculating combat ratios and rolling dice. I didnt think about the people dying with every die roll. Afterward, i wondered how many real commanders fight battles the same detached way.
The game Crusader kings is full of these kinds of stories for me. However, the most important one to me was one of my first games. I was playing as a minor lord in Ireland, who had the goal of uniting the warring factions of Ireland into one kingdom. However, he was a particularly lustful king, and ended up having a bastard child one day. However, years down the line, this bastard child became a skilled warrior and commander, eventually becoming my best general. My lord ended up forging his kingdom, but was killed trying to bring some stubborn lords into the fold. Leaving his one "legitimate" son to rule despite the fact that the bastard was the firstborn. Normally in this game, the bastard would hate his new king, feeling cheated out of his inheritance. instead, he and the king quickly became the closest friends. despite everything, these two half brothers that should have been trying to kill each other, decided to put all else aside and work towards establishing Ireland as the dominant kingdom of the region. Maybe they felt that would be the best way to honor the memory of their father? Anyway, with the leadership of this new king, and the martial brilliance of his bastard brother, Ireland was brought under one banner by force, and was launching campaigns into Scotland to expand the kingdom. However, after a long and prosperous reign, my king died to an illness, leaving a weak son on the throne of Ireland who couldn't control his vassals like his father and grandfather could. The bastard, who by now was an old character in his 70s, with a family of his own, a noble house that he founded, and held some of the most powerful lands in the kingdom, saw that this child threatened everything that his beloved brother and father had done over the years, and decided that for the good of the realm, they needed a good, strong king that could keep everyone in line. and so, he declared himself king of Ireland and began a civil war that lasted 5 years. Every noble family in Ireland was torn apart, as this war ravaged the country. I lost track of how many thousands died. Yet in the final, climactic battle, the bastard king was cut off from his men and captured by the forces of his nephew. The war was finally over. yet, this weak king thought that if he made an example of his uncle, now 78. It would be a show of strength, and a warning of what happens to those who betray him. And with that, he ordered his uncle beheaded. It was a disaster. The execution of a man who was widely considered a national hero sent waves of unrest across the kingdom. two thirds of the country rose up in open rebellion, led by the bastard's son and heir. My weak, ineffective, and now vilified king, was assassinated a year later, and the rebels seized the throne. This began a conflict between these two noble families. those decended from my bastard general absolutely hated those descendants of his brother, the king. And for over 200 years, the two families fought each other over the Irish throne, both in courtly intrigue, and on the battlefield. lesser families were forced to choose sides, and many were exterminated. It took two hundred years, but eventually the descendants of the king managed to seize the lands of their rivals, banish the entire family, and purged the Irish court of those who had supported them. It was an utterly amazing thing. One of the very first decisions I ever made in the game (an affair with a noble's wife) created an Irish game of thrones. I still remember the feeling of utter betrayal when the bastard that I had relied upon for so much of my first game raised his armies against me. that feeling of rage led me to execute him without thinking about the consequences, and that same feeling of rage kept me going for so much of the game, determined to wipe out or at least remove his family from Ireland. Only when I had finally thrown them out of Ireland did I start to feel remorse. I began to remember that very early game where it was the two brothers working together, and the game had so much potential. I always felt in that early part of the game, that so long as the two of us had each other's backs, the whole world would have been ours. And damn, was that an amazing playthrough. I've had some memorable moments in the game like that since. Like this one time where I barely pulled off a victory against the invading Vikings as the English, and used that victory to break the spine of the invaders, retaking all the land they had seized. Or the one time I played as the Byzantine Empire, and managed to restore the old borders of the Roman Empire. But none of them were as amazing to me as this one game where one of my first decisions, to get nasty with a random noble's wife, led to the most memorable chain of events in all my years playing games.
For me, my most memorable role play experience was in Skyrim. I had a mod that allowed me 15 followers, so I had a small army. It was when one of my followers died I realized I would not load a previous save. On the way to defeat Miraak, many followers died, every time one died I would find a respectable place to lay their bodies, then I put flowers and things that represented them ( A sword, spell tomes, daggers , etc) on their chests. It was the final climb and I had only one follower left ,Mjoll The Lioness, as we charged into battle, she went down. As I rushed to her side I saw a fireball headed towards me, I dodged it barely, but when I looked to my side, I saw Mjoll lying there, lifeless. I went into a rage mode and killed every enemy I saw, then when the time came, I stuck down the final boss. After the entire ordeal was over, I settled down in a cabin in the middle of the woods, and let old age take away my character.
I had a similar experience in Skyrim. This took place through the course of three DLC's I was a Kahjit that joined Harkon to be a vampire. At first it was mostly because the prospect of being a powerful Vampire was awesome. But as it progressed I took intrest in Harkon's daughter and started taking her along on my adventures even when I didn't need to because she was the first follower in any game I enjoyed the company of. At one point we struck up a conversation and she asked me about my home life after we got on the topic of her failing family. This was a dialogue option that was rare to me and I could actually forge a bit of a back story. I told her that I had no parents to go back to. She shared my feelings of not having a real family And it struck a cord. Later on when I get locked in the mines at Markarth I get another moment to build my backstory and I tell, them that it wasn't my first time in a prison. This all came full circle later. After winning the battle to defeat Harkon, I stumble onto the boy trying to kill this horrible lady at an orphanage. Thinking this lady must be stopped I took the quest and while she was telling the children they will never be adopted and how worthless they are, I thought back to the story I forged for my character and along with my own feelings I got a stronger incentive to kill her. Instead of sniping her from a dark corner like I was going to I walk right up to her and got a critical where I beheaded her with my Ax. I quickly fled knowing that guards would be there soon. I left with a smile on my face as the children cheered for the stranger that killed her. I was battling Miirak with my favortie follower ever and new best friend and killed him at the last moment when she was on her knees, not wanting to lose her. Then as I walk through Skyrim I get a message that I can make a house in the Pale. Eager I got to work feeling strange happiness about finding a home of my own. Thinking how this has never happened before, I never had a place to call my own. I just stood on the cliff side looking at the wonderful view I had of the lake when I got a letter saying I could adopt a child. With the last renovation I made a room for the two of them (I got a boy and a girl) I got the boy a wooden sword and in my mind I would pretend to teach him the sword skills his old man picked up I got the girl this nice doll I found while shopping in Solitude. My daring adventures became less and less and I started making my character act like a real dad. I went out for short periods of time, maybe a few days at most but would always make it a point to return home to sleep because of the children I owned. In my mind I would be teaching them everything I learned in my adventures, the time I saved the world from dragons. And I thought back to the story I made for my character and where I was now. I started out as a lonely Kahjit with no home and no parents, I always fended for myself and kept myself away from most people outside of getting what I needed, and that would usually end him in jail. But one day as he entered Skyrim he became a hero, people began to love him, he made many strange enemies along the way but also forged powerful bonds with unlikely people, settled down in a cozy home in the woods, saved children from the life he had and lived happily. I stopped playing that character because I felt his story had ended.
My greatest role play moment in gaming was in dark souls. I had befriended Solaire from the very get go, i summoned him every time I could, always exausted his dialogue options to advance his quest line. I didn’t really care all that much about the other npc’s my first play through, but he was my best friend. When I got to lost izalith, and was forced to kill him in his insanity, I was so sad. I then, made up my mind, I was going to live on for Solaire. I joined the warriors of sunlight, i donned the sunlight armor and straight sword and i became the warrior of sunlight. I did it for you buddy, I’ll never forget you. Praise the sun!
Playing Assassin's Creed Black Flag I noticed that I used the whistling mechanic a lot to lure enemies to a spot where I could kill them. I titled myself The Whistling Assassin and from then on made a point of whistling wherever possible before a kill so it was the last thing my enemies heard and leaving one person alive. I deliberately neglected the meter of how much trouble you cause and took down all the hunters sent after me, preferring to cultivate the legend of the Whistling Assassin of the Caribbean
Link’s Awakening did this to great effect. The game doesn’t tell you that you can do this, but you can exploit the facts that you can walk unobstructed all the way around the shopkeeper in the village, and that he turns to follow you as you do. You can get him to turn his back and walk out of the store without paying for an item. This is a huge benefit since one useful item in particular is 900+ rupees. However, once you do, everyone calls you THIEF for the rest of the game. This hit me so hard as a kid when I first did it I restarted my game and just waited until I could afford the item. As a bonus, the Shopkeeper WRECKS your shit if you go back in after ripping him off.
I was playing dont starve together and started up an online game, it was meant to make the game a bit easier for more casual play, I go into the world gem settings and think “huh, why don’t I set the starting season to spring.” Bad idea. I play on this online server for about an hour and the game was full of people, when all of a sudden, frogs start falling from the sky. It was a frog rain. Me and everyone else there frantically make spears to fight of the quickly growing mass of killer frogs. Our stuff is all over the place, skeletons everywhere, and then I decide to restart fresh. It was great.
I’d say my experience playing Wind Walker HD was my story. My dad played up until the second boss was defeated, then after a year or so, I tried it. It was like starting in the middle, but it was one of the most fun gaming experiences I’ve ever had.
In Breath of the Wild, I refused to kill forest animals. I felt like Link is the kind of guy who would live in peace with nature. Doing this, the world felt more precious, and the desire to protect it was stronger.
I also never read any diaries, and I wouldn't wander around people's houses much. I also limited the number of times I would take items from people (sometimes I just really needed an ax).
Judah Sistrunk Me too! No killing animals, no stealing from houses, no breaking things. One time, I accidentally broke someone's pots, so I left an Amber on their table in payment. Breath of the Wild, though, makes your decisions very insignificant or inconsequential. It makes it a great game mechanically! But it's really hard to make moral decisions about not running in to kill things when the game tells you they respawn every blood moon, or not taking something when it just teleports back.
I never thought of leaving stuff for people. That's a great idea. I accidentally stole someone's spoon once, but then I gave it back because the guilt was killing me. I did accidentally kill a bird once. It was hiding in some grass, and I ran it over with my horse. I kept the meat around in my inventory for awhile in memory of the fallen bird. I also killed a wolf because it was threatening a korok. Those are the only animals I killed in my entire play through.
In fallout 4, my character would give up on finding his son halfway through the story. He would make himself believe Shaun was dead, but deep down he knew that wasn't the case, even though he had lost all hope of finding him. During this period i also took the time to play a load of sidequests to entertain myself and distract my protagonist from his gut feeling about his son being alive. Later, my character would finally accept the thought that Shaun was still out there. I'd progress with the story and get to the institute. When he finally finds his son, he would struggle with choosing his side in the conflict for the commonwealth. Ultimately my character chose the minutemen, since he didn't trust the institute nor the brotherhood of steel with the future of the commonwealth, and he thought the railroad were idiots for taking on the institute. My Sole Survivor chose the fate of the entire commonwealth over the life of his son. He was disappointed and mournful, but respected shaun's choice to stay loyal to the institute. In war, nobody wins. And war, war never changes.
Look i know im late, but l just have to share this story: So one night me and my friend were playing overcooked, and we got through about 2 worlds before i really started getting pissed because we were stuck on a certain stage. So i literally started roleplaying as Gordan Rasmay, and we were fucking dying. I was tearing up, we were having alot of trouble playing because of just how hard we were laughing
I've recently started a new character on Skyrim, a completely black Kahjit who I gave one large white splotch on her face. My sister commented how it looked like two cats melded together. So we came up with the story that she absorbed her twin sister in the womb and now it isn't just one dragon born it's two, never alone. Wandering Skyrim together as sisters.
In Skyrim I found a really cool mask that I liked and it totally hi my characters face and was quite striking in itself, and suddenly my hero became: Humble blacksmith by day who wore simple clothes and worked his forge loved his wife and lived the simple life of a craftsman. And on occasion, he would venture out into the wilds to collect ore to and other materials to continue his craft. But when he donned his armour and mask he became the mysterious and legendary warrior who walked from town to town helping villages, fighting off raiders and ridding tombs of the undead. The narrative in my head around my character gave so much meaning and extra enjoyment to my playing the game.
When I played star wars battlefront (the 2002 one) I would always set up a bunch of battles in instant action and play it out like an entire war, drawing my own maps and everything. Imagine my enthusiasm when I discovered battlefront 2 had a full conquest mode with that exact idea in mind :)
One time I did the opposite of what I was intended to do in Untitled Goose Game, being nice after doing a bad decision, like returning the groundskeeper's stuff after the picnic task.
Man RPGs are the best in my collection, I love to role-play. My absolute personal best genre of all time. And yeah, sometimes I role-play in a non role-playing game. It's rather the games we create for ourselves.
XCOM: Enemy Unknown. I naturally named all my soldiers after friends. There was one particular engagement (in a long series of awesome RP moments) when we were going through a routine sweep of a downed alien ship. My elite squad kicked in the door and was confronted by a Locust for the first time. Two of my friends went down almost immediately, and 2 more died in a desperate attempt to save them. Only one soldier came out of that massacre alive
Did a similar thing but named mine after fictional characters. I had a sniper that stood through every battle, by the end she had over 200 confirmed kills and was hands down my favourite soldier. She died on the final mission, shot while running to get a better position on a sectopod. Not only did I MAYBE just cry a little bit, but the mission became less about saving the world, and more making sure her death wasn't in vain.
I just started a new game, and noticed that you can put your soldier in a fedora. I thought that was hilarious, so I decided to make a cannon-fodder joke soldier. I gave him a black fedora and a thick neckbeard. After managing to survive several missions that wiped out a majority of the rest of the team, he's become a total badass and my most powerful unit. He went from being a meat shield to point man MVP, and my favorite character.
I'm reminded of Kikoskia's runs through the original XCom series, where he names soldiers on various characters from LPs he's done. The legends of the likes of Sub Zero, the multitude of Barry Clones, and Loopy McGoopen will be sang through the ages!
yes, naming the soldiers after dear friends of mine. I even kept my real friends up to speed on what was happening throughout the game. those moments I told my friends that they died or when I would tell them I frickin love'em because they saved everyone and then hear their input on everything. my soldiers were not just soldiers, they really were my freinds
I find the greatest asset to be cosmetic slots for equipment (such as transmogrification), that allows you to look how you want without worrying about wearing the statistically best gear.
I have one story with the game Arcanum Of Steamworks And Magick Obscura. My bother played this game and I decided to play it, but for some reason one of my teammates leave me for no reason and I didn't knew why. Even when I started a new game one of teammates still leaved. I decided that I will watched let's play of this game in my national language with is polish. The played said that mechanic of this game is created that if you play offensive with really small skill there's high change that you miss enemy and attack one of your teammate and also there's mechanic that if you still will be accidentally attacking your teammate it will angry at you and leave the team. I was so shocked about this, because it was first time in rpg game that you can not only accidently harm your mate, but also it will leave you if you still does that. I'm surprised that there's no other rpg games that have that mechanics, because even it was hard it was also cool and challenging. And for next time I must take distance weapon.
Majora's Mask is a great example of this (Despite it not being an RPG). The because of the 3-Day cycle and small but dense world of Termina, the NPCs in MM all have purpose and a schedule. Each sidequest has consequences when left incomplete. Stolen farm animals, torture of an innocent bystander, a separated couple, a father turned into a monster...
ECL28E Not to mention, no matter what you do, unless you get the stone masks, you are stuck in the same loop as everyone else, even if you are the only one aware of it. Even more so, the fact that almost all of the heart containers are parts of side quests encourages you to do them, and in the process, better see this world and WANT to save it.
For me it was definitely Cave Story. The first time I've played a game and I genuinely cared for a character. The first time I've played that game I let her Curly die, without knowing you could save her. Eventually I discovered I could save her, and even though I was close to the end of the game I reset my entire progress and started again just so she wouldn't die in that bed.
When I play halo, I always try and keep my marines alive. After reading all the halo books, which delve pretty deep into the lives of the men and women fighting the war who aren't Spartans, you begin see the colossal human struggle behind the war. An individual soldier in this war of billions is a drop in the ocean, and yet each and every one of them has a story. Every person there is fighting for a reason, and is leaving something behind. The ODST squad who got blown up sitting on your tank was a group of childhood friends who enlisted and fought together. That guy you took the warthog from and ditched fights for his family, who all died on Madrigal. The woman standing beside you loading her pistol, preparing for when you breach the door to raid the corvette's bridge, grew up on their family farm on Harvest and enlisted to get away from it all and to see the galaxy. Throughout the games, the marines fighting alongside you are treated as cannon fodder. They are there to make you feel powerful. Yet you can't help to look at the men and woman fighting beside you, and think, damn. These people are trusting me with their lives. The Masterchief inspires courage in those around him. Soldiers would follow you into almost certain death, because they have faith in you. It's like in that halo 3 short, where a bunch of marines go dark while pinned down in the night, and the only thing that keeps them calm and allows them to endure is the understanding that the Masterchief will arrive in the morning. The UNSC, the marines, the soldiers, and humanity put so much faith into you. You can't help but feel a responsibility for them, and that it's your duty to get as many of them out alive as possible. Even if they occasionally team kill you with a warthog. Halo has seriously given me a perspective on the cost, and the sheer tragedy of war.
When i was playing Europa Universalis 4 I was playing as the Ottomans and accidently declared war on the mamlucks where they decimated all of my forces except for one single regiment at the capital. I quickly moved him to retake all of my land while i was making more and ended up peacing out with them and not gaining or losing anything because of that one infantry protecting my capital that I later named "The Survivor."
There should be a game where when you die everyone else acts as if you've died, but you respawn as another character. (This isn't very well thought out, but it's just a thought)
Me and my brother were playing farcy 5. We decided to go full survival mode and would never fast travel anywhere so we would be frantic and always greatfull to find a working vehicle. We never used the stores so any weapons and ammo we found is all we had. It was really fun being in this world with limited ammunition, having to avoid conflict when we can and hiding in bushes or trees when a patrol or convoy would go by. It really immersed us into this world of fighting back against the cult and looking for every opportunity to get ahead that we could.
Not exactly role play but I do have a similar story from Red Dead Redemption. The horse that Ms McFarlane gives you early in the game is a horse I used throughout the game, even when I was supposed to get a new horse, I somehow worked around that to keep the same horse, until the end, when an NPC clumsily crashed a cart into me while I was riding, I fell and the horse dies. Despite my tendency to do all the 'good' decisions in the game, I got so mad that this horse that I had been with the entire game was dead, I killed the cart driver in cold blood.
Nerd cubed did this too, he kept a horse alive the entire game and when he revisited the game on a livestream a "ghost train" (normal train, but he called it that) ran it over. He went on a rampage killing everyone in the train, the local cops and then some.
+kualajimbo Whenever I play through RDD I always keep that new horse you mentioned, I name it Buttercup, and I refuse to ride any horse but Buttercup. Your horse is your best friend in that game.
Metal Gear Solid 3 gives a great kick to the head regarding consequences. I'm sure everyone here would agree that killing is wrong. Yet in any kind of action/shooter game, it's SO easy to just go around killing people without giving it a second thought. Even in a stealth game, though, it can be easy to just kill the guards before they every have a chance to notice you. And when you get spotted, there's DEFINITELY a huge temptation to kill the guards that are coming after you. However, fairly late in the game, there's a boss called "The Sorrow". He's basically a ghost that has the power to summon the spirits of the dead, and as you "fight" him, you see images and hear cries of EVERY person you've killed. It's not like the game doesn't give you any non-lethal options for incapacitating the guards. You've got a tranquilizer gun, stun grenades, cigars that spray knock-out gas...they're just typically not as easy to use as the lethal weapons. But seeing all those people you've killed come back to haunt gives you that "Oh my gosh! What have I done!?" feeling. It makes you think "Did I really do whatever I could to avoid killing these people?"
+KingMeteorStudios See, when I did that boss, I was basically a mass murderer at that point in the game. I'm not gonna say I was unaffected by it... but I WAS a bit distracted by how long the walk was. I wasn't like "What have I done?" I was more like "Wow, did I REALLY kill so many people that this is actually taking hours?"
You know what's one of my favourite gaming memories from recent years that relates to this? Undertale (please don't laugh at me). When I was playing for the first time, I didn't want to kill Toriel, but I didn't exactly know how to beat her peacefully. So remembering how a Froggit told me a monster may not want to fight anymore if I tire it out, I tried that. Obviously, it didn't work, and I killed her. I was considering keeping that choice for the sake of keeping the integrity of the world, but I felt too bad with it. So the exact scenario explained in this video happened - I restarted the game and tried again. And then the game kicked me in the stomach with acknowledging my previous choice anyway. No joke, this may be the only time ever when I actually felt like I lost control. Like the game world was actually alive and I couldn't control it. This was amazing, and may be my favourite memory from playing Undertale. Why don't developers use that more often. Toby Fox took the idea of wanting to reset to change the outcome of our choices and ran with it, and did an amazing job. I'd like to see that in more games.
This isn't a roleplay story, but I do have to say that Undertale was the first game in like 5 years that I truly got invested in and cared about. Every other game, I just happily strolled along knowing it was a game. Heck, the last game I kinda got invested in was Bioshock 2 but after I beat it I just moved on with my life. Sure it was great in the moment, but I couldn't really and truly say I was invested in it. Undertale, on the other hand, handled everything in such a manner that it felt real while also having fourth-wall breaking moments, like what Sans tells you at the end of the game (not going to spoil that for anyone who hasn't played the game yet) or Flowey's entire boss fight. It made the world connect with our own in a way I haven't seen any game do before, which is why I got so invested in it. I even decided to do all three runs (neutral, pacifist, and genocide, in that order) and I honestly felt bad doing the genocide run. I had grown attached to the characters, from Toriel and Asgore to Froggit and Snowdrake, and here I was mercilessly cutting them down just because I wanted to know what happened. And after getting to the end, after cutting down hundreds of innocent monsters and leaving no survivors, after walking through completely deserted towns, and after getting utterly destroyed by Sans, I quit. Not because I was angry, but because I was sad. It is very easy to switch from a genocide run to a neutral run (a little too easy maybe) and I could have very easily chosen any opportunity up until the Mettaton NEO fight to stop. But I didn't. I kept going, I kept slaughtering the innocents that I fought so hard to protect in past playthroughs. By the end of it all, I became disgusted with my actions. Everything from restarting the game after the pacifist playthrough, to starting the run, to fighting Sans. The only action I can say I am proud of from that entire playthrough is the decision to quit. Heck, despite how much I love the game, I am currently playing through the pacifist route again and when I finish it, I am never picking it up again. They deserve their happy ending that I tore from them so callously for nothing more than morbid curiosity. No other game I have ever played has made me feel this way. It is for this very reason that I refer to it as art. Once your game can make the players feel bad for resetting their save to experience some other playthrough that they have heard about through the grapevine, that is when it can start to truly be considered an art
notoriouswhitemoth Yes, I got to experience that when I failed to do a genocide run the first time and wound up doing a neutral run where I killed everything in my path but nothing else. But in the genocide run, when you kill Undyne, she isn't lamenting anything. She knows that her death was not in vain, that by fighting you she bought Alphys some very valuable time to evacuate everyone. And honestly, that is the worse of the two since she knew that she most likely wouldn't be able to defeat you and had already come to terms with it
+dinosaurfan123 I never wanted to play on a genocide run. I couldn't stomach it - not after saving everyone. I think the moment that really snapped it all into place for me as far as roleplay was [after] I'd defeated the boss for true pacifist. Toriel was talking to some of the other monsters and mentioned that near the start of the game, I'd flirted with her, and then asked her if I could call her "mom". The other characters commented on how that was a bit creepy or weird of me. That moment really impressed me and really brought me into the game. It made the feels at the end that much stronger, and cemented my inability to attempt a genocide run.
Amen. Undertale so brilliantly taps into that little corner of our minds where fictional characters receive a breath of life and become real to us, if only for a while, and demands we face that notion head-on. Its permanence is the most powerful thing; I cried hysterically and apologised to the game when I accidentally killed Toriel and restarted itto rectify that and the game /knew/. It destroyed me more handily in those few moments than any other piece of media was ever able to, because it forced me to completely own my actions and become the character. And when I got that True Pacifist ending? My God. I wept without even realising I had started to. That boss fight seized my whole heart and soul. It was the most incredible moment of immersion, where the characters felt like they were pouring their love and talking to me - not my character - not Frisk - /me/.
When I was six or seven, I really fell in love with "Pokémon Firered". I played it everyday as long as I was "allowed" to. But at the point where you had to discover the hidden Team Rocket hideout I couldn't figure out this easily what I had to do. But I didn't get frustrated. Instead I explored the whole city and routes around it and played it like someone else would play Animal Crossing - just refight some trainers, go to every room of every house pushing the A-Button at everything I thought would give back a reaction. I totally accepted, that I would play it like this for ever until the day I discovered the hidden lever. This whole experience let me bond with the game like no game ever has done before. I actually played it the whole playthrough like this, even after beating the league.
I watched this video because I found myself roleplaying in No Man's Sky. The game became about me, suddenly waking up in a strange place with little that I could remember. Sentinels were put in planets to protect resources by the races owning those systems.
This brings me back to Rimworld... Not really the most immersive experience, but turn on perma-death mode, you can't reload your save. I did this once, and my colony got involved in what I wrote down was a war. Raiders would sweep in and set up camps for weeks, shelling the compound, and I spun a story on it that they were tired of all of the lost scouting parties and were tipped off to a fortress' existence gunning down most of their troops. Skye Lourne, Sweesey, Clint, Sweets, Beg, Grandma Black, Grandpa White, McKinley, Lawrence, Dragger, Potsdam, they all became real to me.. They were my people, my soldiers-- they were my citizens, and the game became a story rather than a simulator. I was watching all of this happen, and all I could control was how my people handled it, and even then, you lose control very often. It was a glorious experience. Rest in peace, you magnificent warriors! Say hello to Jesus for me.
Skyrim modding really can take it to the next level. After I got the Sacrosanct - Vampires of Skyrim mod (and some AI dialogue overhauls, etc.) I'm not just reloading saves, but striding the streets like a true Vampire Lord would. Sacrosanct allows you to "drain" your victims, which meant anyone giving me lip could look forward to sleeping in. Permanently. Looking at you, Nazeem.
The best example I can think of is XCOM games. The characters in your squad get randomly assigned names, nationalities, abilities, classes, and nicknames. The games can be brutally difficult, and their deaths are permanent. As a result, your brain creates backstory for every character almost automatically. By the time you reach late game, you've had characters who were just rookies on your first mission who are still alive after multiple brushes with death - and it's impossible not to root for them when they become badasses, or mourn them when they die.
In the game Battlebrothers, near the beginning of my first session, I raided some bandits holed up in an abandoned shack. They had a prisoner. His name was Ulfert. This prisoner joined our ranks, just another body for the machine, I thought. Later on, a hoard of Weidergangers (zombies) overtook my company, and one of the two survivors was this refugee. The other survivor died shortly after, and he was left all alone, with a pile of new recruits. He was an alright warrior, and later on was struck down in combat. However, he survived (in Battlebrothers there's a small chance troops that are killed will survive). He was promoted to sergeant shortly thereafter, and given the title of Ulfert the Unbreaking. Ulfert survived through thick and thin, and soldiers died around him, but Ulfert, he stayed. Nothing could kill him. He never died, even when only three of twelve men survived, he would always be among their ranks. Though I was only 13 days in when he joined me, he was still around over 270 days in. And for all that, I've not forgotten him. One of the best role playing experiences I've had.
Small thing but I had stopped playing War Thunder for a long time. Then I hopped back in and thought: “ what if i go with a different country?” 5 rounds later, I found myself listening to the USSR anthem as I took out panzer 3s and others. I know its not a ‘deep’ game but I still loved it
I was playing the game foxhole, an MMO where two teams fight for different towns and villages in a massive world. So I was playing the warden’s team, and we were in a stalemate. We were fighting in the pits, a piece of ground named that because of a bunch of holes in the ground, and we took position in the holes. After multiple bloody assaults, I, and a group of 4 other people got in a transport truck and charged the enemy position. Bullets pinged off the side of the truck as we got closer. When we reached them, we jumped out, guns blazing. We took the first line of pits, and charged the second line, throwing grenades all the way. Just then, we were hit by a gas shell, breaking up the charge. Some guy and I took refuge in a hole. As bullets flew overhead, we talked about how we would get back to our lines. Then, after we came up on a decision, we threw our remaining grenades and sprinted out of the hole. Soon, the guy was wit was hit in the back, and died. I would never get back to my line, so I yelled, ‘I shall avenge you!’ Then ran towards the enemy. Using my shotgun, I blasted a few people, I got stomped by the ones I couldn’t get. I finally died, thinking how I avenged the guy I only knew from being shot at in a hole.
when I first started video games my parents bought a PlayStation and Digimon World and thought there was no need for more so didn't get a memory card. Digimon world has you raising a Digimon throughout the days passing by while trying to get other Digimon back to File City as you explore the island you're on. This causes me and my brother to race to train, grow, and fight our way through for months without realizing we needed a save file. It was our repeating day trope reliving everything over and over trying to better ourselves and our gameplay learning from the previous day trying to get farther than before. After getting the memory card it became easy. Recently my brother called me and we talked about those days and after a few laughs at ourselves in the past he set up a challenge. With all we knew of the game who could go the farthest without saving or dying. We have both beaten the game within 7 hours but have yet to get all the unlockables. At this point we are neck and neck and slated for round 3.
Whenever I play Starcraft 2 I always after a battle look at who has the most kills and name them as commander and give the priority for healing and guards....
I was playing The Battle For Wesnoth (Great Game) and was playing the South Guard campaign specifically, and there was one peasant who unit who leveled into a royal guard and I made sure he didn’t die lmao.
I was playing Fallout 4 and just wandering around the wastes with Nick (he's the main reason I play). Eventually, we were attacked by supermutants. I slaughtered one who came for me, only to realise one was about to swing at Nick, so I threw myself between the two, my corpse flying back about a metre. Even though Nick can't die. I also found myself avoiding doing illegal things simply so my synthetic companion wouldn't get disappointed in me; I went so far as to break a quest sequence so I wouldn't have to steal.
In ultimate general I had unit that was outnumbered four to one and now matter how many times the enemy charged they would not break and inflicted five times as many casualties as they took and they became a special elite force in my opinion that I could always rely on no matter what
OH man, yesterday I had one of the most intense roleplay experiences of my life: The Stanley Parable. My first 'ending' was the madness ending and I spent hours lost in the joy of that game. I was Stanley, and Stanley was me. Fantastic.
I totally agree here. I think my first ending was the Confusion ending (if you've gotten to it yet), and holy gosh almighty was I attached to the weird stuff happening. Such a cool feeling.
I loved the confusion ending, especially since it straight up lies to you! I triggered it like.... 3 times? Always hoping the next one would be the one that got me to the REAL ending haha.
I got the "normal" ending first because I was advised by a friend to just follow the narration the first time I play through, and then see all the variations on disobedience and choice after. I think it was a pretty good idea.
I only played the HL2 mod version of Stanley parable and when they told me to use the exit menu as a mechanic, i got away from those crushing plates and never came back. My first ending was the normal one, I told myself I'll listen to what the narrator has to tell like story and played through it like he intended.Never got myself into the role of being Stanley but it was a pretty good experience taking the role of the audience.
I had an interesting experience in Skyrim once. I was in Markarth and there was a random dragon attack. Although it was one of the higher level dragons, it didn't matter too much since I had the guards and a few civilians on my side. So, the dragon died without much consequence, except the death of this one blacksmith who I had helped previously. For some reason, I decided to give them a funeral by putting their body in the river like Boromir in the Lord of the Rings. Fast forward a few days, I was in Windhelm and a courier comes up to me and gives me some inheritance from that blacksmith...
Vile in Megaman X. When Zero self destructed for the first time in front of my eyes, defeating Vile was no longer about just beating a boss or advancing the plot: I didn't even know english back then so I literally didn't know the plot of what was happening. All I knew was that in the past, Zero had saved me, and know that he was in trouble, and I had the chance to save him back, I still failed. Vile didn't had to die so I could advance. He didn't had to die because he was a bad guy. He had to die because Zero sacrificed himself to give me a fighting edge. But above all, I had to kill him, because now, there was no one else. I actually felt that I was there, and I had to finish this fight in the name of Zero. And every lost life wasted in learning Vile's attack pattern, was me, failing Zero again. Funny fact, as I didn't kew english, and I didn't had the manual because I played it as a rental, I didn't even kew the names of the characters except for Megaman X... Yet. Zero's death felt... crushingly real.
I do enjoy roleplaying and getting into character, its enjoyable and gives my gameplay more meaning and fun. But usually people dont want to RP or they find it weird or a waste of time. Personally I think its a good way to express your creativity.
For many people, Undertale is one of the games that makes you care. I know I did when I played it. And accidentally killed Toriel ;( One of the most interesting things about that game is it uses the reset as a mechanic of the game, not a way around it. The game remembers, even if you don't save. It constantly reminds you of your shortcomings and encourages you to learn. And the True Pacifist ending really makes playing as Frisk rather than just controlling "the fallen human" feel truly rewarding. If anyone knows how to write a meaningful, interwoven story, it is that Fox, Toby. Sorry, I fanboyed a little there.
+TheRealCAD97 hehe, no prob. as an undertale fan myself, i think that EC should really look into it and make a video about it. i'm surprised they haven't already. it's not a perfect game, no game is. the art style clashes sometimes, with some parts 16-bit and some 64. the music can get stale when it's not absolutely awesome, like his theme, megalovania, or spear of justice. the controls can feel sluggish in battle, and if you're not invested, the story is cliche. however, it is a great game, and an example of how mechanics can reinforce the storyline, instead of clashing against it.
Venus Gillespie Wait, you can KILL Asriel? I didn't even think that was possible. I mean, he doesn't even real stats. They're just the infinity symbol. HOW CAN YOU EVEN HURT HIM?
+TheRealCAD97 While Undertale is an awesome, emotional well written game I can't help but say it's story feels a bit like a kids cartoon. The whole game plays out as 'Be nice and nice things happen, and vice versa.' I think the game could have felt more deep if there was no 'perfect' ending, if at some point you had to choose the lesser of two evils. 'do you kill sans or lesser dog?' ect ect. Might have made the game feel more, fleshed out. (The game Lisa covers this rather well but the gameplay could use some work to keep me going.)
+FIJ707 If you dig all the way into the game, you'll find even the True Pacifist isn't a 'perfect' ending. There are two names to throw out: Chara and Asriel cannot be saved. And even still, just by playing, you've taken free will away from Frisk. And it's not exactly easy to always be nice is it? IRL you can be nice to everyone, but it's not going to be easy on you, In Game it's represented by the escalating difficulty of the SOUL sections with no gained HP. And when the game ends its not a "happily ever after", the Monsters still need to deal with reintegration with the Humans above ground. That's not going to be easy either. It's not a perfect game, but I like it.
While Rimworld isn't really a role-playing game in the same sense as Skyrim or the like, it's ability to weave incredible emotional stories out of just about nothing has earned it's permanent spot in both my heart, and Steam Library. So let me share with you the story told by I-Shuelke: steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198063131324/recommended/294100 "So I had just established my young but promising new colony, Ashton (a quite ironical name in the end ...). The basic needs were all covered, everyone had a nice place to sleep, decent clothing, enough to eat and time to relax. The people of Ashton were prosperous. They lived in harmony with nature and each other. Their wide fields provided them with plenty of food and they sold the surplus to the passing by caravans. Now and then a few warriors of a near tribe, the Pig Face Men, attacked the settlement, but the people of Ashton were safe, relying on the strength of their automated defence systems. And so the colony grew and I thought: This is it, I finally have a colony which doesn't collapse after a few hours. As if ... Remember when I told you about the harmony between the people and with nature? I meant there were no rivalries between the colonists, most were friends and there even was a married couple, Tali and Waltz. The harmony with nature also seems pretty coherent; the people relied mostly on their crops, eating only those animals which died by natural causes (e.g. old age or other animals), so the animal population in the near forests remained stable. So far so good. But taking those dead animals in meant of course someone had to leave the safe area of Ashton and wander through the wilds. Normally that wouldn't have been a problem, everyone was equipped with guns and armor of the Pig Face Men so they were quite ready to take on anything coming in their way. But then came the tortoise. Waltz left Ashton to get the still fresh corpse of a chinchilla which had been killed by some other animal. So Waltz has just grabbed it, when a tortoise nearby turned mad. I thought ok, those aren't that fast, Waltz will be able to safely carry the chinchilla inside and the turrets will take care of the tortoise. Nope! I'm not quite sure what exactly happened, maybe this animal was on speed or something like thak. Anyway, when it saw Waltz it charged at him at a horrifying pace. Waltz had just lifted his weapon when this damn creature reached and hurt him badly. However, its hard shell was no match for Waltz' gun. And so he came back home, injured but happy, that now there was even more meat than expected. But the wraith of the tortoise was unforgiving. The bite wounds in his upper body infected themselves. The medical treatment didn't work and he got weaker and weaker. If the infection at least would've been in one of his limbs, that might had saved him, but you can't just amputate someones chest. At last he couldn't fight any longer, the infection overwhelmed him. Tali, his wife, carved his story in the sides of his sarcophagus. The burial ceremony was heartbreaking. Everyone had come: Tali, his sister Julia, his friends Vas, Jones, Stephan, Boyd and Leia, Vas' tame wolf Nevile and Bacon 1 and Bacon 2. In the light of the evening sun they all waved a last goodbye to their fallen husband, brother and friend, before the people of Ashton went to bed. With Waltz dead or not, they had to cary on. But apparently it was all too much for Tali, not very surprising if you think about it. There was only this one little problem: She was a pyromaniac. When the rest of the colony slept, she left her big and empty bed. Driven crazy by grief, she did the only thing able to ease her pain. She set the forest on fire. Finally, exhausted almost to unconciousness, she fell back into her bed again. While she slept, the others, waken by the crackling fire, desperately tried to put out the flames which already started to spread over to the buildings. But they simply weren't enough, they could either try to save the buildings or the forest, not both. Of course they tended to the buildings, to the food storage to be exact. However it gave the fire the chance to spread through the forest, completely sorrounding the settlement.In the end it was all too much. Tali died in her own fire that she refused to extinguish, Jones and Boyd followed when they collapsed in the infernal heat. And then, when no hope was left, the gods, the ancestors, the Flying Spaghetti Monster or whatever thi people of Ashton believed in, heard their cries. Rain started falling down, putting out the fire. But it was too late. More than three quarters of the colony had been taken by the flames. Vas, Stephan and Leia were unconcious. Julia was the only one still able to stand. She did what she could, but with all the medicine burned she had no chance. Leia died first, Vas second. This caused his wolf Nevile, who had been laying loyal by his side, to turn mad like the damn tortoise and he ripped the still unconcious Stehpan into pieces before he went on attacking a herd of muffalos (some kind of marshmellow like buffalos) which was his end. Traumatised Julia, who managed to flee when Stephan was killed, wandered through the burnt ruins of Ashton. Blackened stone walls and pieces of charcoal everywhere. All the food they stored for the winter was gone, the fields empty. With no medicine left and her own wounds hurting worse and worse, Julia found one last smokeleaf joint in one of the destroyed buildings. She leant against her brother's sarcophagus and lit it. So she didn't feel anything when the Pig Face Men attacked. With the solar panels a loss to the flames, the turrets didn't react when Ashton's last inhabitant finally exhaled her last breath."
i once played Fable 3 and i hadn't gotten to the end before. I had a dog with me the whole way through the game and it never died, it was only injured. At the end though, one gun shot ended its life. I broke down crying and saying "no" over and over. I couldn't believe that through tones of gun shots, wounds, dangers, it was when the dog was almost invincible did it die. After that, some time passes and i'm faced with two options, to revive all of the innocents that were killed, or to revive my family and friends, leaving the others to rot away, forgotten. I wanted my dog back so badly but i chose to let the innocent come back. Even though the families were npcs, i felt that they would be happier with their loved ones instead of me just getting my dog back. I role played so hard and i keep doing it over and over. It's both amazing and saddening.
I keep meaning to come back to this since Dan cleared the Smouldering Lake in DS3 however long ago it was now in Side Quest because the most impactful example of this for me, personally, was finding the two corpses with Quelana's pyromancy tome. I've always enjoyed trying to piece together the lore of the series from the location and item descriptions of the items you find on hundreds of other bodies like this, but having (presumably) met both of those characters before, having actually interacted with them but now finding them turned into just another curious corpse with an interesting item description, the history and forgotten significance all those other bodies might have had finally sunk in. On top of that, the description of the item itself immediately followed that up with the revelation that if the Chosen Undead had been a pyromancer (and likely just the same if they weren't), history had forgotten them - me - entirely. The first time I came across it, it stopped me dead in my tracks and after a while I turned off the game to just think about what could have driven these two characters whose DS1 character arcs had revolved around being mentally or physically unable to face Izalith to return there to eventually die, and what I'd overlooked about every other jerky-skinned corpse I'd stripped the items from previously. Pretty much every character across the franchise I've done since has been role play to some extent, to try and explore the kinds of mentalities that characters in the series have demonstrated or could have.
in hearts of iron 4 I once had one of my majos offenses fail. the spearhead of my army, with the best weapons and men were surrounded, just like in bastogne but it was not one division, it was dozens the hundreds of thousands of virtual soldiers behind enemy lines, were the hopes of my people they could not come back, the enemy had their elite units as a buffer zone, a river in each side the surrounded forces were further divided, now 2 pockets of hungry and surrounded men where deep in enemy teritory I managed to break the enemy line, making a thin connection to one pocket those men could flee, but the retreat would make the other divisions inreachable so they attacked they liberated the rest of the spearhead, and supplyed them with munitions and newer weapons after months of constant battle, those divisions acumulated so much XP they were on the maximun level now the hammering of artillery and the fires of battle, had forget those men into true soldiers they pushed into the enemy lines they pushed into enemy territory they pushed into the enemy capital I never had a experience like that in a strategy game
When I started playing Skyrim, I made a decision that was to prevent myself from going mad: I will make a clear distinction between Dasu-Nir (my Argonian character) and myself. As such, out of game, I will refer to him in third person. I will not say "I got an awesome sword" but "Dasu-Nir got an awesome sword". One would imagine that this would distance myself from my character, but quite the opposite was true. Dasu-Nir being not me but himself helped me role-play my way through Skyrim. It helped him actually being a character with a personality that is completely different from mine, to the point where he -not me, he- actually seemed to have fallen in love, (with Brelyna Maryon from the college of Winterhold) but was somehow hesitant to act on that. I later found out that Argonians were actually enslaved by the Dunmer a few centuries ago and realized how confusing being in love with a Dunmer must have been for him.
+martijn van weele i had something very similar. my character Adriana was in some ways like me, in some ways better: more open, more active, more playful and more open to friends. but also some flaws: too open, too active, too childlike. and whenever i played skyrim is was not vinx playing skyrim, it wasn't vinx playing Adriana, it was adriana living in skyrim. she was a character, she had her own will and her own choices. and one thing i never though possible, she had a character ark. this was not planned, i just started playing with a character with a pretty cool name (a mesh of the high elf name part Andra and nord part ina) and an interesting and sad backstory for a character not sad at all who was really into magic, and kind of childlike with not taking stuff to serious. but then i came to Falskaar, OK cool, but i had already seen a letsplay so nothing was really new. but then i came to the last nordic room in the huge dungeon with a huge fight, and one of my companions died, that and the talk thougout the rest of it of how the war had torn everything apart got to her (I realize here that use I and her though eath other, i think that is because i am now half in character) . something changed in her, the idea was to stay in Falskaar for a bit afterwards, but no, after i was done with the quest i had to go back to skyrim, i had to make the war stop, nether side was truly good, but ether one was better then a war. suddenly i had to finish the cival war. not because i wanted to, or because i wanted to see Civil War Overhaul. but because the war had to stop. she was still happy, but now she was also determent to do what had to be done. and none of this was planned, never. it just happened. i think i will never have an experience like this ever again :( also, thank you if you actually read all that, it is almost a book at this point.
I was playing a game of Stellaris and decided to play as a Republic of merchant curious and friendly geckos. I expected it to be a really casual game, I had set the AI to low aggressiveness and very few opponents. Then I was randomly attacked by another race of aliens and I suddenly had to focus my research to military matters instead of just science for science's sake. My peaceful government had to become more militarized, and eventually the Republic itself fell into becoming an Empire (very Star Wars esque) as we fought back the invasion and then counter-invaded, sparking three wars of revenge until they were a subject with only one system to call their own, and it wasn't even their home system.
I think as a DM, this is my favorite way I've ever dealt with player death in Pathfinder: One of our players was a burglar-turn-spy who was tying to get information from a high-security inmate, a level 18 master of disguise. This inmate's Disguise and Charisma stats were so high they were ostensibly magic: he could turn into anything in the time it takes for you to snap your fingers. The player decided to do this of his own volition- which was kinda dumb, because the likelihood of him making it out of this prison was slim. He did however successfully make it into the cell-chamber, but when the guards finally patrolled by- the master of disguise turned into the player's character, and started shouting "HE LOCKED ME UP- THE PRISONER IS GETTING AWAY". The guards assumed that the person OUTSIDE of the cell was the master of disguise, who had locked up a decoy and was attempting to flee. This is where it got awesome. The master of disguise had a pretty sweet arc that me and my co-DM knew about, and considering the player wasn't strong enough to take on the guards (if he ended up getting caught), we came up with an alternate solution that lead to some of the coolest roleplaying I've ever seen from a player: we decided that the player would take over the character of the master of disguise- IMPERSONATING HIS OLD CHARACTER. The player, as the master of disguise, met up with his old party, assumed the spy/burglar had gotten out safely, and resumed their campaign. All the while, the master of disguise had a very different sub-plot going on behind the scenes. It was rad.
I play Star Trek Online, and they don't really allow much roleplaying in the gameplay itself. However, they allow you to create some interesting alien characters, and once I created my own alien species, I started to detail their anatomies, homeworlds, cultures, and political climates. After doing that, I was much more invested in fleshing out my character and roleplaying. This game periodically releases episodes, and if my character doesn't act the way I think they would during the game, I end up typing the response I think my character should have given in the local chat. So essentially I roleplay my character despite the game at times.
definitely this war of mine (i mean, you liked it yourself at the end^^): in my first run, with the katia, bruno, pavle scenario, with the first additional joining character - there i ran into such a moment. i got anton: an old dude, slow, no useful talents, cant fight or carry much, basically a liability to your group. i could have just reloaded the day and rolled the dice again with no "repercussions" from the game to get a better character to join me, someone useful to squeeze out all the loot, more than i could possibly need, as my completionist urges compell me so often. but when i read antons dialogue it just broke my heart and i started crying: here you have one of the people who are marked for death in war - old, fragile, weak, ill, fatigued, hungry and he is there at the doorstep desperately pleading me for shelter. i just could not bring myself to reload and reject him. at that moment i just felt the protective urge to bring him through this shit and know that i really saved someone who would have certainly died realistically. i teared up again at the conclusion when it told me that anton survived and went back into teaching.
I was playing the Organ Trail (A Post-Apocalyptic Oregon Trail with ZOMBIES!) and it was the first time, so I played the tutorial and when it got near the end, the guide character Clements gets bitten, and forces you to put him down. I had named all of my party members after family and friends, so the prospect of having to put one down because they were bitten scared me, and it became a journey to Oregon to keep everyone I loved from dying in the apocalypse.
In Xcom, every time I lost a mission, it felt like a real tragedy, like something I’d see in a news headline. Instead of it being Xcom, it was the story of some rookie soldiers racing to save humanity. When took the final shot to win the game, it felt amazing.
I don’t specifically remember the game but I do remember that when someone died in the game no matter how many save files you go back the character is dead.
Dragon Age Inquisition did this HARD for me. I believe what set up this insistence was the first outpost you build in the Hinterlands, the Crossroads, where you can build up the resources for the ravaged people living there and become friends with the leader of their defenses--insofar that he even becomes loyal to your cause. This set up immediately tells you that 1) your actions have an immediate infrastructural and personal effect, and 2) that random npcs, NOT just your party, in this game are unique PEOPLE. This is further encouraged throughout the game with the recruitment and outpost mechanics. By the end of the game, as I was leading inquisition soldiers into raids, I became dedicated to protecting every single footsoldier in combat I could. I jumped in front of them to take attacks, and in some cases even had my healer heal them. There was a very true sense of /leading/ my people into battle
ok, roleplaying-story: not from a videogame but from the d&d campaign im running. in the second session we played (all new players) i threw an encounter at them. a person was mugged by a group of 4. the PCs helped and beat up the muggers. after the battle (the bandits had surrendered) it turns out the bandits are just starving peasants who were desperate and had no other options left. thats when one of the players decided to kill the dude that had just attacked her. so i had one of the other bandits break down in tears - they were married. just to show the group: sh**'s real here!
I often Roleplay in games, sometimes more sometimes less. There often were moments where I gave cities planets or military campaigns more worth than they should have, or developed them in not so effective ways to fit their style in a multitude of strategy games. I roleplay out of games too, but it kind of developed from roleplaying in games like Rimworld. I engage games like Civ 5, FTL, Xcom, Kenshi and Stellaris with roleplay mindsets very often, bringing Ideas or Characters from my non-game RP into those situations to see how they would act, or inspire myself from in-game roleplay that emerges from playing normal to make new characters and factions in my other roleplays. I think the most dedication I put to such once was a game of Stellaris where I wrote a "Leaders Log" along my playthrough, with passing time I put in fewer and fewer entries but in the first half of the game a good third of my techs I researched were at least mentioned along the more important reports.
In my first successful playthrough of XCOM Enemy Unknown I brought a randomly generated Swedish female rookie along on a council mission because I had a couple of injuries to my more experienced soldiers. Elin Halvorsen her name was. She ended up getting a few important kills in a mission where I lost another 2 soldiers, and was soon promoted and given the Assault class. I always found this kinda amusing in itself. Assault to me at least is the most aggressive class in XCOM. It's all about running across the battlefield and shotgunning aliens in the face while everyone else hangs back and worries about 'tactics' and 'staying alive' and other boring shit. And so having this crucial role being performed by a blonde woman from Sweden seemed deliciously inappropriate. I constructed a reality where all of these pig-headed 'manly men' looked down on Halvorsen in training and suggested she consider becoming a support, or a sniper where at least she'd get to stay at the back, but she was all like "FUCK YOU!" and then shotgunned them in the face! Of course, she ended up being an essential part of my team, killing dozens and dozens of aliens. She missed a few battles along the way, but I always went into those thinking "Oh god, we're missing Halvorsen, everyone be extra careful!". Of course, she ended up possessing the potential for psychic abilities and of course she ended up being The Volunteer for the final mission. Story spoilers ahead: Having fought bravely for months and taken many hostile lives, at the end of the game, Elin Halvorsen, the plucky Swedish assault who never let anyone tell her what she wasn't capable of, sacrificed herself to save planet earth and the entire human race. I wept. RIP Col Halvorsen.
When I played XCOM Enemy Unknown, in one mission a character that I had since the very beginning of the game was killed, and then came back as an undead servant and started attacking the rookies on my team. I was able to put him down without losing any more of my people but I was both terrified and heartbroken after that. Terrified because now I realized that any one my team that I count on can not only be killed but can be used against me, and heartbroken because I had just lost the founding member of my team and I had to kill him.
Yeah XCOM does it better than most games. I remember my first succesful campaign where I lost 3 of my best men against the first ethereal I encountered. Those loses really hurt, especially if tactical error was the cause of death. But the cool thing is: Its not over. In other games you lose if the hero dies. In XCOM new heroes rise to pick up the sword (hopefully). Like in real warfare noone is invincible. It gives you this 'Game of thrones'-Style fear of what might happen to your favorite soldier in the next mission.
MrRecconfox +Randygandalf95 Exacty. Stereotypes dictate the men in your team are going to be the most aggressive and willing to take the most ridiculous risks, and so having a woman do that job defied those stereotypes in a ridiculously fun way :)
In episode 2 of Life is Strange, there is a scene, if you've played it you know which one, where, if you aren't skilled enough, or paying attention to a specific character's bio, they will die, and the summary sheet at the end of the episode will point that out. When I let this person die, and was told I could have saved them (as 60% of players did), but didn't, that really realigned everything in a series that already did this kind of thing all the time.
I was playing For Honor when I got a silly helmet for my Gladiator, it made him look like a fish so I ran around screaming "I AM FISHMAN! FEAR MY POWER!". I was basically a fish super hero. I named all my moves something dumb like "Strike of a Thousand Piranhas" or "Salmon Slam". About halfway through my 3rd match as Fish Man, I kept getting killed by a Shinobi, and from that match forward, that Shinobi was my arch-nemesis "Fisher's Hook" and I wouldn't stop playing until I bested him. Finally after like 6 or 7 matches I managed to kill him multiple times without dying once to him, it was a great feeling of relief and victory.
The thing about permanant death in games is that in can indeed break immersion. Not just because the players gets frustrated about having to restart, but also because when a game is too hard, players stop immersing themselves so that they can get the best loot.
It depends on how much flexibility it gives you in developing your character's abilities. In a roguelike like Stone Soup the longer my character survives the more unique their skillset becomes and the more I become attached to them. By the time I'm down to the vaults I have some kind of glaive-wielding vampire enchantress and like hell am I going to let her die by taking dumb risks.
Shadow of mordor gives a good reason on permanent death.
Yes, I hate permanent death in games, it ruins the whole thing, on Steam, I have Magicite, and it's super fun! but they ruined it with permanent death...
Actually it's quite the opposite, permanent death makes each play-through almost like a self-contained story with a clear beginning and an end, i made countless stories for my XCOM soldiers and their heroic deeds and deaths, same with Darkest Dungeon, Don't Starve also makes each play-though feel like a personal struggle to survive unimaginable odds, it feels like a genuine role-playing experience, every action i made the character do i would have done myself if i was in the same situation because the stakes feel very real and tangible.
TheHunterWolf Well, a lt of games depend of skillset on permanent death, and some people tolerate more grinding than others, some people find it relaxing mainwhile others find it frustating.
I remember playing League of Legends and everyone in my game got really into character. After about an hour of playing the game and both teams banter back and forth as we thought the champions would, someone on the enemy team pitched an idea. Since we were all full build and max level, the enemy Lissandra suggested we should implement a perma-death style method of game play. Since we were at pretty much a standstill with both teams repelling each other easily at each push, it seemed like the only way to make them game end. If a player died, they sat at fountain and did nothing but offer banter the rest of the match. If a team lost all of it's players, they would agree to surrender. This added so much tension to the game. Every brush became deadly, every space in the fog of war terrifying, knowing death was one five man death bush away. After about five minutes we were down to three players on my team while the enemy still had their full roster. I was one of the last surviving players on my team and I knew that the next fight would come down to mechanical skill alone to determine the winner. So I got my remaining teammates to hop in a Skype call with me so we would be able to effectively communicate the next fight. When it finally came time, we led one last push Zulu style with our Poppy charging at the enemy straight down the mid lane as they pushed, and our Brand and myself (Ashe with Guinsoo's and a Ruunans~) flanking from either side of the river. I was the first to die off but I managed to take two of the enemy with me and burn Lissandra's ultimate so the rest of my team wouldn't have to worry about it. Once Brand got a good Pillar of Flame off the enemy minion wave was decimated and he got one good ult to kill the rest of the team while Poppy did her best to peel for him. The enemy team surrendered and I've been great friends with the lot of them since. It's surprising how much fun one can have roleplaying in a MOBA when all ten players are having a good day and feel like having a bit of friendly RP, and how tense the game can become.
Do you want to ARRRRRRRPEE
+Dylan Stearns I've never played LoL, but I play a lot of Smite and I agree, roleplaying in a MOBA can be so much fun. Since all the heroes in Smite are gods and other mythological characters it's a lot of fun roleplaying them. You can adopt the personality of your character and have fun with the relationships between the characters. For example, if you play as Thor and Odin is on your team as well, you can roleplay and call him "father" while he calls you "son". It can be a lot of fun when you get a whole family of gods on the same team.
+Sir Goldenblade you are a gmod rper. i smell it
or like in space station 13 in a way that trying to win at all costs and not roleplaying will get you banned
I'm not gonna read all of this but I agree
Not having your choices labeled as "good and bad" or "blue and red" or "paragon and renegade" really helps the immersion. Most people would probably project themselves as the good/blue/paragon character. Just look at the statistics for inFamous 2, for example.
This leaning toward good really break the immersion, because you are constantly looking for a way to get that "good ending".
It also makes people only play the bad path because they want to get the mileage off the game, thus the game misses any sense of nuance to the decisions.
Alfredo Marquez Exactly.
The way that the KotoR games did it, through not letting you know which choices you'd made until after the conversation was over, was great for me. It led you to actually think through what each choice meant, and the companion influence could only be changed through these dialogue options. This meant you had to juggle keeping them liking you while staying true to the path you want, while never being told which options did which.
You could argue this broke immersion by 'gaming' the sequences but for me it gave weight to each response, and made the characters seem more real and genuine. They didn't just fall in love with you cause you gave them a hand mirror once.
I never minded the quick-time action buttons for renegade and paragon in Mass Effect. Totally fine with me. I just wish that it wasn't paragon answer is upper right and renegade answer is lower right. I want to pick what I want to say, and let the game tell me later if it was renegade/paragon. Sometimes, I was so mad at the characters that I wanted to say the renegade thing, but the lower right knowledge discouraged me.
Dishonored got the naming thing right,but the ending...
I played a game of Civ 5 a while back where I fairly early on used two catapults to take over Babylon. One survived, was upgraded to a Trebuchet and helped take Amsterdam. More than two thousand years later and that unit, now a rocket artillery, helps to break the defenses of Berlin granting me a Conquest victory. In my head they were a family of siege engineers that generation after generation served my nation in conquering the world.
I like it. I usually play way too militaristic in Civ 5 to get that kind of individual story. Every war a few die, but dozens take their place for the next one. My hero units get buried in the masses in the late game.
I found meta-RP on a PVP server in WoW. I had leveled my rogue back in the day when Thousand Needles was not shit and while I was there I had been constantly harassed by enemy players. So when I made it to level cap, I came back to Thousand Needles and acted as a guardian angel for the horde playing there.
I would stealth around watching people level, if they were going to die, Horde or Alliance alike, I would leap out of the shadows and slaughter the mobs that were about to kill them then vanish into the dusty winds of the salt flats. As long as players didn't harass each others, I was helpful.
However when I saw higher level players or groups of enemy players ganking lowbies I descended on them like the angel of death and over time that place became *my* territory. People would message me when ever they were getting ganked, even total strangers, and ask me to come defend them because it was MY God damn race track and no one got ganked on my land.
I also got really into the RP aspect of Alterac valley back in the day. I use to TORMENT the alliance by stealthing into the towers and stealing them right out from under the guard's noses. I got reported for hacking so many times that I had to make a video about it to show what I was doing so that when the admins contacted me I could just point them to the video and show them how I was doing the seemingly impossible. It's still up on youtube called "Surprise's Rogue Guide to AV".
Again, my Rogue became semi-legendary because I picked this one thing I was really good at and made it into my art. The horde rarely lost when I was with them because I gave them all the time in the world to win by resetting all the enemy timers over and over. I became a ninja-saboteur, insuring my army's victory through the use of stealth and guile. All meta-gameplay but it was fun!
Did you have some sort of heroic title?
+Jaded Pony That's pretty freaking awesome
+Jaded Pony That is something I wish for MMORPG`s. Rouge is far to close to a warrior in most games.
I did a more vengeful npc version of this.
During the Beta, there was this giant albino bat in Tirisfal Glades that snuck up when I wasn't expecting it and killed me a couple times, so I made it my mission to kill it back to get my revenge.
Unfortunately, it was so much higher level than me (and Elite) that I never managed to kill it before the Beta ended.
Approaching 10 years later, I finally found that bat again after getting that character to max level.
I thought "Finally, I get to have my revenge!"
But many changes had happened in the full release and the years and expansions since then, including the bat being delevelled and losing its elite status.
What I saw was a decrepit, feeble creature, ravaged by age and time, no match for my now max level character, who reluctantly put the creature out of its misery, feeling sadness and pity in his cold, unbeating heart that until now had craved only revenge.
I was playing Pokémon Y a few years back. I took a right turn and found myself at victory road and caught myself a baby lucario.
That lucario was X. He was my friend.
We challenged every gym together, every event, and beat the elite four. We caught every Pokémon and he never left my team.
Every time he shed a tear and shook off a killing blow to keep fighting I felt proud.
I equipped him with the moves he needed to cover ANY fight.
And at the end of it all I cried when I put it down for the last time. I know he’s still there, waiting in our home. Waiting for the kid that caught him and built him into a proud lucario.
He never needed the mega stone to win a fight, so I never gave it to him.
Oddly enough, my favorite moment came in a turn-based strategy game: Alpha Centauri. Early on I engaged in a land grab that put me in conflict with another civilization, which eventually lead to war. He had been colonizing some land that I had already established myself on, and I quickly started winning the land battle. He was a aquatic-focused civ, so he could have weathered that for a long while, but he offered peace terms where he'd give me some tech, pay some money, and give me one of the cities on that continent we were contending, so I took the deal.
After that, relations improved; he soon became friendly, and later we became allies. I was a little shocked at this, since most strategy games once you go to war with someone it never ends in a lasting peace, but this time it did. We became strong allies with trade and research agreements, both carefully planning our settlements not to encroach on what we perceived as the other's territory. This was an AI-run civ, I'll remind you.
Later on, I got embroiled in a war with another civ that proved to be mostly a naval battle, which I was not at all prepared to fight. So, I went to coordinate with my ally, and he gave me 50 Needlejets, which more than quadrupled my air forces at the time, and shared plans that he was going to attack a specific city.
At the time, this all made sense to me. I sent him some tanks (since his ground forces were less than mine) and we proceeded to conduct a coordinated war against our foe, later joined by his ally. We won that war, and we continued like that for the rest of the game, steadily expanding, trading units back and forth, and coordinating attacks. The relationship never soured. I even ended the game early so that we wouldn't have to come to conflict on who was the 'real' winner.
On reflection that one relationship has been my favorite moment of roleplaying and strategy at the same time, and I've never been able to replicate it. Most modern strategy games have enemies stay as enemies for the rest of the game; any reconciliation is token and temporary. When I play turn-based strategy games I always plan on going in as the victorious loner; one who can do no wrong in the long run and will have no permanent friends, only temporary non-enemies. But for one solitary game of Alpha Centauri, I feel like I actually made a friend, and they certainly had a friend in me, even though we started as enemies.
Playing civilization. A unit lived with a sliver of health. The last survivor defending my country from a hostile invasion. Later the unit became a veteran and I got to rename it. This made that unit legendary for ages. When it finally did fall It was right in the feels. Lol 😆
those soldiers' descendants got continuously upgraded and promoted all the way to modern times (or until the unit died), becoming the celebrated uber elite celebrity warriors of your country, then? :D
One of my runs in Rimworld gave me the most tragic story. Started tribal, two people, a muffalo, and a pet wolf. We start out okay, getting set up, nothing too bad. My colonists fall in love! And then immediately after one of them gets the plague. I only have herbal medicine and know that despite my best efforts...she's going to die.
On her deathbed, my other colonist proposes to her. Literally minutes later she passes away. Her pet muffalo goes wild with grief and starts attacking everything, beating the pet wolf until it can't move, then my other colonist. After this, while both are still disabled...a wild wolf comes up and kills and eats the pet wolf, all within mere inches of my fallen colonist, forcing him to watch. He slowly starves to death, mere feet away from the entrance to their little home and safety and food. It has been probably 2 years since that scenario plays out and it STILL gets to me.
I know this whole story is gonna sound childish but I was playing Minecraft on hardcore. Ya know, delete the save when I die. Every step and every action I made was careful and calculated. My goal? Build a medieval castle in survival. I did and I was so proud. I was walking around in game in my garden one day and thought to myself “aww heck, why not make a flagship and a fleet?” So I got the materials and got ready. A few seconds too long underwater and I drown. I straight up cried because I had gotten absorbed into being the kindly lord of that town that I forgot I was on hardcore.
I remember playing Doom 3 in my friends basement late at night.
It was dark, we had this sense of being in a place we shouldn’t be because it was probably 1 or 2 in the morning.
Every sound, every sight could just as easily be in the game or right there next to us in the basement.
I remember several times having to pause and rip the headphones off because it was just too real. Like I was the one chainsawing demons and running away from monsters rather than the character.
The one time I was playing Halo 2, and I was on a beach on the mission called "Day at the Beach" I'm fairly certain. I was in a Warthog (Which is just a cool jeep with a gun on it) and had 2 marines in it with me.
At one point I was driving along, awesome music playing in the background, the guy in the turret going at it like crazy, and enemies falling all around me. A pretty awesome show either way, but then, When my Gunner died and I was going to replace him with the other marine so we could survive, I went on a jump very strangely. I ended up flipping the hog, and it ended a little ways away from me.
Instantly I started running to the hog, and I crouched behind it since it was now destroyed, and used it as cover. The marine was as well, each of us taking one side of the hog to shoot from behind.
And then there was a line of explosions coming up to the hog, suddenly the area around me went black, and everything seemed to explode. All I heard other than the boom was a scream. A scream of the man next to me. Everything went silent after that, since the warthog shifted and I was now completely covered from the enemies so they didn't fire. The body of the marine was laying in front of me, the crater from the explosion that killed him, and his blood a short distance away.
It was chaotic, and kinda meaningful, since those two marines fought to the end to defeat the covies and help save Earth. It was awesome.
A good example of permanent death would be Shadow of Mordor. In the game, when you died, you came back to life because you are a wraith. But everytime you die, the orc that killed you will grow stronger and more powerful, harder to kill and more likely to cause problems for you later in the game. Orcs also remember you if they kill you and your choices effect them if the run away or kill you. This way, you had to research each individual orc, what their fears and strengths were, so you could defeat them and prevent them from fighting you again or make them run away and loose their power. This also gave more character to the Orcs more than the books ever could have. Because there are more Orcs than humans or any others, you cherish the human, elf, dwarf and halflings that you do run into.
And then they patented the system.
Me and my friend went through an entire campaign of XCOM on the PS3, where every single member to join our forces and surviving their first outing received their own full backstory and complete interaction with the other members of our main crew. One of them, Wagner, died on his first mission, but was the best friend of our silent, heroic sniper Xiao who saved many a campaign. At the end, we had about 10 A4 pages of notes written about our different characters. Because of this, we refused to use the save and reload system, a dead character was dead, and it's one of the best campaigns of XCOM I played, fully abiding to the Ironman condition without playing on Ironman mode.
To be honest I think it's better when you aren't forced to not save, but you have the choice to if you are truly emerged in the game.
I think it'd be interesting if an RPG kept all the skills and abilities completely under the hood; a game where you don't get to see what your character is capable of, and at the same time, the more you do things, the better you get. You wouldn't get to see the mechanical effect, but you would know that your abilities in the game have improved through doing.
I like the idea, but it would need some clever means of making you use the abilities so you know you can do them. It seems like it would lend itself easily to FOO Strategies.
maybe an entry section where you have to do most of it at the start. Like having to run and jump to get to a part where you can hide, then you get to an armory where you can choose weapons that you like and start using them. something like that.
jesternario so an organic tutorial, maybe not showing skills you can get until just before you chose them(if you use a skill tree), of course hiding the morality bar(bars if you want it to be better) or even better not having it .
Of course this sound really risky and difficult to properly execute.
It would be, and it might fail, but it would be worth trying. As far as morality, I'd prefer there to forgo the binary style most games use and replace it with nothing but shades of gray, where there are no good guys, but no villains either
This is exactly what I want to do in my game :D!! I've been trying to think up ways for the player to have really simple controls at first glance, but as they learn more about the world and themselves they also learn to use those controls in more ways to create more complex moves/skills.
It's all conceptual right now (till I learn how to code or something lol) but its a delicate balancing act...
What do you think about having that same concept for leveling as well? I personally think you need a UI with all that stuff telling you your level and stats, but admittedly, having an xp bar (and health and stuff) is a big psychological motivational factor so I am not sure how to make it more subtle...
When I first played Bastion, and I got to the very last level, the game gave me a decision. It was simple, straightforward, and entirely binary, but no right or wrong or good and bad. Bring Zulf back to the Bastion. The game had no moral choice system prior to know, and it caught me entirely by surprise. I considered everything about this character, what he's done for me, what he's done for my character, and whether I could trust him. And what followed after that was eye-opening, and even more so when I saw the alternative in my next playthrough.
I felt the exact same way with Bastian.
Mr. ShinyObject You're gonna carry that weight...
Bastion's choices were great, all the more so for being unexpected.
That game did a great job surprising the player a few times; the Singer was another good example.
I never played Bastion in full, but I did play the demo. What got to me was being on that first island, surrounded by pots and the inky void. True to gamer instinct, I started smashing pots, to see if there was loot inside. At some point while I was smashing them, the narrator piped up, saying something to the effect of, "he lashed out in anger".
The game had turned some moment of experimentation into a character moment. That my protagonist was overcome by the emotions of the end of the world, and was reacting with blind, directionless fury. It's a moment that stuck with me even now.
Bastion is great for giving context to your character's actions
And I think that's what is important. Even if you aren't rping as the kid, you have to admire the teams ability to give context and meaning to your actions through the narrator, and I believe that is what makes bsation such a great narrative because your game play effects the narrative that is given most of the game.
Bastion did choice great in that your choices aren't discret and are instead subtle, saving the larger choices until later in the game. In truth, there is very little consquence other than the consequence of context being added to your actions as you play. Sometimes context, not consequence, is all a player needs to understand how a character feels, even if they are silent. Tying consequence and context into our gameplay can mean the difference from having a simple game experience to a narrative experience. Gameplay can provide narrative, it just has to be done correctly. And Bastion does that phenomonally.
Here's a story. So i was playing a game of civ 5 as Polynesia. I settled my city, built my army, the usual stuff. But, right after I spit out my first new settler, I lost my capital to barbarians. At that point, I was at war with three nations around me. I had a settler, an archer, three warriors and a scout. That whole game I couldn't find a place to settle. The game went from a complex strategy game to a story of a nomadic tribe fighting for survival.
One of my best and most immersive gaming experiences came from Napoleon: Total War. I was playing as Prussia, and I had to command my weakest army against three full-stack revolutionary armies.
Being composed of mostly veteran Landwehr (Militia) and a few standard Line Infantry, I knew I didn't stand a chance, so I decided that I would bleed them white in their assault! I placed my Landwehr on top of a small hill, where I knew they'd have a height advantage (as well as extra momentum if I ever need to have them to charge) and kept by Line Infantry behind for reserve.
Surprisingly, my Landwehr put up a good fight! More than I expected, as the revolutionary force's Line Infantry (the filthy traitors!) marched closer to the hill, they fired volley after volley, covering the base of the hill with smoke! And once I could see that the enemy started to waver, I ordered a bayonet charge, and the first wave was routed, much to my delight!
The next treat was the cavalry, my Landwehr weren't disciplined enough to form into square formation, so I had them shift ranks with my Line Infantry. However, the enemy launched a surprisingly coordinated assault, combining cavalry charges followed up with lines of infantry to cover their retreat! Having to fight coordination with coordination, I spent most of the battle in intense micromanagement, shifting Landwehr and Line Infantry to maintain my height advantage.
As the muskets silenced and the men retreated, we were victorious - But for the last time. My units were tattered and fatigued, my general had fallen, and the enemy still had fresh reserves, which were being brought to the front. No amount of tactics or micromanagement could save them now. Sensing the moment of truth, I had what was left of the army form a line on the base of the hill, and once the enemy was close enough, ordered one last bayonet charge.
They fought tooth and nail for their lives, but they too had reached their limit. The battle was lost, my forces either dead or routed.
It was a costly victory for the enemy, however! Most of their regiments were tattered and fatigued, and one of their generals had fallen. My remaining forces had been more than a match for them after that, and the rebel scum were crushed under the heels of the king!
I still fondly remember the regiments that fought in that battle:
27th Landwehr
28th Landwehr
29th Landwehr
30th Landwehr (This one was the most veteran of their peers, and routed two units during a bayonet charge!)
31st Landwehr
32nd Landwehr (This one had felled a general!)
15th Regiment of Foot
16th Regiment of Foot (They were part of the climax of the battle - Fought to the last!)
17th Regiment of Foot
22nd Hussars
23rd Hussars
While you couldn't actually do it in-game, I always liked to think that there was a statue erected in their honor at the site of the battle.
Oh man, Nuzlockes...
I was playing FireRed (a Kanto remake for GBA) as "Chai" and did food-based names. Squirtle "Soup" and Pidgey "Chicken" were a favorite duo for a while. Then I caught a male Nidoran. I LOVE Nidoking, so I was ecstatic! I named him Carrot and he stayed on my team as much as possible. He even solo'd Sabrina, a psychic user!
Well, I was heading up to the Elite Four when Gary-MF-Oak showed up. I thought "Okay. We got this. Come on, team!"
It was tough. I was winning, but most of my Pokemon were on low health. He sent out his Alakazam, so I weighed my options. Carrot was at full health, and a high level to boot. Sure, he was a Poison-type, but he'd solo'd Sabrina. This punk Alakazam was nothing to his boosted speed and attack.
Except it went first.
And it crit.
I can't remember who avenged him, only that I'd won but wasn't happy. My husband was cooking dinner and had to turn down the heat to give me a hug, I was crying like a fool. I lost Carrot.
He suggested that I just trade him to another game instead of releasing him or to just continue using him because he was my favorite, but that just felt wrong - like necromancy or something - and I'd gone that far with following all of the rules. Chai would have buried him with honor. So, still teary-eyed, I released him.
Then that left me with a hole in my party at the very tail-end of the game. I didn't want to go through grinding again, not that late in the game, but no one was really strong enough to go into the Elite Four with any hope for survival.
Then there was Tofu. He was the Hitmonlee I got at the fighting dojo in Saffron after beating Sabrina, and he had already survived a decent amount of level-grinding so he wouldn't take too long to catch up. He still went into the Elite Four a little early, but I was hopeful.
I blazed through the Elites, but then got to Gary-MF-Oak again. It was tough. I lost a lot of Pokemon, used up almost all of my Potions. We were each down to one. He had an Arcanine, I had Tofu, and very little hope. Extremespeed is a bitch.
They traded blows back and forth. Then came the choice: How did I want to lose? If I healed, it would get me another turn, but I'd still get hit and I'd be right here again. If I attacked, I'd be too slow because of Extremespeed, and worse, the best attack I could use had a decent miss-chance. Unless he didn't use Extremespeed, or didn't attack at all, or my hit landed... Longshots, but I'd come this far and it was the final moment. I couldn't just turn around and call it quits.
I finally just kinda looked at the little sprite on my screen, nodded, and issued the command to attack.
Extremespeed hit first.
But Tofu clung to life with a single hit point and struck true, finishing off the offending Arcanine with a risky Hi-Jump Kick!
Dinner tasted better than usual that night.
sounds like my experience with Pokemon main series games in general, not even nuzlockes lol
It’s always the ones you don’t expect to pull through
Drama
I remember playing skyrim with a mod that removed all the invincible essential character stuff. as well as another that made dragons way more powerfull and far rarer to run into.I had been playing as a sort of bounty hunter character. once I went into the Silver Blood Inn in Markarth and sat down at the bar for a drink I spoke to the innkeep if he had work and told me about a bounty I for some bandits the usual. then I talked to some of the other NPCS in the inn I eventually found some guy who wanted a drink I gave him one and recruited him as a follower. me and this guy went all around skyrim taking bounties for like a whole 6 in game months. then on my way to turn in a bounty in Dawnstar the first random dragon encounter happened because of the mod it was extremely powerfull. he use fire breath and I was able to block it with a ward but my drunkard follower of course didn't so he was incinerated instantly. he had died before but I usually would immediately go to a previous save but I hadn't saved in an hour and with dragon encourage term so rare I needed to kill this dragon to unlock my next shout. so I let him die then defeated the dragon afterward I role played to think about what my character would do next, and it hit me. on most of my character I never touch the main question I haven't played it since I was playing skyrim on console so I decided idea do the main question for the first time in forever and I though that my character would be doing it all to avenge his friend who had fought beside him sorry so long. THIS IS WHY SKYRIM WITH MODS IS FREE KING AMAZING.
dragon *encounter * so rare
I decided I would do the main quest line sorry for all the typos
There's an edit button
+Tom Jackal
Not on the RUclips app.
>mobile
DansGame
First time I played Skyrim: It was the first game I'd ever really played, so I had no idea about the conventions such as dungeons, loot and the like. So when I walked by the stables of Whiterun and saw there was a horse I could buy, I went back to Riverwood and spent days chopping wood because that's the only way I knew how to make money. I loved that horse and it was incredibly precious me since I'd done hard honest work earning the money to buy it. I left it in towns before heading into dungeons so that it wouldn't be hurt in the wild and ran away from conflicts I could have won so it wouldn't die.
The time I cite for my falling in love with video games was when my courier in Fallout: New Vegas started collecting pre-war books and cartons of cigarettes, and leaving them in every mailbox he could find across the Mojave. Something about the moment of his actual character developing made the hundreds of hours I spent with him after that point (and losing his file right before finishing the game) worth it and forever changed the way I play games.
I roleplay because of Extra History,
Every time I play a strategy game (ck2, civ, eu4 ect.) I imagine Dan's voice narrating the entire journey, it feels like I'm making an episode of EH.
Cheers extra credits.
I remember a section in Bayonetta were you have to defend Cereza(little girl) from the evil angels trying to kill her. I defended her with crazy combos and an adrenaline rush you only get from jack and slash games; more when you have an objective to keep fighting for. When it was over I got a trophy called a mother’s love. That attached me to that little girl for the rest of the game in the most maternal video game way there is; even though I’m a dude...
Yeah, I'd note that Bayonetta and the like are actually a lot better for "Role playing" at least to the extent of character and mechanics intertwining.
You see a cutscene of Bayonetta putting off crazy combos, and then get to do similar combos in the actual gameplay.
My best _stories_ from gaming came from Rome: Total War, especially my one unit of Hastati (basic fighting unit), reduced to 17 men, without a leader after a Pyrrhic victory, stuck on the open road in the Swiss Alps, journeying to meet up with reinforcements... They were caught by another, healthier and more veteran unit of Hastati led by an actual general. I cared about those 17 men (they had been through multiple battles, and for a while had been "the 33 men"). I saw the enemy coming to kill my men, and swore I would give them _such a fight, that those 17 would be remembered._
It was in the Alps so there were mountains in the battlefields. I put my men on top of the highest peak and waited for the enemy to come to them - tiring them out a bit. Hastati throw three javelins before charging, so there was a volley, back and forth, javelins up, javelins down, and my men had the high ground advantage. By the time they were ready to charge, their energy and morale were up, and they poured down from that peak and cut down the enemy _and_ their general.
All 17 survived, and one was promoted to general. That unit had a place of honor in my armies for the rest of my career (and that general married one of my own daughters).
This is an awesome story. Wish I could recall such events of mine, but it has been too long.
So, I was playing Fallout New Vegas, (I believe it was for the first time), and I was patrolling the surrounding area of the town to see what was nearby. All of a sudden, a Mierlirk started chasing me. I didn't have anything useful on me at the time, and I was on the hardest difficulty, so it did more damage. I ran like hell, trying to slow it down with my 10mm, to no avail. This thing chased me all the way back into goodsprings, where I ran to the bar for shelter, at the last second, before I entered, I turned to see the first NPC I had talked to other than the doctor from the beginning of the game, the guy who had better helped me understand the world I had entered into only a mere hours ago, Easy Pete, distracting the Mirelirk so I could get inside. I had hurriedly looped around to the back of the bar to go make sure Easy Pete was still okay. I then crept back to the front of the building to see what had happened to Pete. The good news was that the Mirelirk had wandered off just far enough for me to sneak by without him noticing. The bad news was that Easy Pete's corpse laid by the entrance to the bar. Sneaking by the Mirelirk, I took Pete's body to the cemetery nearby atop a hill and buried him in the grave I was supposed to be buried in from the start of the game where I was almost killed. After a moment of solidarity, I left Pete, (where his body remains still), but not before taking his iconic hat, which I have not unequipped from my character to this day, in honor of the man who saved my life.
Once in Shadow of War, there was this one orc who I just couldn't beat. He just kept on showing up and kicking my ass, following me from region to region. Each time, he wouldn't kill me. He'd only demand I give him a better fight next time. I managed to lose him in Nurn, and ended up forgetting all about him for most of my game. Only after I finished the main questline did he reappear, around 20 levels lower than me, and once again managed to actually kick my ass. Like always, he refused to kill me and instead basically just said how I hadn't become nearly as powerful as I thought. I was truly humbled, so when I inevitably chased him down and beat him, with the element of surprise no longer on my side, I decided to let him go rather than kill him. I then sent a series of low level minions for him to kill and level up, until he was finally of equivalent level to me. Then, I dueled him in single combat, refusing to use any bullshit and OP Wraith powers, and decapitated him.
I don't know if this 100% counts as role-playing, but I felt a rather personal attachment to the fight.
Another example is undertale with it's (literally) game breaking revelations about the consequences of your actions, it shows you how your actions can affect other people and even if you can restart, those actions can still carry consequences because everything you do can affect your life in different ways.
strength coach SC
That damned flower, he knows everything you did in your previous saves, even telling you about what you did to the characters.
This is the story of my first nuzlocke, it was of pokemon white.
My run started when I encountered and caught a lillipup and named her “Lolla” on route 1. I then lost my starter to the first rival battle, and Lolla became my new starter. Throughout the play through I had lost most of my pokemon. One time I almost had a full team wipe against Skyla, only Lolla and an Escavalier I had named “Night” survived and I had to rebuild my team. I added a Vanillite named “Strawberry” to my team. Those three pokemon stuck with me through the game until the final battle against Ghetsis, when all of my other team members seemed to change every other route. During this final battle, half of my team was dead, Strawberry and Lolla were in red health, and I didn’t have anymore healing items. Ghesis sent out his final pokemon, his hydreigon. I sent out Night. Hydreigon used fire blast and watched as Night’s health dropped from 100% to 0%, and like that, one of my longest surviving pokemon died in one hit. I sent out Lolla because I didn’t trust Strawberry to out speed, and Lolla had more speed. It didn’t matter because Lolla didn’t out speed, and hydreigon used focus blast. It missed and Lolla avenged Night with retaliate. I won my first nuzlocke with only two pokemon in red health.
This is from Panzer Blitz, a board game: Once, after i finished a massive battle, i totalled up all the "dead" units and calculated that they had over 1,000 men. Moreover, seeing all the "wreck" counters on the board where tank platoons had died made me imagine the real battlefield, littered with burning tanks, destroyed guns, and dead and injured men. It made me feel for the men who fought the real Battle of Porohzvka (the climax of the Kursk Campaign). During the game, i was busy moving cardboard pieces, calculating combat ratios and rolling dice. I didnt think about the people dying with every die roll. Afterward, i wondered how many real commanders fight battles the same detached way.
Every game of CKII I've ever played
Paradox games in general
Me: stops bribing my vassals soft 2 minutes
My vassals: REBELLION
The game Crusader kings is full of these kinds of stories for me. However, the most important one to me was one of my first games. I was playing as a minor lord in Ireland, who had the goal of uniting the warring factions of Ireland into one kingdom. However, he was a particularly lustful king, and ended up having a bastard child one day. However, years down the line, this bastard child became a skilled warrior and commander, eventually becoming my best general. My lord ended up forging his kingdom, but was killed trying to bring some stubborn lords into the fold. Leaving his one "legitimate" son to rule despite the fact that the bastard was the firstborn.
Normally in this game, the bastard would hate his new king, feeling cheated out of his inheritance. instead, he and the king quickly became the closest friends. despite everything, these two half brothers that should have been trying to kill each other, decided to put all else aside and work towards establishing Ireland as the dominant kingdom of the region. Maybe they felt that would be the best way to honor the memory of their father?
Anyway, with the leadership of this new king, and the martial brilliance of his bastard brother, Ireland was brought under one banner by force, and was launching campaigns into Scotland to expand the kingdom. However, after a long and prosperous reign, my king died to an illness, leaving a weak son on the throne of Ireland who couldn't control his vassals like his father and grandfather could.
The bastard, who by now was an old character in his 70s, with a family of his own, a noble house that he founded, and held some of the most powerful lands in the kingdom, saw that this child threatened everything that his beloved brother and father had done over the years, and decided that for the good of the realm, they needed a good, strong king that could keep everyone in line. and so, he declared himself king of Ireland and began a civil war that lasted 5 years. Every noble family in Ireland was torn apart, as this war ravaged the country. I lost track of how many thousands died.
Yet in the final, climactic battle, the bastard king was cut off from his men and captured by the forces of his nephew. The war was finally over. yet, this weak king thought that if he made an example of his uncle, now 78. It would be a show of strength, and a warning of what happens to those who betray him. And with that, he ordered his uncle beheaded.
It was a disaster. The execution of a man who was widely considered a national hero sent waves of unrest across the kingdom. two thirds of the country rose up in open rebellion, led by the bastard's son and heir. My weak, ineffective, and now vilified king, was assassinated a year later, and the rebels seized the throne.
This began a conflict between these two noble families. those decended from my bastard general absolutely hated those descendants of his brother, the king. And for over 200 years, the two families fought each other over the Irish throne, both in courtly intrigue, and on the battlefield. lesser families were forced to choose sides, and many were exterminated.
It took two hundred years, but eventually the descendants of the king managed to seize the lands of their rivals, banish the entire family, and purged the Irish court of those who had supported them.
It was an utterly amazing thing. One of the very first decisions I ever made in the game (an affair with a noble's wife) created an Irish game of thrones. I still remember the feeling of utter betrayal when the bastard that I had relied upon for so much of my first game raised his armies against me. that feeling of rage led me to execute him without thinking about the consequences, and that same feeling of rage kept me going for so much of the game, determined to wipe out or at least remove his family from Ireland. Only when I had finally thrown them out of Ireland did I start to feel remorse. I began to remember that very early game where it was the two brothers working together, and the game had so much potential. I always felt in that early part of the game, that so long as the two of us had each other's backs, the whole world would have been ours. And damn, was that an amazing playthrough.
I've had some memorable moments in the game like that since. Like this one time where I barely pulled off a victory against the invading Vikings as the English, and used that victory to break the spine of the invaders, retaking all the land they had seized. Or the one time I played as the Byzantine Empire, and managed to restore the old borders of the Roman Empire. But none of them were as amazing to me as this one game where one of my first decisions, to get nasty with a random noble's wife, led to the most memorable chain of events in all my years playing games.
For me, my most memorable role play experience was in Skyrim. I had a mod that allowed me 15 followers, so I had a small army. It was when one of my followers died I realized I would not load a previous save. On the way to defeat Miraak, many followers died, every time one died I would find a respectable place to lay their bodies, then I put flowers and things that represented them ( A sword, spell tomes, daggers , etc) on their chests. It was the final climb and I had only one follower left ,Mjoll The Lioness, as we charged into battle, she went down. As I rushed to her side I saw a fireball headed towards me, I dodged it barely, but when I looked to my side, I saw Mjoll lying there, lifeless. I went into a rage mode and killed every enemy I saw, then when the time came, I stuck down the final boss. After the entire ordeal was over, I settled down in a cabin in the middle of the woods, and let old age take away my character.
hahahahaha you sir are a champion in life
One of the most epic Skirim moment I've heard
I had a similar experience in Skyrim. This took place through the course of three DLC's I was a Kahjit that joined Harkon to be a vampire. At first it was mostly because the prospect of being a powerful Vampire was awesome. But as it progressed I took intrest in Harkon's daughter and started taking her along on my adventures even when I didn't need to because she was the first follower in any game I enjoyed the company of. At one point we struck up a conversation and she asked me about my home life after we got on the topic of her failing family. This was a dialogue option that was rare to me and I could actually forge a bit of a back story. I told her that I had no parents to go back to. She shared my feelings of not having a real family And it struck a cord. Later on when I get locked in the mines at Markarth I get another moment to build my backstory and I tell, them that it wasn't my first time in a prison. This all came full circle later. After winning the battle to defeat Harkon, I stumble onto the boy trying to kill this horrible lady at an orphanage. Thinking this lady must be stopped I took the quest and while she was telling the children they will never be adopted and how worthless they are, I thought back to the story I forged for my character and along with my own feelings I got a stronger incentive to kill her. Instead of sniping her from a dark corner like I was going to I walk right up to her and got a critical where I beheaded her with my Ax. I quickly fled knowing that guards would be there soon. I left with a smile on my face as the children cheered for the stranger that killed her. I was battling Miirak with my favortie follower ever and new best friend and killed him at the last moment when she was on her knees, not wanting to lose her. Then as I walk through Skyrim I get a message that I can make a house in the Pale. Eager I got to work feeling strange happiness about finding a home of my own. Thinking how this has never happened before, I never had a place to call my own. I just stood on the cliff side looking at the wonderful view I had of the lake when I got a letter saying I could adopt a child. With the last renovation I made a room for the two of them (I got a boy and a girl) I got the boy a wooden sword and in my mind I would pretend to teach him the sword skills his old man picked up I got the girl this nice doll I found while shopping in Solitude. My daring adventures became less and less and I started making my character act like a real dad. I went out for short periods of time, maybe a few days at most but would always make it a point to return home to sleep because of the children I owned. In my mind I would be teaching them everything I learned in my adventures, the time I saved the world from dragons. And I thought back to the story I made for my character and where I was now. I started out as a lonely Kahjit with no home and no parents, I always fended for myself and kept myself away from most people outside of getting what I needed, and that would usually end him in jail. But one day as he entered Skyrim he became a hero, people began to love him, he made many strange enemies along the way but also forged powerful bonds with unlikely people, settled down in a cozy home in the woods, saved children from the life he had and lived happily. I stopped playing that character because I felt his story had ended.
My greatest role play moment in gaming was in dark souls. I had befriended Solaire from the very get go, i summoned him every time I could, always exausted his dialogue options to advance his quest line. I didn’t really care all that much about the other npc’s my first play through, but he was my best friend. When I got to lost izalith, and was forced to kill him in his insanity, I was so sad. I then, made up my mind, I was going to live on for Solaire. I joined the warriors of sunlight, i donned the sunlight armor and straight sword and i became the warrior of sunlight. I did it for you buddy, I’ll never forget you. Praise the sun!
Ever played Minecraft and had a creeper kill your only pet wolf? Changes the way you think of the hissing green hellspawn.
Pablo360able So true
Pablo360able Or horse... It cant ever be replaced... Its just not the same
@@sassui90 it’s never the same
Playing Assassin's Creed Black Flag I noticed that I used the whistling mechanic a lot to lure enemies to a spot where I could kill them. I titled myself The Whistling Assassin and from then on made a point of whistling wherever possible before a kill so it was the last thing my enemies heard and leaving one person alive. I deliberately neglected the meter of how much trouble you cause and took down all the hunters sent after me, preferring to cultivate the legend of the Whistling Assassin of the Caribbean
Cool!
Link’s Awakening did this to great effect. The game doesn’t tell you that you can do this, but you can exploit the facts that you can walk unobstructed all the way around the shopkeeper in the village, and that he turns to follow you as you do.
You can get him to turn his back and walk out of the store without paying for an item. This is a huge benefit since one useful item in particular is 900+ rupees.
However, once you do, everyone calls you THIEF for the rest of the game. This hit me so hard as a kid when I first did it I restarted my game and just waited until I could afford the item.
As a bonus, the Shopkeeper WRECKS your shit if you go back in after ripping him off.
Reece Orton Expand the entire comment and read the whole thing.
I was playing dont starve together and started up an online game, it was meant to make the game a bit easier for more casual play, I go into the world gem settings and think “huh, why don’t I set the starting season to spring.” Bad idea. I play on this online server for about an hour and the game was full of people, when all of a sudden, frogs start falling from the sky. It was a frog rain. Me and everyone else there frantically make spears to fight of the quickly growing mass of killer frogs. Our stuff is all over the place, skeletons everywhere, and then I decide to restart fresh. It was great.
I too, roleplay as a tetris L block.
*falls on you and are you vaporised cutely*
@@cheeselad2401 dies cutely
@@Minus-Premium **ragequits cutely**
**cutelys cutely**
I’d say my experience playing Wind Walker HD was my story. My dad played up until the second boss was defeated, then after a year or so, I tried it. It was like starting in the middle, but it was one of the most fun gaming experiences I’ve ever had.
In Breath of the Wild, I refused to kill forest animals. I felt like Link is the kind of guy who would live in peace with nature. Doing this, the world felt more precious, and the desire to protect it was stronger.
I also never read any diaries, and I wouldn't wander around people's houses much. I also limited the number of times I would take items from people (sometimes I just really needed an ax).
Judah Sistrunk Me too! No killing animals, no stealing from houses, no breaking things. One time, I accidentally broke someone's pots, so I left an Amber on their table in payment.
Breath of the Wild, though, makes your decisions very insignificant or inconsequential. It makes it a great game mechanically! But it's really hard to make moral decisions about not running in to kill things when the game tells you they respawn every blood moon, or not taking something when it just teleports back.
I never thought of leaving stuff for people. That's a great idea. I accidentally stole someone's spoon once, but then I gave it back because the guilt was killing me.
I did accidentally kill a bird once. It was hiding in some grass, and I ran it over with my horse. I kept the meat around in my inventory for awhile in memory of the fallen bird. I also killed a wolf because it was threatening a korok. Those are the only animals I killed in my entire play through.
Judah Sistrunk That's impressive! I threw a metal boulder with magnesis and accidentally hit a whole flock...
In fallout 4, my character would give up on finding his son halfway through the story. He would make himself believe Shaun was dead, but deep down he knew that wasn't the case, even though he had lost all hope of finding him. During this period i also took the time to play a load of sidequests to entertain myself and distract my protagonist from his gut feeling about his son being alive. Later, my character would finally accept the thought that Shaun was still out there. I'd progress with the story and get to the institute. When he finally finds his son, he would struggle with choosing his side in the conflict for the commonwealth. Ultimately my character chose the minutemen, since he didn't trust the institute nor the brotherhood of steel with the future of the commonwealth, and he thought the railroad were idiots for taking on the institute. My Sole Survivor chose the fate of the entire commonwealth over the life of his son. He was disappointed and mournful, but respected shaun's choice to stay loyal to the institute.
In war, nobody wins. And war, war never changes.
Look i know im late, but l just have to share this story:
So one night me and my friend were playing overcooked, and we got through about 2 worlds before i really started getting pissed because we were stuck on a certain stage. So i literally started roleplaying as Gordan Rasmay, and we were fucking dying. I was tearing up, we were having alot of trouble playing because of just how hard we were laughing
I've recently started a new character on Skyrim, a completely black Kahjit who I gave one large white splotch on her face. My sister commented how it looked like two cats melded together. So we came up with the story that she absorbed her twin sister in the womb and now it isn't just one dragon born it's two, never alone. Wandering Skyrim together as sisters.
In Skyrim I found a really cool mask that I liked and it totally hi my characters face and was quite striking in itself, and suddenly my hero became:
Humble blacksmith by day who wore simple clothes and worked his forge loved his wife and lived the simple life of a craftsman. And on occasion, he would venture out into the wilds to collect ore to and other materials to continue his craft.
But when he donned his armour and mask he became the mysterious and legendary warrior who walked from town to town helping villages, fighting off raiders and ridding tombs of the undead.
The narrative in my head around my character gave so much meaning and extra enjoyment to my playing the game.
When I played star wars battlefront (the 2002 one) I would always set up a bunch of battles in instant action and play it out like an entire war, drawing my own maps and everything. Imagine my enthusiasm when I discovered battlefront 2 had a full conquest mode with that exact idea in mind :)
That sounds very interesting, kinda cool that you did that
Man I’m only 15 but I miss my old mind that would think like that, I feel sad.
Creepah Reapah well that sucks
One time I did the opposite of what I was intended to do in Untitled Goose Game, being nice after doing a bad decision, like returning the groundskeeper's stuff after the picnic task.
Man RPGs are the best in my collection, I love to role-play. My absolute personal best genre of all time. And yeah, sometimes I role-play in a non role-playing game. It's rather the games we create for ourselves.
XCOM: Enemy Unknown. I naturally named all my soldiers after friends. There was one particular engagement (in a long series of awesome RP moments) when we were going through a routine sweep of a downed alien ship. My elite squad kicked in the door and was confronted by a Locust for the first time. Two of my friends went down almost immediately, and 2 more died in a desperate attempt to save them. Only one soldier came out of that massacre alive
Did a similar thing but named mine after fictional characters. I had a sniper that stood through every battle, by the end she had over 200 confirmed kills and was hands down my favourite soldier. She died on the final mission, shot while running to get a better position on a sectopod. Not only did I MAYBE just cry a little bit, but the mission became less about saving the world, and more making sure her death wasn't in vain.
I just started a new game, and noticed that you can put your soldier in a fedora. I thought that was hilarious, so I decided to make a cannon-fodder joke soldier. I gave him a black fedora and a thick neckbeard.
After managing to survive several missions that wiped out a majority of the rest of the team, he's become a total badass and my most powerful unit. He went from being a meat shield to point man MVP, and my favorite character.
I'm reminded of Kikoskia's runs through the original XCom series, where he names soldiers on various characters from LPs he's done. The legends of the likes of Sub Zero, the multitude of Barry Clones, and Loopy McGoopen will be sang through the ages!
yes, naming the soldiers after dear friends of mine. I even kept my real friends up to speed on what was happening throughout the game. those moments I told my friends that they died or when I would tell them I frickin love'em because they saved everyone and then hear their input on everything. my soldiers were not just soldiers, they really were my freinds
I find the greatest asset to be cosmetic slots for equipment (such as transmogrification), that allows you to look how you want without worrying about wearing the statistically best gear.
yes! I wish this was in more games.
I have one story with the game Arcanum Of Steamworks And Magick Obscura. My bother played this game and I decided to play it, but for some reason one of my teammates leave me for no reason and I didn't knew why. Even when I started a new game one of teammates still leaved. I decided that I will watched let's play of this game in my national language with is polish. The played said that mechanic of this game is created that if you play offensive with really small skill there's high change that you miss enemy and attack one of your teammate and also there's mechanic that if you still will be accidentally attacking your teammate it will angry at you and leave the team. I was so shocked about this, because it was first time in rpg game that you can not only accidently harm your mate, but also it will leave you if you still does that. I'm surprised that there's no other rpg games that have that mechanics, because even it was hard it was also cool and challenging. And for next time I must take distance weapon.
Majora's Mask is a great example of this (Despite it not being an RPG). The because of the 3-Day cycle and small but dense world of Termina, the NPCs in MM all have purpose and a schedule. Each sidequest has consequences when left incomplete. Stolen farm animals, torture of an innocent bystander, a separated couple, a father turned into a monster...
And unlike some other Zelda games, they don't treat you like you're the saviour of the universe, but just some kid.
ECL28E
Not to mention, no matter what you do, unless you get the stone masks, you are stuck in the same loop as everyone else, even if you are the only one aware of it. Even more so, the fact that almost all of the heart containers are parts of side quests encourages you to do them, and in the process, better see this world and WANT to save it.
For me it was definitely Cave Story. The first time I've played a game and I genuinely cared for a character. The first time I've played that game I let her Curly die, without knowing you could save her. Eventually I discovered I could save her, and even though I was close to the end of the game I reset my entire progress and started again just so she wouldn't die in that bed.
Quote? You mean Curly Brace? Quote is the character you play as.
Strike Blade
Right you are, fixing. been a few years since I've played that game so names are getting a bit fuzzy
Yeah I can still remember my gut wrenching as that door closed.
Saving Curly is one of the most satisfying experiences I've had in gaming.
Yeah, same here.
When I play halo, I always try and keep my marines alive. After reading all the halo books, which delve pretty deep into the lives of the men and women fighting the war who aren't Spartans, you begin see the colossal human struggle behind the war. An individual soldier in this war of billions is a drop in the ocean, and yet each and every one of them has a story. Every person there is fighting for a reason, and is leaving something behind. The ODST squad who got blown up sitting on your tank was a group of childhood friends who enlisted and fought together. That guy you took the warthog from and ditched fights for his family, who all died on Madrigal. The woman standing beside you loading her pistol, preparing for when you breach the door to raid the corvette's bridge, grew up on their family farm on Harvest and enlisted to get away from it all and to see the galaxy.
Throughout the games, the marines fighting alongside you are treated as cannon fodder. They are there to make you feel powerful.
Yet you can't help to look at the men and woman fighting beside you, and think, damn. These people are trusting me with their lives. The Masterchief inspires courage in those around him. Soldiers would follow you into almost certain death, because they have faith in you. It's like in that halo 3 short, where a bunch of marines go dark while pinned down in the night, and the only thing that keeps them calm and allows them to endure is the understanding that the Masterchief will arrive in the morning.
The UNSC, the marines, the soldiers, and humanity put so much faith into you. You can't help but feel a responsibility for them, and that it's your duty to get as many of them out alive as possible. Even if they occasionally team kill you with a warthog.
Halo has seriously given me a perspective on the cost, and the sheer tragedy of war.
When i was playing Europa Universalis 4 I was playing as the Ottomans and accidently declared war on the mamlucks where they decimated all of my forces except for one single regiment at the capital. I quickly moved him to retake all of my land while i was making more and ended up peacing out with them and not gaining or losing anything because of that one infantry protecting my capital that I later named "The Survivor."
There should be a game where when you die everyone else acts as if you've died, but you respawn as another character. (This isn't very well thought out, but it's just a thought)
@Naoto-Icarus The Antagonists Yes. That's the point, I guess. I just couldn't think of the word.
or a game where respawn is actually a story element
@@Silverdev2482 Ooo, that's a cool idea too
@@totalynotcatherine idk what to say for a reply but i want to reply
@@Silverdev2482 Understandable have a great day.
Me and my brother were playing farcy 5. We decided to go full survival mode and would never fast travel anywhere so we would be frantic and always greatfull to find a working vehicle. We never used the stores so any weapons and ammo we found is all we had. It was really fun being in this world with limited ammunition, having to avoid conflict when we can and hiding in bushes or trees when a patrol or convoy would go by. It really immersed us into this world of fighting back against the cult and looking for every opportunity to get ahead that we could.
Not exactly role play but I do have a similar story from Red Dead Redemption. The horse that Ms McFarlane gives you early in the game is a horse I used throughout the game, even when I was supposed to get a new horse, I somehow worked around that to keep the same horse, until the end, when an NPC clumsily crashed a cart into me while I was riding, I fell and the horse dies. Despite my tendency to do all the 'good' decisions in the game, I got so mad that this horse that I had been with the entire game was dead, I killed the cart driver in cold blood.
Nerd cubed did this too, he kept a horse alive the entire game and when he revisited the game on a livestream a "ghost train" (normal train, but he called it that) ran it over.
He went on a rampage killing everyone in the train, the local cops and then some.
+kualajimbo Whenever I play through RDD I always keep that new horse you mentioned, I name it Buttercup, and I refuse to ride any horse but Buttercup. Your horse is your best friend in that game.
+maarten schultze That was a good one =) hello fellow procrastinator!
Metal Gear Solid 3 gives a great kick to the head regarding consequences.
I'm sure everyone here would agree that killing is wrong. Yet in any kind of action/shooter game, it's SO easy to just go around killing people without giving it a second thought. Even in a stealth game, though, it can be easy to just kill the guards before they every have a chance to notice you. And when you get spotted, there's DEFINITELY a huge temptation to kill the guards that are coming after you.
However, fairly late in the game, there's a boss called "The Sorrow". He's basically a ghost that has the power to summon the spirits of the dead, and as you "fight" him, you see images and hear cries of EVERY person you've killed. It's not like the game doesn't give you any non-lethal options for incapacitating the guards. You've got a tranquilizer gun, stun grenades, cigars that spray knock-out gas...they're just typically not as easy to use as the lethal weapons. But seeing all those people you've killed come back to haunt gives you that "Oh my gosh! What have I done!?" feeling. It makes you think "Did I really do whatever I could to avoid killing these people?"
+KingMeteorStudios See, when I did that boss, I was basically a mass murderer at that point in the game. I'm not gonna say I was unaffected by it... but I WAS a bit distracted by how long the walk was. I wasn't like "What have I done?" I was more like "Wow, did I REALLY kill so many people that this is actually taking hours?"
+KingMeteorStudios alternatively, there IS a trophy given to you by killing 300 peoples...
+senor PachuChay
Was that in the original release? Or was that only added in the HD remaster?
You know what's one of my favourite gaming memories from recent years that relates to this? Undertale (please don't laugh at me). When I was playing for the first time, I didn't want to kill Toriel, but I didn't exactly know how to beat her peacefully. So remembering how a Froggit told me a monster may not want to fight anymore if I tire it out, I tried that. Obviously, it didn't work, and I killed her. I was considering keeping that choice for the sake of keeping the integrity of the world, but I felt too bad with it. So the exact scenario explained in this video happened - I restarted the game and tried again. And then the game kicked me in the stomach with acknowledging my previous choice anyway. No joke, this may be the only time ever when I actually felt like I lost control. Like the game world was actually alive and I couldn't control it. This was amazing, and may be my favourite memory from playing Undertale. Why don't developers use that more often. Toby Fox took the idea of wanting to reset to change the outcome of our choices and ran with it, and did an amazing job. I'd like to see that in more games.
This isn't a roleplay story, but I do have to say that Undertale was the first game in like 5 years that I truly got invested in and cared about. Every other game, I just happily strolled along knowing it was a game. Heck, the last game I kinda got invested in was Bioshock 2 but after I beat it I just moved on with my life. Sure it was great in the moment, but I couldn't really and truly say I was invested in it. Undertale, on the other hand, handled everything in such a manner that it felt real while also having fourth-wall breaking moments, like what Sans tells you at the end of the game (not going to spoil that for anyone who hasn't played the game yet) or Flowey's entire boss fight. It made the world connect with our own in a way I haven't seen any game do before, which is why I got so invested in it. I even decided to do all three runs (neutral, pacifist, and genocide, in that order) and I honestly felt bad doing the genocide run. I had grown attached to the characters, from Toriel and Asgore to Froggit and Snowdrake, and here I was mercilessly cutting them down just because I wanted to know what happened. And after getting to the end, after cutting down hundreds of innocent monsters and leaving no survivors, after walking through completely deserted towns, and after getting utterly destroyed by Sans, I quit. Not because I was angry, but because I was sad. It is very easy to switch from a genocide run to a neutral run (a little too easy maybe) and I could have very easily chosen any opportunity up until the Mettaton NEO fight to stop. But I didn't. I kept going, I kept slaughtering the innocents that I fought so hard to protect in past playthroughs. By the end of it all, I became disgusted with my actions. Everything from restarting the game after the pacifist playthrough, to starting the run, to fighting Sans. The only action I can say I am proud of from that entire playthrough is the decision to quit. Heck, despite how much I love the game, I am currently playing through the pacifist route again and when I finish it, I am never picking it up again. They deserve their happy ending that I tore from them so callously for nothing more than morbid curiosity. No other game I have ever played has made me feel this way. It is for this very reason that I refer to it as art. Once your game can make the players feel bad for resetting their save to experience some other playthrough that they have heard about through the grapevine, that is when it can start to truly be considered an art
Wow that was a lot longer than I thought it would be
#Typing
notoriouswhitemoth Yes, I got to experience that when I failed to do a genocide run the first time and wound up doing a neutral run where I killed everything in my path but nothing else. But in the genocide run, when you kill Undyne, she isn't lamenting anything. She knows that her death was not in vain, that by fighting you she bought Alphys some very valuable time to evacuate everyone. And honestly, that is the worse of the two since she knew that she most likely wouldn't be able to defeat you and had already come to terms with it
+dinosaurfan123 I never wanted to play on a genocide run. I couldn't stomach it - not after saving everyone. I think the moment that really snapped it all into place for me as far as roleplay was [after] I'd defeated the boss for true pacifist. Toriel was talking to some of the other monsters and mentioned that near the start of the game, I'd flirted with her, and then asked her if I could call her "mom". The other characters commented on how that was a bit creepy or weird of me. That moment really impressed me and really brought me into the game. It made the feels at the end that much stronger, and cemented my inability to attempt a genocide run.
Amen. Undertale so brilliantly taps into that little corner of our minds where fictional characters receive a breath of life and become real to us, if only for a while, and demands we face that notion head-on.
Its permanence is the most powerful thing; I cried hysterically and apologised to the game when I accidentally killed Toriel and restarted itto rectify that and the game /knew/. It destroyed me more handily in those few moments than any other piece of media was ever able to, because it forced me to completely own my actions and become the character.
And when I got that True Pacifist ending? My God. I wept without even realising I had started to. That boss fight seized my whole heart and soul. It was the most incredible moment of immersion, where the characters felt like they were pouring their love and talking to me - not my character - not Frisk - /me/.
The first time I ever played outer worlds, I shot the guy I just helped cos I didn't think it would kill him.
He exploded into tiny bits.
I cried...
When I was six or seven, I really fell in love with "Pokémon Firered".
I played it everyday as long as I was "allowed" to. But at the point where you had to discover the hidden Team Rocket hideout I couldn't figure out this easily what I had to do.
But I didn't get frustrated. Instead I explored the whole city and routes around it and played it like someone else would play Animal Crossing - just refight some trainers, go to every room of every house pushing the A-Button at everything I thought would give back a reaction.
I totally accepted, that I would play it like this for ever until the day I discovered the hidden lever.
This whole experience let me bond with the game like no game ever has done before.
I actually played it the whole playthrough like this, even after beating the league.
I watched this video because I found myself roleplaying in No Man's Sky. The game became about me, suddenly waking up in a strange place with little that I could remember. Sentinels were put in planets to protect resources by the races owning those systems.
This brings me back to Rimworld... Not really the most immersive experience, but turn on perma-death mode, you can't reload your save. I did this once, and my colony got involved in what I wrote down was a war. Raiders would sweep in and set up camps for weeks, shelling the compound, and I spun a story on it that they were tired of all of the lost scouting parties and were tipped off to a fortress' existence gunning down most of their troops.
Skye Lourne, Sweesey, Clint, Sweets, Beg, Grandma Black, Grandpa White, McKinley, Lawrence, Dragger, Potsdam, they all became real to me.. They were my people, my soldiers-- they were my citizens, and the game became a story rather than a simulator. I was watching all of this happen, and all I could control was how my people handled it, and even then, you lose control very often.
It was a glorious experience. Rest in peace, you magnificent warriors! Say hello to Jesus for me.
Skyrim modding really can take it to the next level. After I got the Sacrosanct - Vampires of Skyrim mod (and some AI dialogue overhauls, etc.) I'm not just reloading saves, but striding the streets like a true Vampire Lord would. Sacrosanct allows you to "drain" your victims, which meant anyone giving me lip could look forward to sleeping in. Permanently. Looking at you, Nazeem.
Goodness. Skyrim flipped my roleplaying switch hard especially with mods.
The character archetype that you can integrate to the world is so vast.
The best example I can think of is XCOM games. The characters in your squad get randomly assigned names, nationalities, abilities, classes, and nicknames. The games can be brutally difficult, and their deaths are permanent. As a result, your brain creates backstory for every character almost automatically. By the time you reach late game, you've had characters who were just rookies on your first mission who are still alive after multiple brushes with death - and it's impossible not to root for them when they become badasses, or mourn them when they die.
In the game Battlebrothers, near the beginning of my first session, I raided some bandits holed up in an abandoned shack. They had a prisoner. His name was Ulfert. This prisoner joined our ranks, just another body for the machine, I thought. Later on, a hoard of Weidergangers (zombies) overtook my company, and one of the two survivors was this refugee. The other survivor died shortly after, and he was left all alone, with a pile of new recruits. He was an alright warrior, and later on was struck down in combat. However, he survived (in Battlebrothers there's a small chance troops that are killed will survive). He was promoted to sergeant shortly thereafter, and given the title of Ulfert the Unbreaking. Ulfert survived through thick and thin, and soldiers died around him, but Ulfert, he stayed. Nothing could kill him. He never died, even when only three of twelve men survived, he would always be among their ranks. Though I was only 13 days in when he joined me, he was still around over 270 days in. And for all that, I've not forgotten him. One of the best role playing experiences I've had.
Small thing but I had stopped playing War Thunder for a long time. Then I hopped back in and thought: “ what if i go with a different country?” 5 rounds later, I found myself listening to the USSR anthem as I took out panzer 3s and others. I know its not a ‘deep’ game but I still loved it
I was playing the game foxhole, an MMO where two teams fight for different towns and villages in a massive world.
So I was playing the warden’s team, and we were in a stalemate. We were fighting in the pits, a piece of ground named that because of a bunch of holes in the ground, and we took position in the holes. After multiple bloody assaults, I, and a group of 4 other people got in a transport truck and charged the enemy position. Bullets pinged off the side of the truck as we got closer. When we reached them, we jumped out, guns blazing. We took the first line of pits, and charged the second line, throwing grenades all the way. Just then, we were hit by a gas shell, breaking up the charge. Some guy and I took refuge in a hole. As bullets flew overhead, we talked about how we would get back to our lines. Then, after we came up on a decision, we threw our remaining grenades and sprinted out of the hole. Soon, the guy was wit was hit in the back, and died. I would never get back to my line, so I yelled, ‘I shall avenge you!’ Then ran towards the enemy. Using my shotgun, I blasted a few people, I got stomped by the ones I couldn’t get. I finally died, thinking how I avenged the guy I only knew from being shot at in a hole.
when I first started video games my parents bought a PlayStation and Digimon World and thought there was no need for more so didn't get a memory card. Digimon world has you raising a Digimon throughout the days passing by while trying to get other Digimon back to File City as you explore the island you're on. This causes me and my brother to race to train, grow, and fight our way through for months without realizing we needed a save file. It was our repeating day trope reliving everything over and over trying to better ourselves and our gameplay learning from the previous day trying to get farther than before. After getting the memory card it became easy. Recently my brother called me and we talked about those days and after a few laughs at ourselves in the past he set up a challenge. With all we knew of the game who could go the farthest without saving or dying. We have both beaten the game within 7 hours but have yet to get all the unlockables. At this point we are neck and neck and slated for round 3.
Whenever I play Starcraft 2 I always after a battle look at who has the most kills and name them as commander and give the priority for healing and guards....
I was playing The Battle For Wesnoth (Great Game) and was playing the South Guard campaign specifically, and there was one peasant who unit who leveled into a royal guard and I made sure he didn’t die lmao.
I was playing Fallout 4 and just wandering around the wastes with Nick (he's the main reason I play). Eventually, we were attacked by supermutants. I slaughtered one who came for me, only to realise one was about to swing at Nick, so I threw myself between the two, my corpse flying back about a metre. Even though Nick can't die.
I also found myself avoiding doing illegal things simply so my synthetic companion wouldn't get disappointed in me; I went so far as to break a quest sequence so I wouldn't have to steal.
In ultimate general I had unit that was outnumbered four to one and now matter how many times the enemy charged they would not break and inflicted five times as many casualties as they took and they became a special elite force in my opinion that I could always rely on no matter what
OH man, yesterday I had one of the most intense roleplay experiences of my life: The Stanley Parable. My first 'ending' was the madness ending and I spent hours lost in the joy of that game. I was Stanley, and Stanley was me. Fantastic.
I totally agree here. I think my first ending was the Confusion ending (if you've gotten to it yet), and holy gosh almighty was I attached to the weird stuff happening. Such a cool feeling.
I loved the confusion ending, especially since it straight up lies to you! I triggered it like.... 3 times? Always hoping the next one would be the one that got me to the REAL ending haha.
I got the "normal" ending first because I was advised by a friend to just follow the narration the first time I play through, and then see all the variations on disobedience and choice after. I think it was a pretty good idea.
I only played the HL2 mod version of Stanley parable and when they told me to use the exit menu as a mechanic, i got away from those crushing plates and never came back.
My first ending was the normal one, I told myself I'll listen to what the narrator has to tell like story and played through it like he intended.Never got myself into the role of being Stanley but it was a pretty good experience taking the role of the audience.
That's interesting, so by doing what the game told you you actually didn't get into the game? I feel like that says something about life, and you.
I had an interesting experience in Skyrim once. I was in Markarth and there was a random dragon attack. Although it was one of the higher level dragons, it didn't matter too much since I had the guards and a few civilians on my side. So, the dragon died without much consequence, except the death of this one blacksmith who I had helped previously. For some reason, I decided to give them a funeral by putting their body in the river like Boromir in the Lord of the Rings. Fast forward a few days, I was in Windhelm and a courier comes up to me and gives me some inheritance from that blacksmith...
Vile in Megaman X.
When Zero self destructed for the first time in front of my eyes, defeating Vile was no longer about just beating a boss or advancing the plot: I didn't even know english back then so I literally didn't know the plot of what was happening. All I knew was that in the past, Zero had saved me, and know that he was in trouble, and I had the chance to save him back, I still failed.
Vile didn't had to die so I could advance. He didn't had to die because he was a bad guy. He had to die because Zero sacrificed himself to give me a fighting edge. But above all, I had to kill him, because now, there was no one else.
I actually felt that I was there, and I had to finish this fight in the name of Zero. And every lost life wasted in learning Vile's attack pattern, was me, failing Zero again.
Funny fact, as I didn't kew english, and I didn't had the manual because I played it as a rental, I didn't even kew the names of the characters except for Megaman X... Yet. Zero's death felt... crushingly real.
+Camilo Fernández Wow, suddenly my life seems a little bit trivial...
+Camilo Fernández Wow
+Camilo Fernández
It was a very emotional moment, told with few or in your case no words.
I do enjoy roleplaying and getting into character, its enjoyable and gives my gameplay more meaning and fun.
But usually people dont want to RP or they find it weird or a waste of time.
Personally I think its a good way to express your creativity.
For many people, Undertale is one of the games that makes you care.
I know I did when I played it.
And accidentally killed Toriel ;(
One of the most interesting things about that game is it uses the reset as a mechanic of the game, not a way around it. The game remembers, even if you don't save. It constantly reminds you of your shortcomings and encourages you to learn.
And the True Pacifist ending really makes playing as Frisk rather than just controlling "the fallen human" feel truly rewarding. If anyone knows how to write a meaningful, interwoven story, it is that Fox, Toby.
Sorry, I fanboyed a little there.
+TheRealCAD97 hehe, no prob. as an undertale fan myself, i think that EC should really look into it and make a video about it. i'm surprised they haven't already. it's not a perfect game, no game is. the art style clashes sometimes, with some parts 16-bit and some 64. the music can get stale when it's not absolutely awesome, like his theme, megalovania, or spear of justice. the controls can feel sluggish in battle, and if you're not invested, the story is cliche. however, it is a great game, and an example of how mechanics can reinforce the storyline, instead of clashing against it.
+TheRealCAD97 Dude, you think you fanboyed? Read my comment. It may be a little hard to find, and it's really long, but THAT is fanboying
Venus Gillespie Wait, you can KILL Asriel? I didn't even think that was possible. I mean, he doesn't even real stats. They're just the infinity symbol. HOW CAN YOU EVEN HURT HIM?
+TheRealCAD97
While Undertale is an awesome, emotional well written game I can't help but say it's story feels a bit like a kids cartoon. The whole game plays out as 'Be nice and nice things happen, and vice versa.' I think the game could have felt more deep if there was no 'perfect' ending, if at some point you had to choose the lesser of two evils. 'do you kill sans or lesser dog?' ect ect. Might have made the game feel more, fleshed out. (The game Lisa covers this rather well but the gameplay could use some work to keep me going.)
+FIJ707 If you dig all the way into the game, you'll find even the True Pacifist isn't a 'perfect' ending. There are two names to throw out: Chara and Asriel cannot be saved. And even still, just by playing, you've taken free will away from Frisk. And it's not exactly easy to always be nice is it? IRL you can be nice to everyone, but it's not going to be easy on you, In Game it's represented by the escalating difficulty of the SOUL sections with no gained HP.
And when the game ends its not a "happily ever after", the Monsters still need to deal with reintegration with the Humans above ground. That's not going to be easy either.
It's not a perfect game, but I like it.
While Rimworld isn't really a role-playing game in the same sense as Skyrim or the like, it's ability to weave incredible emotional stories out of just about nothing has earned it's permanent spot in both my heart, and Steam Library. So let me share with you the story told by I-Shuelke:
steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198063131324/recommended/294100
"So I had just established my young but promising new colony, Ashton (a quite ironical name in the end ...). The basic needs were all covered, everyone had a nice place to sleep, decent clothing, enough to eat and time to relax. The people of Ashton were prosperous. They lived in harmony with nature and each other. Their wide fields provided them with plenty of food and they sold the surplus to the passing by caravans.
Now and then a few warriors of a near tribe, the Pig Face Men, attacked the settlement, but the people of Ashton were safe, relying on the strength of their automated defence systems. And so the colony grew and I thought: This is it, I finally have a colony which doesn't collapse after a few hours.
As if ...
Remember when I told you about the harmony between the people and with nature? I meant there were no rivalries between the colonists, most were friends and there even was a married couple, Tali and Waltz.
The harmony with nature also seems pretty coherent; the people relied mostly on their crops, eating only those animals which died by natural causes (e.g. old age or other animals), so the animal population in the near forests remained stable. So far so good. But taking those dead animals in meant of course someone had to leave the safe area of Ashton and wander through the wilds. Normally that wouldn't have been a problem, everyone was equipped with guns and armor of the Pig Face Men so they were quite ready to take on anything coming in their way.
But then came the tortoise.
Waltz left Ashton to get the still fresh corpse of a chinchilla which had been killed by some other animal. So Waltz has just grabbed it, when a tortoise nearby turned mad. I thought ok, those aren't that fast, Waltz will be able to safely carry the chinchilla inside and the turrets will take care of the tortoise.
Nope! I'm not quite sure what exactly happened, maybe this animal was on speed or something like thak.
Anyway, when it saw Waltz it charged at him at a horrifying pace. Waltz had just lifted his weapon when this damn creature reached and hurt him badly. However, its hard shell was no match for Waltz' gun. And so he came back home, injured but happy, that now there was even more meat than expected. But the wraith of the tortoise was unforgiving. The bite wounds in his upper body infected themselves. The medical treatment didn't work and he got weaker and weaker. If the infection at least
would've been in one of his limbs, that might had saved him, but you can't just amputate someones chest.
At last he couldn't fight any longer, the infection overwhelmed him. Tali, his wife, carved his story in the sides of his sarcophagus. The burial ceremony was heartbreaking. Everyone had come: Tali, his sister Julia, his friends Vas, Jones,
Stephan, Boyd and Leia, Vas' tame wolf Nevile and Bacon 1 and Bacon 2. In the light of the evening sun they all waved a last goodbye to their fallen husband, brother and friend, before the people of Ashton went to bed. With Waltz dead or not, they had to cary on.
But apparently it was all too much for Tali, not very surprising if you think about it.
There was only this one little problem: She was a pyromaniac. When the rest of the colony slept, she left her big and empty bed. Driven crazy by grief, she did the only thing able to ease her pain. She set the forest on fire. Finally, exhausted almost to unconciousness, she fell back into her bed again.
While she slept, the others, waken by the crackling fire, desperately tried to put out the flames which already
started to spread over to the buildings. But they simply weren't enough, they could either try to save the buildings or the forest, not both. Of course they tended to the buildings, to the food storage to be exact. However it gave the fire the chance to spread through the forest, completely sorrounding the settlement.In the end it was all too much.
Tali died in her own fire that she refused to extinguish, Jones and Boyd followed when they collapsed in the infernal heat. And then, when no hope was left, the gods, the ancestors, the Flying Spaghetti Monster or whatever thi people of Ashton believed in, heard their cries. Rain started falling down, putting out the fire. But it was too late. More than three quarters of the colony had been taken by the flames. Vas, Stephan and Leia were unconcious. Julia was the only one still able to stand. She did what she could, but with all the medicine burned she had no chance. Leia died first, Vas second. This caused his wolf Nevile, who had been laying loyal by his side, to turn mad like the damn tortoise and he ripped the still unconcious Stehpan into pieces before he went on attacking a herd of muffalos (some kind of marshmellow like buffalos) which was his end.
Traumatised Julia, who managed to flee when Stephan was killed, wandered through the burnt ruins of Ashton.
Blackened stone walls and pieces of charcoal everywhere. All the food they stored for the winter was gone, the fields empty.
With no medicine left and her own wounds hurting worse and worse, Julia found one last smokeleaf joint in one of the destroyed buildings. She leant against her brother's sarcophagus and lit it. So she didn't feel anything when the Pig Face Men attacked. With the solar panels a loss to the flames, the turrets didn't react when Ashton's last inhabitant finally exhaled her
last breath."
i once played Fable 3 and i hadn't gotten to the end before. I had a dog with me the whole way through the game and it never died, it was only injured. At the end though, one gun shot ended its life. I broke down crying and saying "no" over and over. I couldn't believe that through tones of gun shots, wounds, dangers, it was when the dog was almost invincible did it die. After that, some time passes and i'm faced with two options, to revive all of the innocents that were killed, or to revive my family and friends, leaving the others to rot away, forgotten. I wanted my dog back so badly but i chose to let the innocent come back. Even though the families were npcs, i felt that they would be happier with their loved ones instead of me just getting my dog back. I role played so hard and i keep doing it over and over. It's both amazing and saddening.
I keep meaning to come back to this since Dan cleared the Smouldering Lake in DS3 however long ago it was now in Side Quest because the most impactful example of this for me, personally, was finding the two corpses with Quelana's pyromancy tome. I've always enjoyed trying to piece together the lore of the series from the location and item descriptions of the items you find on hundreds of other bodies like this, but having (presumably) met both of those characters before, having actually interacted with them but now finding them turned into just another curious corpse with an interesting item description, the history and forgotten significance all those other bodies might have had finally sunk in. On top of that, the description of the item itself immediately followed that up with the revelation that if the Chosen Undead had been a pyromancer (and likely just the same if they weren't), history had forgotten them - me - entirely. The first time I came across it, it stopped me dead in my tracks and after a while I turned off the game to just think about what could have driven these two characters whose DS1 character arcs had revolved around being mentally or physically unable to face Izalith to return there to eventually die, and what I'd overlooked about every other jerky-skinned corpse I'd stripped the items from previously. Pretty much every character across the franchise I've done since has been role play to some extent, to try and explore the kinds of mentalities that characters in the series have demonstrated or could have.
in hearts of iron 4
I once had one of my majos offenses fail.
the spearhead of my army, with the best weapons and men were surrounded, just like in bastogne
but it was not one division, it was dozens
the hundreds of thousands of virtual soldiers behind enemy lines, were the hopes of my people
they could not come back, the enemy had their elite units as a buffer zone, a river in each side
the surrounded forces were further divided, now 2 pockets of hungry and surrounded men where deep in enemy teritory
I managed to break the enemy line, making a thin connection to one pocket
those men could flee, but the retreat would make the other divisions inreachable
so they attacked
they liberated the rest of the spearhead, and supplyed them with munitions and newer weapons
after months of constant battle, those divisions acumulated so much XP they were on the maximun level now
the hammering of artillery and the fires of battle, had forget those men into true soldiers
they pushed into the enemy lines
they pushed into enemy territory
they pushed into the enemy capital
I never had a experience like that in a strategy game
When I started playing Skyrim, I made a decision that was to prevent myself from going mad: I will make a clear distinction between Dasu-Nir (my Argonian character) and myself. As such, out of game, I will refer to him in third person. I will not say "I got an awesome sword" but "Dasu-Nir got an awesome sword". One would imagine that this would distance myself from my character, but quite the opposite was true. Dasu-Nir being not me but himself helped me role-play my way through Skyrim. It helped him actually being a character with a personality that is completely different from mine, to the point where he -not me, he- actually seemed to have fallen in love, (with Brelyna Maryon from the college of Winterhold) but was somehow hesitant to act on that. I later found out that Argonians were actually enslaved by the Dunmer a few centuries ago and realized how confusing being in love with a Dunmer must have been for him.
+martijn van weele i had something very similar. my character Adriana was in some ways like me, in some ways better: more open, more active, more playful and more open to friends. but also some flaws: too open, too active, too childlike.
and whenever i played skyrim is was not vinx playing skyrim, it wasn't vinx playing Adriana, it was adriana living in skyrim. she was a character, she had her own will and her own choices. and one thing i never though possible, she had a character ark.
this was not planned, i just started playing with a character with a pretty cool name (a mesh of the high elf name part Andra and nord part ina) and an interesting and sad backstory for a character not sad at all who was really into magic, and kind of childlike with not taking stuff to serious. but then i came to Falskaar, OK cool, but i had already seen a letsplay so nothing was really new. but then i came to the last nordic room in the huge dungeon with a huge fight, and one of my companions died, that and the talk thougout the rest of it of how the war had torn everything apart got to her (I realize here that use I and her though eath other, i think that is because i am now half in character) . something changed in her, the idea was to stay in Falskaar for a bit afterwards, but no, after i was done with the quest i had to go back to skyrim, i had to make the war stop, nether side was truly good, but ether one was better then a war.
suddenly i had to finish the cival war. not because i wanted to, or because i wanted to see Civil War Overhaul. but because the war had to stop. she was still happy, but now she was also determent to do what had to be done.
and none of this was planned, never. it just happened. i think i will never have an experience like this ever again :(
also, thank you if you actually read all that, it is almost a book at this point.
I was playing a game of Stellaris and decided to play as a Republic of merchant curious and friendly geckos. I expected it to be a really casual game, I had set the AI to low aggressiveness and very few opponents. Then I was randomly attacked by another race of aliens and I suddenly had to focus my research to military matters instead of just science for science's sake. My peaceful government had to become more militarized, and eventually the Republic itself fell into becoming an Empire (very Star Wars esque) as we fought back the invasion and then counter-invaded, sparking three wars of revenge until they were a subject with only one system to call their own, and it wasn't even their home system.
The only time I ever roleplayed was when I played Maoki top as Groot. I got reported for not communicating effectively with the team
+stephen Sterling
Honoured. Every game I like to roleplay 'Gordon Ramsey' and feed as much as possible while swearing at everyone.
I think as a DM, this is my favorite way I've ever dealt with player death in Pathfinder:
One of our players was a burglar-turn-spy who was tying to get information from a high-security inmate, a level 18 master of disguise. This inmate's Disguise and Charisma stats were so high they were ostensibly magic: he could turn into anything in the time it takes for you to snap your fingers. The player decided to do this of his own volition- which was kinda dumb, because the likelihood of him making it out of this prison was slim. He did however successfully make it into the cell-chamber, but when the guards finally patrolled by- the master of disguise turned into the player's character, and started shouting "HE LOCKED ME UP- THE PRISONER IS GETTING AWAY". The guards assumed that the person OUTSIDE of the cell was the master of disguise, who had locked up a decoy and was attempting to flee.
This is where it got awesome. The master of disguise had a pretty sweet arc that me and my co-DM knew about, and considering the player wasn't strong enough to take on the guards (if he ended up getting caught), we came up with an alternate solution that lead to some of the coolest roleplaying I've ever seen from a player: we decided that the player would take over the character of the master of disguise- IMPERSONATING HIS OLD CHARACTER. The player, as the master of disguise, met up with his old party, assumed the spy/burglar had gotten out safely, and resumed their campaign. All the while, the master of disguise had a very different sub-plot going on behind the scenes.
It was rad.
+TheFLMP Woah thats really crazy. You killed off the ACTUAL PC. Nuts.
I play Star Trek Online, and they don't really allow much roleplaying in the gameplay itself. However, they allow you to create some interesting alien characters, and once I created my own alien species, I started to detail their anatomies, homeworlds, cultures, and political climates. After doing that, I was much more invested in fleshing out my character and roleplaying. This game periodically releases episodes, and if my character doesn't act the way I think they would during the game, I end up typing the response I think my character should have given in the local chat. So essentially I roleplay my character despite the game at times.
definitely this war of mine (i mean, you liked it yourself at the end^^): in my first run, with the katia, bruno, pavle scenario, with the first additional joining character - there i ran into such a moment. i got anton: an old dude, slow, no useful talents, cant fight or carry much, basically a liability to your group. i could have just reloaded the day and rolled the dice again with no "repercussions" from the game to get a better character to join me, someone useful to squeeze out all the loot, more than i could possibly need, as my completionist urges compell me so often.
but when i read antons dialogue it just broke my heart and i started crying: here you have one of the people who are marked for death in war - old, fragile, weak, ill, fatigued, hungry and he is there at the doorstep desperately pleading me for shelter. i just could not bring myself to reload and reject him. at that moment i just felt the protective urge to bring him through this shit and know that i really saved someone who would have certainly died realistically. i teared up again at the conclusion when it told me that anton survived and went back into teaching.
I was playing the Organ Trail (A Post-Apocalyptic Oregon Trail with ZOMBIES!) and it was the first time, so I played the tutorial and when it got near the end, the guide character Clements gets bitten, and forces you to put him down. I had named all of my party members after family and friends, so the prospect of having to put one down because they were bitten scared me, and it became a journey to Oregon to keep everyone I loved from dying in the apocalypse.
In Xcom, every time I lost a mission, it felt like a real tragedy, like something I’d see in a news headline. Instead of it being Xcom, it was the story of some rookie soldiers racing to save humanity. When took the final shot to win the game, it felt amazing.
I don’t specifically remember the game but I do remember that when someone died in the game no matter how many save files you go back the character is dead.
DDLC?
@@OsmSkylandersCheats what does that means?
light blue Doki Doki Literature Club
Dragon Age Inquisition did this HARD for me. I believe what set up this insistence was the first outpost you build in the Hinterlands, the Crossroads, where you can build up the resources for the ravaged people living there and become friends with the leader of their defenses--insofar that he even becomes loyal to your cause. This set up immediately tells you that 1) your actions have an immediate infrastructural and personal effect, and 2) that random npcs, NOT just your party, in this game are unique PEOPLE. This is further encouraged throughout the game with the recruitment and outpost mechanics. By the end of the game, as I was leading inquisition soldiers into raids, I became dedicated to protecting every single footsoldier in combat I could. I jumped in front of them to take attacks, and in some cases even had my healer heal them. There was a very true sense of /leading/ my people into battle
ok, roleplaying-story: not from a videogame but from the d&d campaign im running. in the second session we played (all new players) i threw an encounter at them. a person was mugged by a group of 4. the PCs helped and beat up the muggers. after the battle (the bandits had surrendered) it turns out the bandits are just starving peasants who were desperate and had no other options left. thats when one of the players decided to kill the dude that had just attacked her. so i had one of the other bandits break down in tears - they were married. just to show the group: sh**'s real here!
I often Roleplay in games, sometimes more sometimes less. There often were moments where I gave cities planets or military campaigns more worth than they should have, or developed them in not so effective ways to fit their style in a multitude of strategy games.
I roleplay out of games too, but it kind of developed from roleplaying in games like Rimworld. I engage games like Civ 5, FTL, Xcom, Kenshi and Stellaris with roleplay mindsets very often, bringing Ideas or Characters from my non-game RP into those situations to see how they would act, or inspire myself from in-game roleplay that emerges from playing normal to make new characters and factions in my other roleplays.
I think the most dedication I put to such once was a game of Stellaris where I wrote a "Leaders Log" along my playthrough, with passing time I put in fewer and fewer entries but in the first half of the game a good third of my techs I researched were at least mentioned along the more important reports.
In my first successful playthrough of XCOM Enemy Unknown I brought a randomly generated Swedish female rookie along on a council mission because I had a couple of injuries to my more experienced soldiers. Elin Halvorsen her name was. She ended up getting a few important kills in a mission where I lost another 2 soldiers, and was soon promoted and given the Assault class. I always found this kinda amusing in itself. Assault to me at least is the most aggressive class in XCOM. It's all about running across the battlefield and shotgunning aliens in the face while everyone else hangs back and worries about 'tactics' and 'staying alive' and other boring shit. And so having this crucial role being performed by a blonde woman from Sweden seemed deliciously inappropriate. I constructed a reality where all of these pig-headed 'manly men' looked down on Halvorsen in training and suggested she consider becoming a support, or a sniper where at least she'd get to stay at the back, but she was all like "FUCK YOU!" and then shotgunned them in the face!
Of course, she ended up being an essential part of my team, killing dozens and dozens of aliens. She missed a few battles along the way, but I always went into those thinking "Oh god, we're missing Halvorsen, everyone be extra careful!". Of course, she ended up possessing the potential for psychic abilities and of course she ended up being The Volunteer for the final mission. Story spoilers ahead: Having fought bravely for months and taken many hostile lives, at the end of the game, Elin Halvorsen, the plucky Swedish assault who never let anyone tell her what she wasn't capable of, sacrificed herself to save planet earth and the entire human race. I wept. RIP Col Halvorsen.
When I played XCOM Enemy Unknown, in one mission a character that I had since the very beginning of the game was killed, and then came back as an undead servant and started attacking the rookies on my team. I was able to put him down without losing any more of my people but I was both terrified and heartbroken after that. Terrified because now I realized that any one my team that I count on can not only be killed but can be used against me, and heartbroken because I had just lost the founding member of my team and I had to kill him.
Question: Why did it seem inappropriate?
Yeah XCOM does it better than most games. I remember my first succesful campaign where I lost 3 of my best men against the first ethereal I encountered. Those loses really hurt, especially if tactical error was the cause of death.
But the cool thing is: Its not over. In other games you lose if the hero dies. In XCOM new heroes rise to pick up the sword (hopefully). Like in real warfare noone is invincible. It gives you this 'Game of thrones'-Style fear of what might happen to your favorite soldier in the next mission.
Randygandalf95 stereotypes :D
MrRecconfox +Randygandalf95 Exacty. Stereotypes dictate the men in your team are going to be the most aggressive and willing to take the most ridiculous risks, and so having a woman do that job defied those stereotypes in a ridiculously fun way :)
Does saying "Ouch!" when my character takes damage mean I'm role playing?
yes
yes
نعم
@@anairconditionermother7537 sorry I don't read minecraft enchanting table.
@@AKASkobble lmao imagine not begin able to speak Minecraft enchanting table language what a nerd
In episode 2 of Life is Strange, there is a scene, if you've played it you know which one, where, if you aren't skilled enough, or paying attention to a specific character's bio, they will die, and the summary sheet at the end of the episode will point that out. When I let this person die, and was told I could have saved them (as 60% of players did), but didn't, that really realigned everything in a series that already did this kind of thing all the time.
+DiscoClam no, plz, the onions, where are they coming from ;-;