5punk

It just occurred to me that in nearly every RTS I've ever played, when you fail a mission that's it, game over. You get to replay or restart the campaign. Very few games have ever offered an alternative path if you lose which imo would add a huge amount to the immersion. For example, there I am as the Supreme Commander and I'm told as a mission objective that 'Unit X Must Survive'. Of course, if it dies it's game over ... wait, I lose that and Earth is fucked? Pinning rather alot on Mr X there don't you think Mrs General, Ma'am? I can't help thinking to myself 'so what if it does die? Do I get a chance to recover?'

A few examples (not just RTS) where continuity has been addressed successfully include Wing Commander (the very first one had a branching campaign tree which was simple but effective) and er, can't think of many other story based ones that do - are there any that you know of?

On a different note, I'd love to see a proper Strategic level in these RTS's in the style of the most excellent Total War series. Recently Star Wars: Empire at War gave it a go but failed pretty miserably to make anything good. What other examples of this kind of thing exist?

Haven't played very far into it, but I thought Supreme Commander had this to a degree, even on the first mission. I'm pretty sure I got two outcomes, one where I'd protected the facility better.

RTSs with optional sub-quests, and particularly ones like Dark Crusade (as opposed to its prequel) and the Total War series - where you move around on a map have loads of outcomes and let you carry on after losing. I wish there were a few more like them myself, Rise of Legends not being a good example as even though you can move around a map and lose battles without losing the game, the actual battles have many "do this or lose" moments.

Most of the ones I have with a "map mode" either predate Rome: TW by long enough to make them seem a bit clunky or are actually on console - the Japanese have made absolutely stacks of Three Kingdoms, WWII and fantasy themed ones. There was one fairly recent PC one I enjoyed though, based in immediately post 1066 Britain, I think. Had a bit of castle-sieging like TW going on, too. Had little comic cartoony cut-scenes like something flying through the air and bashing a soldier on the head. Can't remember the damn name.

Granted, most if not all have some missions you have to win at, sometimes done better than others (for instance I hated the 'protect Rayner' mission in Starcraft because he just sucked at not dying) but then most games have some sort of a boss stage where you have to win - you can't expect the bad guy to res you and give you another crack at him.

The 'protect or fail' thing to me is pretty much standard RTS/FPS fodder, it can be a good thing to involve the player in protecting a character because of their importance to the rest of the game. It racks up the tension, and if it's done well, and you're attached to the person you're defending then you should feel proud when the mission's complete.

As FatherJack said, Dark Crusade did the alternative well, where you can loose a battle and still come back to try it some time later without any problem, and your commander can die only for you to bring him back to life - However this does make him feel a little more like just another weapon, and less like an important character crucial to your war effort.

The de-linearisation of RTS games and even FPS games where an outcome wont affect the rest of the game is slowly progressing - but only in tiny baby steps.

Father Jack wrote:Stuff

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Grimmie wrote:As Dogpants said...

Errorz

friznit wrote:Errorz

I have no idea what you're on about old chap


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I really liked the campaign mission on Rome Total War. That was the last game I had that got me playing 3-4hours plus sessions. That shows a lot about my recent gaming exploits (I guess xfire shows that too). I really though SoupCom would bring me back, but my Geforce5700 just wouldn't be able to handle it, and my wallet can't handle any better.

Its a problem of openness vs storyline.

Yes, it would be cool if they could make it so that not fulfilling all the mission objectives just pushes you down a different path, but think about it: if you had only 2 objectives per mission, that would mean that after mission one you could be on 4 different story paths (completed objective a but not b, b but not a, both or niether). After two missions, with all those different story paths, you could now be on any of 16 slightly different missions. If they want to do a proper story for the game, they would have to script and design 21 missions by this point, instead of 3. Obviously, that would take considerably more time and money.

The other option is to go for the Rome or DoW style "big map" part. But the only hint of a story in Rome is the one you make up as you go along, and the attempt at a story in DoW is a big mess of badly told, hardly connected voiceovers.

You just cant do a game with as tightly a told storyline as, for example, C&C3 with the openess of results you get from Rome or DoW. Sad but true.

I demand computers make up plot on the fly! Maybe they will eventually.