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The Melancholy of Slaying Monsters

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Re: The Melancholy of Slaying Monsters

#71

Post by bob1029 »

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #56
bob1029 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It sounds like you might be interested in the idea of a PvP multiplayer game. I've never found myself concerned with the morality of camping/flanking/wiping an entire squad in BF6 without mercy because I know they urgently wish to do the exact same thing to me.

But one where death is permanent / seriously bad; in Battlefield you just respawn so dying is not a major issue.

World of warcraft and battle royale variants exist. One life across a 90 minute game is pretty high stakes, relatively speaking.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/3028330/Battlefield_REDSE...

Re: The Melancholy of Slaying Monsters

#73

Post by relaxing »

ajuc wrote: post #6

No mention of the Witcher? The whole franchise is based on moral dilemmas like that.

Maybe the author, being Czech, wanted to look beyond the quintessential Slavic contribution to the genre. It’s the only explanation I can think of.

The idea that monsters can be understood, and spared because in the end they’re exhibiting human flaws, is such a powerful storytelling device.

Re: The Melancholy of Slaying Monsters

#74

Post by ArmadilloGang »

LandR wrote: post #26
baumschubser wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To me, these reflections upon my aggressive and violent behavior in a game are much more impactful than games that put me into dilemma situations, where you are already presented with a nicely arranged moral problem in the moment. These are two distinct techniques and I feel the latter almost always failed to impress me much, while the first one is where I feel caught, even shocked by myself and the cold-bloodiness t…

The Uncharted games are weird like this. They get lauded for their storyline, yet Drake is out their killing hordes of guys for what ? Some treasure ?

I thought about this playing Just Cause 2. So I go to this island, blow up all of their oil, gas, and power infrastructure, killing hordes of security guards who are just locals working the few jobs available to them.

Re: The Melancholy of Slaying Monsters

#76

Post by Zarathruster »

jdw64 wrote: post #40
probably_wrong wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I vouched for your comment because, while (IMO) dead wrong, I didn't think it was "this should be flagged" wrong. The article uses the word "dilemma" exactly once in the introduction, mostly because that's not really what the article is about. Instead it's a reflection of the melancholy of playing a game where, justified as your actions may be, the entire act of killing is surrounded in sadness. In Dark Souls specifi…

While I agree to some extent, realistically, if we follow that logic, wouldn't we have to feel a sense of melancholy every time we kill an enemy in almost any game? It's highly debatable whether players actually feel melancholy when fighting monsters in Dark Souls. Putting aside the fact that the story is notoriously cryptic and reliant on player speculation, yes, the lore of Dark Souls is tragic. However, this is th…

The praise heaped on Spec Ops makes me embarrassed for games as a medium. This is a game that forces you to commit mass murder in order to progress the storyline, pretends that something profound has just been demonstrated, and then tries to guilt trip you about it for the rest of the experience. It's a mess of dumb, trite, "war is hell" cliché and I wish we would collectively forget about it.

Re: The Melancholy of Slaying Monsters

#77

Post by no-name-here »

arjie wrote: post #29
myfonj wrote: post #12

> As a result, the game offers no easy satisfaction of hacking and slashing through weaker opponents. Besides the questionable morality of kill=experience=progress in typical hack'n'slash or roguelike, what started to irritate me in there as I grew older as well, was the stupid mechanics where crowds of enemies described as intelligent humanoids (i.e. not animals or robots) facing clearly overpowered high-level PC (f…

There's a mod for Battletech (the video game) where people act realistically and it is catastrophically boring. The second you get sufficient advantage over an enemy they panic and promptly eject to save themselves at the cost of their company's mech. Yes, yes, it's what you would do, but it means I only fight 50% of the enemy.

Googling returned ‘PanicSystem’ https://www.nexusmods.com/battletech/mods/461 which says it builds on 2 other mods - I don't know if you used this one or another it built on etc?

Re: The Melancholy of Slaying Monsters

#78

Post by no-name-here »

CurtMonash wrote: post #5

For a mainstream boss example I nominate the Lonely Giant in Elder Scrolls Online. There also are plenty of cute-animal mobs that weren't going to bother you unless you started something. An example that still stands out for me is the first set of sleeping bears in LOTRO.

LOTRO = Lord Of The Rings Online

Re: The Melancholy of Slaying Monsters

#79

Post by SubiculumCode »

SubiculumCode wrote: post #20
myfonj wrote: post #12

> As a result, the game offers no easy satisfaction of hacking and slashing through weaker opponents. Besides the questionable morality of kill=experience=progress in typical hack'n'slash or roguelike, what started to irritate me in there as I grew older as well, was the stupid mechanics where crowds of enemies described as intelligent humanoids (i.e. not animals or robots) facing clearly overpowered high-level PC (f…

This is, IMO something that has infected modern mainstream TTRPG: Monsters hardly run away, even if a fireball just killed half of you. One thing B/X AD&D got right were the heavy use of Moral Checks, e.g. Check their morale on first death in enemy party, when half have died, etc. In fact, fighting is deadly and scary. And these morale checks differentiated undead as that enemy that knows no fear and had no morale ch…

I'd fix my typos and spelling now that I have my coffee, but it will not let me.

Re: The Melancholy of Slaying Monsters

#80

Post by amiga386 »

myfonj wrote: post #23
pprotas wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Game developers (mostly... hopefully?) try to optimize for the "fun" aspect of a game, not the "realism of the flight/flight instinct" aspect

Sure, but I don't think they must be mutually exclusive; on the contrary: in the late stages when your character is a tank, swarms of minions that posed a challenge in early stages become just a nuisance, mostly. You are walking legend slaying dragons for breakfast, everybody and their dog knows about your invincibility … but instead of giving you some respect, they try to bite your heels on the first sight. I guess…

Other than the meta-answer that the game designers made it that way, or that you may need to farm kills for something in future, there is also the Zerg Rush answer: some creatures are literally bred to swarm their enemies, that's how the hive has always survived before. It doesn't matter how outmatched they are, provided every needling damages you at least a little bit.

It's not unknown in human warfare either:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_wave_attack#Use

There's a similar human need to protect what is precious. Defending your family, defending your motherland. Cities being seiged by a superior opponent don't just abandon the city in cowardice, because they know the opponent will just gain ground and still come after them. They don't want to, they'd rather you stopped, but they have to defend their territories, even if it means their annihilation. If you win, everyone gets killed, ravaged, enslaved, ... If they only have sticks, and you have missiles and jets... they have to use sticks. Can you imagine how they feel?

But yes, you're probably thinking of RPGs where the enemies are preprogrammed with the same hostility no matter what the circumstances, even if you're a God-killer and they're defending 5 coins and half-eaten sandwich in their den.

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