Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The Melancholy of Slaying Monsters

thereader.mitpress.mit.edu

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 149 posts

Re: The Melancholy of Slaying Monsters

#91

Post by amiga386 »

belval wrote: post #89

Perhaps not a monster, but in "It takes two", there is a particular scene where you have to murder a friendly stuffed elephant to get your in-game daughter to cry. I have been playing video games for decades at this point but that one really shook me up. You pretty much execute a toy begging for its life. As soon as that scene was over it genuinely took me a few days to come back to it. That was a hard rewatch: https…

The ending credits show her patched back up with needle and thread, but they know what they did.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0bnKr0M1Tzs

Re: The Melancholy of Slaying Monsters

#92

Post by kmeisthax »

throwatdem12311 wrote: post #51
cubefox wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article didn't say that a pacifist run was more difficult than a genocide route.

I never even considered one might play Undertale where you only kill some people but not others, the game doesn’t really ever incentivize you to do a “mixed” run. Pacifist is more like a puzzle game, and I didn’t find it all that challenging at all. If you go the “kill only some people” route, I don’t think you would ever really be strong enough for this to be fun due to not levelling up enough to keep up with later…

The funny thing is, not only are there multiple Neutral endings, Toby actually wrote different variations of them for almost every possible combination of boss kill. They range from "you know, Alphys wanted to talk to you about something" if you killed nobody, to "if Sans ever figures out how to leave the Underground, he will end you". The latter is what you'd get if you misinterpreted "Genocide run" to mean "kill everything you see", which isn't quite it.

My guess is that Toby's intent was for you to play the game normally, get one of the many, many different Neutral endings, reset to get the Pacifist ending, and then a few years later come back to Genocide after hearing about this weird route where you get to fight the other font skeleton.

Re: The Melancholy of Slaying Monsters

#93

Post by debugnik »

throwatdem12311 wrote: post #51
cubefox wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article didn't say that a pacifist run was more difficult than a genocide route.

I never even considered one might play Undertale where you only kill some people but not others, the game doesn’t really ever incentivize you to do a “mixed” run. Pacifist is more like a puzzle game, and I didn’t find it all that challenging at all. If you go the “kill only some people” route, I don’t think you would ever really be strong enough for this to be fun due to not levelling up enough to keep up with later…

It takes some really serious farming to accidentally find genocide route and then not exit it my mistake. Most players blindly treating Undertale as a regular RPG would simply kill the enemies they encounter (which is not enough to trigger genocide route), maybe regret it along the way, and eventually get a neutral ending plus the hints to try pacifist.

It's clearly the intended progression, since the second playthrough then changes to reflect the fact that the game "remembers" your first one.

Re: The Melancholy of Slaying Monsters

#94

Post by debugnik »

kmeisthax wrote: post #87

> Contrary to Flowey’s advice, the game can be finished without a single kill, leading to a special ending, but this pacifist route is markedly more difficult. ...huh? This is very much not true. The most difficult[0] encounters happen on the Genocide route, in which you powerlevel like it's a normal JRPG until the encounters run out. Pacifist is only slightly harder than a "No Mercy" neutral run[1]. For the first tw…

> in which you powerlevel like it's a normal JRPG until the encounters run out

Regular JRPG farming is not enough to trigger this route. You need to farm out every single area with enemies, starting from the very first one and never leaving one unfarmed, otherwise you accidentally exit the route even if you keep trying. You seem to know this but somehow pretend it's the normal JRPG experience?

As for Shadow of the Colossus, this article has flaws but its analysis of that game isn't one of them. It's very much what "everyone" knows about the game.

Re: The Melancholy of Slaying Monsters

#95

Post by SamoyedFurFluff »

pprotas wrote: post #17
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…

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

I think games don’t have to be fun. There’s plenty of games where fun would be super inappropriate and yet the games are very popular. This applies to a lot of psychological or survival horror games. I think better is that a game must be compelling. There must be something encouraging you to play more, more so than any frustration or conflict the game introduces.

Re: The Melancholy of Slaying Monsters

#96

Post by butlike »

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.

Check this one out: It's a F2P war game that ships with every new console. You only get one life in the game, so if you die, you can't play it anymore. It's not required to play, but heavily encouraged since it comes pre-installed.

Re: The Melancholy of Slaying Monsters

#97

Post by superxpro12 »

david_shaw wrote: post #4

The Fallout games often exemplify this: nearly every decision you make is morally ambiguous, and often has far-reaching repercussions in the story and world.

IDK if i'd go that far... there's usually clear paragon and renegade pathways. I'd agree that they do include a few morally ambiguous quandaries, but they are not regularly encountered.

Re: The Melancholy of Slaying Monsters

#98

Post by superxpro12 »

serallak wrote: post #44

I've just finished playing Metro Exodus, which is another example. The "good ending" depends on your behavior in the three open areas of the game. You can still kill "monsters" (mutated humans, animals, cannibals, bandits) without impact, but you should minimize killing other humans, such as slaves, or even hostile but "misguided" NPCs (people that just want you to stay out of their settlement, that you are required…

It's interesting that metro and Stalker both feature this sort of decision tree. I wonder what it is about that culture that leads to this gameplay element.

Re: The Melancholy of Slaying Monsters

#99

Post by SV_BubbleTime »

belval wrote: post #89

Perhaps not a monster, but in "It takes two", there is a particular scene where you have to murder a friendly stuffed elephant to get your in-game daughter to cry. I have been playing video games for decades at this point but that one really shook me up. You pretty much execute a toy begging for its life. As soon as that scene was over it genuinely took me a few days to come back to it. That was a hard rewatch: https…

I’m apparently a heartless monster or something, but that elicited less than zero for me. I wanted it to end because the squeeky annoying voice and over the top cuteness was for effect.

I’m happy for you that you felt that was dark. Well, IDK, maybe I’m happy for you, hard to say.

Re: The Melancholy of Slaying Monsters

#100

Post by stared »

I love how the game SOMA deals with taking (or not taking) someone's, or something's, life. It is never an easy moment. And with no commentary (with some haunting exceptions, https://youtu.be/pmC6naegRgo?t=161), no external reward or punishment, you need to carry the burden of your own decisions.

Some people says they will be judged (only) by God and history. In SOMA, there is neither.

Post reply on HN