I’m a casual gamer so perhaps this has been made hundreds of times and I just ignore it.
So let’s say you play your game, things don’t go well so you go back and reload a save. Now, with your current knowledge you can get things right and that’s usually how it goes with games.
Is there any game that takes this into the plot as something necessary by design (say for example, the main character is supposed to be clairvoyant or something)? You play, your character gets things wrong the first time, but now when you reload your character will obviously do everything right, almost as if they were clairvoyant/psychic/etc because that’s exactly what your character is. The only way to beat the game is to explore a variety of outcomes in order to gather information until you get it right, but instead of this being immersion breaking it’s actually supported by the plot itself.
Not sure if I’m making sense here or maybe I ate the wrong kind of cookies, you tell me…
This gimmick instantly reminds me of The Stanley Parable. It isn’t really related to saving and loading but it does “reset” you all the time. I find it an absolute gem of a game.
Never heard of it… Will keep in mind!
Inscryption
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1092790/Inscryption/
Don’t read into it too too much. It’s better experienced knowing as little as possible, but things are absolutely not as they seem
This one rings a bell… I can’t remember much but I’ve heard it’s a good game
Undertale.
Katana Zero does this. You have precognition and work out how to win an encounter before you actually do it. Later, it explores more interesting concepts like, “what if your opponent also has the same ability”. The story is really good, so i won’t go into it too much, but I highly recommend.
Nice, I haven’t heard about this one either. Thanks!
Note that it’s not an RPG, though.
There’s a game where the best way to experience it is to go blind and discover everything, I think you might enjoy it, it’s called Outer Wilds, and it’s one of the best games I’ve ever played.
Alright, exploring, I like that, I take there is something about it that relates to my original question as well, will keep in mind. Thanks for the suggestion!
Gonna second this, judging from your other comments, you will very much like this game (just don’t confuse it with Outer Worlds). Go in as blind as you can, but if you feel like you’re just not “getting” it and at risk of bouncing off, this video might help you: https://youtu.be/msABa06aiT0
It does, it’s not a very large spoiler, so if you want to I can let you know. But without spoiling anything, I can tell you it’s very close to what you’re describing.
Yes the best game I’ve ever played. I wish I could do back and play it again
I now want to make a game that does exactly that.
If you quick save in an area with killable NPCs they would know and some would look at you and back away slowly, others would turn an run like in GTA, maybe one or two go wide eyed and freeze and just stare at you waiting. If you had previously killed any and reloaded then one goes “Oh no, not again.”
I would make puzzles or locked areas that are impossible to open UNTIL you figure out that knowledge, but if you reload after learning that and try to shortcut the process the puzzle would either change so you fail again or even better, you could solve it and like a door opens, but then when you go into the next room there is a scroll or book tome thing that would lecture you about cheating or something funny and then make you do a second different puzzle to proceed, that would be an infinite series of rooms if you reloaded, but if you solved then organically then you could finally escape the loop and the door exits the loop.
If you don’t play for a while and load up an old save, make some characters aware of the passage of time and comment things like “oh I thought you forgot about us.” Or even specifically call out the exact amount “Really? 49 days waiting on you. Did you even think about me?”
I LOVE the idea someone else mentioned of an in-game antagonist being able to corrupt your save file or even transfer themselves to one of your other save files. How freaky would it be if they corrupt your save, so you have to load an old save before you met that antagonist and then they fucking show up and KNOW WHAT YOU DID.
Or if it reads your other saves and the NPCs could make rude or insulting comments about them. “Been playing Mario instead of spending time with us again? Is a plumber really better than us? Ouch.” Or if you played any spicy games one of the characters would look at you and wink and go “I was watching you Friday night, you animal.” And really freak you out.
I really love the 4th wall break idea of an antagonist that becomes self aware and breaks out of the game. There was a Star Trek TNG episode where Data and Geordi do a Sherlock Holmes holodeck thing and create a Moriarty character that could “outsmart data” and he becomes sentient and breaks out of the holodeck and it’s a whole thing and I love that concept for a game.
There are so many amazing possibilities.
Lol okay this is taking the concept one step forward after breaking the wall, not exactly what I was referring to ( more of a narrative device, while what you describe sounds like also related to the mechanics of the game itself). But you got a point, there’s no shortage of cool stuff you could do with it
OneShot’s plot focuses on the gamer’s relation to the protagonist, Niko, so try that!
Oh interesting! I was also going to ask about games with that plot/narrative device in this post, but I typed so much to explain myself with the saves already I thought I might leave it for another occasion.
Yeah I don’t know if that game is anything like this, but one could say the player directly manipulates, influences, controls and /or gives information to the game protagonist… What if the protagonist could interact directly with you as a player? That’d be a cool concept to explore too. Cheers
Metal Gear Solid does a little bit of that lol. I do not want to spoil OneShot as it’s entirely plot-heavy, but it does have what you’re talking about at a major plot point.
This game has a game mechanic that is similar to what you describe: https://store.steampowered.com/app/311240/Zero_Escape_Zero_Time_Dilemma/
You are faced with lots of challenging and deadly traps/puzzle that almost always end with your death. But you can jump back to earlier times in the story and with your new knowledge you can make better choices.
idk if this is on topic but I remember playing jak3 as a kid and after i constantly died, that stupid fkin rat pops up and said something like “You suck”. I think i cried for a bit lmao
Animal Crossing O o O
Resetti has always been one of my favorite parts of the series.
This reminds me of the book “Only you can save mankind” by Terry Pratchett. The aliens surrender once they realise the player is apparently immortal!
Isn’t that just Undertale and Deltarune?
I don’t know, you tell me. Never played either
Yes.
Yep, narratively Undertale uses the exact concept you’re talking about.
It’s not much of a mechanic for most parts of the game though.
This.
Most rougelites kind of do this.
For “big” FPS games Deathloop kind of does it. You and the main villain are aware of a reset that happens when you die or the two day timer runs out.
Every loop you gain more knowledge, and every miniboss gives more power.
But to actually beat the game, you need to do a bunch of tasks in the right order in the right timeslots.
I don’t think I ever finished it, but it was a fun concept
I would have never thought of a roguelike… Are we talking about stuff like shattered pixel dungeon? Hardly enough depth of plot and definitely a different run every time so repeating is nearly impossible.
As for Deathloop, that sounds really cool! That would fit the bill, cheers!
Hades is a great example of this. You start out as the son of Hades, lord of the underworld. You want to escape his realm, so you try to fight your way out. Along the way, you will die and fail, and you just get sent back down to your father’s house, and he gives you a bit of a hard time about how weak and ineffectual you are.
The plot unfolds as you interact with various gods and other figures in the underworld, over the course of your many attempts. Saving and reloading isn’t really a thing, as such, but the plot continues to unfold, even as you die over and over over and over.
Edit:
This is a great time for me to rave about how much I love the storytelling in Hades. In a book or in a totally linear game, the story looks like this:
You start at the beginning, you proceed directly to the end. You have no choices in how the plot progresses. This is fine in a book, and I’m sure there are some games where it works okay, too.
Most games with “choices” go like this:
You might make a few choices, but a lot of them either end in a false ending or take you right back to the ending that the writers planned all along. It can give the illusion of meaningful choice, but it can also start to feel hollow once you see where the railroad tracks are.
Hades works like this:
All of the characters in the game (and there are a lot of them) have their own linear plot that is unfolding as you play the game, and you are learning about any one of them at any given time. You don’t have many meaningful choices to make, but it still reads as a very compelling plot because all of your interactions deepen your relationship with each character in turn. It saves us all from the fake choices that a lot of games stick us with. It’s genius.
Okay, belated thanks for your artwork. You are a good visual communicator. I think I read your comment before you added the images. I’m intrigued now
In Fable 2 when you purchase shops that earn you money it accrues in real time. If I plugged in my 360 I’d probably have 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 gold or something now haha
There was an upper limit on how much you could earn like this. I know, because you could also just disconnect from the internet and set the clock forward.
Not an RPG, but the ancient civ-like Output would have a “news” article pop up whenever you loaded a save game. “Entire colony plunged back in time - scientists baffled” or something like that.
