[In his latest column examining gaming conventions and the pros and cons of breaking them, Gamasutra contributor Jeffrey Matulef analyzes games with unexpected consequences.]
There's a moment in The Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker when I entered a rich man's house full of extravagant vases. After nearly two decades of smashing ceramics to collect whatever goodies lay inside them, I instantly did the same here. In the Zelda universe, these things respawn after a loading screen, so it's a victim-less crime, right?
Wrong. Upon leaving the residence the owner came out and chastised me for my vandalization and forced me to reimburse him for the damages at a costly 20 rupees a vase.
Rather than get angry, I smirked. You got me! Job well done.
It was a harsh punishment (or rather it would have been if money wasn't so easy to come by in that game), but it was completely fair. I hadn't been thinking about my actions and this was a clever way to punish me as well as poke fun at the rest of the series.
Few titles have replicated this cautionary design, but a game that took it one step further was Demon's Souls.
In Demon's Souls there's a random NPC you can rescue who will proceed to kill off friendly NPCs in the game's hub, the Nexus, if you don't kill him first. This is especially unforgiving as they don't come back and some of them represent the only way to gain new spells or swap your equipped magic. In a 40+ hour game, it can be heartbreaking to come back to the Nexus only to discover that you can't re-equip that fire spell you liked so much.
There are hints about this. If you're playing online, it's likely that people will leave warning messages scrawled next to him saying "bad" or "do not trust."
This isn't fool proof though, as some players will try to trick you. I repeatedly saw warning messages about a different NPC, but couldn't bring myself to kill him because a.) death is permanent in the world of Demon's Souls, b.) my information wasn't reliable, and c.) I was curious to see what he'd do.
To my knowledge, he didn't do anything sinister (though he was kind of a jerk), so I'm not sure what those messages were about. He didn't help me either, but if it's all the same I'd rather not murder someone if I don't have to.
Another hint is that the treacherous NPC starts off killing unimportant characters before going after the more vital members of the Nexus. This is easy to miss though, as it's not uncommon to run from level to level without spending much time in the Nexus, so you won't realize this until it's too late.
Or you could be like me and simply be too unobservant to find and rescue the guy in the first place. Ignorance is bliss, I suppose.
The penalty here is far less forgiving than Zelda, which makes sense as Demon's Souls is a much harder game in general. This might be taking it a little too far if it makes it near impossible for some people to complete the game, but I admire it's gusto for making people stop and consider their actions rather than blindly pressing forward expecting to be showered with loot and benefits at every corner.
A similarly harsh consequence caught up with me in Mass Effect 2. As Commander Shepard, I did everything I could to keep my team happy. I completed all their loyalty quests and every side mission. (Spoiler alert!) In the final act, my ship's crew still died.
What did I do to deserve such a fate? I played the missions out of order.
Tired of "loyalty missions", I hungered for some more substantive plot development, so I pressed on through the clearly labelled main quest, confident that I could go back and do all the other missions later. Unexpectedly, my crew ran into some trouble while I was away and got themselves kidnapped by an sinister race of insectoid aliens called the Collectors.
No matter, I thought. I'll wrap up what I'm doing, do a bunch of good deeds for my squad mates and random strangers, then I'll get my crew. They'll be fine.
By the time I reached them I was too late. When I got to where they were held, my ridiculously flirtatious XO, Kelly, was stuck in a green tube before she turned into soup before my eyes. I liked Kelly (way more than Jack or Miranda, despite sleeping with the latter), so this was quite shocking. Given my boy scout record, I'd just assumed that the fate of Kelly and the rest of the crew was an inevitable.
Or so I thought. I later watched my girlfriend play through the same sequence and she had a different crew mate die before the rest were saved. I pinpointed the disparity being due to her playing through the missions in a different sequence, so she hurried to their rescue, whereas I dallied.
This made some degree of sense, since rescuing people is a time sensitive matter. There was just no way of knowing that they'd get captured when they did. I actually respected this as I liked that there were casualties. If everyone made it out alive it would have come off too falsely happy. What kind of commander would I be if I didn't have some regrets?
These games could be viewed as deceiving or unfair, but I respected their willingness to surprise a game veteran like me who usually knows how these things work and can use them towards his advantage. It may seem arbitrary, but sometimes sh*t happens.
[Jeffrey Matulef is a freelance writer whose work can be found at G4TV.com, Eurogamer, Paste, Joystiq, GamePro, and Kill Screen among other places. He's also a regular on the Big Red Potion podcast. You can contact him at jmatulef at gmail dot com.]
I agree, curiosity is certainly a tool developers should take advantage of more often and theres so many ways to do it. I always remember dying early in Final Fantasy 9 after climbing a ladder with a warning sign below, naturally in most games warning signs mean nout so I ignored it, the area at the top of the ladder looked exactly the same as the previous one, no differences or sign of danger, that was until a random battle occured, my party of level 20's came up against a dragon level 87, it was just so random and actually made me smile as my team was destroyed in a single turn.
The game was designed to punish the player for being curious despite being warned, the area is inaccessable later in the game and there is no way any player could ever get to a decent enough level to put up a fight.
Its these kind of surprises that make gaming so worthwhile, its still one of my fondest memmories of the PS1 era.
"...and there is no way any player could ever get to a decent enough level to put up a fight."
Actually, I did. It turns out that if you get strong enough to kill one of them, you can use more of them to level up, and it was actually my favorite part of the game, as it was clearly a situation where I could just easily overpower and dominate whatever my adversaries were.
You got to level 68 training against weak level 30's, I applaud your efforts, tbh it doesn't suprise me someone has done it, must of taken alot of dedication, this kind of things highlights the effectiveness of such a simple idea, with design choices like this the Square created a whole new mini game for you to enjoy which enhanced your experience of the actual game, now in my opinion that is game design at its finest.
I don't remember the details, but yes, I approached it like it was a mini-game. I do remember that I would gain a few levels (or get some new gear), go back to try again, fail, and repeat until I finally won. I think my first couple of minor "victories" consisted of me successfully stealing from the dragon and running away before I got killed. Eventually, though, I found a working strategy and killed a dragon, and from there, I systematically ramped up my efficiency as I leveled up from the dragons themselves, until I leveled up to 80 or so and the dragons became a joke.
Good point! But be careful when guiding player by curiosity matter. Player will hate you if you fail while introducing rules of the game.
Let’s take time sensitive crew-rescuing mission in ME2 for example. There are other missions with time-pressing mechanic in ME2 but the game always shows timer when you need to hurry. Or there is mission where you find Krogan chief, and in the end of it game tells you to hurry, but there is no timer and next cut-scene will begin only if you stepped on trigger. You learn that there is no time-pressing if there is no timer on the screen.
So it hardly seems fair, when you found that crew-rescuing mission is also time-sensitive, but no one has clearly declared that you need to hurry or your crew will be killed.
Will you try to complete any additional mission after your crew was kidnapped, while you definitely know that every completed mission results in additional crew member death? Of course, you should try to safe them as soon as possible if you care enough. And you would do this if you’d had enough information about time-pressing.
Game is a set of conditional mechanics and before you begin to play with player’s curiosity you should carefully declare the game mechanics. Or player will hate “your game trick” but not the “results of his decision”.
Great examples listed here. It's still a tough balance but those games pulled it off right. Like in Red Dead Redemption's undead game, your encouraged to keep the towns safe because EVERYONE in the game has only 1 life, once their gone, the towns are over ran and remain that way the rest of the game (Even though the only consequence I can see is missing an Achievement).
(Spoiler)
I still remember Final Fantasy Tactics, progressing through the story you gain certain main characters when their storyline is over. To me, they became like ordinary characters cause they never talked again so if they died,I thought it wouldn't alter the story. During the final battle in chapter 3 (Arguably the hardest fight in the entire game) Mustadio died in battle but being It was such an impossible fight, I ventured on into the story. I realized only later that HE was the single key character needed to access a MASSIVE side-quest arch that garnered big rewards (including the main Prize, Cloud strife as a playable character). Easily the biggest buzz-kill of my gaming career, Determined I started all over to reach that critical point which was 30-40 hours of game play and corrected my wrongs. Just another reason why one must think 3 steps ahead..
Some also view it as a good way of adding extra replayability to a game, since for ME2 it essentially adds alternate scenes for players to witness. Same thing to an extent with games where your choice of abilities (i.e. inFamous or X-Blades) will influence your outcome, though those typically have only a good or bad route rather than anything more complex.
The only time I find it to be bothersome though is when I have to replay numerous hours of the SAME thing just for a slightly different outcome. Makes me wish games with stuff like that had a "choose a chapter" mode based on the timelines you've unlocked rather than relying on players making countless saves at every point that seems important in the game themselves.
Yeah on my first playthrough of Mass Effect 2 I decided to explore every inch of the galaxy, upgrade all the weapons and my ship plus the loyalty of all my crew members. Yes I got the same result with the one crew member that I had grown fond of over that time dying quite horribly in front of my very eyes. It just added to the epic feel of Mass Effect 2's ending and the game plays out vastly different if you chose neutral choices all the time. I knew I'd loose people but it's heart wrenching when it happens and just shows how good Bioware's writers and development team are. I agree with you curiosity is a slippery slope but yeah it can pay off great if configured correctly.
There are hints about this. If you're playing online, it's likely that people will leave warning messages scrawled next to him saying "bad" or "do not trust." 
By the time I reached them I was too late. When I got to where they were held, my ridiculously flirtatious XO, Kelly, was stuck in a green tube before she turned into soup before my eyes. I liked Kelly (way more than Jack or Miranda, despite sleeping with the latter), so this was quite shocking. Given my boy scout record, I'd just assumed that the fate of Kelly and the rest of the crew was an inevitable.
The game was designed to punish the player for being curious despite being warned, the area is inaccessable later in the game and there is no way any player could ever get to a decent enough level to put up a fight.
Its these kind of surprises that make gaming so worthwhile, its still one of my fondest memmories of the PS1 era.
Actually, I did. It turns out that if you get strong enough to kill one of them, you can use more of them to level up, and it was actually my favorite part of the game, as it was clearly a situation where I could just easily overpower and dominate whatever my adversaries were.
Let’s take time sensitive crew-rescuing mission in ME2 for example. There are other missions with time-pressing mechanic in ME2 but the game always shows timer when you need to hurry. Or there is mission where you find Krogan chief, and in the end of it game tells you to hurry, but there is no timer and next cut-scene will begin only if you stepped on trigger. You learn that there is no time-pressing if there is no timer on the screen.
So it hardly seems fair, when you found that crew-rescuing mission is also time-sensitive, but no one has clearly declared that you need to hurry or your crew will be killed.
Will you try to complete any additional mission after your crew was kidnapped, while you definitely know that every completed mission results in additional crew member death? Of course, you should try to safe them as soon as possible if you care enough. And you would do this if you’d had enough information about time-pressing.
Game is a set of conditional mechanics and before you begin to play with player’s curiosity you should carefully declare the game mechanics. Or player will hate “your game trick” but not the “results of his decision”.
(Spoiler)
I still remember Final Fantasy Tactics, progressing through the story you gain certain main characters when their storyline is over. To me, they became like ordinary characters cause they never talked again so if they died,I thought it wouldn't alter the story. During the final battle in chapter 3 (Arguably the hardest fight in the entire game) Mustadio died in battle but being It was such an impossible fight, I ventured on into the story. I realized only later that HE was the single key character needed to access a MASSIVE side-quest arch that garnered big rewards (including the main Prize, Cloud strife as a playable character). Easily the biggest buzz-kill of my gaming career, Determined I started all over to reach that critical point which was 30-40 hours of game play and corrected my wrongs. Just another reason why one must think 3 steps ahead..
The only time I find it to be bothersome though is when I have to replay numerous hours of the SAME thing just for a slightly different outcome. Makes me wish games with stuff like that had a "choose a chapter" mode based on the timelines you've unlocked rather than relying on players making countless saves at every point that seems important in the game themselves.