Disliked Elements, Mechanics, and Tropes

General
3389

Sifu is super guilty of this: The good ending requires you to not kill any of the bosses.

Let me emphasize that:

THE BOSSES.

The hundreds of hapless mooks standing between you and the bosses? Kill the hell out of them, they mean nothing.

But oooh, you’d better not kill the final boss who happens to be your older brother who stabbed your order in the back, or else your dad is gonna be disappointed in you from beyond the grave because [something something kung fu philosophizing].

You don’t exactly have non-lethal takedown options for the grunts, either, you either pummel them to death or (if you have a sharp object) shank them to death. Once again, only the boss fights have non-lethal takedowns, and from what I’ve seen of gameplay footage (I’m pretty bad at the game, myself), those can go by so fast that you don’t even realize they’ve happened until you’ve already shoved a repentant assassin’s own knife in her sternum because you were so focused on her not stabbing you that you missed a vital input.

(I just realized I may have quoted the wrong comment, my bad y’all.)

10 Likes
3390

I haven’t play sifu but uncharted was like this as i remember. You kill dozens of mercs but when it comes to the end game boss “oh no, im not a killer.” It’s annoying.

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3391

Basically, Sifu is a game where you play as a dude (or dudette!) who’s out for revenge after a group of villainous sorts including your older brother who led the whole thing destroyed the order you and your family were part of.

And this being a game by the Absolver folks, you do so with kung fu fighting (or beating people over the skull with a metal pipe, it varies from mission to mission).

There’s also a mechanic where you have several chances to get back up right on the spot if you die, but a magical macguffin you’re wearing makes you grow older as a consequence. You gain the wisdom and knowledge of being that much older, which theoretically helps you fight better, but you also get slower and weaker with age, so the tradeoff is going from being a burly weakling to a glass cannon. It is very likely for you to walk into the final boss fight as a seventy-two year old man, when you started the game as a twenty-something boy.

5 Likes
3392

I played the absolver but i don’t remember the story if there was any. All i remember is that i was trying to find some masks. I’m not good with these types of games :sweat_smile: If there isn’t a story i lose interest fast.

Idea sounds interesting though i think it would work better as a movie or animation. But like i said i didn’t play it, so maybe it’s good idk.

Thanks for the summary tho :+1:

2 Likes
3393

I got clowned on for three hours straight by the second boss, and then a random high-level player challenged me to a duel I had no prayer of winning and proceeded to Wuxia my mask off with my head still attached to it, so I totally understand.

4 Likes
3394

I don’t mind getting clowned if there is a story or a deep lore. I just need something i can follow. So, something like dark souls would work you might think. Since it has a lore… but only lore i got was from the loading screens :smiling_face_with_tear:

1 Like
3395

I actually prefer that, it would be extremely annoying to have to restart a whole run to get the good ending just because I spammed the wrong key too fast while finishing off the 10000th mook.

Sometime narrative points have to take a backseat to quality of life. Same reason I dislike games that don’t have ANY pause options regardless of ‘That’s the point!’, the point is that I don’t wanna piss myself just cause your game is badly designed.

7 Likes
3396

I’m about to say a thing that everybody is going to disagree with me on: (it’s a good thing you didn’t put money on that bet, Zyri)

The found family trope repulses me deeply.

I get the premise behind it, it’s supposed to be a heartwarming story about a character finding warmth and acceptance and camaraderie among unexpected allies and all that fuzzy, cozy stuff…

But I’ve read too many stories that attempt to invoke the trope, and instead of finding a family, I find an ever-growing list of reasons why I despise all these repugnant assholes.

It’s either the “family” I’m supposed to be finding are all just abhorrent to be around, and that’s their collective personality, or they start out fine but end up doing increasingly stupider bullshit that I find harder and harder to justify or let slide, or the “family” part of the trope is forced upon me so fervently that it feels like I’m being marched by the barrel of a gun.

Not to mention, it feels almost like an insult for it to be insinuated that my MCs need to find a family in the first place, that they need to have some sense of belonging or else they’ll be lost adrift in a sea of loneliness and hollow despair.

If anything, most of my MCs took a frank look at society and decided the healthier option was to keep to themselves.

Not every lone wolf character is suffocating from a lack of human contact, sometimes they really just don’t want to hang around people. I’m an introvert in real life, the kind where I do better with limited interactions with other people, it’s what’s comfortable for me. If a bunch of randos suddenly barged in on my life and attempted to bring me into their midst, I wouldn’t exactly be overjoyed by it.

Anymore, when I see a story that proudly proclaims the found family trope, my stomach just kinda turns and I stop being interested in it.

20 Likes
3397

Honestly, same. I dislike this shit because you often can’t push aganist this found family, can’t try to be more than a yes-man that just follows everything others say. When you try, you get shit and usually must fall back in line for anyone to care about you, which is… it brings certain memories about social conformity. I guess they don’t deliberately try that, but that doesn’t make it better.

4 Likes
3398

I actually kinda agree with this? I think it can be done fairly well, its just often times its done in a way that turns me off.

Found family media usually has a theme of sticking together through thick and thin, having each others backs no matter what. BUT often times media (regardless of genre) has archetype quotas that they have to fill. A lot of times found family ends up being less “your family is what you make” and more an excuse for the MC to keep toxic people around.

Also, at least in interactive fiction (anywhere from choicescript to traditional video games) found family isn’t really found family. Because of the way the medium is, you don’t get to choose your family, your “family” is usually 3+ characters the game decides have to be your family for plot reasons. You’re just as stuck with them in game as you are with your real family irl.

Found family can be done well, its just that most of the time, they’re not really written differently from a biological family, and they get away with being waaaaay more toxic because “they chose that”.

15 Likes
3399

For me, found-family is something that’s a lot harder to make convincing than people think. It’s challenging enough to write a convincing one-on-one relationship development, let alone a group dynamic and all the individual relationships within it that will affect and be affected by the group as a whole. I personally struggle a bit with the nuances/differences between a strong friendship group, a shared community, and a chosen family in fiction; i think in an interactive work there’s a danger of it feeling like the “family” dynamic is imposed from the narrative rather than coming from the MC (especially if a character directly expresses that they feel like part of a family and the MC thinks “huh? Really?!”). That can lead to issues because if it isn’t solidly coming from the MC, it can just fall into the toxic workplace thing where “everyone’s part of the family” (therefore there are no boundaries). Either way a “family” dynamic isn’t going to bring warm fuzzy feelings for everyone, chosen or not, and it really needs to be something chosen by MC to feel right.

(This is funny timing for this to have come up as I was thinking about this very subject - I might make a separate thread to ask about games in which it’s more felt successful)

18 Likes
3400

Maybe not suffocating, but they will suffer from it. Humans need other humans to a greater or lesser degree depending on the person. Even if it’s only a little, even as an introvert, the lone wolf is worse off if they completely neglect human interaction.

Now, that doesn’t invalidate the complaint about a so-called “found” family being forced on you of course.

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3401

Sure, and I’m not saying “absolutely no interactions with other people ever,” that’s completely impossible. For a character who wants to get anything done, for one, and for a person’s health, besides.

As I said, I’m most comfortable with limited interactions - even my roommate and I don’t spend every hour talking each others ears off and hanging around each other, we end up in separate rooms for a bit at least once per day.

Many of my MCs are similarly set up: they prefer being left alone, but they’ll still work with others and like to at least chat with people, even if briefly.

It’s just that once that’s all said and done, they’re not gonna feel the need to hang around and continue sharing those people’s company. They’ll stomach as much as they can, then go home and take a nap, or some other decompression methods like that.

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3402

Given that you instantly got 10 likes, I think you were mistaken there.

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3403

Boy, I couldn’t have been more wrong if I tried!

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3404

Found family is my favorite trope of all time, and this IS something I’ll stick by, but your points are absolutely right. It’s harder in IF because, well… most works simply aren’t long enough for it to feel like the MC really has a connection to the other characters like that, so the game pushing it on you feels a lot like the weird office “Oh we’re all part of the family here :))” kind of thing, where instead of feeling reassuring it feels Deeply Uncomfortable. It especially irks me because the whole POINT of found family is that you CHOOSE the people that you call family, so having it not be in the MCs choice feels… eh.

Edit: It tends to work much better in games without customizable MCs, since background etc etc can be decided and the works are usually much more linear.

21 Likes
3405

Honestly, I think the issue described with the found family trope is present in a lot of stories about families. I’ve seen plenty where the plot is something like; “Hey I know your mother/father abandoned you for no good reason when you were an infant and is a terrible person in the present to boot but they’re your family!” The implication is that it’s wrong for the person not to immediately reconnect with said family member. I love stories of reconciliation and forgiveness, so it’s annoying to me when the solution to the problem is the idea that since they’re family, it’s wrong to dislike any action they take.

As for found family in IF… While there’s no way to please everyone I think it could work under the right circumstances. However, I think the best way to pull it off would be to not have super rude, combative members of said found family? That’s always been the thing that’s annoyed me about it. I love stories about good people banding together and connecting to become something of a family over time. So when there’s some jerk smack dab in the middle of it making people uncomfortable, it’s harder for me to get into.

Overall I do like the trope. When done well it has great potential, though it is harder to do in IF.

6 Likes
3406

Found family trope is a hit or miss for me but one thing is a clear nope to me like @SamsonJBodney explained, if a asshole/rude/mean/cold/heavily sarcastic person is around, I don’t care your reasons of being that way, if you can’t be a decent/respectful person to other people then you better believe that found family feeling will be so stale than a bag of hard crackers.

12 Likes
3407

I mentioned this in a post in another thread, but I think a specific issue that exists with choicescript found family is the structure of the works it typically appears in.

A lot of the works follow a general formula with the following elements:

  • The group that you are expected to become found family to was already together with the MC just being introduced to them. They already have a clear family dynamic.
  • The game is structured in one of two ways. There is “downtime” in between story beats where you chose the person you spend time with or during the story sections you choose to accompany a single person. In either of these cases the reader almost always chooses to spend time with the character they want to romance
  • The works follow a fairly short time frame (at least that has been published so far, multi book works we’ll still have to see how it turns out) or a longer time frame with a lot of time skips between plot points.

The problem I have with this formula combined with found family is that there is already a dynamic, and the MC never really feels like they’re joining it. It feels more like they’re “X’s partner” instead of a family member where X is the member of the group the MC is romancing. Outside of major story moments, they rarely interact with anyone aside from X unless its for Plot Things. Wayhaven does a bit better on this by having a best friend, but even then its still two people in the group you’re just coworkers with.

With shorter works, there isn’t really time to develop a proper dynamic. With longer works, a lot of the downtime is skipped, so you don’t really see interactions that show the MC becoming closer to people. Either way, it usually ends up with the MC becoming close to a single person as a romantic partner, and everyone else being acquaintances.

22 Likes
3409

Here we at the ring again, let’s be a ringleader.

Let’s imagine a hypothetical situation. You have a love interest that has traits that don’t match up with the established LI norms. Maybe they swear so much anything with them will get flagged by Apple Store, maybe they tend to smoke like a train from Moscow to Nizhny Novgorod, maybe they are a battle-hungry fanatic that constantly searches for something bigger and stronger and doesn’t care about much aside from that (Hawkins, my beloved), maybe they are an unfeeling and cold creature that cares about your character, but has troubles expressing that in the socially normal ways, maybe they just don’t like to go outside or talk to anyone who isn’t their love interest. The possibilities of their quirks or unusual traits are endless.

But here comes your player character, the romantic partner! Under their watchful presence, nagging and constant unability to show sympathy to their unique traits your beloved starts to change, becoming far more socially acceptable and tolerable, so you won’t feel ashamed going out with them. The thing that bugs me, essentially, is the fact all characters you create for such a character with quirks are assumed to want them to change, to want them to be something closer to romantic stereotypes and “normal” dating and thus can’t simply… not give a damn about that and not push them towards the mushy-mushy normal romantic behaviour or not be concerned with their behaviour. This often is obvious in games where you can start a FWB - eventually in series (yes, this is about M) everyone will start looking at you weirdly for not jumping into eternal love, for being quite okay with the idea of just staying FWB like that.

11 Likes