The 'Missing Item' Syndrome in old-school Adventure Games

[TerranRich]

but can be avoided simply by designing your game so that all areas remain accessible at all times.

That's not the only solution. Another solution would be... let's say that Item A is required in the current area and Item B is required later on... but where Item B is needed, the player cannot return to retrieve said item. If you make Items A and B obtained at the same time, the player is basically forced to collect the item that is required later on in the game.

There are many solutions to this "feature" other than making all areas accessible. Sometimes making all areas accessible at all times just isn't feasible or doesn't work story-wise.

[OneDollar]

I think it could work but only in very specific situations, e.g. a shortish game that is specifically geared towards re-playability. Look at something like Laura Bow

I strongly disagree that the dead ends in laura bow somehow "work". Heck, I know people who've played that game to the bad ending and didn't realize it was the bad ending.

I wouldn't have called the endings in Laura Bow dead endings... There were only really three types of ending - get killed by the murderer (which was always due to an action by the player, rather than an omission), get the bad ending by not finding enough clues to work out who the murderer was and getting the good ending (as far as I remember anyway).

To me a dead ending would be either a walking dead situation (the player cannot possibly progress any further, but the game doesn't actually end) or one where the game ends prematurely (You died. Restore/Restart/Quit). Laura Bow does do the second one, but never because you missed an item which is what's under discussion here.

Personally I see no problem with this kind of game where multiple playthroughs are expected. Its all about replayability, and being able to act on information you get later etc etc. Then again if you know people who didn't get this idea, I guess the game design needs some more work

For the record I'm not much of a fan of being killed off in Sierra games for doing some small thing wrong (you opened the cupboard, but someone was hiding in it who dragged you in and killed you), so there are things in Laura Bow that I don't like, but the point of this topic is missing items. I reckon its a good example of a game that treats them well - you will alway get to the end of the night without items and while you won't get the best ending you get hints about how to improve.

Also for the record: walking deads should never ever be used. As other people have said, its just bad game design

[Trent R]

Ah, but that's not actually a dead end, because if you've saved after picking it up, you can still put it down again (and you get points for doing so!)

You're stressing the point I was trying to make (and apparently wasn't able to make without sleep). BJB pointed out one walking dead that he liked, and I replied that I would rather such a situation be changed so it's not a walking dead in the first place.

chances that I will ever pick it up again are almost nil.

So what if it's a bug? Would you try it again once a patch was released?


~Trent

[mrsix]

One interesting point people have made, that I will pick up on, is that some people have said that in some games it wasn't too bad because you could restore a recently saved game, and it wouldn't have been too bad.
The problem with this, IMO, is that in the old Sierra games, Saving actually became a part of the gameplay strategy itself, which may have been acceptable back then, but in this day and age, IMO, saving and restoring should only be used to store and return to your progress when you have a rest from playing.
Just my two bobs 

[Trent R]

Exactly, this is a different time. As dkh said as the first reply to this thread, they just don't count as nostalgia.

That being said, how about we gear this thread and discussion toward other types of the missing-item syndrome (as some of us have done) instead of the 'anti-dead-end thread'.


~Trent

[Makeout Patrol]

chances that I will ever pick it up again are almost nil.

So what if it's a bug? Would you try it again once a patch was released?

Only if I was really enjoying the game up to that point.

[MillsJROSS]

I liked the walking-deaths. Let me repeat it so it sinks in. I liked the walking-deaths. The space quest one pointed out before was one of the funniest ones I had ever witnessed. I didn't have a saved game before that, for some reason, and DID have to start the game over again. Yes, it effectively screwed you, but it made you think smarter. It added en element of fear, that you just don't get anymore.

That said...I need to emphasize the past tense I used. In games of today, I don't think we tolerate this way of creating a game anymore. It's not necessarily because it's bad puzzle design. It's that it's bad puzzle design for us in this time. Just think back to when you were playing those games. The last eighties and early nineties didn't have all these fancy forums, blogs, social-groups, etc...That's not to say that the internet wasn't around, it just wasn't as global or as entertaining. So back then, when you got stuck in your game, you had nothing else to do...so you had the drive to start again, or go to a restore point. Now, you're stuck, you have several other things at your fingertips that will provide instant entertainment.

The walking dead puzzles just don't work with our attention deficit lifestyle. They don't work with the length of games we have today. Place them back in the time they were made, though, and I don't think it was bad design.

-MillsJROSS

[Khris]

I hate walking deads, and whenever I play a game that has them, I just follow a walk-through. I just do this to pass time and to get to know a game I haven't played yet. The idea of not knowing whether you're just stuck or already in a dead end completely ruins even the greatest game for me.

I vividly remember playing Gold Rush for the third time or so; this time without the solution. When I got to the very end, it suddenly occurred to me that I forgot to pick up my mail back at the beginning. So there I was, near the end, and even though I had plenty of saved games, I still had to more or less restart from the beginning.
Now imagine playing a game like that in DOS, without a HD, constantly juggling game and save disks, waiting for half an hour in between rooms. Gives me the shivers.

Games have simply evolved; back in the 80s, the designers tried to make them as realistic as possible, game play-wise, thus wrong decisions lead you into a dead end or to death, just like in real life. Additionally, producing a very hard game increased the length (just look at the average NES Jump'n'Run, those are the devil's work).
Nowadays, games don't need to be realistic, they need to be fun. And with media like DVDs, there's also no need to artificially lengthen the play time.

Another mean dead end was in Broken Sword II; after you shoot the boar on zombie island, you can simply run away to the left, but you have to jump up to the branch to reveal another exit. I spent literally hours walking back and forth trough the damn forest maze, trying to find a way to proceed.
To stay on topic, though: I'm not sure what happens if you don't pick up the tequila worm at the very beginnig; you need it later on, but I think I've read there's a replacement in case you don't have the worm.

[Ionias]

Because then it's not a walking dead and more like an ordinary Sierra game (ie. 'ordinary' death traps everywhere )

Hmm, you have an excellent point and I take back my previous post. I do enjoy a good death scene. But I don’t really consider a puzzle that involves you getting killed by performing the wrong action a “walking-dead” … especially since you’re usually killed rather close to the time that you made the mistake. A true “walking-dead” in which there is no entertainment value and is there only to lengthen the game and frustrate the player is not only a bad design but lame.

[Trent R]

Just thought of a (sort-of) dead-end/missing item syndrome from QFG4. There's a character that gets framed for a murder he didn't do, and you have to either prove him innocent or break him out of jail (if he dies, you get a death message).

Because QFG has classes and stats, it's not a missing-item, but rather a low-stat problem. So you had to do one of the following (supposing you had enough in that stat/skill)
Eg.

• Picklock the jailhouse and cell (pick locks skill)
  
• Cast an unlocking spell at previous mentioned doors (magic skill)
  
• Use brute strength to free the trapped 'murdered' (strength skill)
  
• Use a grappling hook and leverage to free the trapped 'murdered' (strength skill (I think))
  

So basically, if you're skill isn't high enough if one of these areas, you'd have to solve it another way, which poses a possibility for a 'dead-end'.



~Trent
PS-It seems like I'm missing some clarification on something above, but I can't pinpoint what..... Oh well, my brain's fried! (which is why I'm ignoring my scripting and on the forums in the first place)

[Shane 'ProgZmax' Stevens]

That doesn't constitute a dead-end, Trent, because you could sit and practice those skills over and over until they succeeded (especially lockpicking).

[Trent R]

I'm thinking (ie. I could be wrong) that I've played through times where I saved too late (say, the night before the burning) and my skills weren't up to par. Even with mad-training (train, nap, train, nap) I haven't been able to make it in time.

So it only becomes a dead-end if you wait too long..... But like I said, it's not a true dead-end, just 'sort-of'.


~Trent

[Sektor 13]

Dead ends (and deaths) are the main reason why I NEVER played Sierra games, I just hate it.
I agree, If you must "die" you should be warned first, as i did in my games 

Or at least autosavegame should be made in case of "dead end".


OK it sound more realistic but games must adapt to that, the whole point is to play and have fun with game, not furstration when it kicks you in your balls !

my 5 minutes are up...

[mrsix]

Technically, you can still get dead-ends in games these days.

Take a first person shooter for example.

You may have a save game (and no previous saved games for ages), and got to a point with only 1 bit of health.
However, the next action part you play may indeed require at least 15 bits of health without being killed, no matter how skilled the player.
Technically a dead-end, although in fairness created by yourself by not thinking ahead.

... just thought i'd whack that one in for some interest!

[OneDollar]

Technically, you can still get dead-ends in games these days.

The difference is how you perceive the game. In a first person shooter there is obviously going to be shooting, and because there's shooting you expect your character to be shot at. If you're character is being shot at then you expect to lose health, and depending on the difficulty of the game you expect to die, sometimes very frequently. Because you go into a FPS with that mindset you (generally) blame yourself for saving with 1 health then not being able to get any further. You expected to be shot at and if you didn't prepare for it then its your fault and not the designer's.

In the Sierra classics the old restore/restart/quit dialogue was expected, and it was part of the game strategy to have multiple save files. You expected to die so you played as such. Since LucasArts came on the scene and started making adventure games where you (mostly) could never die or get irreversibly stuck the genre moved on. Nowadays if you play an adventure game you expect not to have to save every 5 minutes, so if you miss something and need to reload you blame the designer.

It boils down to establishing ground rules before you start playing. The other issue is that games have moved on as a whole from being really hard (to keep you playing the same short game over and over) to being perfectly possible to complete so that you'll buy the next one. Nowadays gamers expect the game to 'play fair', which in this case either means making it impossible to die/get stuck or possibly autosaves.

Also people seem to be interchanging terms

I liked the walking-deaths. Let me repeat it so it sinks in. I liked the walking-deaths. The space quest one pointed out before was one of the funniest ones I had ever witnessed

I always thought

Walking Dead
The player cannot progress any further in the game, but is not told this. They are left wandering around the game world until they either abandon the game or have their character killed by a triggered event (e.g. performing an incorrect action or running out of time)

Dead end
When the game ends 'badly'

...? The difference being a dead end is a definite end of the character (usually death) whereas a 'walking dead' character is one that has no chance of finishing the game, yet the game carries on anyway and the player may not realise.

[Trent R]

mrsix,
Walking-dead/dead-end is a term applied to the Adventure Genre. It'd be like talking about an overworld map (like many console RPGs) in an FPS discussion. It just doesn't work (granted, there's a few hybrid games in every genre, but I'm talking generally).

And to continue off of what OneDollar was saying, the genre has evolved, so those old design choices just don't work any more, even though others have persisted. To take the FPS example again, imagine the flop it would be if Halo4 used a raycasting engine (like Doom, Wolfenstein) on the 360. It'd be ridiculous because the genre (and tech) has evolved from older design choices.


OneDollar,
In this thread, I think the two are interchangeable. Which is fine by me:

I personally use the term 'death message' when the game ends badly (ie. Sierra games). If you get a bad ending (ATOTK, QFG1, Laura Bow(note: I've never played LB)) then that's just a bad ending (as opposed to the good/canon ending).

It's the difference between a Game Over screen and rolling the ending credits. (And DDR is the only game that I know that does both )



~Trent

[Edit]: To take this point further (not to bash OneDollar, but just for discussion) I'll talk about the QFG1 example. Being both a Sierra Game and RPG, there were plenty of ways to kill off your character (ie. death messages). As for ending the game, you could fulfill the prophecy completely (free the prince, free the princess, and drive away the ogress) which gave you the best ending (canon from QFG4 and 5 dictates this when you talk to Baba Yaga, Elsa, or Toro). However, to just end the game you only had to free the princess, but it gave you a 'bad ending' (and you lost the associated score points).

Example 2: Daggerfall, you could obviously die in many ways (if you didn't know how to manipulate the opening quiz and character building, that could be in the first dungeon!), but the Main Quest and ending deals with giving a powerful artifact to one of 9 characters/organizations. (Interestingly enough, all 9 endings are considered canon! Jeez I love TES).

Example 3: Chrono Trigger, to end the game you just had to kill Lavos. But because you could do this at multiple times, the ending changed depending how far you went in the 'main quest' and completing major side quests.

Example 4: Suikoden, in the Suikoden series, you can recruit the 108 Stars of Destiny to your army/crew (many of which joined automatically). But if you recruited everybody, you would get a special ending (dealing with the main character's True Rune) through the power of the 108 Stars.


~Trent

[OneDollar]

It's the difference between a Game Over screen and rolling the ending credits. (And DDR is the only game that I know that does both )

Yeah, Laura Bow does that (which is why I was trying to use it as an example ). Basically you play through a night at your friend's grandfather's mansion and gradually everyone around you gets killed off. All you have to do is survive the night, but if you want the full ending you're going to have to some detective work and figure out who the murderer is, where all the bodies are etc etc...

The game does have Sierra's Restore/Restart/Quit bits, but these are always triggered by an action from the player, never by an irreversible inaction. Going right back to the subject of this topic...

How does everyone feel about the old-school adventure games that would make you have to revert to a much earlier save, or start again, if you inadvertantly forget to pick up an item, or you use it on something you shouldn't have had?

...missing an item in Laura Bow never kills the character or gets you irreversibly stuck.... but there are sections you can't do because you don't have an item...
Example: There's some steps going down a secret passage and if you try to go down them without a lamp you fall to your death. This means if you haven't got the lamp you can't go down the steps so you never find the dead body down there and hence don't get the best ending... but you don't have to go down the steps. You'll still get to the end of the night alive and with the credits rolling, essentially the end of the game, but the game will give you a list of the things you did/didn't find. Amongst those will be at least one corpse you didn't find and a secret passage you didn't explore, so you can restart the game with the aim to find a way down the passage and find the dead body.

What this shouldn't be confused with is the standard death sequences...
Example: If you use the shower in the bathroom you're treated to a sequence where a mysterious figure comes into the room and stabs Laura ("Didn't Alfred teach you anything?"). This is either funny or annoying depending on whether you saved/your sense of humour/how much you're enjoying the game etc etc... but you never have to use the shower so its not the type of sequence that mrsix mentioned originally. If the puzzle were At the very start of the game go to the barn and unscrew the door lock (because the barn becomes an inaccessible location after 11 o'clock or something) then at 11:30 you need to take a shower so fit the lock to the bathroom door then you can shower in peace. If you didn't get the lock... restart the game, which is something similar to what mrsix described, I'd call it bad game design. Adding replayability to the game by giving you bad endings - but proper endings with clear suggestions for improvements - if you don't get items could, in my book, be good game design. The reason I brought Laura Bow up in the first place is because that's what it does.

Did any of that make slightly more sense?

[Nlogax]

yeah, I played that Dierdre Kiai game The Game That Takes Place On A Cruise Ship (or something), and after perservering for ages trying to advance the story by wandering back and forth, trying different item combinations, I eventually conceded defeat and consulted the walkthrough...

...turns out I'd missed doing something earlier and so I was now stuck in a dead end, from which I couldn't proceed. I was extremely 

I mean, what's the point?

[mrsix]

mrsix,
Walking-dead/dead-end is a term applied to the Adventure Genre. It'd be like talking about an overworld map (like many console RPGs) in an FPS discussion. It just doesn't work (granted, there's a few hybrid games in every genre, but I'm talking generally).

If I were being pedantic and meant 'dead-end' soley for the Adventure Genre, then perhaps, but I meant it as a general term.

There are many types of dead-ends in games if you're not careful. How many times have you dropped an important item in an RPG and thought "oh heck, where on earth did I leave that?!".

Still I guess this is an adventure forum I guess, so I take it all back 

But, back to the original question - Dead ends suck. Period. 

[Ozzie]

Personally I thought some dead ends / walking deads in King's Quest 6 were worse than others. It depended on if you knew that you could have missed something. Often you're just stuck because you didn't take an item earlier and you have no idea why.

For example, the catacombs. Before you go there you're told to prepare yourself, which basically tells you that you should take everything with you that isn't nailed down. Therefore I didn't consider this as much as a bad dead end.

You could also go in the castle unprepared (missing the mint and the mechanical nightingale), but I think here the game didn't give you a clue that you should prepare yourself well because once you're in there's no way back later. Sure, the doors close behind you and can't be opened, but the game should warn you before you get into a dead end. It was obvious with the catacombs, but not here. So, while you could think ahead to take the mint leaves and the nightingale I didn't get the feeling that I had to, so I didn't like this dead end really.

A really bad example of a dead end was when you forgot to take the key from the skeleton guard in the realm of death you couldn't unlock the chest in the castle. It's especially annoying because I still don't understand how the player should've been able to deduce that this was the necessary key! Yeah, keys unlock locks, but not every key unlocks every lock. This was just stupid.

Personally, I think I never would design a game with dead ends. While I thought the catacomb one was fair I think it's possible to design a game without ones and I don't see any advantage in them. They just may force you to play a segment again. And since adventures don't have much replay value in contrast to, say, RPGs, it's just wasted time.