When you're fighting one of the St. John brothers near the end. He turns on the generator to the electric fence, drags you/Lee to it and tries to shove you/him in. No matter how hard and long I mashed the "Q" button, the scene didn't change and the borders of the screen stayed orange; once I stopped, if you/Lee get close enough, either Lilly intervenes or you mash again to headbutt him (depends on if you tried to save Larry or helped Kenny kill him).
Games Where The Only Way To Win...Is To Lose?
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Final Fantasy X, really early on you encounter this big fish thing and it'll whoop your ass till it triggers a cutscene. Later in the game though you can go back when you're really powerful and return the ass beating.
Fallout 3. You have to die to save the Wasteland.... until the DLC came out and you're fine again.
There's always Mass Effect 2 as well. Gotta say that one took me by surprise when it happened.
There's always Mass Effect 2 as well. Gotta say that one took me by surprise when it happened.
I think it's the one where raynor gets high on some protoss dark templar crystal that shows him a potential future where the hybrids and their master royally fuck everyone up. You play as Protoss and the final objective is something like "fight to the last man" or "death before dishonor" or something where the only way to proceed is to have all your units killed and structures destroyed.squeekenator said:
Some details might have been different, i've played it a very long time ago
What i think is funny is when you get fights like that and it is easy to survive them, then it switches to a cutscene where your party is barely standing.Tiamattt said:Ah I remember that. In fact I got so used to it whenever I got up to a enemy that was seriously kicking my ass I figured it was one of those and just didn't fight back, and instead of progressing I got a game over screen.ShinyCharizard said:
Like lost odessey. You fight some immortal. It is a battle you can not win(cutscene starts before you can kill him). But by the time i reached it most of my characters had skills that let them get healed by a lot of attacks.
Funny to see that by characters were almost full health before the cutscene and then in that cutscene they could hardly stand on their legs.
What i dislike is getting killed right before the point the cutscene starts showing.
Oh, right, duh. That mission, where you have to let all your stuff die but have to kill an arbitrary number of Zerg first or else losing actually makes you lose because... ummm, just because really. Yeah that mission was odd.Pohaturon said:
Only skimmed page 1, so someone may have already mentioned this, but in one of the Metal Gear Solid games (I think it was 3, but I'm uncertain) Snake has to fake death by taking a pill. Doing it actually puts you in the death animation with the game over screen and everything. If you click continue it restarts from your last save, but if you just wait a bit he gets back up.
EDIT: At least that's how I remember that part of the game going. It's been years since I've played it though, so I may have misconstrued it a little.
EDIT: At least that's how I remember that part of the game going. It's been years since I've played it though, so I may have misconstrued it a little.
Z.H.P. Unlosing Ranger vs. Darkdeath Evilman
This whole game is based on the concept of effortlessly trying to increase your characters strength by continuously failing and dying throughout the entire game. I haven't personally played it, but I am interested in the concept, and hopefully I'll be able to get it after I've completed a few of my PSP titles.
This whole game is based on the concept of effortlessly trying to increase your characters strength by continuously failing and dying throughout the entire game. I haven't personally played it, but I am interested in the concept, and hopefully I'll be able to get it after I've completed a few of my PSP titles.
The ending is incredibly amazing to me for this reason:Ranorak said:
After a big twist involving the dragon's apparent death, you find yourself up against god himself and have a battle with him. After some cutscenes and talking, you have to use an item you got back in the final fight with Grigori to kill yourself in order to break the cycle of Arisen and dragon and give true life to your main pawn.
A variation on a theme, but Skies of Arcadia has a fight you can't win and the only way to progress is to surrender beforehand.ShinyCharizard said:
Oi with the poodles, already.
Crisis core definitely did, and did it in an incredibly moving way.Exius Xavarus said:
He fights an endless number of enemies, and you can see he is being torn apart piece by piece. Bits of his memories are shattered until only Aerith (Aeris, dammit!) remains. Finally, even she is taken from him. He fights on and on, protecting Cloud right up until the end.
But then, it was a prequel. If you've played FF 7 then you already know what's going to happen.
Funnily enough, on my first playthrough of Kingdom Hearts, I beat Leon and Cloud on my first try. I didn't even know they were "supposed to lose" fights until MUCH later on.Johnny Novgorod said:
I didn't think they were THAT tough, Leon especially is dead easy if you're smart enough to NOT stand in the way of his fireball.
OT: I could name any number of JRPGs that use this, but I'll try to be more creative. In Heavy Rain, there's a "fight sequence" where the character you're playing as gets stabbed, and it's then revealed it was all a dream sequence. As far as I know, there's no way to "win" that part.
This is used in a couple games, most memorably for me, in Final Fantasy: Crisis Core for the PSP.
Crisis Core had a great ending, but you knew what was going to happen -- in Final Fantasy 7, the protagonist of CC, Zack, is already dead. So, you kind of know that this character is going to die the whole time, but the game does a fucking fantastic job of getting you attached to him, to the point where you're kind of against the idea of him dying; something that you already know is a fact.
So when you do reach the end, you come up against a 'supposed to lose' fight against endless wave after wave of soldiers, but while this kind of mechanic is generally used as a cheap shock tactic in a lot of games, it's different here.
First, you'll probably KNOW that you're supposed to lose before you get into it, because chances are you've played FF7. But you don't want to lose, because you know what will happen to Zack, and you know that this game you've enjoyed is going to end... so you fight, and you fight, and you fight, harder than you've ever fought against any 'real' encounter in the game because somehow, now, the stakes are so very real.
Even the mechanics change to make this fight special. You spin slots every few turns to summon aeons to help you, but the slots all line up on characters that Zack has met and formed relationships with, throwing a few frames of flashback on the screen at you before executing their summon. It really makes you think about the whole game and gives the ending a bit more oompf.
And when that ending does come... jeez. You've almost given up. I actually felt exhausted, emotionally, by the end of that fight. It was so intense. Fucking genius game design right there.
So when you do reach the end, you come up against a 'supposed to lose' fight against endless wave after wave of soldiers, but while this kind of mechanic is generally used as a cheap shock tactic in a lot of games, it's different here.
First, you'll probably KNOW that you're supposed to lose before you get into it, because chances are you've played FF7. But you don't want to lose, because you know what will happen to Zack, and you know that this game you've enjoyed is going to end... so you fight, and you fight, and you fight, harder than you've ever fought against any 'real' encounter in the game because somehow, now, the stakes are so very real.
Even the mechanics change to make this fight special. You spin slots every few turns to summon aeons to help you, but the slots all line up on characters that Zack has met and formed relationships with, throwing a few frames of flashback on the screen at you before executing their summon. It really makes you think about the whole game and gives the ending a bit more oompf.
And when that ending does come... jeez. You've almost given up. I actually felt exhausted, emotionally, by the end of that fight. It was so intense. Fucking genius game design right there.
Also, all three story endings are... well, basically a lose state, if you think about it from the right angle/a different angle than the one which naturally comes out of the story.BurnedOutMyEyes said:
Btw, I heard a rumor, that this is in fact implemented in the game - when Nameless One dies, game code picks a random unimportant NPC and kills it off. And if it can't find any in your current location (say, you died too many times, or killed everyone manually), it won't ressurect you... Any idea on whether this is true or not? I was always curious but never actually got to trying it out.
