Those beautiful unscripted moments

[philosophicalbastard]

Late last night I discovered the Mount & Blade: Warband demo on steam, and what seemed like 5 minutes later the sun began to rise. After a few hours of murdering, and getting murdered by random bands of thieves, I got into my first major fight. My allies the Swads were sieging a random enemy castle, armed with only a couple of newly recruited farmers, I decided to assist them. Battling my way through a force of mostly, well armed, crossbow men, I fought in just about every part of the castle. When the battle finally ended we were victorious and I ascended to level 8, which coincedentally was level that once gained ended the demo.

Many developers seem to believe, as of late, that heavy scripting is neccessary to provide cinematic gameplay. This is blatantly not true if you look at heavily non-scripted games, such as Mount & Blade that allow just about anything to happen, it's pretty much guaranteed to have some awesome moments. The question though is: Why is there so much scripting when its uneccessary? And as a side topic, please tell some of your own unscripted tales.

 

[Easton Dark]

Scripting ensures a uniform experience. What may have been awesome for you may have been unbearably frustrating for others.

My unscripted moment from recent memory is discovering how useless teamwork sometimes is in Killing Floor. Me and 4 others were on Abusement Park, in the corner by the weight games for some reason. This unusually big horde is coming at us with about 3 scrakes and a Fleshpound + I'm pretty sure a Husk or two with an assortment of the rest, sorrounding us. I told the guys to run but they didn't listen, thought they could handle them.

I ran.

Level 5 sharpshooter, running around the map with only a Lever Action Rifle, baiting the enemies to come around the corner into a headshot.

There were 90 specimens when my team died.

I killed them all by myself, my team cheering me on.

I didn't feel like a hero, I left them to die, but damn did it feel good when the last siren's head popped.

 

[philosophicalbastard]

Scripting ensures a uniform experience. What may have been awesome for you may have been unbearably frustrating for others.

The experience would be uniform, but how people play and react isn't. Less scripted games would allow you to play any level as you wanted, avoiding frustration, because frustration with games is mostly from a game deeming your playstyle improper.

 

[Use_Imagination_here]

Ok now i want that game.

 

[philosophicalbastard]

Ok now i want that game.

The demo is available on Steam, the game is currently priced at around $20.

 

[LookingGlass]

I think I've heard too much about this game to not give the demo a try now.

These forums are terrible for my bank account and game backlog.

 

[SomeLameStuff]

Ok now i want that game.

Believe me, worth every cent. I bought both Warband and With Fire and Sword. Best game I've played since Freespace 2.

One awesome moment I had was when me and my 300 odd men were attacked in my castle by a 1500-men strong Polish army. I ran out of arrows around the second wave and had to scrounge up some from the arrows they were shooting at us. My shield got smashed sometime later, so I picked up another from a dead soldier. My men held the line and sent those Polish cowards running with their tails between their legs!

Moments like that... I live for those moments.

 

[Irridium]

Oh yeah, Mount and Blade is the shit. I could talk about my awesome escapades in that game, but that's what everyone else is doing, so I'll do something different.

F.E.A.R.

The combat AI is unscripted. The result? Some of the best damn fights I've ever had the pleasure of experiencing. The clones will work together, use the environment to their advantage, employ many tactics... it's just ridiculous.

One memorable fight I had was against 3 clones. At the start, two started shooting at me while the third ran away. While I was focused on one, the second started running to the side. I tried hitting him, but I couldn't get him before he dove into a window. I turned back to the other guy and he was right in my face. When I turned to shoot the second, the first used that opportunity to charge me. I managed to get him right as he was about to smack me in the face. At that point the third that ran back started shooting at me. So I moved up to try and get a better shot. Well, one of the spots I moved to was right next to the window clone number two jumped in, so as I moved up he tossed out a grenade and started firing at me. I barely made it away in time. As I was running, the third sprinted towards me. He managed to avoid the blast and came close to punching me to death(my health at this point was really low. 20 if I recall correctly). Well I killed him, then went to deal with the second clone. Only he wasn't where he was when he tossed the grenade. I looked around, I knew he was there, I could hear him. Eventually I just gave up and continued. Well when I decided to do that, he jumped down from a railing right behind me and hit me a few times in the back of the head, killing me.

That damn AI got the best of me by just plain being better and working as a team. It was damn impressive.

 

[ChupathingyX]

Does multiplayer count?

Because my mates and I have had some pretty epic moments in Dawn of War.

 

[AlternatePFG]

Yeah, the Mount & Blade games are a goldmine for epic non-scripted moments. There is this mod called of Prophesy of Pendor for Warband (Really good mod by the way, I play it 99% of the time) and one of things in that campaign are huge mega-armies of with hundreds of extremely powerful troops. You get some great rewards for beating them, but damn is it challenging. The first time I actually took one down was probably the coolest moment in all of my Mount & Blade games.

 

[Ben Edge]

in halo 3, when a marine controlled warthog went over a jump in the middle of a battle and landed in the entrance to a scarab i had just lowered, effectively taking out those on board (including the plasma turret) allowing me to take it without incidence, unfortunately they were caught in the explosion and died.

 

[Fraeir]

S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Call of Pripyat:

After investigating one of the crashed Hind chopper locations, in the middle of a minefield that I managed to flawlessly traverse, I started to hear a cascade of explosions behind me. Turning around, I saw that a pack of Pseudodogs and Blind Dogs were hunting Flesh and Boars into the middle of the minefield. About 10-15 animals died in the chaos.

I was confused at first then basically burst out laughing. What an effective way to hunt something!

This happened earlier today, haha.

 

[Kenko]

There was that one time my party of 300 got ambushed by 2000 or so enemy Swads...

We held out as long as we could, as their reinforcement came in (most fucking calvary) there was only a dozen or so of us left. I put away my shield, took out my bastard sword and ran into the oncoming doom and I yelled at the top of my scottish lungs.

"FRRRRRREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEDDDDDDDDDOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOMMMMMMMMMMMMM"

I managed to take down 50 before I was enslaved.

Mount and Blade, is the shit.

Reminds me of my 80 Huscarls Vs. 1400 Vaegirs fight. Stationed my troops on a steep ledge overlooking a river. (Mind you i have 500 battlesize). They came at us like 420 at a time and got butchered. Cant remember ever havin killed so many enemies without taking a single hit. It was a slaughterfest and the ground was littered with dead vaegirs. The fight lasted like 30+ minutes at the end I was covered in gore and blood to the extent of it almost being sick xD It was epic, only took like 3 casualties and routed the entire Vaegir army, leaving their lands to be plundered without resistance.

 

[Dalek Caan]

Oblivion, I will set the scene. My Orc character was causally walking through the Imperial City when I was attacked by those Mythic Dawn assassins. That part is obliviously scripted. What happened next is the best thing. Two guards attack the assassin with broadswords and begin killing him. After a few swings the assassin is dead but one guard swiped his sword one more time and hit the other guard. For some odd reason the guard must have thought the other guard was attacking him so he fought back. Soon enough it turned into a street brawl were over 12 guards were fighting each other, 6 on each side. After about 10 minutes of fighting on side eventually won with one guard left alive. The best thing was that after the fight the one guard left looks around and says "There's been a murder here". Never laughed so hard.