Recently I’ve played dead space and some other survival horror games like Alien Isolation, and just about every single time you see someone in there, they’re somehow invincible. Like, the fuck, that fat idiot inside that VIP Area there has somehow managed to lock himself in that room for what, weeks? Months? And somehow never did any of the necromorphs even notice him? And that crazy scientist guy? He can just run around in the ship? And what about alien? The medic dude, like, there’s a vent right in the room next to him. And he has a broken leg, so the alien can even smell his blood. Also, what about the marshal? Well, thats kinda fair game, he has an effective weapon after all.
I’d add a variant on this:
Games where you spend hours unlocking death traps in tombs that haven’t been opened in 500 to 1,000 years only to find the mercenary opposition has already beaten you inside.
Looking at you Uncharted, Tomb Raider, Prince of Persia, etc.
Being kinda serious for a second here, I think this is a byproduct of chasing ever higher production values in service of “realism”. The more they try to spackle over all the cracks, the more the ones they can’t/don’t become obvious to the player. Just like movies, videogames often require a bit of temporary suspension of disbelief.
I’m not gonna write a whole essay about chasing some perfect, mythical balance here, but it’s a design aspect that I feel a lot of developers just don’t consider at all. Maintaining a high level of illusion is extremely difficult and not even always all that worth it. Sometimes it’s just nice to admit you don’t know why that enemy dropped a glowing hamburger that restored 25% health, but those are the rules you’re playing by and you don’t have to question it.
Also kind of breaks immersion when there’s tons of different enemies, but they never fight between themselves. Only when the player character shows up, they’re like, imma ruin this woman’s life.
Dr Mercer was advantageous to the Marker to have alive and doing his work, so he isn’t killed until his usefulness has run its course
Canonically: the markers try to influence people to do what will assist in Unification. Isaac vehemently doesn’t believe in Unitology so the marker throws enemies at him to try to stop him / manipulate him into doing what it wants (in DS2 & 3). Other people in the series are believers, so they don’t need to be killed off if they’re more useful alive for the time being
Survivors lasting by staying behind locked doors isn’t too unbelievable, either, given the fall of the Ishimura took a while (1 month from marker discovery to it getting on board the ship), and you arrive not that long after it falls (less than a week). It’s been at most a week since she went dark, I think, which is a believable timeframe to survive given the comms going black is at least a day before the big fall of the ship
Oh hey my memory was pretty close: Check the year 2508 section
Other games absolutely pull that shit too much, but DS did a pretty good job with background story details to explain why some people aren’t dead
Well, but Isaak was believing that after he talked to Dr mercer, or am I wrong?
I mean, he brought the marker back to the planet, which should be what the marker wanted, so why were they still attacking him?
But also, from another perspective, they have set up this twist perfectly. I mean, first of all its pretty logical: everything all right --> marker removed --> everything going to shit, so everything all right <-- marker brought back <-- everything going to shit
This, the betrayal, and Dr mercer being one of the people studying the marker in the first place (and Isaak’s girlfriend actually being able to interact with things, and the necros attacking her) have really convinced me that bringing it back was the right thing to do, and the necros not attacking all of a sudden would have been way too obvious
Edit: Wait, is mercer the guy developing the invincible necromorphs, or is he the one helping you bring the marker?
I mean, he brought the marker back to the planet, which should be what the marker wanted, so why were they still attacking him?
The marker wanted to stay off of Aegis VII, actually. Their entire goal (as we learn in 3) is to spread the Necro infection and eventually make a Brother Moon. It’s likely the marker kept attacking Isaac in an attempt to stop him from putting it back on the planet that was about to fall apart. Isaac’s mental infection isn’t hardcore until DS2, either, so he’s not being manipulated very hard yet
Dead Space gets fucking complicated if you read the extended lore in all the games holy shit I sound insane
Wait, is mercer the guy developing the invincible necromorphs, or is he the one helping you bring the marker?
Mercer is the guy making the invincible Necro. In the remake he kills himself willingly, in the original he’s “betrayed” by the marker. The guy helping you is June, poor bastard
Was going to say this myself, but you already did it better. Mercer didn’t survive the enemies, he was one of them.
I may be playing Freecell wrong
Games are boring when nothing happens to the player. So lots of things happen to the player. You can consider this the MC’s time when months happen in days.
Its just this trope of „Guy locked himself inside some safe room from where he dosent want to come out, so he just commands the player around until he somehow dies the moment he wants to come out again” that aggrovates me.
Nothing can save bad writing. Everyone wants to make a Handler Walter, but not everyone can handle it.
Yeah, I’ve been replaying Golden Sun for the last week (finishing up achievements for RetroAchievements) and there are really frequent fights in the game, two steps and a fight, two steps and another fight, and the npcs are fine, and even seem to be traveling around without any problems, when I can’t even walk three damn centimeters without an encounter… it’s pissing me off.
The bad guys are the bleach, and humans are the germs.
Kills 99.9%
We find the 0.1% as we play!
