Castle Paradox

[Moogle1]

>> Also in part five is something that's rather interesting, though I don't know if you meant it that way: How what one person views as inspiring, another person views as depressing. It brings to mind an old episode of Dennis the Menace, in which Dennis explains to a friend who's had a nightmare that "It's better to have a bad dream than a good one, because when you wake up from a bad dream, you're glad it's over. When you wake up from a good one, you wish that the dream was real." I've never played a game, seen a movie, or anything else, that's ever come even close to that level. There's been no worlds that are so vile that I was glad to be gone from them when I was done, and no worlds so promising and wonderful that I was sad I couldn't see more of them , or be part of them when the show was over, and it was time to go home. <<

( http://www.livejournal.com/users/gizmog1/18132.html )

YES. Moreover, a massive failure of the entire FF series, excepting one or two games, is the lack of buildup to the last boss. In almost all of them, you have never seen nor heard of the last boss until at most a couple of hours before you fight him and commonly not until you actually fight him. In those instances where you have heard of him, he looks completely different up close and personal.

This is wrong.

The player should literally fear that final encounter. The game up to that point should instill a sense of reverence for that enemy because he is so powerful. The player should have tasted of that power and so should know that he will likely get his head handed to him at least the first three times he goes up against that last boss.

What are your insights on this? How can you make the player afraid of the last boss?
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Slime Salad :: Independent Game Design

[JSH357]

You're overrating the FF series, I think. And I don't really know how you could make a final encounter fearful...

Imagery and/or virtual reality is probably the best way. Since we're nixing VR, I imagine making the final enemy completely grotesque and disturbing would help. (But then, it might not) Presentation can be a really powerful thing. If you wanted something more whole-games oriented, I don't have too many ideas. I've never really been afraid of an encounter unless I'm new to the system.

[Iblis]

If you want fear, the last boss can't just be some villain in a tower that sometimes laughs maniacally. They should appear throughout the game committing hideous atrocities. It has to be planned violence too, something the villain needs to do to reach their goals. This violence should be committed against someone that the player has some emotional investment in, so you'd need to have some really good characterization to make them care.

The villain should wield power themselves. They shouldn't have to summon a demon to do their dirty work, they should have the ability to do it on their own. And the heroes should be absolutely powerless to stop them until the final moment.

This is all very vague, I know, but I'm having problems thinking of a specific example at the moment.

Also, you can make someone afraid if you do something like say you'll delete their saves if they lose against the last boss, but that's way too evil for my taste.

EDIT: I forgot this part, but the last boss battle should actually have some kind of challenge to it, instead of just being a weak lamer who you beat easily. For the most part FF games suck at this majorly.

[Gizmog1]

I replied to your LJ with a comment, but I think I can word it better here, Moogle. As always, Martial Arts movies hold the answer. I'm thinking of Kung Pow, as a really off the wall example, but most any of them would work. There's scenes in that movie, which establish the Evil Master Betty as a real bad ass. He kills people, and shows himself as pretty damn near impervious to pain. Chosen One even challenges him once, and loses, and sets himself about practicing to be able to defeat him. But in that movie as well, Betty establishes himself as evil, by attacking villages, threatening people, and generally being a bully. I believe I mentioned in another thread here, something about Iraq. Saddam Hussein is what everyone should look at, at least once, if they plan to design a villain. He gassed entire villages, simply for differing religious beliefs. There's mass graves of people who disagreed with him, and video of him and his sons raping and torturing the relatives of those same people. Or, for another good example, imagine how Jewish soldiers in World War 2 must've felt, when they stumbled onto the concentration camps. Just the thought in the back of your mind, that if you don't pay attention for a minute, they'll capture you, and throw you into a place like that, must've been horrific, and these are the kinds of things you need to throw at the player, sickening as it might be. Villages need to be burned, people the player cares for need to be hurt, and hell, even the killing off of playable characters, is all the kinds of things that can add to the fear and hatred of a villain, and makes it all the better when hopefully in the end, you've defeated him.

[Komera]

i would like to add to giz's comment. it isn't enough to make a final villan commit attrocities akin to the holocaust or to saddam and have the player suddenly stumble upon it. i've actually seen various games do this (horribly) but it barely phases me. at most, all i think is "okay, this guy's evil, yah yah yah." but what makes giz's examples effective is that long before the evidence was found, there were hints of what was going on that was largly ignored because people didn't want to believe things really were that horrible. (this probably doesn't work as well in a video game because of people's tendancies to take every bit of npc dialogue and scrap of paper as literal truth) also, the general population near the villan (if you want to imitate real life) should actually ADORE the villan even while they're being dehumanized.

all this doesn't work by itself, the villan should make enough appearances in a game so that you CAN mentally connect him (or her or it) to the devistation you're looking at. and there's the key. emotional investment in hating the villan needs to be spent, otherwise its like going off to fight exdeath or sephiroth... plenty of appearances but you don't really care much except to get through the fight just to see the ending. (this at least kefka had the upper hand. by the time i got to him, i couldn't stand him and was glad to get to his fight (and found myself downright loathing him when he had the nerve to appear as an angel))
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LJ.Art

SD - Ten creatures remaining.

[Ysoft_Entertainment]

this brings fond memories of superman series(cartoon). people hated darkside, and superman couldn't stand him, and at the end, when he beat darkside, he was surprised that darksides slaves actually cared for him. I for once hated that dude, and was glad when superman beat the crap out of him. and yes, I was surprised that people actually could care for that SOB.

as for the villain being well known, I think lafia has that content, before the main hero defeated that sinistral of destruction(I don't remember his exact title, but it was one of the sinistrals) on the first encounter the hero lost miserably, and was kind of afraid, and I as a player was glad to have finally defeated him.
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Try my OHR exporter/importer.
OHRGFX
Striving to become better pixel artist then Fenrir Lunaris. Unfortunately the laziness gets in the way of my goals.

[Sephyroth]

An extremely underlevel character getting prematurely beaten down by what is essentially the final boss of the game does NOT inspire fear. It's just common sense. After seeing stuff like this for about 15187043 times, you can pretty much just guess when a boss fight is scripted. (i.e. if the boss spends 7-8 turns doing nothing and just letting you attack him, you can bet that the next attack will instantly kill everyone in the party.)

Asides from that, if you spend the entire duration of the game building on this fear factor, you damn well better make sure that the enemy actually lives up to his reputation in the boss fight. The first time you fight Gades in that "Lafia" game he is essentially invincible (hackers have proven that he does, indeed, have infinite hp), and then he turns into a pushover when you fight him at the end of the game (all four were pushovers, essentially). The sequel did a much better job of this, I think, since the players have to defeat Gades relatively early (as in NO scripted battle). Suikoden 2 also did an awesome job with the main villain.
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im realy ded

[Ssalamanderr]

I think this is kind of relevant to the "good dream, bad dream" part of the thread: http://www.livejournal.com/users/ssalamanderr/2005/03/05/

Keep in mind I was really tired when I wrote that, and WHR was not the best anime/story/whatever that I have ever seen, I just used it as an example because I had just finished watching it.

I think the reason you might not want to keep on living in the world of whatever game or story you've just finished is that they end. The conflict is over (usually) and the most interesting parts of the story are done.

I think a good example of building up fear of a villian is Trigun.
(warning: spoilers ahead)

Knives does horrible things, both to Vash and the human race. He's also about the only one who can match Vash in a fight. His mindset is also completely opposed to Vash and Vash still doesn't want to kill him. I'm having a lot of trouble explaining this, but those who have seen the show should understand.

(end spoilers)

I think the fear of fighting a villian shouldn't come from the feeling of "oh god, he's going to kill us" but from the feeling of "if we don't win, everyone else is screwed!" Of course to do this you have to build up a convincing world that people will care about.
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