Dear Video Game Industry, please stop putting escort missions in your games. Sincerely, me.

[kane_magus]

I hate escort quests. I don't think I've ever played a game that had an escort mission in it where that escort mission didn't horribly suck in some way.

(EDIT)

Actually, that's not entirely true. I just remembered that Ico was incredibly amazing. But then, this is a case where the entire game is based on having a companion following you around, rather than just being that one level of a much larger game.

Also, Half-Life 2 Episode One and Episode Two had Alyx following you around most of the time as well, and that was also very well done.

Beyond that, however, escort missions mostly suck balls.

(/EDIT)

I'm currently playing Folklore on the PS3. It's an awesome game, and I'll probably write a bigger post about it when I finish it, but for now I must rant.

There is a quest later on called "Lost Annwn." This quest involves escorting an Annwn (one of the enemies you face in the game, but in this case he's on your side) through several different areas, all of which are filled with enemies. In addition to this, the game restricts you to using two pretty crappy abilities, one of which doesn't even affect the particular enemies you fight here at all and is only used to clear some obstacles (and the other is just a slow, crappy melee attack). The Annwn dude who is following you does not fight back at all and he follows you pretty closely, meaning he's often in the line of fire when enemies are targeting you. Also, on top of that, the enemies explicitly target him about half the time anyway. When he dies, you have to start over from the beginning of the first area. Any health that you lost during that time does not refill, for some strange reason. And for an even stranger reason, whatever that reason may be, you also can't refill your health at the save point at the beginning of the area like you can at just about any other point in the game. And if you die, rather than the Annwn dying, it returns you all the way back out to the quest-giver in the real world, and you have to re-accept the quest again.

This quest blows. I finally just beat it, but only after several tries. I'll say this much for it, though, it finally gave me a reason to use Keats's Transcension ability, which until now I've never needed to use.

Comments

[owsf2000.livejournal.com]

I'm not a fan of escort quests myself although I don't usually mind them that much. But... I'd loath seeing the kind of crap like you describe...

[kane-magus.livejournal.com]

I'm getting tired of having to mark the email notifications of your replies as "Not Spam." And it's only your replies that go into the spam folder for whatever reason, as those of everyone else just goes into the inbox like normal. It's rather annoying, and I don't get it.

To hopefully stop it from happening, I just made a custom filter that should move them back to the inbox, but I won't know if it works until you comment again and I get another notification.

[owsf2000.livejournal.com]

Tis very strange. Wonder if I should go back over all my posts to see if there's any spam repliers that might be mucking up the results somehow. I'll see about doing that over the weekend.

[owsf2000.livejournal.com]

And here is another comment to pump my l33t statz.

[kane-magus.livejournal.com]

Custom filter has failed. Guess I'll just have to put up with it and keep marking them as "Not Spam." :/

[owsf2000.livejournal.com]

Eh, you can just not bother as well, it's not that big of a deal. As a rule of thumb you can probably assume I won't be commenting on anything more than 5-6 posts back. If I find something old on the livejournal it's much more likely I'll just tell you about it on irc or something.

[kane-magus.livejournal.com]

I was wrong, it's not just yours. hikarugenji's are going into the spam folder too. stuckinacave's are not, though. These are the ones I've gotten since last night. And one from alessar a couple days ago also made it to the inbox as well. And I'm pretty sure rabbitucker's are making it to the inbox as well, since I know I've gotten at least a couple from him since yours starting hitting the spam folder. You guys are about the only people who ever comment on my journal anymore, though, so I don't know where anyone else's are going. >_>;

What I don't get is why only some of these are hitting spam and some aren't, since all of them are coming from the lj_notify@livejournal.com email address. At the very least, according to the link (http://news.livejournal.com/135748.html) you sent me the other day, LJ is already aware of the issue, so there is that. But I still might try opening my own support ticket about it, even so. It's only a mild nuisance, but it's still a nuisance. But maybe it would be more fruitful to complain at Comcast about it, rather than LJ.

[kane-magus.livejournal.com]

"But maybe it would be more fruitful to complain at Comcast about it, rather than LJ."

Hahahahahaha.... what a fucking joke (http://kane-magus.livejournal.com/451950.html) that turned out to be. -_-

[korby.livejournal.com]

I used to skip all the escort quests I came across in WoW, but since Wrath came out the new ones they've put in are almost impossible to fail. I've even had one escort quest where I did something dumb, died, ran back as a ghost, resurrected, and the NPC was still alive and fighting and I was able to complete it. It's not that all escort quests are bad, just that they could be programmed better to avoid the issues you've run into.

[stuckinacave.livejournal.com]

I've been impressed with Enslaved, which I picked up for just $20 a couple weeks ago. The game is practically a giant escort mission, but so far it's been very well designed, probably becuase Trip (the girl you're helping) is smart, hides when badies come out, and has abilities which you can call upon to help out. Also, if bad guys do get around you and are about to kill her she has an EMP blast that disables them all to give you a couple more moments to save her.

I also remember Freelancer having a couple great escort missions (a game I really should play again). Granted I don't remember many bad escort missions, probably because I don't want to.

The worst thing game companies can do is put an unskippable cut scene before an escort mission. That drives me INSANE.

[kane-magus.livejournal.com]

"The game is practically a giant escort mission"

This just reminded me of Ico (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ico). Edited my original post to account for that.

As for Enslaved (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enslaved:_Odyssey_to_the_West), I've never even heard of it before now. Hmm. It looks pretty interesting. I might have to check it out sometime, especially if it's only $20 as you say. (Actually, it looks like it's only $16 on Amazon now (http://www.amazon.com/Enslaved-Odyssey-West-Playstation-3/dp/B00319DX4M/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1301690494&sr=8-2). Sadly, though, I've put a temporary freeze on my game-buying for the time being, but I'll still keep an eye on this one for future reference.)

It's also interesting that you mention Freelancer (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freelancer_%28video_game%29), because I was just reading a thread about it (http://www.poe-news.com/forums/sp.php?pi=1002492155) on poe-news.com the other day. I haven't had a chance to play it yet, but I've always heard good things about it. Haven't played X (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X%C2%B3:_Reunion)3 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X%C2%B3:_Terran_Conflict) either, which they're comparing it to. I have played Space Rangers 2 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Rangers_2:_Dominators) though, which they also mention, and it's pretty cool, but I never really got into it because I had other, higher profile games to play at the time.

And the part about unskippable cut scenes... yeah. That's another thing that ticks me off, especially when put in front of an escort mission, or even just more generally in front of a really hard boss fight or something.

Dear Video Game Industry, if you're determined to put cutscenes in your games, make them skippable! Sincerely, me.

[kane-magus.livejournal.com]

Oh, but guess what I just found out! Space Rangers 2 doesn't work on Windows 7 64-bit, apparently. Great. Just great.

[stuckinacave.livejournal.com]

The biggest reason why I bought Enslaved was because I heard great things about it, but also, it's a unique setting, a new IP, amazing and imaginative visuals and even though it takes place in a post apocalyptic world, it actually uses COLOUR! I've lost track at how many times I've said "Wow this game is simply beautiful" and spent a couple moments just looking around the levels. And again, for $20 or less you really can't go wrong at all.

Freelancer was the last game I played in the space sim genre. Mind you, there probably hasn't been many top notch games in the genre since Freelancer. I bought the X3 set on a Steam sale because I've been itching to play a game in that genre again, but haven't installed it yet. I need to stop playing time intensive RPGs (as I eye Tales of Vesparia, Resonance of Fate and Dragon Age 2 next to me, waiting to be played).

But either way, Enslaved gets a full recommendation (at least based on my time spent on it, which is about half way through). I'd recommend playing on Hard though as it offers a good challenge and I suspect playing on Normal would be too easy.

[stuckinacave.livejournal.com]

Oh and one more thing about Enslaved: It's the first time I've played a game in which game developers actually tried to have their characters emote realistically.

Other than a few times where it looks rather goofy, it generally works. There's no "I am feeling sad" and the character looks the same way they do when they are content. There are no exaggerated anime inspired expressions, or well drawn still portraits. The characters just smile or scrunch their brow and you know what they are thinking.

The other night it was difficult going back to playing Dragon Age 1 (still working on my 2nd playthrough). I always thought the characters were a little stiff in DA1, but after playing Enslaved, wooooow...it's made me realized that Bioware (as well as many other companies) really need to step up their game in regards to having their characters properly emote.