243: Misadventures in Role-playing

[Drof]

minor SPOILER WARNING
I did this on fallout 3 when my Xbox finally got live - If you look on my acheivments [ listed by date ] and I DO[!!!] make people look through my acheivments!!! I completed the game before I even aquired the quest scientific pursuits [ I think ] because I went straight to the washington memorial and found my dad's holotapes saying he was at vault... whatever. XD
Also did this in oblivion, sorta - I knew all of the dark brotherhood quests - so I did them [ the majority of them ]- before joining - that was funny, just standing there talking to the two poeple like "yup done that... and that...yeah did that too."

 

[Mabari_Dominance]

Yeah I've done stuff like this before in lots of games, ESPECIALLY Morrowind and Oblivion. I didn't realize that the fish quest in Oblivion only spawned one fish at a time. Good thing I got fed up with it in five minutes and proceeded on with doing whatever I wanted rather than worry about how the story wanted me to go. Fun article; brings back memories

 

[peachadelic]

I did something like that in Half Life 2 once. There's a scene later on when you get to set up some turrets to defend against incoming enemies. I took one of the turrets and carried it along, which was sometimes difficult because the obstacles weren't meant to be tackled with a turret in hands. Then later, there's this scene where Eli Vance comes down, strapped into some kind of metal holding device. I had the turret with me at that point, of course. There were some other turrets you could get just minutes before Eli appears, but the one I carried was a bit different. =P It didn't recognize Eli as friendly and started shooting him. And unlike the player, it could actually hurt and kill him, and he fell down from his metal pod and dropped dead on the floor. This wasn't even intentional, but that made it even funnier I guess. Of course it broke the scripts and all the other characters were just standing there and staring at me, so I had to reload. But yes... quite a funny discovery, I think.

 

[dkyros]

Very interesting artcile, never thought to ever do something like that. Only time I came close to something like this would be in LOZ: Orcarina of Time when my whole file was erased so I put on my gameshark and put in something like all items mode. Then upon reaching the castle after defeating the doku tree dungeon you would see the ganon cutscene where he is riding away on his horse, and then see him later in the castle. Yeah, using gameshark disqualifies it, I think that what was done here is much cooler and ingenious.

 

[YuheJi]

It reminds me of how in HL2, you could take turrets from previous parts of the game, and keep them with you up to the point where

Spoiler

Eli Vance is teleported by Dr. Mossman

The Combine are supposed to take the room after that, but the turrets killed all of them.

Or at a certain boss in Guild Wars: Factions who is supposed to kill you in a cutscene. Players figured out a way to lay enough traps that when the boss appeared in the cutscene, he would die.

 

[mew4ever23]

On the subject of Half Life 2, There are a number of ways to break the game (making it impossible to continue) by using the console.
Examples include Giving yourself the Gravity Gun before the NPCs Give it to you and Giving yourself a magnum and shooting Dr. Breen when you transport into his office.

 

[The Youth Counselor]

Yeah, this reminded me of Deus Ex and how surprisingly hard to break it was. It had an answer to almost everything. The only bug I recall finding in it was an infinite skill point glitch when Gary Savage tried to give you a reward when your inventory was full. Man, I love that game...

Almost. But it's one of the few games that take into account your breaking character. You can't kill most of the main cast in the beginning of the game, but towards the end everyone is up for grabs.

For example in the Hell's Kitchen Bar:

Spoiler

If you kill the barkeep, everyone in the bar including Jock will freak out with a hive mind and run from you or attack you. However, if you survive and proceed, upon returning to the saloon later everyone's pouring themselves free drinks. The young sailor proclaims something along the line of "Sweet, somebody offed the bartender. Free drinks!"

On going into places you shouldn't reach:

Spoiler

If you ever enter the ladie's room and get spotted, Manderly reprimands you for it.

On the captured NSF soldiers.

Spoiler

In normal gameplay Walton Simons enters their prison cell and interrogates them. After realizing they will remain defiant, he executes both prisoners. However you can get inside the cell. You have to follow Simons in carefully as the door is only open for a split second. Once inside, you can interrogate and incapacitate the prisoner yourself and make Simon's shitlist for robbing him of the opportunity.

And don't forget Jock. You know what I mean.

The endless possibilities are also something from the Black Isle/Interplay days of Fallout that I cherished. I'm not in the crowd that spouts "OMG! Fuck Bethsada, they ruined Fallout. It should have been an overhead dungeon crawler," though I enjoyed Fallout 3, I was indeed disappointed that there are so few games like Fallout, Deus Ex, and Vampire the Masquerade.

 

[Altorin]

I found out the last time I played Mass Effect that there's a sequence of events on Noveria that make sense.

I always had a problem with the sequence of events on Noveria... I always ended up getting the cure for the bioweapon, getting assaulted by the asari.. then going straight to Benezia from the the maintenance bay.

The other option I found was to break into the restricted area, which absolutely shattered the flow of the game, as all of the people you were just recently being friendly with attacked you, and then you were left with a ghost town.

But then, after beating Benezia, I would go to the Hotlabs.. and the PC responses to the fact that *gasp* the Rachni are still alive are completely incongruous with the rest of the mission to that point.

However, in my last playthrough, I discovered that if you go to the Hotlabs after getting the Cure made, you get a scene with the guard captain saying he sold you out to Benezia and you have to kill his guards.. and then you get a scene with an asari commando and that one surviving Volus (I forget his name)...

Everything seems to flow much better that way, and the discussion with the Volus seems to indicate that that's the way Bioware intended the mission to be played.. He mentions how the captain sent you down to the Hotlabs hoping you'd end up dead.. but he didn't really, he just mentioned that his men weren't going down there... but I had played the game through 9 times without even attempting it that way.

So in a sense, because the game isn't clear, the most clear way of doing the mission is to inadvertently break the continuity of the scene.

 

[LTK_70]

Almost. But it's one of the few games that take into account your breaking character. You can't kill most of the main cast in the beginning of the game, but towards the end everyone is up for grabs.

For example in the Hell's Kitchen Bar:

Spoiler

If you kill the barkeep, everyone in the bar including Jock will freak out with a hive mind and run from you or attack you. However, if you survive and proceed, upon returning to the saloon later everyone's pouring themselves free drinks. The young sailor proclaims something along the line of "Sweet, somebody offed the bartender. Free drinks!"

On going into places you shouldn't reach:

Spoiler

If you ever enter the ladie's room and get spotted, Manderly reprimands you for it.

On the captured NSF soldiers.

Spoiler

In normal gameplay Walton Simons enters their prison cell and interrogates them. After realizing they will remain defiant, he executes both prisoners. However you can get inside the cell. You have to follow Simons in carefully as the door is only open for a split second. Once inside, you can interrogate and incapacitate the prisoner yourself and make Simon's shitlist for robbing him of the opportunity.

And don't forget Jock. You know what I mean.

The endless possibilities are also something from the Black Isle/Interplay days of Fallout that I cherished. I'm not in the crowd that spouts "OMG! Fuck Bethsada, they ruined Fallout. It should have been an overhead dungeon crawler," though I enjoyed Fallout 3, I was indeed disappointed that there are so few games like Fallout, Deus Ex, and Vampire the Masquerade.

I knew about the interrogation, did that every time just to piss Simons off. The ladies' room, rather than a place you shouldn't reach by mean of game mechanics, is a place you shouldn't reach because of social norms. Although I didn't know about the bartender, that's cool!

Uh, Jock? What about Jock?

 

[mikekearn]

I remember doing this in Morrowind, purely by accident. I had killed someone important to the main quest, and decided to see what happens when I continue anyway. I had to work the hard way to actually complete the main quest.

Of course, there were some great things you could do with stacking effects that let you create potions and spells far more powerful than should ever be allowed.

I never knew there were whole groups of people dedicated to that sort of thing. Thanks for such an informative article!

 

[tetron]

This was a really cool article. Mostly because it's what I love to do in games, especially RPGs. Anytime I play a game and something seems impossibly hard or it's one of those "you're not meant to win battles" I don't rest until I know for 100% certainty that it is indeed impossible. I've actually paused games and stopped playing to go do something else just because I couldn't win but neither could the other guy, and I didn't want to lose. I've been rather surprised at some stuff that turned out to be doable though and actually had consequences for doing it.

 

[bobisimo]

Hey, welcome to Quality Assurance! Seriously, the idea of the anti-walkthrough is something that anyone involved in QA *should* (but often are not) be well versed in.

 

[Jared]

Very cool article. I've often thought about things like this but have never had the patience to really go after it, never mind to the point where I could write an entire walkthrough on it.

Yeah, it was really quite nice to read something on this! Great job!

 

[Quick Ben]

Spoiler: Snip

I found out the last time I played Mass Effect that there's a sequence of events on Noveria that make sense.

I always had a problem with the sequence of events on Noveria... I always ended up getting the cure for the bioweapon, getting assaulted by the asari.. then going straight to Benezia from the the maintenance bay.

The other option I found was to break into the restricted area, which absolutely shattered the flow of the game, as all of the people you were just recently being friendly with attacked you, and then you were left with a ghost town.

But then, after beating Benezia, I would go to the Hotlabs.. and the PC responses to the fact that *gasp* the Rachni are still alive are completely incongruous with the rest of the mission to that point.

However, in my last playthrough, I discovered that if you go to the Hotlabs after getting the Cure made, you get a scene with the guard captain saying he sold you out to Benezia and you have to kill his guards.. and then you get a scene with an asari commando and that one surviving Volus (I forget his name)...

Everything seems to flow much better that way, and the discussion with the Volus seems to indicate that that's the way Bioware intended the mission to be played.. He mentions how the captain sent you down to the Hotlabs hoping you'd end up dead.. but he didn't really, he just mentioned that his men weren't going down there... but I had played the game through 9 times without even attempting it that way.

So in a sense, because the game isn't clear, the most clear way of doing the mission is to inadvertently break the continuity of the scene.

This was actually quite enlightening, as I could never figure out what I was doing wrong on Noveria that made the story there feel like it was in the wrong order. Maybe I'll be able to make the Noveria story progress as intended the now...

The article was interesting as well. I knew about some things like this, but I didn't imagine you could exploit things to such an extent in so many games.

 

[Fwee]

Great story. Me and my friends are fans of "game breaking", lately I've been thinking about making my 10th Fallout 3 character to see if I can shoot Mr. Burke's pistol from his hand to stop him from murdering the sheriff.

 

[Orcus The Ultimate]

Almost. But it's one of the few games that take into account your breaking character. You can't kill most of the main cast in the beginning of the game, but towards the end everyone is up for grabs.

For example in the Hell's Kitchen Bar:

Spoiler

If you kill the barkeep, everyone in the bar including Jock will freak out with a hive mind and run from you or attack you. However, if you survive and proceed, upon returning to the saloon later everyone's pouring themselves free drinks. The young sailor proclaims something along the line of "Sweet, somebody offed the bartender. Free drinks!"

On going into places you shouldn't reach:

Spoiler

If you ever enter the ladie's room and get spotted, Manderly reprimands you for it.

On the captured NSF soldiers.

Spoiler

In normal gameplay Walton Simons enters their prison cell and interrogates them. After realizing they will remain defiant, he executes both prisoners. However you can get inside the cell. You have to follow Simons in carefully as the door is only open for a split second. Once inside, you can interrogate and incapacitate the prisoner yourself and make Simon's shitlist for robbing him of the opportunity.

And don't forget Jock. You know what I mean.

The endless possibilities are also something from the Black Isle/Interplay days of Fallout that I cherished. I'm not in the crowd that spouts "OMG! Fuck Bethsada, they ruined Fallout. It should have been an overhead dungeon crawler," though I enjoyed Fallout 3, I was indeed disappointed that there are so few games like Fallout, Deus Ex, and Vampire the Masquerade.

I knew about the interrogation, did that every time just to piss Simons off. The ladies' room, rather than a place you shouldn't reach by mean of game mechanics, is a place you shouldn't reach because of social norms. Although I didn't know about the bartender, that's cool!

Uh, Jock? What about Jock?

wasn't it that following your choice of either investigating or not, the helipad in the Illuminati base, that jock would live or die?

 

[LTK_70]

Uh, Jock? What about Jock?

wasn't it that following your choice of either investigating or not, the helipad in the Illuminati base, that jock would live or die?

Could have been, I don't know. The one time I did neglect to investigate, I watched the chopper fly away, and waited for it to go down in a blazing ball of black steel. When it didn't, I assumed there was no effect and didn't bother to continue with a bomb in the chopper. How silly of me!

 

[Veskanderrai]

Great story. Me and my friends are fans of "game breaking", lately I've been thinking about making my 10th Fallout 3 character to see if I can shoot Mr. Burke's pistol from his hand to stop him from murdering the sheriff.

You mean you want to actually stop Burke from killing the sheriff, or by doing it in a specific way.

Because, if you've played the game and you know when the scene starts, you just go into VATS and blow some holes in Burke's head and the sherrif is saved.

 

[Doom972]

And that is why Deus Ex is the greatest game ever. Because there was no way to break the story and no way to act that didn't produce consistency later on in the game.

Almost. It's possible (though very difficult and it actually depends largely on luck) to complete Deus Ex without killing Anna Navarre. The game does not account for this possibility and will continue as though you had killed her.

Still the greatest game ever, though.

No, in won't.
If you don't kill her, Gunther won't complain about it but complain about you leaving him as a prisoner, not giving him a pistol, or he simply won't like you.

I tried to mess with this game and as long as you don't cheat this game's consistency seems unbreakable.

 

[Richard Hannay]

And that is why Deus Ex is the greatest game ever. Because there was no way to break the story and no way to act that didn't produce consistency later on in the game.

Almost. It's possible (though very difficult and it actually depends largely on luck) to complete Deus Ex without killing Anna Navarre. The game does not account for this possibility and will continue as though you had killed her.

Still the greatest game ever, though.

No, in won't.
If you don't kill her, Gunther won't complain about it but complain about you leaving him as a prisoner, not giving him a pistol, or he simply won't like you.

I tried to mess with this game and as long as you don't cheat this game's consistency seems unbreakable.

What? No way. That's not at all how it went down when I did it. I don't believe you.

EDIT: I've read that patched versions of the game prevent any NPC from opening that door, thus solving the problem. Don't know if that part's true, though.