Escorts Aren't Free

[Flatfrog]

I think the ultimate in perfect escort quest is Abe's Odyssee/Exoddus. There was something very satisfying about sneaking up to those mudokens, whispering 'Follow me' and having them tiptoe after you in synchrony - and the satisfaction of chanting, opening a portal, and having the whole bunch of them jump in, was perfect. In general, I think Abe's Odyssee remains the greatest game I've ever played, the perfect mix of story, character and gameplay.

[Edit]I said 'perfect' a lot there, didn't I? My English teacher would've given me a slap for that.

 

[FoolKiller]

Or if you're leaning more towards NPC support, have them attack, but just don't let them die.

The problem with that idea, is that it leaves you open to let the NPC do all the work. Its what happened with Uncharted 3 in the final mission, once I realized Sully not only didn't die, but was quite capable and had an infinite amount of ammo.

In all fairness, I think its lazy programming as well. I find it annoying that you/your escort/your NPC support can run out of ammo but the enemy seems to magically have infinite ammo. What the fuck is that all about? I realize that increasing difficulty is most easily done through enemies being bullet sponges and you taking greater damage and being limited in terms of weapons but I still think its a cop out. In this day and age, they should spend more on good AI and less on pretty graphics.

Escorts aside, I think Star Wars Republic Commando is the example of NPC support done right.

You don't have to worry about them dying, but they aren't invulnerable. You don't have to worry about their ammo, but they'll only use their best weapons in specially designated positions. And best of all you can actually rely on them.

Here is a case of AI done tooooo well. We (a friend of mine and myself) tested this theory. The game will actually complete itself if you die at the end. Say what?

Personally I hate many escort missions. Dead Rising (the first one) was terrible. They acted dumb and got killed and wouldn't stay put.

In actuality, the concept is good but the AI has to be able to match up with the skill of the person playing the game. If the person you are escorting is too dumb or too good then the challenge of the scenario is rendered moot.

 

[BlackWidower]

Three words: "Reload Doctor Freeman!"

 

[Avaholic03]

Seriously, no mention of Yoshi's Island? That game was made up entirely of one escort mission. It was well designed so it only punished you if you screwed up, and even then you had some time to correct your mistake before you got the game over. Plus, it was the last game in the Mario franchise that actually felt new and interesting.

 

[F-I-D-O]

Metro 2033
the majority of it is an escort quest (there is an NPC who, if killed, causes game over). But more often than not, they have better equipment and experience. They rarely die, and it drives home the point that you are a rookie in this world, not an experience veteran. When you are alone, you feel the need for another gun to help you, but it isn't there. It works to improve the setting, instead of focusing on keeping the companion alive.

 

[C117]

Glad to see I'm not the only one who didn't find Ashley mind-numbingly annoying to look after. And it's all because I could control her movements to a fair degree, whereupon I'd order her to stay at the far side of the map, while I just went out and slaughtered the entire population of Los Murderos (or whatever the place was called).

That, and I was secretly hoping for her and Leon to get it on...

 

[Mike Fang]

I'll be frank, I don't have a problem with escort quests or NPC support so long as one thing is consistent; I'm. In. Control. What this means is that whether I'm escorting an NPC or I'm being backed up by supporting characters, I want them to follow instructions. If I move, I want them to follow with me at a respectable distance; not breathing down my neck, but also not dragging their feet. If I tell them to stay somewhere, I want them to plunk their ass down on the curb and pull out a book they've been meaning to catch up on while I scout ahead. If there are enemies around, I want them to either stay behind me, take cover, or in the event they're support NPCs, hold their ground and give me cover, only maneuvering if something hits them. Furthermore, they should be following MY lead, which means they should only attack if I attack and only what I'm attacking or something that's attacking me. If I push forward, they should push forward. If I retreat, they should follow me back. If the NPC has healing powers that are limited, i.e. a first aid kit that runs out of supplies, or healing spells that drain energy, they should ask me first before using something to patch me up.

I think that anytime someone has a gripe with a given game's escorts or NPC support characters, it stems from what degree control is taken away from the player. Thinking back to the escort quests in WoW, the biggest problem I had is how the NPC's would blithely blunder on ahead, even if you had to stop for a second to eat some rations or put a bandage on or fight off some fucking monster that spawned randomly in your path that wasn't part of the prescripted escort battles. In Fallout 3, I love the personality of the companions, but by God, they are annoying when I'm trying to fight in an enclosed space. They'll detect an enemy two rooms away, and while I'm trying to loot bodies, they go wandering off on their own because they "heard a noise" and pick a fight before you're ready, robbing you of XP if the win and getting themselves killed if they lose. The worst part is when I've got too much in my bags and I can't run. I'm left impotently cussing at them and telling them not to get ahead of me while dragging my overfilled knapsack, stuffed with the guns and armor bits I can't bring myself to discard because they're either good for spare parts or I can sell them for enough to buy a post-apocalyptic concubine.

So in a nutshell, I'd say if game designers want to make escorts or support characters a big part of their game, they don't need to impress us with how well the NPC's can do without us; they need to impress us with how well they can follow instructions.

 

[him over there]

I thought the escort mission in twilight princess was pretty great. You know the one with the carriage and the zora child Ralis. Sure it wasn't exactly a conventional escort, it was one of those "keep up with and protect these things" missions.Like the missions in inFAMOUS where you ride cars or trucks or the chopper. But the carriage escort was tolerable because:
1. The escort is on a set path.
2.If they catch fire you can put it out.
3.When damaged they stop moving forward, instead moving in a circle where you can save them and defeat the surrounding enemies.
4.You can lock on to them so you don't have to break the flow.

They do commit the one cardinal sin of those kinds of missions where you ride something but you can get knocked off. Getting knocked off your horse totally limits your ability to move or fight and it takes precious time from you.

 

[Daniel Is I]

What I hate even more than escort missions are missions with NPCs that, rather than continue to go toward their target, opt to change course to the nearest group of enemies that needs a kicking.

Sort of an MMO-style AI treatment.

Thank you, Random NPC #423, but I don't need to kill those. You don't need to kill those. They weren't going to attack us. You're just wasting our time and getting yourself beat up so I have to go over to help you.

 

[Callate]

If the escort-ee can't die, is it really an escort quest/mission? I don't really think of the companion cube as being escort-related at all (I haven't gotten a chance to play Portal 2 yet, so if there's something in that more obviously escort-like, pardon me.)

My bigger problem is when the escorted doesn't have the sense to get out of the line of fire... Especially when hitting them causes either 1) instant game over, 2) them to become violently hostile towards you or 3) all of a class of NPCs to become hostile towards you.

(Crap. How do you quick load again...?)

Ashley in RE4 wasn't too bad, it's true. But far too often, escort missions don't actually contribute anything to a game- no interesting new mechanics, no alternate tactics, not even enough of a personality to make you feel more than irritation when the escorted inevitably gets their fool selves killed. They're just there to make you do what you've been doing, only with a millstone strapped around your neck. What's fun about that?

 

[SilverUchiha]

A perfect example of your NPC support claim is StarFox64. They would fight, but they died. Their death never made your game end, but it certainly made it harder to progress through an area with one less arwing in your squad to take down enemies. (fuckin' slippy). However, you got rewarded for saving them as well as the ability to access different parts of the game. That is probably one of the better ways to do NPC support. Not vital, but certainly rewarding if you are willing to aid them often.

 

[chadachada123]

Aside from RE4 and Yoshi's Island, I've seen very few escort missions that weren't complete bullshit, through-and-through. I think that Mike Fang said it best:

Furthermore, they should be following MY lead, which means they should only attack if I attack and only what I'm attacking or something that's attacking me. If I push forward, they should push forward. If I retreat, they should follow me back. If the NPC has healing powers that are limited, i.e. a first aid kit that runs out of supplies, or healing spells that drain energy, they should ask me first before using something to patch me up.

This right here is everything wrong is games today. When I come up to some enemies, STAY WHERE YOU ARE AND DON'T RUN IN FRONT OF MY GUN/AXE/SWORD. Grr...

 

[samaugsch]

I suppose parts of Bioshock 2 amount to escort quests when your helping the Little Sisters. It's the game I'm playing at the moment, and I really don't enjoy helping them. However it's not totally terrible.

Actually, the only consequence to a splicer grabbing ahold of Little Sister gatherers is that the Little Sisters stop ADAM collecting until the splicer lets go. In one area in Pauper's Drop, there's a gather spot that happens to be within range of a camera. If you manage to get within the building within the locked door (without unlocking it), you can watch splicers get torn to pieces from the summoned security bots over and over again xD. Hopefully, you can understand what I'm talking about. In other words, you don't always have to pay much attention to Little Sisters.

 

[samaugsch]

I'll be frank, I don't have a problem with escort quests or NPC support so long as one thing is consistent; I'm. In. Control. What this means is that whether I'm escorting an NPC or I'm being backed up by supporting characters, I want them to follow instructions. If I move, I want them to follow with me at a respectable distance; not breathing down my neck, but also not dragging their feet. If I tell them to stay somewhere, I want them to plunk their ass down on the curb and pull out a book they've been meaning to catch up on while I scout ahead. If there are enemies around, I want them to either stay behind me, take cover, or in the event they're support NPCs, hold their ground and give me cover, only maneuvering if something hits them. Furthermore, they should be following MY lead, which means they should only attack if I attack and only what I'm attacking or something that's attacking me. If I push forward, they should push forward. If I retreat, they should follow me back. If the NPC has healing powers that are limited, i.e. a first aid kit that runs out of supplies, or healing spells that drain energy, they should ask me first before using something to patch me up.

I think that anytime someone has a gripe with a given game's escorts or NPC support characters, it stems from what degree control is taken away from the player. Thinking back to the escort quests in WoW, the biggest problem I had is how the NPC's would blithely blunder on ahead, even if you had to stop for a second to eat some rations or put a bandage on or fight off some fucking monster that spawned randomly in your path that wasn't part of the prescripted escort battles. In Fallout 3, I love the personality of the companions, but by God, they are annoying when I'm trying to fight in an enclosed space. They'll detect an enemy two rooms away, and while I'm trying to loot bodies, they go wandering off on their own because they "heard a noise" and pick a fight before you're ready, robbing you of XP if the win and getting themselves killed if they lose. The worst part is when I've got too much in my bags and I can't run. I'm left impotently cussing at them and telling them not to get ahead of me while dragging my overfilled knapsack, stuffed with the guns and armor bits I can't bring myself to discard because they're either good for spare parts or I can sell them for enough to buy a post-apocalyptic concubine.

So in a nutshell, I'd say if game designers want to make escorts or support characters a big part of their game, they don't need to impress us with how well the NPC's can do without us; they need to impress us with how well they can follow instructions.

In Fallout New Vegas, they fixed most of those issues. Instead of dying, companions only get knocked unconscious (meaning, instead of losing them permanently, they're simply unusable until combat is over), and according to one of the loading screens, you get xp from monsters they kill. I'm not sure about the picking fights issue however.

 

[Wooly]

One of my favorite missions from CoD4 is where you and a sniper buddy have to find a way in and out of the warzone. While escaping he get's injured so you have to carry him across the rest of the level. You're unable to fight while you carry him, but when you need to fight you can dump him somewhere and he acts like a portable turret. It's not the typical escort mission, but it's one of the few I know that's actually fun to do.

 

[luckshot]

playing through either of the left 4 dead single player campaign (for those of us without friends) does a fairly good job of being support...most of the time. it is difficult to give them orders i recall

 

[Something Amyss]

That's my thinking as well. Considering how much people complain about escort missions, I suspect developers' main reason for continuing to make them is that they believe it can be done right, and they want to challenge themselves. Thing is, though, most developers today have a hard enough time getting the tried-and-true game mechanics to work properly, so they probably shouldn't be pushing themselves for its own sake.

I think it's laziness, possibly even artificial difficulty, myself. I could be wrong, I mean your altruistic look is at least favourable to the people making the games, but so many of these games seem to employ copy/paste ideas.

 

[Elementary - Dear Watson]

I prefer not to have escort quests... although if I am to have them I prefer 3rd person games... The ammount of times I tried to escort/keep someone alive in Oblivion/Skyrim and ended up with them dead, or worse, them running in front of me, and me ending up killing them with a mistimed arrow, due to the fact I didn'tsee them coming!

 

[JohnnyDelRay]

A lot of people seem to be comparing escort games/quests to support characters, which is a totally different thing, as illustrated by the RE4/RE5 example. Alyx was NOT someone you were escorting, in any of her appearances. Nor was the majority of NPCs in Metro 2033 (when's the sequel to that coming btw, that game was unbelievably good).

But to stay on topic, I find most escort quests to be quite annoying. But this is a sliding scale depending upon how hindered your own character is by the "escorting", and how weak or stupid your "escortee" is. The furthest I appreciate is Metro 2033, having the boy on your shoulders is a bit of a balance because although you turn slower, he warns you about those rat things if one is approaching from behind. Basically this whole situation is alright with a good shotgun in your hands.

The worst kind is when you have to carry them (like in Dead Rising) and you are completely useless, moving very slowly, and being surrounded and hacked at. Although most of the time in Dead Rising you can just pick a path and sprint it, to be fair. Having someone over your shoulder and shooting with the other hand is pretty cool too, despite being quite unrealistic. But people getting in the way of gunfire, or wading into enemies and getting themselves killed makes it extremely annoying.

A good mechanic to implement would be like in Rainbow 6: Vegas, although you are not escorting your teammates, you can give them solid, simple commands as go there, hold position, or follow me, which is just about all you need.