I remember one of the Metal Gear games had a really really blatant example of this Snake has to crawl through an electric torture field to make it to the switch to turn it off, and you have to mash the buttons to simulate this
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Replying to @arthur_affect @Plutoburns and
And it's this long, agonizing struggle and you just barely have enough HP to make it before you die It's a pulse-pounding, edge of your seat moment the first time
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Replying to @arthur_affect @Plutoburns and
Then as soon as you play it again you're like oh yeah You can't fail this part It's programmed to take away your HP based on your progress through the field so that you always end up with a sliver left before you die The tension is totally fake
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Replying to @arthur_affect @Plutoburns and
(On TVTropes this is called Always Close It's a necessary trope, arguably, because either way you do it deflates the tension - if it is possible to fail, and a certain % of people fail over and over again, then it goes from being cool and exciting to obnoxious)
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Replying to @arthur_affect @Plutoburns and
i mean this is a reflection of games really struggling to provide fail-forward states as opposed to fail-and-reload states.
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Replying to @perdricof @arthur_affect and
for me the strongest dissonance i ever had while gaming was Tomb Raider. in our world, lara dies over and over and over and over. but in the game world she never dies; she's just this unstoppable killing machine.
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Replying to @perdricof @arthur_affect and
wound up writing a short story with that conceit--what it would be like to face this nightmare of the person who just can't be stopped, who gets to respawn and reload every single time you stop her. it remains an unsettling idea.
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Replying to @perdricof @arthur_affect and
Terry Pratchett wrote a book Only You Can Save Mankind about this concept. The aliens from a shoot-em-up try to broker peace with the unstoppable warrior who has killed thousands of their people and resurrects every time he dies.
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Replying to @TGNProfessor @perdricof and
Sure, but "resurrects every time he dies" is at least comprehensible. A video game protagonist *unmakes* the circumstances of their death [or other mission failure], and no-one [possibly not even themselves] knows what happened.
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Replying to @Random832 @perdricof and
This was more the extra lives era of gaming rather than modern games where you can save anywhere. When Johnny dies he has to replay the level, which to the aliens looks like launching a new attack on an area they just defended and sent reinforcements to replace everyone he killed
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Right, although true to this era of PC gaming there weren't actually "extra lives", once you unlock a mission you can replay it as many times as you want until you beat it Hence Johnny getting the nickname "The Hero With A Thousand Extra Lives", as a riff on Campbell
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Replying to @arthur_affect @TGNProfessor and
He does find the wreckage of an annihilated ancient civilization of Space Invaders, from back in the day when you did have to keep track of lives, after his dad makes a comment about how much games have progressed since the good old days
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Replying to @arthur_affect @TGNProfessor and
One thing I loved about this book was that Pratchett, unlike many other authors of his generation, genuinely loved video games and had clearly spent a lot of time playing games just like this The game in the book is very clearly a parody/knockoff of Wing Commander
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