The Stanley Parable, Dark Souls, and Intended Play

Clickbait title: Watch These Hot Games Intentionally Misbehave
The cough hasn't gotten any better. If anything it's worse now. I had to stop and hack a good, rumbling cough for a solid few seconds every other line. I wouldn't be surprised if it shows in the performance. The other thing, and this is petty I know, is that I'm dreading the inevitable wave of single commenters pointing out that my shirt is missing a button. They'll probably mostly assume that I missed a button, maybe make a crack about how I forgot how to dress myself, but, no, the shirt is just missing a button. I actually meant to take the spare from the fringe and repair the shirt before filming, but between the cough and the three hours of sleep it pretty much slipped my mind until recording was already done. Anyway, The Stanley Parable and Dark Souls are both really good games with very different approaches to narrative, you should check them out.
Written and performed by Dan Olson
Twitter: / foldablehuman

[@misterdoctor9693]

To see true "unintended play" one need only check in with the speed-running community.

[@michaelwarnecke3474]

This depends a lot on the game though. This is of course true for games designed before speedrunning became a major thing like super mario bros. or super mario 64. But beyond that, some games like celeste or super meat boy were designed (amongst other things) to be speedran. And nowadays, in a wprld were almost all games are mutable after release and unintended behaviour could get patched out, by choosing not to do so, they are complicit with your 'misbehaviour'. It is arguable wether being complicit is enough to count for intend of course. This statement is hillariously true in the context of club penguin ban any%

[@mai_komagata]

yet people complain about clipping and walljumps in mario 3 despite it being clearly described in the nintendo power guide as actions mario could take that the devs fully knew about.

[@TheRodentMastermind]

There is a great example in Hollow Knight, the only exploit they patched out was one where the player got stuck and could no longer complete the game.

[@misterdoctor9693]

I love unintended mechanics that got left in and became part of the game like "pulling neutral camps" in Dota or nearly every single part of Rocket League that isn't just driving.

[@blodstainer]

@@mai_komagata who complains about that? Nobody does. What people do complain about, is skipping large portions of games, that's generally the biggest gripe with speed running. Which is a critique that's countered by having 100% runs

[@mikeymegamega]

No matter what we type, as long as comments are enabled, we are still playing along to his intended narrative.

[@shellovisionhd]

Mikey !!!!!!!!! Love your drawing tutorials and you resident evil gameplay .

[@twistedwell9568]

Lol! Perfect

[@spartanwar1185]

Same goes for rating the video Hell and even watching it They could make this video private if they wanted to They could make it link only and then try to sell it back to you (Lotta legal shit there, but just an idea)

[@badmanjones179]

what if everybody comments "disable the comments" to the point where they get disabled.... does that mean we've won by losing the game

[@badmanjones179]

er rather losing access to the game

[@elsie8757]

"DID YOU GET THE BROOM CLOSET ENDING?? THE BROOM CLOSET ENDING WAS MY FAVORITE xD"

[@Firestar4041]

As your friend, i find this very concerning...

[@hooperdooper3356]

As not you’re friend, I also find this concerning, just not as severely

[@1996Pinocchio]

It was mine aswell.

[@beanqueen2126]

I loved the broom closet ending!!

[@ashleybyrd2015]

As your enemy, I actually find this as rather good news.

[@arenkai]

Players: Hehehehe ! I'm disobeying the game, I'm so smart ! Game devs: Sure you are **patpat**

[@vaiyt]

Undertale dangles this concept on your face to smack you with it. The entire game is about making you believe you have a leg up on the NPCs in terms of agency and then pulls the rug from under you at the last minute.

[@franklinturtleton6525]

When you pick up poop in Duke Nukem Forever and Duke shouts "WHY AM I DOING THIS!?"

[@patrickphelan279]

"No! Hey, c'mon, no!"

[@TheShadowOfMars]

In Broken Sword 2, you acquire a set of your girlfriend's lingerie, and the logic puzzles require you to keep hold of it for an inordinately long stretch of the story, until the need for an improvised catapult arises. At one point during the period where it's sitting in your inventory, there's a puzzle involving a flagpole. Attempting to attach the panties to the flagpole prompts George to say "I'm not in college anymore".

[@xw591]

@@TheShadowOfMars why do you know this

[@1Seanmb]

@@xw591 Presumably because he played it.

[@saarimarshad9515]

"why is it the genocide route in undertale" gold

[@helloofthebeach]

Literally everyone gets called the fuck out at the last second

[@user-ty7xj7ks8u]

loooooooooool

[@user-ty7xj7ks8u]

I mean, the Genocide route is sort of the most interesting variation on this theme legitimately though. Because its not just the game stating that the player character is bad for engaging in violent behavior, but that the player themselves should not want to experience this content. It exists in the game as an intended form of play, but arguably as an undesirable form of play. There's sort of a "Davey Wreden (narrator) vs Davey Wredon (game designer)" dynamic going on (I'm referencing Innuendo Studio's great essay on The Beginners Guide) between what Toby Fox the game designer probably (?) wanted, which was for the genocide route to be experienceable, and what the perceived "authorial voice" of the game wants, which is for the player (not the player character) to not play the game in this manner Undertale presents "choosing to stop playing the game" as a valid gameplay choice, and a valid moral gameplay choice at that. I'm not sure how many other games have done that

[@Twisted_Logic]

How about the backdoor route to completing Morrowind by killing Vivec?

[@ShjadeNexayre]

"It exists in the game as an intended form of play, but arguably as an undesirable form of play." ...you're kidding, right? Two of the best songs in the entire game are only heard by going the genocide route, and it includes some truly gripping heroism...on the part of the monsters. It's DEFINITELY a route with content a player might want to experience in it, they just have to be horrible to reach it. Which then opens up its own conversations, as Dan was pointing toward: WHY is the genocide route your answer to his question? It has all sorts of directions of approach. As for me (not having played more than about 90 minutes of Undertale, myself), it's a small thing: the character reactions to/instructions about facing down a Witch in Left 4 Dead vs the completely valid strategy of walking up to one and shotgunning her for an instant kill. I love both the L4D games, but I have to admit the atmosphere of it gets lost in a hurry on lower difficulties once you know how to speed through the open and put down major threats with maximum efficiency. All the mood pointers and character reactions point toward "be careful, don't take risks, stick together!" but with experience you can be dashing your way through the zombie apocalypse faster than they can warn you about the dangers of running ahead.

[@stevenm7057]

My favorite moment in a game is when it tells me " don't turn off while auto-saving" and I do!

[@aturchomicz821]

...💀

[@snazztacular]

Makes me wonder how that dude in animal crossing who shows up when you don't save pertains to intended play

[@trissylegs]

Doing this in Pokemon Gold and Silver could duplicate items and Pokemon. So it was very much unintended play.

[@baronvonbeandip]

​@@trissylegsBut the system is designed with powering off in mind. It is unintended relative to the game and its developers... but the game exists without the player and in spite of the developers' intentions once it is made. "If an author dies in a forest, does his work still affect his audience" or something like that

[@michaelw6277]

Disco Elysium is packed full of these moments to the point where doing what you’re told not to do, or not doing what you’re told to do is a key part of the experience. It helps that there are certain skills that you can focus on that lead to hilariously unreliable narratives, like the one that makes you an expert on illicit substances that more or less turns you into an addict or an alcoholic.

[@Tuckerscreator]

Okay, to be actually serious, the Broom Closet of Stanley Parable is interesting because it's designed to lure the player into taking part in it, even though the player thinks they're disobeying. The player sees a labeled door open, drawing their attention by the sudden movement. The narrator starts commenting on it, and the player is encouraged to remain so they can hear more lines of said narrator's increasing frustration. Even the lack of anything interactive inside the broom closet is turned into a plus, since the narrator keeps insisting there's nothing noteworthy inside, so the player becomes determined to find something and clicks on everything they can see systematically. So in a way, lack of content itself becomes content. A neat trick of reverse psychology.

[@rickpgriffin]

There was at LEAST one instance in Stanley Parable where I broke out of the intended path. It was in the warehouse area, stepping out of the return trolley before its gate closed. (this is AFTER you get the slide show) Once it did, the kill zone that was initially at the bottom of the warehouse was gone so you could jump down there and look around. And it was interesting but it was also kinda boring cause, like, there's not actually anything to do down there except look at the textures. Anyhow since the only intended play in the games is to find endings, does finding an unintended softlock count as intended play, EVEN IF there is no scripted content??

[@nathanhall9345]

The best one for me was the window that you have to borderline glitch the game to get out. There's a sly, "You thought you were more clever than us," followed by, "Here's your punishment!"

[@kootiepatra]

@rickpgriffin - Read your second paragraph and started hearing the music from the adventure line ending*

[@davixx1995]

Also the broom closet ending was simply outstanding. Easily my favourite.

[@jasonblalock4429]

On the other hand, that same basic thing led to me sitting in the observatory room for five minutes straight thinking that surely there was an alternative to forcing Stanley to kill himself. Or at least that *something* would happen since the Narrator was so keen on it. To this day, I think that's the one thing the TSP developers missed. There should have been a "Friendship Ending" where Stanley and the Narrator both agree that staring at pretty nebulas is awesome.

[@Ameliacats42]

At first I thought the title of this video was "The Stanley Parable is the Dark Souls of Intended Play"

[@antoniolucio6836]

Isn't it?

[@KanadasKid]

and intended play is the cuphead of best em ups

[@prometheus1100]

Ha that actually kinda makes sense

[@DiakronYT]

i'd watch that

[@Karanagi]

A friend of mine was playing Skyrim some years ago. He figured that instead of killing all the bandits in a dungeon, it was much faster to just run through the place, grabbing anything of remote value along the way. If the bandits objected in some fashion, he would simply smack them with a shield. By the time they had recovered, my friend would be 3 treasure chests further into the dungeon. I don't think that was intended play. The AI seemed very inept in it's response. But I doubt the developers would be upset. After all, my friend had a lot of fun playing Skyrim this way.

[@gidioter]

DYNAMIC RADIENT AI

[@redanwrong]

Todd is displeased

[@pahbody5336]

He just fucking rushed the place, cool

[@jon9828]

Old comment. But I feel a need to relate how one of my friends decided to tackle Skyrim. He started out thinking "wonder if I can play Skyrim in a pacifist run?". He ended playing for a long long time, having zero kills in his stats through illusion magic. All magicka upgrades and illusion magic, nothing else. He'd get one-shot by most enemies. Enemies would most often kill each other first though via being charmed. When only one charmed enemy remained he'd loot the place and move on. He played to a surprisingly high level using this strategy. By the end of it all his stats still stated zero kills. He technically never killed anything. This was fascinating to behold. He often seeks to play games counter to their perceived intended play. If he wasn't so dismissive of games as interesting stories/narrative (he's a very mechanically focused type of player, he was a massive fan of Diablo 2 but was completely indifferent to the fact that he didn't know the Horadrim was a society of human mages, of which Deckard Cain was one, when I mentioned it) I'd likely have a blast watching him play The Stanley parable and somehow making my brain melt.

[@gilotyna815]

The AI in Skyrim always seems very inept tbh so it doesn't tell us much.

[@MochaKimono]

"The Path": You're a girl on a path through the woods to your grandmother's house (Red Riding Hood, clearly). The first LP I watched of it, the player did exactly that. She walked to the house and finished and nothing of interest happened. She even thought that the odd noises and visuals coming from the surrounding forest were just to lure you into Game Overs where the wolf would get you. And indeed, if you leave the path, the "wolf" will "get" you (symbolic wolf and/or symbolic getting?), and the ending cutscene changes - but exploring the woods is the point of the game. Ultimately you can finish the game quicker by doing exactly what it tells you while also missing 99% of the content. Obviously most people will disobey, if not immediately, at least the second time around when they realize they missed something. (Apologies if anyone mentioned The Path already, 1.1k comments is a lot to look through to check...)

[@TheRodentMastermind]

I think it's Far Cry 4, where you travel to a country to sprinkle your mothers ashes. The dictator gets called away while you are having a meal and asks you to stay there. If you do for about 10 mins, he returns and takes you to sprinkle your mothers ashes. End Credits.

[@matteoar]

@@TheRodentMastermind no, Mocha is literally talking about The Path, a 2009 video game that is exactly what he described.

[@rifkamiriam7721]

@@matteoar I believe "it" in "I think it's..." refers to [the best subversive but intended gameplay experience] as in Dan's prompt, not [the movie you are speaking of]

[@sithdude2436]

That game sounds a bit like Slay the Princess. "You are on a path in the woods. At the end of that path is a cabin. And in the basement of that cabin, is a Princess. You're here to Slay her. If you don't, it will be the end of the world." The game makes you constantly question everything everyone tells you, even the Player Character's voice is wrong sometimes.

[@casbyness]

The earliest (and in my opinion, best) example of this was in Dino Crisis, way back in 1999 before I knew to look up walkthroughs on the internet. I was totally blown away by what the game set up. During the dramatic finale you are presented the choice of either allowing a wounded team mate to chase down an escaped bad guy (he succeeds, but then dies) or knocking the team mate out so you and a second team mate can carry him to safety, allowing the bad guy to escape. However, after choosing to start down the path of the latter option, the game still leaves the route to the bad guy open. So I randomly thought "hey, what if MY CHARACTER goes after the bad guy, instead of me escaping with the other two heroes?!" To my total shock, the developers had actually left that option open, and I was treated to a surprise "best ending" by both catching the escaped villain AND not letting my overzealous friend die. :D There was no prompting of the player to take this third option, the final choice of the game appeared to be a binary tradeoff, but secretly wasnt. Despite all the great efforts of Bioware and other AAA games, that final choice in the original Dino Crisis still sticks out as the first memorable moment in a game when I genuinely felt free to make my own choices.

[@1WEareBUFO1]

casbyness That's next level tihs

[@ProjectThunderclaw]

I'm reminded of the dumbest way I was ever rewarded by a video game, which was when I accidentally got the hardest standard ending for Silent Hill 2. It's the "sad" ending, and the two big contributing factors are frequently being at low health and repeatedly examining a knife in your inventory that serves no other purpose. Here's the thing: Silent Hill 2 does not have a traditional health bar. Instead, the pause menu has a little icon of the current scene with a colored filter over it: red if you're low, green if you're high. But if you're right in the middle, there's no obvious filter at all, just a clear picture - so naturally I assumed that a clear picture meant full health and stopped using healing items when I got there, and unintentionally ended up playing most of the game at or below half health. Also, did I mention the knife serves no other purpose? Every other object with no immediate gameplay use was the solution to some puzzle, so obviously whenever I was stumped I'd just cycle through my inventory Examine-ing and trying to Use my key items, including the knife, over and over looking for clues. And I got stumped a lot. Basically what I'm saying is that I got the hardest ending in Silent Hill 2 by being extremely bad at Silent Hill 2.

[@fluidthought42]

@@ProjectThunderclaw You too? Yay us!

[@Kagomai15]

@@ProjectThunderclaw I did this too, except I thought the colour between green and red was blue? Regardless, I just didn't use health items because I didn't want to waste them!! I hoarded my health packs for monster fights, which I avoided whenever I could anyway! To get In Water you also have to look after Maria and check on the knife a lot. To get the good ending you need to ignore her, keep your health up and keep checking Mary's letter, which, like the knife, doesn't do anything. My point is, I also got stumped and cycled through my items, except for the letter, which I assumed (semi-correctly) didn't do anything. I didn't even know there were multiple endings until after the credits!

[@gilless429]

One of my favourite examples of this (the game presenting you with a problem that it says only has two solutions, but there actually being a third/better option that's intended as well) is in Deus Ex: Human Revolution, specifically the Missing Link DLC (it's in the director's cut by default). Some spoilers ahead : At one point you're given a choice between saving a specific (rude and morally grey) character you need, for story reasons, to achieve overall good (exposing dark secrets to the world, which otherwise will be swept under the rug), or saving a bunch of innocent prisoners who're getting poisoned by gas. Saving those prisoners means opening the cells which takes a while since you've gotta go to where you can do that, and so you'd leave the other character unprotected and the baddies would get to her. This is the choice you're presented with, save the prisoners (who are mostly good people) or the morally questionable jerk whose testimony would mean a lot. But the thing is, you can save all of them. When you get presented with this dilemma, there's some vents nearby that lead to where the gas tank that's being used to kill the prisoners is, and you can use that to stop the poisoning quickly, then go and save the other character anyway. That is never even vaguely hinted by the game, but if you take it upon yourself to look for it, you can do that. I found that without a guide my first time through myself, and it was the most amazing feeling.

[@DennisJoyceEsper8]

I stopped playing SUPERHOT when the game made me promise to stop playing. True story.

[@Carewolf]

I stop playing Oblivion when I reliased the game rewarded not doing anything, in other words, the only winning move was not to play.

[@thefatheroflies7921]

@@Carewolf Same with Dark Souls.

[@ViceAdmiralHoratioNeIson]

Superhot has such a neat concept but by golly its story is so tedious

[@simplylinn]

@@ViceAdmiralHoratioNeIson Very much so. The game tried to have a "message" about stuff so bad, and was very pretentious about the fact that it had a message to tell with its story, that... All I remember of the story is how pretentious it was. Nothing specific it did (sans the command to go out and promote the game with that phrase containing the word 'innovative' that I forgot rn) is actually inherently stupid, it's just that it didn't have a proper build-up for it. Virtually the only way we interacted with the story was in segments where the game went "OKAY TIME TO STOP GAMEPLAY FOR A BIT TO THROW NONSENSE TEXT AT YOU FOR A BIT!", when the game, otherwise, was so heavily focused on gameplay. It's, for lack of a better word, jarring. The story tries to make us feel bad for playing it, but the gameplay doesn't reflect that at all. Contrast that with, say, the Undertale genocide route, where gameplay is SEVERELY altered, the population in the game world is avoiding you at all cost, towns are barren, shops are empty, character interactions are minimal, content and puzzles are skipped. The game, both narratively and mechanically, reinforce "You're the fucking bad guy, and the worst of the bad guys at that", which is why it works. Having gameplay that highlights your badassery by, at the end of a level, replaying your path through that level in full speed while "SUPER HOT!" being played back to you in a victorious way is not "reinforcing the idea that you're bad", while the story constantly insists you're doing something wrong. It's just... not well integrated. That game called for a minimal story, just enough justification to put why you're killing red blobs into some minimal of context and then let the admittedly fun mechanics carry the game. The current story actually makes the game worse and probably took more effort and development time than just "Oh, this is a training simulation, go kill red blobs" would've

[@tinchosabala]

Isn't Superhot the game in which you kill the red guys and time goes as fast as you do?

[@elizabethagudelo7179]

you breeze through am IMO very interesting point halfway, when you say that dark souls tells you there's certain NPCs you should not kill because they're your allies or, and I quote "at the very least not your enemy", something caught my attention about the way you said it, the tone of your voice and the emphasis you put in "at the very least", and got me to think how often games expect you to not care about anybody that's not explicitly your friend, like there's a couple games like undertale and spec ops that explore the implications of how willing we are to just attack anything the game tells us to, how easy it is to convince ourselves that what we're doing is the righteous thing to do, with no evidence or nuance, because that's what the protagonist do I guess, how we don't ask ourselves "why is the enemy, well, my enemy" or question the fact that shoot first ask questions later is the default interaction with the world in so many games; but both games make it quite explicitly about the idea of enemies, spec ops frames the faction you're fighting as nothing more than the same kind of dubious middle eastern people so many games before asked you to shoot right up till the white phosphorus, which is when the game starts to unravel, and undertale frames your encounters in a very deliberately cliche turn based rpg battle screen, expecting that the audience's game literacy will imply to them that what you see before you is just another mob to slay. But I've never seen a game explore the implications of how explicitly worthless neutral, everyday people are, never really seen anybody question why it is that characters that are not explicitly on the character's side, even if they're not marked as enemies either, are fair play, how they're faceless setdressing at best and cannon fodder at the worst, why is it that in games, you're not expected to show mercy, compassion or empathy to anybody that does not aid you or support you first, even if they're not doing anything to harm you either, why is it that only the life and death of your friends and allies matter? does life has no value if they're not serving your interests? isn't that kind of fucked up on it's implications? just think that's interesting is all

[@Tanuki-cl7qi]

I’m really glad you brought this up because, yeah, it’s really interesting. My kneejerk, admittedly thermian response is all npcs having mechanical value would be a development nightmare, and that the only value a game can give to an npc is mechanical incentives. Still, the uninterrogated option to kill anyone outside your main party remains. Not all games let you kill everyone. Plenty discourage it through mechanics, narrative, or simply make it impossible. The option to kill is offered as a form of controlled transgression that games so often take. Obviously gta doesn’t make people actually want to murder people, but it allows you to do so because its entire brand is letting you do the unacceptable. Likely as a response towards the trend of realism, killing random people has become almost a structural grammar of the medium. Only somewhat recently have games begun interrogating this, and even fewer go further than “killing bad.” The value of human life is extremely complex. Not to say it’s difficult to prove one has value, but it’s definitely difficult to convey. This feels like an untapped goldmine of game design potential, to be honest.

[@SirMonday]

> But I've never seen a game explore the implications of how explicitly worthless neutral, everyday people are, never really seen anybody question why it is that characters that are not explicitly on the character's side, even if they're not marked as enemies either, are fair play, how they're faceless setdressing at best and cannon fodder at the worst, why is it that in games, you're not expected to show mercy, compassion or empathy to anybody that does not aid you or support you first, even if they're not doing anything to harm you either, why is it that only the life and death of your friends and allies matter? I think *some* open world games do make (perhaps anaemic) attempts at addressing this. Assassin's Creed 2 (and perhaps others, but I never played the others), for instance, will put up warnings if you go around murdering random innocents, and I think will even eventually forcefully de-sync you, which is an explicit fail state. I think Watch Dogs, while not going as far, does something similar by giving short profiles to every NPC (even explicit enemies, IIRC), an action which seems to me like a kind of reserved but omnipresent judgement if the player does treat the game as effectively GTA with hacking -- "hey, just letting you know, that person you ran over was a single mother of 2 making $42k".

[@bennemann]

"Stanley Parable is a 2011 game..." Damn, I'm old.

[@m.m.1301]

That hit hard bro

[@bigchum3984]

Now you’re older still

[@Em-uk8ew]

@@bigchum3984 time is marching on

[@Barrillel]

Time to boot it up again for that sweet sweet 5 year achievement

[@aturchomicz821]

@@Barrillel Clap

[@SoranMBane]

Well, there is also that moment early in Undertale where Toriel tells you to wait in that room while she leaves to make you a pie. But if you actually do try to wait like she said, the Annoying Dog (who is Toby Fox's author avatar) will just keep delaying her forever until you proceed. In the end, he even steals her cell phone to keep her from calling you, and only gives it back once you leave the room to actually PLAY HIS DAMN GAME ALREADY. So, the game tells you to do one thing (wait in the room), but it clearly intends for you to do the opposite. It's also a pretty funny and self-aware bit of blatant railroading on the developer's part (since, again, it's literally a representation of Toby Fox that's forcing you to proceed, and he's doing it by being REALLY ANNOYING).

[@TheSoulHarvester]

I stayed in that room for 35 minutes, then quit. My only ever playthrough; a weird example of doing exactly what you're told to do to a game-breaking extent, a kind of inverse-subversion. No regrets either. I've heard enough Discourse & seen enough gameplay of Undertale to have played it thru 11 times. Didn't expect anyone to bring up this example tbh.

[@_gremlinboy]

69th like hehe (good comment)

[@supsendchapal4679]

@@TheSoulHarvester The same happens in Far Cry 4, the "bad guy" tells you he has something to do and asks you to not move until he comes back. The game presents it as an overly creepy psychopath so you'll have all the reasons in the world to jump out the window to the rest of the game, but if you just wait 10 minutes he'll come back, excuses himself, and you'll have a cinematic where he flies your character to do what he came there for (instead of killing half the country), and end credits.

[@TheSoulHarvester]

@@supsendchapal4679 This is a true story: I went AFK right after Pagan tells you to wait, due to something happening IRL. I thought I pressed ESC but I guess not, because I came back like 20 minutes later to see the final credits rolling. I was confused as hell, thought maybe I died or something, ended up googling what happened lol. Still not sure who subverted who on that one.

[@MegaZeta]

Interesting how "self-aware" actually doesn't make it funny or any better. It's not improved at all over other "railroading".

[@archvaldor]

Either responding positively or negatively would be to intentionally or unintentionally conform to the wishes of the video creator so the only subversive option is to terminate this comment mid-sen

[@RoboterHund87]

tence. Unfortunately, that action can itself be subverted by completing it. Unless you rem om the middle.

[@WtbgoldBlogspot]

To truly subvert his wishes, we need only type "First."

[@KristofskiKabuki]

To truly truly subvert his wishes, comment about something entirely irrelevant. Or tell him how sexy his beard is.

[@heavenlysenju9948]

If break a law in real life, can I call prison "content"

[@albertcamus9338]

Living a life of crime and a law abiding one are both perfectly good ways of living

[@Satherian]

Reminds me of DMing in D&D - some players try to mess around and throw everything off. However, if they were truly throwing off the game, then they would just be kicked out. So, my players might think they're messing with me, but really, they are playing the game as intended.

[@boiicashthehizzle]

my exact thoughts

[@LimeyLassen]

Sometimes they DO get kicked out, though 😂

[@ceralor]

Our CoC DM says that we make things difficult sometimes but that he loves how goofy we get with it and that it's a fun difficulty. Like inciting a riot amongst indentured servants at a distillery, or snapping thralled folks from their duty by burning down the winery they're working at, or tricking a cop into getting squashed so all three of us get a clean shot at some monster!

[@alpacalorde]

In half-life 2 when the gaurd knocked a can off of a garbage can and tells you to pick it up and throw it away, essentially its supposed to be a tutorial on throwing things and world establishment showing that the guards and police force of this city treat its citizens in a demeaning manner. But if you pick up the can and instead throw it *at the guard* then he runs forward and smacks you with his Baton which might at first make it look like that's not what the game wanted you to do but instead build the world a little bit more.

[@AkumuVids]

You even get an Achievement for doing so!

[@briangonigal3974]

@@AkumuVids You get an achievement for obeying the guard and a different achievement for disobeying him, which pretty much sums up this video's entire point right there.

[@Noelle808]

One of my favorite recent examples is Nier: Automata, which has 26 "endings," but 21 of those endings are ultimately just more elaborate game-overs.

[@susanoo6696]

Noelle Clayton That goddamn fish.............

[@patrickphelan279]

@@susanoo6696 "It was good, though..."

[@PopfulFrost]

Blowing yourself up on the YoRHa Satellite was pure comedy gold.

[@timetuner]

Where does it fit into this that I haven't opened Undertale since Sans asked me to stop in the middle of the boss fight?

[@imveryangryitsnotbutter]

Well you haven't passed the point of no return yet. You can always restart and atone.

[@timetuner]

I'm Very Angry It's Not Butter!! That's not really what I'm pointing at here. The game explicitly offers complete disengagement from it as a valid action within the text. There's no further content to legitimize this form of play, but there is the narrative implication that you are no longer resetting the timeline and things are finally allowed to progress. Until you try to go back and atone...

[@knightsintodreams]

I played the game blind, and during my first pacifist (after killing the woman from the tutorial) playthrough, when I got to the King, I had everyone telling me that letting him kill me will save the world. In a game of choices, it doesn't account for this choice. Upon realizing that I just got a game-over screen, and losing to the king wasn't actually a viable option, i just turned the game off and walked away to retain the integrity of the emotions behind my choice. I remember feeling disappointed that the game didn't understand how a player might want to save their friends and not kill anymore. And didn't account for a CHANGE in morality inspired by in-game events. The rewards for a 99%pacifist playthrough is identical as the reward for a neutral playthrough, where you kill the entire time. It seemed to assume everybody would know the "trick" to Undertale the first time playing.

[@Loof42]

You're in what gameologists refer to as "the dunked on zone"

[@zedre7633]

I suppose that's more of a conflict between narrative and attempting to subvert expectations. The game's tutoriel teaches you that not killing is an option, but the player simply assumes that if you try to do something once and it doesn't work ~ forgiving Toriel ~, then the opposite must be the only possible choice. The game is also *not* designed to be 100% completable in one run. Like many other games, the story doesn't end after your first playthrough, and it even presents the power to restart the timeline and try again as a player-exclusive "superpower", so if you really want to change and not kill things anymore, you could just use your power to reset and do it. That is basically the same as the game changing itself halfway through, but with you being the agent of that change instead of the game itself.

[@Michael-Hammerschmidt]

hen he was talking about intended behavior being all that which the game permits and includes in its content, I was waiting for him to reference when, in the Stanley Parable, you jump out the window thinking you've found an exploit and have escaped the map, until the narrator starts talking; or how, if you turn on cheats in the developers console on steam you are teleported to "The Serious Room".

[@MegaZeta]

great story bro

[@BKSF1]

damn you really clowned his ass, did it take all those 34 months to come up with that zinger

[@TheEvilCheesecake]

@@BKSF1 great story bro

[@Emmariscobar]

@@TheEvilCheesecake damn you really clowned his ass, did it take all those 11 months to come up with that zinger

[@ashleybyrd2015]

@@Emmariscobar great story bro

[@roddydykes7053]

I saw a midnight screening of The Room recently, and it was by far my favorite movie experience of my life. People (myself included) came dressed up as characters from the movie, hundreds of plastic spoons were given out, footballs were tossed around the theater, a guy in the back yelled out perfect responses to the characters wooden lines, chanting of “go-go-go!” during the golden gate bridge pan shots, chanting “do it!” While Tommy fumbles with the pistol: It was all so surreal and an incredible experience in film.

[@HughDingwall]

I think this is particularly true in _Dark Souls_, because part of the conceit of the _Dark Souls_ series in particular (I'm not sure if it's *quite* so true in _Bloodborne_) is that every single playthrough by anyone ever, *including ones where the player gives up* is canonical and part of the overarching story.

[@Mordalon]

While not exactly, I do believe this is the case if you consider the Awaken ending, since it's implied that your character chose to go on being ignorant and that the Night of the Hunt will eventually repeat itself.

[@HughDingwall]

And invasions by other players are canonically part of the story as well, yeah?

[@benjwils]

Hugh Dingwall Ah, but you forgot the key thing that makes it all ok - In lordran, the flow of time is distorted.

[@crestfallensunbro6001]

convoluted*

[@HughDingwall]

Well yeah, and every game in the series is a closed loop because (presumably) cultural Buddhism.

[@woodencoyote4372]

Anyone who has played The Sims series eventually kills off their sims just to see what happens. Sometimes this actually becomes part of the planned gameplay - build a family in a house and then leave them alone to see how long they survive; make a "black widow" sim who seduces NPCS and murders them; get as many ghosts as possible etc. In the original Sims and in the base game of Sims 2, there was no penalty. The game almost rewarded the player. The Grim Reaper was a romance-NPC. Ghosts were colour-coded based on their death. Sims could even wish each other dead. I played Sims 2 for a long time, well after 3 came out. As more expansion packs and patches for 2 came out, the game began to discourage or even prevent murderous behaviour. By the final expansion, I noticed that sims could escape deaths that had been easy before - they weren't as flamable, they could climb out of pools without a ladder, even shove away the hungry cow plant when it tried to eat them. The game was trying to almost retroactively remove content it had created (and which had broad appeal in its player base)

[@yamikuronue]

The creators of Sims have talked about adding the Grim Reaper because they wanted to encourage the player to take risks and experiment by rewarding them for "failure" with content -- an adorable death scene and an exciting new NPC. So yes, 100% intentional. They were worried people would play the game too safe and miss out on interesting content

[@allnaturalfigjam310]

Yeah I've found it a bit weird that a lot of the Sims 3 changes and "fixes" have been doing exactly what you're talking about - making things safer, broader, less weird. But all the most popular mods for the Sims have been putting all the wacky stuff back in, because that's what the die-hard fans liked. My favourite mod for the Sims was always the one that turned on ALL the socialization options for NPCs - without it they'll only use generic friendly ones, but with it they'll start fights, propose marriage, hit people, or have sex in public bathrooms. Much more interesting all round.

[@StuntpilootStef]

My favorite unintended way to play is in Game Dev Tycoon where you could make lots of money by accepting huge contracts from publishers, never delivering and then sending an army of lawyers to litigate the fallout. This was truly unintended because the devs fixed it.

[@LegendLeaguer]

I don't even remember lawyers in Game Dev Tycoon

[@staticpoko]

@@LegendLeaguer It sounds like Software Inc. not Game Dev Tycoon.

[@wearethebomb42]

Damnit! I was watching this entire video planning on bringing up the genocide route in Undertale! But yeah, it’s great! There’s a really great scene about a third of the way through that really highlights your lack of subversiveness. As you’re going along in waterfall, you can walk into the shop of the old turtle and find out that he’s still alive. Because he’s just a shopkeeper, there’s no code, no menu option to allow you to kill him, and he knows that. He taunts you with it, knowing that despite your desire to rebel, you are still bound by the game’s intended play, as everyone in the game is.

[@vaiyt]

The entire ending of the genocide route is about demonstrating that you are just as bound to the game's programming as all the NPCs.

[@NihilTruth]

You saucy son of a gun. I was literally typing something up about Undertale and you called me out as I was doing it!

[@Schwallex]

So you were trying to comment before you even finished watching the video, eh. That's not him being a saucy son of a gun, that's you being a saucy idiot.

[@NihilTruth]

Buddy it was the last couple of seconds in the video ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[@trotskyeraumpicareta4178]

I think he intended you to write it before the video ended so he could call you out as you were doing it.

[@b9brett]

I always got a kick out of Resetii from Animal Crossing.

[@mothcub]

OMG YES RESETTI IS OUR KING

[@ZakDraper]

Interesting example because Resettii exists to discourage a form of play that is common in other games. Resettii was created only because the game developers could not prevent players from shutting off the game without saving. I expect he would not be there if they could have figured out an autosave instead. He's not really intended play, so much as expected-and-accounted-for play.

[@b9brett]

I liked that if you reset it more than once it wasn't the same old message. He changed up his interaction indicating that he was aware. It was a kind of "always watching" anxiety that made me laugh. Of course, as a middle schooler, I wasn't really aware of that at the time.

[@polyp2910]

He scared me when I was a baby boy

[@watcher314159]

I think my favourite case of unintuitive intended play is from Morrowind. The Main Quest runs you through a bunch of prophecy hoops culminating in collecting three MacGuffins needed to get rid of the BBEG's power source. Pretty standard stuff, at this level of abstraction at least. Or you can just kill the holder of the first MacGuffin and loot a broken version of it, get another NPC to fix it, levitate/jump/whatever over the barrier to the BBEG's lair region instead of using the gate, and collect the other two Macguffins from some minibosses as normal. But the really cool thing here is that if you pay *very* close attention to the lore in the in-game books... the the holder of the first MacGuffin actually kind of asks you (specifically, the player, not even necessarily the PC (which in itself has so many lore implications that it's almost literally half of what the lore community talks about)) to take this "back path". Which play is 'more' intended is actually not clear-cut in the slightest. The 'front path' plays nicer with the overall continuity of the series, but the "back path" only messes with continuity if you let it. Tl;dr: Morrowind has a case of seemingly contradictory intended play that is used to serve not just gameplay, nor even mere narrative, but is used to establish a huge component of the setting and its themes. And this single bit of brilliant writing has managed to help fuel debate (often citing some of the most esoteric and disparate stuff...) among fans for a decade and a half now.

[@e.s.r5809]

Also, on a mundane note, that wonderful moment when you run off on the wrong road right at the beginning and a guy falls screaming from the sky right onto you. And then you loot his stuff, which can directly assist you taking the "back path".

[@cat_city2009]

I hated that you couldn't use Kangrenac's tools on the dead god's heart.

[@CryptP]

I mean, it's pretty clear that killing a necessary npc and taking the back path isn't the intended path or even technically canonical within the greater Timeline. When you do this, the game actively tells you "Hey you've fucked up the prophecy and doomed this timeline. You should probably go back but I won't stop you if you don't." It's kind of like Yes Man, if Yes Man were only accessible after totally fucking up your ability to complete the other variations of the main quest

[@watcher314159]

@@CryptP You'd think, but considering Vivec disappeared anyway after the Heart was freed, it doesn't actually mess with the canon timeline. Plus, the Time Dragon is schizophrenic. While there is a notion of Tamriel Actual, every timeline is canon and little details like whether Vivec died or disappeared, or when this happened, get scrubbed from history as the Jills Mend the Minutes. Or, if you insist on timeline consistency, keep in mind Vivec talks about loading a saved game after death in the Sermons. The game truly bent over backwards to ensure both versions of events are equally valid. Even the thread of prophecy being severed is essentially meaningless because Prisoner Heroes exist beyond the sight of the Elder Scrolls.

[@axelanderson2030]

The main quest got pretty boring during the trial where you have to be named nerrevarine by the tribes. Very repetitive and didn't really go anywhere.

[@a8lg6p]

"Remember when the platform was sliding into the fire pit and I said 'Goodbye' and you were like 'no way!' and then I was all 'we pretended we were going to murder you'? That was great!"

[@kitrana]

you know when i played portal the first time i followed the instruction and was confused as to what i was actually supposed to do instead.

[@a8lg6p]

@@kitrana 🤣

[@WhatAboutTheProles]

being rewarded for spending time just staring at a picture of your wife in Silent Hill 2

[@casketscratcher]

WhatAboutTheProles That's like in the first Darkness game where you get an achievement for watching movies with your girlfriend until she falls asleep.

[@luisantonioayora170]

There's also a series of questionable decisions that either move the plot forward or affect the ending of SH2. I love that game.

[@jackgladney]

What about those World of Warcraft players who spread a boss event plague to npcs and crashed a server, or those people who executed a grey goo attack on second life?

[@FoldingIdeas]

The Corrupted Blood incident is actually a good example of the difference, because it wasn't crafted content. NPCs didn't react, which was half the problem as unkillable (or functionally unkillable) NPCs would spread the plague indefinitely.

[@majeflyer]

Aren't the other players that spread the plague creating content, as it changed the behavior of the players?

[@Jackle02]

But as Dan said, that wasn't the developers intent. There wasn't any coding for that to be intended, it happened from hunters dismissing their pets with Corrupted Blood and going into a city and letting them loose.

[@majeflyer]

But, how helpful is "intended play" when players can have playstyles not intended by the designers... Especially In multiplayer. Isnt corrupted blood's repeated introduction into the game world like creating a level on little big planet that forces the player to complete the level using a physics bug? In games like WoW, content is other players and their impacts on the game world and the player. Content is whatever the player finds inside a game. If intended play is anything that gets a response inside the game, then the corrupted blood's repeated introductions to cities is intended play because there are responses to it. Isn't playing against community guidelines in a Moba by abusing team mates a comprehensive enough part of those games in order to call it a general play experience... even if it's not intended play? How can you draw a boundary to talk about the intended play if it doesnt exist in the multiplayer environment? As it was permissible by the game's rules, AND players got content from it during that time, for the moments it existed in the game. Sure the developers eventually rectified the intended play experience of the corrupted blood not being able to leave the raid. "The game" created during that window is not "just a bug", but an intended play experience that wasn't intended by the developers, but by players who wanted to be amateur bioterrorists.

[@vonhendrik]

majeflyer I think Dan is drawing the the distinction for intended play as what the developers willing included and not so much something that arises from the mechanics of the game. Skyrim is a good example of this, with scripted negative repercussions arising from your divergant actions. Kill someone or steal something and there are penalties placed on you. But what about when you place a basket over a shop keeper's head and proceed to rob them blind, without any consequences. It's hard to argue that the developers INTENDED you to do that. It's only a side effect of the base mechanics of the game, a glitch or bug. It's doesn't mean that's not a completely legitimate player option, it's just not what Todd Howard imagined you would or even could do as a player. Not something he intended to do.

[@SimsMusicals]

I always love how in Assassin's Creed there is this fairly straightforward morality tale of "only kill when it prevents evil" and then it blatantly encourages you to shove guards of rooftops to get to all the viewpoints. So much for engaging questions about good and evil, I need to get me a view to die for.

[@seraphonica]

6:50 "This is because even a negative reaction, even the game pushing back against misbehavior, is content." Somewhere, somewhen, there's a babysitter yelling "PREACH!" at their monitor.

[@afowler13]

its me i’m that babysitter

[@knightsintodreams]

So I thought of this during your last video, is Breath of the Wild able to avoid dissonance? The new zelda game starts you off by telling you to save zelda and hyrule, and then lets the player have free reign over what they want to do next. Here's the catch: You have amnesia. So while you're scaling mountains and talking to villagers, you collect pieces of your memories scattered across the country. The more you explore, the more you AND link learn the story and grow to know the princess. Suddenly, some vague command transform into a gnawing guilt that yes, these treasure chests are fun, but isn't there something you should really be doing? By the time Link has collected the last memory, it's very likely that the Player has exhausted nearly everything there is to do in the game, and is ready to go and beat the final boss. My point is that the gameplay is designed to seemingly account for why the hero is catching lizards instead of saving the kingdom: he doesn't remember the kingdom he's saving. As you and Link learn, the more you WANT to save the world.

[@Yewro2000]

I'll would argue that the whole game it self was Link becoming the chosen hero. It's not until complete all the shrines that you get the wild set, the traditional outfit of "Zelda." If you really think about it Link being chosen before the story started seemed artificial. (The blue tunic, Zelda having trouble with her powers and the sword choosing the hero) I guess what I'm saying is that narratively, I don't see BotW a "Zelda" adventure. It's a prequel to one. Sidenote: I beat there final boss and I still dick around Hyrule

[@mojolotz]

The overarching theme of botw is clearly to jumpglitch out of the first cave, rollglitch into the first few trials, utterly demolishing them, finishing the intro quest and then jumpattack glitch yourself at supersonic speeds towards the endboss before collecting and subsequently thowing half the castle at the mythic archvillain of the game universe and lastly easily defeating it by shooting a bunch of glowy disks and then glitching over the endcredits.

[@jon9828]

@@mojolotz kzbin.info/www/bejne/Z6DVZIx_gdplbq8 old comment. But it isn't complete without this link (pun not intended, but it's still content soooooo... you can experience it anyway... Uhhhh... Shit) That video is an animated but largely correct representation of what a botw speedrun looks like when it was posted (with one or two cheeky edits for a laugh) It's good stuff.

[@emiliotap]

You know, the most refreshing thing about this channel is to hear someone talking in an intellectual and calm manner. It's a rare art even among other informative channels.

[@gameworkerty]

purevil89 you might like Errant Signal

[@agleth6018]

Games wise there's actually quite a few channels out there that do, like Errant Signal (as Chemtrail Dreams mentioned), Mark Brown, Innuendo Studios, Raycevick, Turbo Button, Writing on Games, and Games as Literature. Or there's folks like Noah Caldwell-Gervais and Joseph Anderson if you're looking for longer form content (typically an hour or (often ;) ) more). And even that's really just scratching the surface, there's a lot of great channels out there that just focus on a single game or two, or mix the thoughtful commentary with a fair bit of humour like Cool Ghosts and hbomberguy, or traditional reviews like Super Bunnyhop. KZbin doesn't always make them easy to find, but they're out there.

[@IguitarVreakI]

Matthewmatosis! So good!

[@carysbebard3690]

Nostalgia chick's recent video essay serieses also have this about film analysis in spades :)

[@rolfs2165]

And then you find his twitter ... don't go there.

[@ScottJohnHarrison]

My favourite Intended play moment is "Go Outside" Achievement for Stanley Parable. I am currently 3.75 years in my 5 year run of the "Go Outside" Achievement...and I am expecting about a month before I get around to completing it that I will be seeing news stories of "The Stanley Parable has had a patch released with new dialogue."

[@chroma.z]

it's been 4 years... I need to know if you completed this

[@printaboy]

Did you?!

[@user-fn8tq2wg2e]

"To tell the participant to do one thing while expecting them to do another" immediately makes me think of A Series of Unfortunate Events.

[@Tuckerscreator]

This video is ordering me to respond with a favorite disobedient decision in a game. However, I am choosing to write something else, thereby disobeying the contract laid before me. This counter decision will lead to further decision opportunities, and be responded to with likes and comments. Said responses become content that is rewarding me for my disobedience, and justifying my act as an alternative and equally valid path. KZbin is a higher level of game.

[@bensnap1834]

well played...

[@Uhshawdude]

Tuckerscreator But the fact that such an act is possible shows that the creators of KZbin intended for you to disobey, or they wouldn't have given you the ability to.

[@mozata6838]

...So you liked the genocide route in Undertale, then.

[@ahva2280]

Such is life.

[@jonathandorozowsky4005]

You sir, are worse than Hitler. /end_youtube_comment_thread.exe

[@Tuckerscreator]

I remember having a conversation related to this topic once. Them: "Is it possible to create a game so interactive that any wrongdoing the player commits is solely their own fault and not the developer's?" Me: "To be honest, we're no closer to answering this about games, when we've spent millennia still trying to answer it about God."

[@JustAndre92]

The people of two years ago failed in giving this seven upvotes and not seven hundred.

[@crazycreeper888]

I know this comment is two years old, but there is an answer to that question: Tabletop role-playing games, like D&D. In the campaign I just finished DMing, my players messed up so bad that the prewritten conclusion failed to account for the decisions and actions they took.

[@keyboardstalker4784]

Minecraft?

[@geoffallan5331]

@@crazycreeper888 Much like your comment, I know mine comes with time delay.... The problem is can you be sure that the players' "messing up" is solely their own fault? Can you be sure that your own interpretation of their actions, the rules of the game and the world didn't contribute to the player actions and their consequences? After all, they took the decisions based on the information you offered. What you perceive as wrongdoing may have been a perfectly logical and reasonable decision from outside given the information they were provided with and the way it was presented. I've certainly DM'd games where they players focused on a some irrelevant (to me) aspect of the game that I made as a passing comment... but by me making the comment as DM I allowed them consider the point important.... if I'd never mentioned it their focus would have been elsewhere. Even if you consider yourself as one of the players, the writers of the prewritten adventure certainly had to communicate their vision to you... which in turn may only have been as efficient as you conveying your vision to the players.

[@crazycreeper888]

@@geoffallan5331 ​Ooh, I like your comment, very thought-provoking. I'll give an example that I believe to be completely their fault, or at least one player's fault. There was a deadly dragon in the local area. I'm paraphrasing, but don't let that make you think I was any less direct to them, I used a lot of the same vocabulary; NPC: "There's a dragon over yonder. It's very powerful, will notice you, and can easily kill you." Fighter: "Thanks for the warning. We will avoid that area." Rouge: "Imma sneak up on it." Needless to say, it noticed the Rogue despite the warning.

[@foragegrasspause2gotoloop961]

I recall in "shadowun", not only do certain npc's not die when you shoot at them, but you actually *lose* kama (exp points) if you continue to shoot at them As a little kid playing "a link to the past", I sat in the house for like 20 minutes because dad said to stay there

[@robotfencer]

I feel like it's important to note, as far as authorial intent goes, that "content" for doing something that the game "doesn't want you to" is sometimes added because in playtesting, players did it and it broke the game, or they focussed on it too much even though it didn't matter. The game literally did not want players doing it, and the only reason developers ultimately added a consequence for it was to move players *away* from doing it.

[@Contla3]

That last sentence. You got me good Dan.

[@LetsReadSFF]

Buried in Time (a Myst like game) has the player time travel to a derelict space station where all hands perished. Nobody should be alive, but when the player alive a single booming voice continually demands that you leave the station. When playing I would flee the station for other objectives because I was fully terrified of even the possibility of the unknown around the corner. Months later, puzzling through the level it is revealed that the voices are a timid AI who is simply trying to scare the player off because they are the unknown intruder. The majority of the game cannot be played unless the player overcomes this obstacle.

[@watchm4ker]

You're forgetting what the actual "mistake" is, in that sequence: You shouldn't be interacting with Arthur *at all.* That would have been a *deadly* mistake in the original Journeyman Project, but here? Arthur is not only necessary to progress the plot here, but becomes Gage's best friend... When he can remember the poor guy, that is.

[@TheManofThings777]

In Hollow Knight there's a section called the Colosseum of Fools which was (for me) the toughest part of the game. It's a sequence of fights that get tougher with each new enemy, and ultimately don't contribute much to the story. Of course, at the end of it, you get an achievement called "Fool". Essentially asking you why you wasted your time on that, even though you could.

[@TheJols]

That was my favorite part of the game. I love that Hollow Knight will hide huge chunks of content like that. Even though I bet most people found the Colosseum, it was such a fun Discovery because I was playing the main story then the detour kept me there for like 6 hours.

[@Olivman7]

Alright, let's go darker. In Hollow Knight, there's a section called "the House of Pleasure" where the only thing left is the ghost of an opera singer. She's a tiny bit more self-aware than other ghosts in the game, and has a beautiful and haunting singing voice. There's no interaction as far I know, you can just drop by and listen to her sing (especially since that house is one of the shortest routes to the Colosseum). The first thing I did after meeting her was attack her with the dream nail, which immediately dissolved her. I did that because I'd gotten into the habit of using the dream nail on everything (it lets you start some boss fights and read the thoughts of NPCs), and I was curious what it would do. I'm pretty sure the game never, ever acknowledges that action in any way except by letting it happen. It haunted me for the rest of my playthrough. Every time I would go near that house, I'd avoid going in it, and feel shame about what I did in there. It actually brought to mind real-life actions I'm genuinely ashamed of. Oh how I wish the game would let me go back to a previous save where I didn't accidentally murder that opera singer.

[@rjwalker4622]

In case anyone is wondering, those "midnight screenings of The Room" are called Shadow Casts, originally popularized by The Rocky Horror Picture Show. Shadow Casts typically feature actors or people standing in front of the movie screen acting out parts from the movie, or instructing the audience on what to do and how to react. In this way, the interactive elements of theatre combine with the experience of watching a film. It's a lot of fun and I wish there was more of it.

[@litcrit1624]

Who knew that DARK SOULS was the lost grandchild of Sesame Street's 1971 "The Monster at the End of This Book"? Perhaps Grover (or helmeted unheroic Super Grover) is our crestfallen warrior?

[@nathanhall9345]

Would play the crap out of Sesame Street by From.

[@Sleepy12ftPanda]

Wouldn't that mean you'd eventually face off against Bertstien and Smernie?

[@HughDingwall]

Killing Snuffleupagus always chokes me up a little...

[@nathanhall9345]

I'd be disappointed if you didn't. Naturally, Oscar the Grouch is Havel.

[@bethanybone3163]

OOOH!! Fantastic example! I remember, as a very little child, being super scared as my mother read me that book for the first time!

[@inevitabletraitor]

One of my favorite moments of disobeying orders from a game is in MGS2: Sons of Liberty when the Colonel is glitching out, telling me to turn off the console.

[@watchm4ker]

A reference to the original Metal Gear, when Big Boss orders you to *turn the MSX off* near the end of the game.

[@ELMINECRAFTERO96]

Correct me here if I'm wrong but as I see it Dark Souls does not only tell you "Hey don't kill these guys" but it also removes complete storilines if you do, contrary to what you said at 5:40. Take the great and kind Lautrec for instance: If you kill him as soon as you see him you cannot go and kill him in anor londo later on. Killing all Dark Souls NPC's gives you exactly 0 advantge, progress or secondary missions except for, obviously, NPC's that are bosses like Nito. What is actually true is that you can kill some, most I would say, of the NPC's to get their equipment but that's all up to you, you decide if you want to sacrifice someone important to get equiment and literally nothing more.

[@Vandalgia]

First time i've played Dark Souls, I actually killed Solaire because I want his equipment. Lmao.

[@MegaZeta]

You're wrong here. Consider yourself corrected.

[@latrodectusmactans7592]

I think you’re misinterpreting his point. There is unique content behind killing all the NPCs: Items, dialogue, NPC fights. So if someone hypothetically wants to experience ALL the content in the game, they need to kill every NPC at least once. Just like how a Portal player who wants to experience every part of that game would follow Glados’ commands to their own death, just to hear the dialogue. The inclusion of unique content behind the “wrong” option means it’s very much something the developers expects and allows people to do.

[@abaxmanjr]

@oohanalligator my conniption was that this video said that certain bosses were locked behind killing every npc. What boss is this because I've never seen or heard of them. I get getting their death lines and stuff but thats hardly noteworthy.

[@adamcomstock6781]

@@abaxmanjr Gwyndolin's boss fight is locked behind killing the illusion of Gwynevere. I guess you can also betray his pact once you get the dark moon seance ring, but either way is disobeying or killing an npc that the game sets up as an "ally"

[@LokiDuck]

One of my favorite games is Papers, Please partly because there are 20 endings, though most of the endings are bad one because you have fucked up in someway. I know this because the very first ending I got was being arrested as a traitor to the state because I thought it would be a smart idea to tell my boss about the weird code cypher i had gotten from the rebels and thought the government should know about it and I think that's great. The number of different ends adds to the replay value, but also shows that Lucas Pope was aware that people might want to play the game in different ways or do stupid shit like I did. The main point of the story is that either you work as a loyalist lapdog in order for your family to survive or you help the rebels take over, but you can also be somewhere in between. Plus there are the country coins that basically reward you for thinking outside the box a bit.

[@justvashu]

The ending of that damn prince of Persia reboot game. The game forces you to do something even if you don't want to. I just jumped off a cliff and turned the game off. It's my ending and I'm sticking with it.

[@YamiKyougi13]

I find so few people that have played that game and I am so glad to hear about it. I don't blame you, after I got to that point I froze for like 10 minutes trying to get around it.

[@justvashu]

MissingDigit_UnOfficial the thing is that I hated that ending so much it made me like the game more, at least it made me never forget about it.

[@YamiKyougi13]

justvashu that's really interesting. I am just glad it made you enjoy it more. while this isn't an amazing game overall, the buddy cop dynamic of the game I loved. something I haven't seen done well again until Brothers: a Tale of Two Sons

[@yitz7805]

May I ask what it was the game forces on you? I'm not gonna play it (probably), so I don't care about spoilers.

[@justvashu]

Yitzi Litt sure. *SPOILERS* You play the whole game with a companion that slowly becomes a part of you. Everything you do is made better by her presence and the prince grows from a jerk to kind of loving her. She is a very independent character that believes in doing the right thing for her kingdom. In this case sealing the evil that will consume the world. After the final battle you discover that the evil was released by the king of the land in order to revive her dead daughter (Your companion) and sealing him kills her. This is all revealed in a cut scene and then the game gives you the control back. The thing is you can only do one thing. Release the evil once again against your companion's wishes and walk away carrying while she asks you why you did it. You don't have a choice, that is the only option and you have to play it. It's not a cut scene.

[@kapgun8000]

I always liked what happened if you listen to Pagan Min at the beginning of Farcry 4 and just wait for him to come back.

[@tychoazrephet3794]

Same, I just typed a needlessly long comment about that. xD

[@1WEareBUFO1]

Tycho Azrephet u did, sir... u did

[@wrenbeck3370]

I like how Disco Elysium makes it so that winning some skill checks, you end up with a negative outcome (the only non-spoiler one that I can think of right now is when you have to throw a ball when playing a game of pétanque with some old men; if you succeed, you end up throwing the ball into the ocean and you have to go on a quest to find a replacement ball, but if you fail, you perform a perfect throw and the old men are friendlier towards you).

[@therisingtithes]

I've been watching this video over and over, and it reminds me of one of the best critiques of how people defend ~subversive~ games and their play on the merit of merely illustrating the gamut of bad behaviour without tacitly endorsing or fetishizing said behaviour: "Why are there so many games where you can kill prostitutes, but in almost none of those games you can kill children?"

[@PopfulFrost]

Bioshock would have a thing or two to say about that. XD

[@hotdog782]

The 21 joke endings in NieR: Automata got a good laugh outta me after the first 5 made me cry like a squealing banshee.

[@Stephen-Fox]

The disobey options in the free, online, game Loved - an abstract, free, platformer about domestic abuse that's playable in browser is probably my favourite, since the ability to disobey what the game is telling you to do and that's part of intended play plays into the text really well with that one.

[@BravoSquid]

One of my favorite examples of intended disobedience: In Final Fantasy XIV there are random group quests that pop up in the world for 15 minutes at a time called FATEs. Usually the goal is to kill a bunch of enwmies or a single very strong enemy. Sometimes though, they want you to gather a bunch of a specific item in an area and turn it into a nearby NPC. If you speak to the NPC while you have any amount of the item in your inventory you'll be prompted to hand it over. There is pretty much no reason to decline (the items are otherwise worthless), but you can. If you do, it always prompts some (usually humorous) dialogue from the NPC. I don't know why, but it's one of my favorite little details about the game.

[@Sorenzo]

The hard part of playing Dark Souls, for me, was to overcome the social contract to let me even consider whether the NPC's were not on my side. I failed.

[@conkshellthegeek7]

I'm sorry to hear your cough isn't getting better, Dan. Maybe it'd help if you drank an entire bottle of cough syrup.

[@benjaminp.771]

Maybe once Suicide Squad 2 comes out

[@asimpledevice]

dan, just drink dayquil and nyquil at the same time. then you will see the future

[@micab7660]

conkshellthegeek7 estus flask.

[@OldOnesBDO]

Done that. Trip was okay, but god damn my bathroom smelled like rotting bodies.

[@princealmighty5391]

conkshellthegeek7 u suck

[@Duckspeak]

"...Now put it, in the trash can." That one will always be my favorite. Thanks for the insightful video!

[@bridgetpetras9986]

This has probably been said before by other commenters, especially because you talk about The Stanley Parable in the video, but there's this great moment in The Beginner's Guide where you can choose to explore an area, and the narrator tells you "I know it's tempting, but there's really nothing back here." And there isn't anything vastly interesting or insightful, but if you stand in a certain place, you can hear whispers. Looking back, after finding out the stuff at the end, it speaks so well to the narrator's person and what he considered important. It's subtle, but I love it.

[@Cheesus333]

Red Dead Redemption actually has what I'd consider a very interesting example of this that plays really well into the game's overall story and themes [SPOILERS FOLLOWING] At the end of the game, once John Marston's job is done and his duties are fulfilled, he's permitted to return to his ranch with his family and live out the arcadian dream he's apparently earned for himself through - as the title implies - his 'redemption.' The missions turn from the wholesale slaughter of bandits to teaching your son how to hunt, or scaring the crows away from the farm, and it seems for a little while that the worst of John's days really are behind him. However, the very last mission sees his employers return to tie off the loose end he represents, and so he has to sacrifice himself to ensure his family gets the peaceful life he fought so hard to earn. Doing this the first time, it's a gut-wrenchingly brutal and emotional finale to a great story. However, playing the game a second time turns it into something else. Knowing what was coming, I tried to resist John's fate by doing every mission up to the last one, and then just refusing to do it, leaving him in a kind of limbo within the story. But doing that turns the world stagnant. When you already know what's supposed to happen, you feel the game pushing you towards that inevitability, and everything else is just a diversion while you hold off the end for as long as possible. For the record, this is very different from a game like Zelda or Fallout New Vegas where you avoid the last mission because it ends the game; you can play after the credits just fine, though you'll be playing as John's son - not John. But no-one wants that, either because they hate Jack or because they don't want the character they love so much to die at all, so they suspend the fantasy. Eventually, though, 'The Last Enemy That Shall Be Destroyed' (as the suicide mission calls itself) is just that - the last thing there is to do. There's no 100% completion without it, and there's no resolution to John's story either. Just like the consequences of John's actions, and the attractive lie of redemption itself, you can only put it off for so long before it catches up to you. I love Red Dead Redemption, and I love its ending, as much as it breaks my heart every time. But the way that last mission functions in relation to the game's themes always struck me as extraordinary.

[@Twizinator]

It's not the last thing there is to do. Well, it is the last thing for JOHN to do. When the player takes over as adult Jack, you eventually get an opportunity to track down Ross (the one responsible for John's death). You duel him and win, killing him, getting revenge and tying up the last loose end. It's been ages since I played RDR, so my memory might be wrong, but the fascinating thing to me was that I never got an explicit mission to duel and gun down Ross. It wasn't a titled mission that the game aggressively steered you towards, but something that you - the player and/or Jack - could seek as someone wanting closure/revenge.

[@royalfool3600]

Dude

[@Molemitts]

Speaking of the genocide route in Undertale *SPOILERS*. I found it extremely interesting how giving up is an intentional design of that part. First through the tedium of needing to grind out every last enemy and also through the heightened challenge of bosses like Sans and Undyne the game is cluing you in on the fact that maybe this is a bad idea. Although it's very possible to get past that and complete the run. The game repeatedly tells you to give up and stop playing and after your 50th time dying to Sans you just might take that advice. Also, I think if it detects recording software while you're playing Flowey will comment on those who are too cowardly to fulfil the route themself and have to watch someone else do it, lmao. Dark Souls also did the "giving up as an intended action of the game" thing. Obviously, it is a challenging game and not everyone is going to be able to finish it. This is reflected in its lore with the state of being hollowed. Humans with the curse of the undead will eventually go hollow if they no longer have a drive left in them, i.e. die to those stupid dogs in the Capra Demon fight every time and I- In terms of the ludonarrative in general or whatever, both Dark Souls and Undertale attempt to explain many of the mechanics in their story with aspects like hollowing or determination respectively. Something I greatly appreciate about both.

[@beingmegucaissuffering.5326]

This is an ultra late reply, but to add to your point about Undertale and how it handles player choice, the very end of the Genocide route is really interesting. You're presented with a choice about whether or not to go through with totally deleting the world of the game, but no matter what you choose, the deletion happens anyway. However, the player does have the third choice at that point, even if it's not blatantly acknowledged by the game, which is to just flat-out turn it off. It's pretty interesting, really.

[@lemonice]

Sans knows what you went through to get to that fight, so when you want to give it up and spare him, he won't let you. you already killed the whole undergrounf

[@FiggityJones]

"...and why is it the genocide route in Undertale?" XD love that ending, and great video as a whole too ^_^

[@INTPTT]

In Skyrim's Dark Brotherhood questline, Astrid asks you to kill (at least) one of three NPCs. You're locked in a shack, and she won't give you the key until you do. But you can kill her, take the key from her body, and free the NPCs. Then there's a quest where you destroy the Dark Brotherhood instead of joining.

[@akmonra]

I love the Stanley Parable. Honestly, it's best if you start "playing" the game without any clue what's expected or what to expect.

[@onedeadsaint]

I find when I try to be subversive in games, which is pretty much always, I run into a lot of game overs and such. game mission: help this npc-me: nah, I'll just leave the area Oh and game over reset mission. exploring the games open areas Oh you need to turn around because this is part of the level we don't want you at , but that other area in the level that looks similar is ok to explore. honestly I wish more games did a time limit to missions (and maybe not show the time limit). hey you need to save this npc; well you decided to do something else and now they're dead. I'm guessing game devs don't do this very often cause that would probably take to much effort to account for more branching narratives.

[@eladnarra]

Human Revolution has something like that. I thought it was interesting, because it ran counter to the way I play other games (talk to everyone and look at everything before moving on). For once the urgency in a mission was real, and dawdling had consequences.

[@RoboterHund87]

onedeadsaint On the subject of time limits: the real problem is that, except self-contained time-critical events, they are too unpleasant for most players. Unless it's an inherently time-critical game like an RTS, duh.

[@SolarFlorad]

I know it's been like 6 months since you commented this but I feel it's relevant enough. A while back Shigeru Miyamoto did an interview where he explained that Nintendo doesn't make difficult games anymore because people like winning and they want to sell games that people like. Understanding that video games are a business has helped me look at design decisions and see that sometimes their are choices there that are designed to just make me "feel" like I'm achieving something when I'm really not. Case in point, look at Mario. A victory jingle for every moon. Game companies want you to feel good, and when you subvert that then they will try and stop you and lead you back.

[@Stratelier]

I agree, I believe that an RPG engine should record *all* event flags in the form of timestamps. Not only would this be useful statistics for developer analysis (like the "Hero's Path" in Breath of the Wild, originally a dev tool), but it also enables quests to judge what level of urgency the player *actually* gave it. ...To be clear, not EVERY quest should hinge on the player being prompt, but just have a few minor ones scattered here and there where the game is secretly watching. For example: Say an NPC gives you a standard rescue quest for a friend who disappeared on a dungeon dive. But depending on how quickly you actually find the missing person, the outcome may vary: - If you're quick enough, you find them inconvenienced but in reasonable condition, and they may even help you in return (i.e. best quest rewards). - If you took a little too long, maybe you find them alive but injured. Maybe you have to heal them before they will follow you out. You get a standard quest reward as thanks. - If you took even longer, you find them dead (but their body reasonably intact). You can only return to the quest giver and explain what happened; they're obviously devastated, but at least give you some small compensation (i.e. poor quest rewards) for putting their mind at ease. - If you took forever, you find nothing but dessicated remains. The quest giver (probably) doesn't blame you, but you get no reward.

[@MontyBeda]

Just one game to make you happy. Kingdom Come: Deliverance. It is not perfect but so many quests will just move on without you and make the world really feel alive and not waiting for you.

[@executiveassistantkettleshiner]

After an ending like that, your next video had better be about the genocide route in Undertale. Edit : That said I strongly disagree with you when you say that killing friendly npcs in Dark Souls opens up anything. On the contrary, it shuts down storylines entirely. If you kill Lautrec of Carim early, you get a nice ring, sure, but you also lose access to the storyline where he kills the firekeeper, and you go after him for revenge, killing this ganker asshole in his own world, obtaining his armor set after O&S in yours, and restoring the firekeeper to life, who regains her ability to speak. Every storyline is like this. There certainly isn't a single boss you unlock by murdering a friendly npc :x

[@deliciousdishes4531]

Well I can think of one storyline where killing an npc does reward you with more content/information. But overall, yeah I wondered why he said that as well. There really isn't much to killing npcs in the game (except for getting some humanity) outside of black phantom invasions.

[@polyp2910]

Also, if you do Solaire's quest exactly right, he is canonically another chosen undead, as he too fights Gwyn. He's your only true equal after you return a favor to him, even if you didn't realize what the sunlight maggot was.

[@WetSaucySlommy]

I guess technically Priscilla would be a boss that results from attacking a friendly npc

[@shane2863]

While your overall point is still intact..I thought I would point out that you are incredibly misinformed of the results that come from killing friendly NPC's in dark souls. There is no single NPC you can kill that gives you access to areas you wouldn't otherwise have access to. You can collect their gear in most cases..but again...90% of the npcs will go hollow and you'll fight them anyways or they die at their own volition. IF you DO kill all friendly npcs...not only do you not get any extra access to the world..but you will end their quest line thus limiting your rewards. It's also counted as "sin" and the higher your sin is the more prioritized you are far invasions as long as you're within soul level. So it's a very clear example of the game punishing you for acting hostile towards characters that aren't hostile towards you. There are only 2 npcs you benefit from killing early in the entire game. Hate to be "that guy" but I had to point that out. Otherwise a great video.

[@followeder666]

I think his intention was to talk about killing Gwynivere for dark Anor Londo/ Gwyndolin boss. But I agree that’s hardly a “new dungeon”.

[@themambawarrior2290]

@@followeder666 You don't even need to kill Gwynevere to fight Gwyndolin, since you can get the Darkmoon Seance Ring from the Catacombs and use it to access the Blades of the Darkmoon Covenant and fight Gwyndolin without making Anor Londo dark.

[@IRoIN100]

Was looking for this comment

[@monotas2000]

even bad content or punishment still counts as intended play, since they programmed those consequences

[@MateusAntonioBittencourt]

Watch the video on Ludonarrative dissonance and this video again... then re-read your comment. The fact is that killing NPC is content. Everything the game developers put in the game is content and a choice. You can't say "I put this option in there, but I don't want anybody to use". A game is a collection of things game developers put in to it, and everything is done on purpose. Get it?

[@Andres5045]

Chickens on zelda punish you for misbehave

[@Nick0Kyuubi0Narion]

this is the best comment

[@1WEareBUFO1]

I can only hear Rolf from Ed Edd and eddy when I read this

[@vorpal997]

Except Twilight Princess when you are control the chicken

[@SophistFCD]

A mechanism for punishing misbehavior means that misbehavior was an intended option.

[@MasterOfGalaxies77]

The issue with looking at intended play through this lens is that believing that creating content cannot be punishment is overall limiting on what stories games can and can't tell and posits that certain stories fail narratively simply because of the gameplay disconnect. The problem with this is that exploring the consequences of evil actions by allowing and punishing them is stronger narratively than simply saying "don't do it" and then not letting you do it. Lord of the Flies would be a boring and bad book if Piggy told everyone to work together in a society then everyone believed he knew best and didn't try to push their boundaries. Games that "encourage" genocide by programming content that allows for it, like Undertale's infamous genocide route, are better explorations of and condemnations of performing evil acts than similar games that simply disallow evil even if whiners claim "the coolest boss is at the end of the evil route, of course I'm gonna be evil." The mere existence of content is not reward for the player in a game. It is what is contained in that content that makes a player feel good or bad, and that can thusly be reward or punishment.

[@rmsgrey]

Yeah, I feel that "intended play" is the wrong label here - the term "expected play" (or "predicted play") seems like a much better fit. The concept is worth having a label for; just not the one used in this video.

[@movelea]

I know it's been 2 years, but thank you for saying this.

[@TheSoulHarvester]

whoosh

[@watchm4ker]

The problem there is you risk it becoming a "Do Not Do This Cool Thing". Fighting Sans *is* a reward, just as much as fighting the God of Hyperdeath. The equivalent route in Deltarune, "Snowgrave", does try to make it more explicitly uncomfortable and unpleasant... But for someone that enjoys depictions of cruelty and abuse, that's a plus in their book. Further? It's a legitimate path to the end. It is just as valid an option as any other.

[@edg4rallanbro753]

I feel like "reward" is being used with two meanings here, both that the player is simply given new content for trying a new thing, and that the game *endorses* this type of play in moral terms. Undertale doesn't endorse mass murder (i think, i havent played it) but it allows you to do it, dedicating a lot of time and resources into the consequences of mass murder. In this same way, I believe "punishment" is being used with two meanings, the game both says they don't like this behavior that they are allowing you to do, and they are mechanically not allowing or disadvantaging this behavior. But over all, I think "intended play" is moving towards something. To have a full read of a game, you need to consider if you play like the game seemingly wants you to play, and how the game responds if you go off the rails, and also what the limits of "off the rails" is.

[@logangraham3689]

The joke endings in NieR Automata. Especially the ones you get for running away from the plot.

[@Vaith]

holy mackerel

[@WereInHell]

My favourite was uninstalling my OS

[@blackshirts_and_breads]

@@WereInHell o

[@godspeedhero3671]

My favorite Intended Play counter narrative action was joining the OPPOSING assassin faction in TES III: Morrowind. It was super rewarding to find out that you actually had a choice to choose EITHER of the two factions Morag Tong or Dark Brotherhood.

[@theJellyjoker]

Fallout 4 "Go find your kidnapped infant son!" Me: spend 500+ hours building Sanctuary into an impregnable self-sufficient fortress

[@thecurseofkevin]

In Final fantasy 8 (the greatest ff game) there's a part where the main character is being tortured for information he doesn't have. The obvious solution is to lie but if you keep telling the truth/refuse to answer he gets tortured to death. I remember that as a kid that blew my tiny mind AND taught me two important lessons. Torture doesn't work and sometimes you have to lie to survive.

[@mechtroidProductions]

I really hope you released this on the 5th anniversary of Spec Ops: The Line on purpose, because that game is created entirely on this concept and you didn't even mention it. The game itself does NOT want you to play it, but allows for you to anyways, condemning you the entire way.

[@unslept_em]

postmodern books also act in a similar way, e.g. house of leaves explicitly saying 'this [book] is not for you.'

[@Aceedius]

To plug another good analysis channel, Raycevick put out an indepth retrospective of Spec Ops just a few days ago. He acknowledges the "game wants you to not play it" reading, but concludes that the condemnation (including the loading screen insults) is meant for Walker even more than the player. By his interpretation, the game doesn't want you to feel guilty for Walker's actions, but rather reflect on how his attitude mirrors yours as a player of hero fantasies. It's a really well put together video that explains the point better than I can, check it out if you're curious.

[@casketscratcher]

Emma House of Leaves is a great example of this. The whole time the second (third?) narrator is getting more and more paranoid as he reads about the House and then you as a reader experience the same reactions to the horror the more YOU read about the House. It's like the damn book keeps warning you that there will be horror!

[@O52401]

Spec Ops was painfully pretentious in hindsight. I mean, really devs, you give me no choice at one point in your game, and then you try to guilt trip me for deciding to continue playing? If there had been an actual choice at that point in the game, I would understand the attitude towards the player, but when the only choice is proceed or put down the game, I'm gonna proceed, because I spent money on this experience. After all, at that point, it's not my choice, it's the main character's. Guilt tripping a player for, well, playing a game is just a thick-headed thing to do.

[@SgtKaneGunlock]

mechtroidProductions the choice is continuing to play it after Willie Pete

Link talking to people while standing on a table in Breath of the Wild.

[@Efreeti]

I feel you're misrepresenting the advantage of "killing all NPCs" in Dark Souls.

[@zhnigo]

Misrepresenting, more like straight up lying.

[@DasBienchenThea]

Thank you! Looked for a comment like this.. i have about 300 hours in ds and NEVER heard any of that! New Bosses?! I mean.. excuse me? Somebody better tell vaati about this "new bosses"..

[@CoopsMcPoops]

I mean. Technically he’s not wrong. But the only NPC death that affects gameplay in any meaningful way is killing gwynevere to unlock the Gwyndolin fight

[@collegsucks]

@@CoopsMcPoops You can unlock the Gwondolin fight without killing Gwynevere. He's wrong.

[@DasBienchenThea]

@@CoopsMcPoops i sound a lot more toxic as intended (sry for that) but as David mentioned you can fight gwyndolin without killing gwynevere if you find the dark seance ring, if i remember correctly.. but i have more an issue with his presentation, and encourangement to kill npcs to get more content and unlock more regions and Bosses, even thou its completly incorrect.. i dont care if he played the game or not, but his research was really poorly done.

[@rr3dd]

When you're told not to touch anything in "Please, Don't Touch Anything"

[@FoldingIdeas]

Please Don't Touch Anything perhaps even more than The Stanley Parable, is a game rooted in intentional disobedience.

[@MouseGoat]

But this stil doesn't make it right. it's actually a lot like the "if she did not want to get reped, she sould not have been poorly dressed in a bad neighborhood" kind of argument, in that that your now just justifying wrongdoings by saying it was "available" and therefore you can't be blamed for doing it. But how much do we really owe the games we buy. It's not like i get to use and se the code the game runs on, or the engin it use. so what parts of the game have i paid for? Maybe i should make a game were i tell you that all you pay for is the "right way to play the game" and in that case, you killing all the npc and getting to the hitten content would be violation of the game. Just to ask the point of where our own responsibility start.

[@kirbwarriork3371]

@@MouseGoat I think that's part of the point. Some actions AREN'T right. I found it great in Link's Awakening that you can straight up steal from the store, then everyone replaces your name with THIEF and next time you go to the store the shopkeeper kills you. I'm being punished, and permanently, for something that everyone, even implicitly Link, thinks is wrong. But the programmers had to put all of that in to allow me to even try it. It's like how some games (like Dragon's Lair) have tons of "bad" content to the point that it's almost the reason you play the game. Some games have tons of different endings. Others have tons of different game over sequences. But you're not supposed to die, you're supposed to save the princess!

[@Corrodias]

@@MouseGoat I don't think I understand the question. What parts have you paid for? All of them. Disobedience isn't a sin, neither to real-life authority nor to a video game's narrator. Do what you want in the game; I don't think anyone has suggested you should do otherwise. This video is a followup to one about ludonarrative dissonance, talking about game mechanics that don't communicate the same ideas as the story, and in fact it's a response to the responses to that video. Presumably, some commenters held up The Stanley Parable as an example of gameplay communicating different messages (i.e., letting you do what you want) from what the story is communicating (i.e., the narrator's instructions), but that's a misunderstanding of what The Stanley Parable is actually trying to convince you to do. The authors of the game *don't* want you to just follow the narrator's instructions, which is clear from how much effort was put into making it entertaining *not* to. In contrast, my favorite example is probably Grand Theft Auto 4, in which the protagonist, Nico, narratively agonizes over his violent past and how he's getting dragged back into it, but when there isn't a cutscene running, the game actively rewards you for going on a violent rampage. The story and the game mechanics are communicating different messages, different expectations. In neither case is there some, in-game behavior to be made "right" or "wrong".

[@liamosullivan6580]

There's a pretty dumb moment at the end of Resident Evil Revelations 2 where Moira, the character who has an intense fear of guns, has to pick up a gun to get the good ending. In co-op, both players get the prompt, but the *intended* response is for the player controlling Rebecca (the main character who does the shootins) to do nothing while player 2 grabs the gun. The narrative doesn't really build to that being the ending, and Moira's arc doesn't point in that direction, so I can't tell if it was clever or stupid.

[@Natabus]

I remember how many people were surprised that killing Astrid in Skyrim lead to a whole different quest line, of destroying, rather than joining, the Dark Brotherhood. Most had only obeyed the choice that Astrid presented them.

[@Keira_Blackstone]

I like this one, since I also actually consider it the correct answer- Astrid really is the person in the room the night mother wants you to kill.

[@Bootleg_Jones]

I think my favorite instance of a game fully intending the player to do things that they're "told" not to do is in the game Anodyne. *End game spoilers ahead* Anodyne for the most part plays like a 2d Zelda game with most rooms contained in a single screen. Near the end of the game the player will acquire an item that allows them to swap any 2 tiles of the environment that they can reach with their weapon, but it's limited to only a few rooms before the final boss. However, it's possible to smuggle this item outside of this area and use it practically everywhere in the game. You can even remove walls with it and walk to screens that would normally be inaccessible, and in doing so you can find quite a few secrets. The game is laid out in a way that you'd assume you'll never be able to get to these areas, or that they don't exist, and even when you first start exploring out of bounds so many areas are empty and seem unnavigable. But once you start exploring there's so much to discover, including some very intentionally laid out puzzles. Even some rooms without any floors can be navigated with clever exploitation of the way room transitions are handled. Discovering all this on my own is one of my favorite experiences a game has ever given me.

[@benjaminp.771]

My favorite instance of this is in Cave Story, the game wants you to save the professor, but if you don't, you can unlock Ballos as a boss and ultimately save Curly Brace

[@SpeedyThingGoIn4]

Well that was a spoiler. Also you may want to explain what you are describing to people who have no idea who the professor is.

[@Roxfox]

Wouldn't explaining it make it a spoiler for people to whom it's not yet a spoiler? Also, the game's 13 years old, there's gotta be a point where we can start to talk freely about specifics without worrying about people who still intend to play it but haven't...

[@Mordalon]

+SpeedyThingGoIn4 this whole subject is about content that is spoilery. Also, Cave Story has been around for a good long while and available on a variety of systems, so you shouldn't expect people to continue being sensitive about minor spoilers for it.

[@SpeedyThingGoIn4]

Mordalon Yeah but they should try to say more than just summarize any plot surprises.

[@tarkus1056]

"If you go on a rampage in Dark Souls and kill every last friendly NPC you will actually unlock whole new side-stories, and dungeons and bosses" That's straight up a lie. You don't unlock anything of that, you just get some of their equipment, like their weapon, armor or item. Actually, you just lose their side-stories. Have you played the game?

[@Vaith]

prob went hollow after getting mugged in the graveyard i bet

[@cjwiffle4714]

came to the comments looking for this

[@nickpoenisch4563]

I don't play video games, but i am constantly fascinated by what complex story-telling mediums they are

[@dominomasked]

Regarding Undertale (it's been a while since I played, so please pardon any specifics I misremember), I would argue that the "genocide" route is the standard instructed gameplay, while the peace route is the intended violation of intended play. The musical and animation style of the game deliberately evokes early just-barely-post-arcade console games like Zelda where puzzles were to be solved, objects were to be broken, anything you were supposed to talk to was unkillable, and anything that moved was to be killed. You get the "xp" system explained and are likely not expected to question the very standard definition of "xp" as anything with a moral component. The "genocide route" specifically illustrates standard "completist" behavior, while the peaceful route is where the bulk of the "extra" content can be unlocked. *Not* killing everything that gets in your face and has the ability to hurt you is the violation of standard interaction, and that's what's so brilliant. It's deliberately rewarding pro-social behavior as something that makes the player special, rather than the usual game formula that glorifies abusive behavior as heroic and special and escapist.

[@watchm4ker]

Not... really. Following the tutorial does explicitly explain the pacifist option in fights, and if you kill the first boss, you are *explicitly* called out for your actions. Indeed, the game even anticipates if the player immediately reloads/resets and does the pacifist route, and calls them out *again* for their prior failure.

[@apsleymay3531]

Eileen the Crow warns against the player heading to the Gascoigne arena a second time, yet the game wants you to go down there, and if you don't help or head down into the arena, you get an alternate ending to her storyline.

[@conatgion]

This comment section is gold. For example I never heard about the ending of Prince of Persia reboot but it's fascinating. I hope we get a follow-up video just responding to games mentioned in the comments. Please?

[@bravetherainbow]

People are already providing the responses with their comments about it!

[@MsQueenOfDance]

The broom closet ending was my favorite ending.

[@SSZaris]

It's been 11 years and Weynon Priory is still waiting for that Amulet....

[@Jakkalope]

This reminds me of an argument I saw once about there being an achievement for forcing the camera to upskirt a character in-- I think Nier Automata? And I saw a bunch of people defending it on the grounds that "you're not supposed to do it, the achievement is supposed to shame you and brand you as a pervert!", and it always sat poorly with me-- and this finally helped me put into words why. "If they don't want you to do it, they won't let you do it". If it's accounted for and responded to, it's intended. Because I *have* to be a basic-ass bro and talk about Undertale, I think it's why the Genocide run works more. The game still fully intends for you to do it, by virtue of it being content (a whole lot of content), but it both remarks on the "it's there, so I have to do it" motivation of the player, and it also actually plays to emotion to leave a lasting effect far more impactful than a "ha ha you're a pervert JOKE'S ON YOU #REKT" achievement.

[@vighneshsivakumar3418]

I think it's less "COWER IN SHAME, PERVERT!" than Yoko Taro acknowledging you as a pervert buddy. Remember, that's the same guy who asked people to send him sexy fanart of 2B.

[@lionskull1]

there's an extra credits episode about that that brings up yakuza 0 as a good example of preverseness done right.

[@peters885]

Although with Nier: Automata, you have the option of purchasing the achievement with in-game currency, so you can have the "shameful" achievement without actually "consuming the content". I don't think that fact changes anything you said about it (in fact, I think it only serves make that creative choice even more premeditated), but it is interesting that Taro decided to be so weird that he gives you an out.

[@Jakkalope]

Yeah, the entire argument was pretty daft, but I'm just regurgitating the argument I paid witness to, so, shrug emoji goes here.

[@davidwit7749]

There's a similar achievement in Lollipop Chainsaw if you look up her skirt for a prolonged period of time.

[@streq9199]

I really liked how instead of straight up not letting you steal from the shop in link's awakening, the shop owner would nuke your ass the next time you came back.

[@MateusAntonioBittencourt]

After watching this 3 times throughout the years, I think I finally understand. It's like how in the game Hearts of Iron, about WW2, there's isn't a way to do genocide. While other paradox games have mechanics akin to genocide. Every thing programed in the game... doesn't matter if it punishes, or even lead to defeat, is intended play.

[@MsDefectiveToaster]

This might be kind of a shallow connection but all I keep thinking about is Disneyland. If there is a sign in Disneyland telling you not to do something (ex: in the Indiana Jones Ride, there is a sign stating "Caution: Do Not Pull Rope") oftentimes it is to draw your attention to something that they do want you do. If they don't want you to do something, they typically hide it from sight somehow. That's why the paint color "Go Away Green" exists. To ensure that your eye slides right past things like electrical panels.

[@brockmckelvey7327]

Hi there! New subscriber here. One of my proudest moments in gaming was when I played "The Legend of Zelda: Oracle of Seasons" and managed to gain access to one of the powers before completing the game-suggested dungeon beforehand. I used said power to get about halfway through through the sixth dungeon before I felt bad enough to go complete the fifth. That really got me thinking about what the developers want/plan for, and how sometimes developers will leave Easter Eggs for people who can break the game or skip sections like that. Suffice to say, I absolutely LOVED "The Stanley Parable" and am waiting for that 5-year mark to come around.

[@wereoctopus]

I had a similar experience with Link's Awakening. Accidentally sequence-broke my way to the 8th dungeon, got the Fire Rod which made for a much easier time against the 7th dungeon boss.

[@HeadHunter455]

I remember the "Pick up that can" part in Half-Life 2. It's pretty great for a lot of reasons.

[@marmied7840]

Loved this video, dan! Thank you so much for your lovely content and great way of speaking! I learn a lot every time

[@mick-ericboettge8683]

6:44 this is something you learn quickly playing dnd. If something is gamebreakingly insane or drives you and/or the party too far off the narrative track, the dm will just either not let you do something, let you fail, or let nothing happen at all. My party once sneaked into a town where we were supposed to meet an anonymous contact. Stupid as we are, we ended up wanted by the police and had disguised ourselves, something that was fun, but entirely unnecessary and unexpected by the dm. Since we were under disguise the contact couldn't find us. That only dawned on us after spending like an entire ingame day just killing time, waiting to be contacted. At least once we realized our fuck-up the dm had us contacted a different way to make up for time but I still think of this a lot, since dnd is theoretically the most expansive open world game imaginable (literally) but it can be tricky to communicate what behavior is intended/allowed the more freedom you give players.