ALEXANDER NEWCOMBE
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Dying is the best time you can have in XCOM

8/2/2014

5 Comments

 
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Firaxis' remake of the classic PC game XCOM was a huge title for me when it released in 2012. I was a big fan of the original game, and found the new version to be an incredibly fun spiritual sequel. There is no better way to experience the thrill and terror of an alien invasion.

It contains a reward loop that digs its hooks in, tense tactical battles, and a moderately deep strategic level. It does all of that stuff well. But what it does amazingly well is make character death an exciting part of playing.

Now, there is a caveat to all of this: Ironman Mode. This optional mode makes it so that you cannot reverse the choices you make by loading a previous save. You have only one save file, and it is continually auto-saving so that all decisions are final. I firmly believe that the game is at its best when played like this. You could, of course, play it like this without turning that mode on. But it's there because you'll want to revert a decision at some point. You will regret something when you play this game. Ironman makes you move on despite the regret.

And that's the crux of what I love about it. You feel like your choices matter. Your squad of soldiers from around the world is thrown into bizarre firefights with horrific aliens where lots of things can kill them. If you fall behind in the arms race with the aliens, they die. If you move them to risky positions on the battlefield, they die. If you don't know your enemy's capabilities, they die. Despite the random number generator the game uses to decide what hits or misses, the ball is almost always in your court. And, until several failures pile up, you live with your bad calls. A failed mission is a setback, but maybe one that you can fight back from. Maybe it was what you needed to rethink your strategy and renew your attack. It's both stressful and exhilarating.

It stands out against the vast majority of games in which the only way to progress is to succeed. In a standard single-player game like Uncharted, if you fail at a challenge, the game stops. It seems to make sense (why wouldn't you want to succeed at a challenge), but it creates a very flat experience. It creates a story in which the character always succeeds (since the deaths never happened in terms of the final game story) except where the designers of the game dictated some kind of setback.

Now, other strategy games do what XCOM does and have been for many years. But there is a difference between losing a unit of infantry in a Total War game and losing Jake Smith from Australia in XCOM. It goes to great lengths to make you care about the characters. Even though they can be replaced (apparently XCOM has no problem with recruitment), there is a feeling of loss each time a soldier dies. And the methods the game uses to foster that connection are pretty clever. Every soldier has a name (which you can change) and a nationality. They also gain new abilities, speak in a variety of voices, and (as of the Enemy Within expansion) are awarded medals. All of this helps establish them as a specific soldier as opposed to one more grunt on the front lines.


The Souls series (Demons' Souls, Dark Souls) also use this concept. Those games build failure into the game, making a death a part of the experience as opposed to a simple game over screen. I think it's one of many ways those games have found of creating an engaging narrative
. But, in the interests of keeping this post manageable, I'll speak about those games later.

This creates a story that is much more varied. S
ure, I was able to defeat the aliens in New York, but I lost Jean-Luc Lamy, the French support soldier that had been in every mission since the start of the game. And now the next mission isn't just another bug hunt outside a crashed UFO, but a shot at vengeance for Lamy's comrades.

This kind of player-created narrative (often called inferred narrative) is one of my favorite things in gaming. And while it would be possible in any game with random events, the emotional connection caused by the high stakes, personal investment, and humanization of game characters makes
XCOM really excel at it.

So, go get some fine soldiers killed and enjoy the hell out of the game.

5 Comments
TC a.k.a. Kyomaru
8/2/2014 03:50:57 pm

The thing is the industry has gotten confortable with the gaming conventions. Dying, restarting, checkpoint, saving games... even the loading screens... They assume that the players knows they are playing a game and don't try to rethink those conventions. Imagine a game where your action during the loading screen would have an impact on gameplay, a game where every game over/continue would arch the story or where the lenght of your game session/ time off the game would have a meaning full impact. I know, I am just a big dreamer...

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Alex Newcombe
9/2/2014 12:42:53 am

Yeah, I think they are definietly some underused tricks and mechanics that could make you feel that "hit" when you realize you are responsible for the characters.

And there are people playing around with this. Hey, even that little Tamagachi toy made you feel bad if you left it alone for too long. But I think there are lots of games that would be better if they rethought their death mechanics (or other ones, as you mentioned)

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EMI
8/2/2014 10:16:10 pm

The death of single soldiers is insignificant in a Total War game, you do feel it more when it's a general that dies. Although the nature of that game is that you play a nation, so you're always slightly removed from things. I think that Crusader Kings II does a fairly good job of this, since rather than playing a nation, you are roleplaying the leader of the current dynasty. Since there's more of a personal connection at play, you really feel it when you overextend yourself, and see your entire dynasty crumble under your hubris.

If I wanted to dig back deeper into my memory banks, I remember Breath of Fire Dragon Quarter for the PS2 playing around with death, dying, and the restarting of a game in a way that was quite unusual for jRPGs at the time (or even now).

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Alex Newcombe
9/2/2014 12:38:36 am

You're right. I should have brought up the generals if I was going to mention Total War. I also tended to build up a connection with my ninjas in TW: Shogun 2.

One thing I would have loved to see more of is recognizing the impact of character death. In XCOM, they have some voice over from the NPCs expressing despair when a mission goes very poorly, and they have a "wall of remembrance" for all your dead soldiers. These are nice touches, but they could be more tailored to the individual's accomplishments.

In TW: Shogun 2 (the only one of the series I played), I don't remember any recognition of the deaths of your generals after that initial notification from the NPC advisor. I wish they had incorporated some of those themed bonuses (you get +10 morale against the Clan that killed your son in battle) or something like that. Anytime the game can reinforce the narrative with mechanics is great.

Thanks for pointing out Breath of Fire Dragon Quarter. There is a lot more that could be written about character death in video games, I think. I might come back and to a post about the whole topic and pull these in as examples.

Reply
EMI
9/2/2014 01:41:53 am

I also think an important part of these sorts of things is limited resources (in the business sense of resources). That is, If you have like 20 guys at maxish level in XCOM, the death of one doesn't have such a big impact, compared to if they were one of 5 elite you had groomed all game. Similar to in TW games, where if you're just fielding like 30 five-star generals, monks, emissaries, ninjas, etc. the death of one matters little to the overall structure of the clan/nation. I'd be hard to code it so the game knows when a death is significant or not, and I think the cold reports in XCOM and TW do a good job of this. I think if you tried to, the player might be annoyed at the game trying to force melodrama down his throat for the death of someone they didn't think was important.


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