A terrible gaming take of mine is I hate when a non-mystery game decides to throw a little whodunnit into the mix. I am too dumb to compare the statements of a bunch of NPCs! I'm just gonna pick someone at random!
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Well someone didn't like skyrim. I enjoyed the hack-and-slash slop that made me feel godly. And you could have a few quests come out with unusual endings, just the majority don't have any real impact. Personally I liked "Lost to the Ages" as well as the dark brotherhood line.
I will say that adding elements to a game that does not share a similar theme out of left-field is weird. If I know I'm implementing something new (murder mystery, race through town, dating sim), I'll preface it near the end of the previous session or let players know between sessions.
I won a murder mystery on a cruise we took last year by basically accosting the entire cast one at a time and accusing them of literally anything until they confessed out of terror. I am NOT good at Clue, either.
Oh NO, Jacob - this is your first bad take 😩
Whenever that happens, you’re supposed to break out your little deerstalker cap that you keep next to your computer and declare “by George, the game is afoot!”
Star Wars KOTOR 1: chilling on dantooine trying to be a Jedi and randomly being asked to complete a time-sensitive murder mystery in the middle of a field.
As a static element in a roguelike, it interests me in every way but narratively. Guessing at a conviction or engineering a specific outcome doesn't hit for me.
I got mad at not realizing a popular comic was a fair whodunnit I could have guessed (spoiler to mention which) so now I'm always ready for a puzzle like that
I'm wary with those because I generally don't trust games to have a competently written mystery plot. I get REAL bitter when I didn't notice their small Smoking Gun detail due to a much larger and more important detail that came from the writer not knowing how something works.
I still look up the jindosh riddle anytime i play dishonored 2 simply because I'd rather get to the fun next level rather than deal with feuding factions and trying to setup stuff. I feel bad about it because there's a bunch of systems I'm not paying attention to and end up playing through it anyway
funny, i want to have a go at the jindosh riddle but i always end up doing the faction thing because i just kinda want to explore the level and skipping it would feel bad
Dang, I’m completely the opposite. I’m down to whodunnit wherever and whenever. Approach me in real life with a whodunnit, I’ll fuckin’ break out a Poirot impression no problem!
(That said, the proportion of *good* mystery sections to bad in non-mystery games is uh… yeah.)
so long as it’s reasonably story-heavy it works, I think. for example sable (though I do love it dearly) was NOT working great for me in that one quest (really does not work for such a meditative, more vibes-rich experience)
Lmao Astral Chain does this exact thing out of nowhere and is absolutely in a genre where you wouldn’t expect to have to do this. I remember being completely thrown off guard by that.
Really? I actually kind of love those kinds of detective puzzles, where you have to compare NPC statements and suss out the truth. If it's just for one sidequest, I find them to be a fun diversion.
I actually love the mystery genre but have a similar problem where i zone out for a piece of dialogue and cant go back and i end up missing a key detail.
I feel like this sort of mechanic requires a particular state of mind. I don't want to suddenly have to think a bit too hard in a game whose premise wasn't about thinking a bit too hard.
I was recently playing Pokemon sword and there's a room you can walk into in a random hotel with a whodunit contained entirely within it. It basically plays itself and brings the culprit forward with no ambiguity, and this post makes me validated for being so annoyed by it.
That first part of wonderland in Kingdom Hearts one…. No I don’t wanna run around and find little boxes and have staged fights…. Just hurry up and give me the third hardest fight in the game please thanks
whenever games suddenly jump genres like this I cannot decide if that makes the game better and I am just too dumb to appreciate it - or it is a actually bad design.
For my part I hate when you immediately figure out who it is but you can only accuse the wrong people until you’ve jumped through a bunch of arbitrary hoops.
There's a bit in Final Fantasy 9 where on Disc 3, you have to choose which NPC soldiers are the best for certain jobs during a mass evacuation to ensure all the citizens get out alive. They don't tell you anything about them except for some books in Disc 1 and you're expected to remember them.
There's a very obvious whodunnit quest just waiting to be triggered in my Like a Dragon: Ishin playthrough, they even put shiny things on the floor next to them to tempt me. I refuse 😂
My favorite version of this was Illbleed for the Dreamcast. At one point you get a kitschy TV style "Who Done It" title card and shows you all the characters so far. The correct answer is the masked killer named Killerman. You get 1 million dollars for getting this right.
So true, I'm not a person who enjoys narrative in a game, so when I suddenly realise I need to be listening to a conversation I get really annoyed. Give me a vast world that I can wander around on my own and a bow and arrow and I'm happy. (This applies to reality as well if I'm honest) ;)
What bugs me is when they give you one-sentence dialog options (or worse, emotions) and then you pick one and your character goes off on a three paragraph tangent that you don't agree with at all. Like, I didn't MEAN it that way! Gah!
omg yes, these drive me crazy... Yes, I'm angry about the situation, but no, I didn't intend my character to insult your mother or go on a racist tirade or something!
It is connected to that weird space of mystery games like ace attorney where you not only need to understand the mystery but also the unspoken intentions of the designers.
It's a bit like doing college level math but you are also trying to reverse engineer trig because you didn't study
Yessss I tried the Ace Attorney trilogy and kept running into that problem. I had it solved in my head, but picking the right questions and responses was driving me nuts.
Have you played Caves of Qud's mystery quest, written by @ectafoole.bsky.social? It contends with this friction fairly directly, in a very interesting way that I will not spoil.
borderlands 2 took a funny approach to this in a sidequest. theres a 5 way standoff after a heist bc someone stole the money. you can either solve the puzzle to figure it out or just notice that one guy has a big bag of money on his back
Yeah you can sort of goober your way around solving that one the standard way. They mention that the guy was killed with a single shot so you can kinda take an educated guess that it’s the sniper guy
That was literally my exact thinking as a kid LMAO. I thought well snipers usually don’t kill in one hit in this game soooooo. Then I was too lazy to figure it out but it turned out correct
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Whenever that happens, you’re supposed to break out your little deerstalker cap that you keep next to your computer and declare “by George, the game is afoot!”
it was only after a few times around that I realized you never get enough clues to truly know what happened, just enough to choose your outcome
spent so much time looking for a truth I was was meant to accept wasn't accessible
It's a theme carried all throughout Qud. To paraphrase Vol1. of Earth and Canto, the present is only but one window to the past.
Qud is shaped as much by the history the denizens get WRONG when studying, as get right.
Detective games are my jam. But only in a detective game.
If I'm in Helldivers 2 or something, I'm not there for that.
(That said, the proportion of *good* mystery sections to bad in non-mystery games is uh… yeah.)
Me: "I think it was that person..."
Game: "But...the game just started...you don't even know the crime yet..."
Me: "Pretty sure it was that person".
Great game. I just sucked at it.
All I saw in my head the moment I read this was you as Phoenix Wright in this clip:
https://youtu.be/2bRtcwk3U9Y?si=7mRpV49400RRYZEK&t=86
The detective levels in the Princess Peach game for babies: my brain is now tv static
*glares at KOTOR*
then any other game is childs play.
It's a bit like doing college level math but you are also trying to reverse engineer trig because you didn't study
Clearly Evil Guy Who Lied But Was Good At It: *escaping in a balloon* HAHAHAHA IT WAS ME
Cop: YOU FAILED ME, NO REWARD
me, reloading: ok
it being identical brothers I think was good
unless you're me and then i miss every shot LMAO