Plotstopper in games

[Fragger]

Hi all,

i got the inspiration for this thread from this posting:

http://eab.abime.net/showpost.php?p=664970&postcount=35

So i guess there are some games, which you cannot complete, if you missed out an action before.

As an example, Police Quest 2 is a candidate for a plotstopper award.

If you skip that annoying gun calibration part, you will lose in the following shootout.
There is also a plotstopper in Impossible Mission 2 .. If you waste those tapes from the safes, you will not be able to complete the game.

[gimbal]

Yeah PQ2 is fun, especially the second time you can miss this. Then you end up in the plane blasting terrorists and... you miss at point blank range!!!

Lucasarts' the Dig is also famous for allowing you to get permanently stuck. And then there are the Ishar games, especially Ishar 3...

[StarEye]

Sierra games in general have a reputation of doing this. In Leisure Suit Larry1, you can run out of money, thus no chance to get anywhere (taxi is the only way, and you get beat up if you don't pay). LSL 2 have a lot of dead ends, and you'll be in big trouble if you forgot items early in the game. A lot of them actually.

Same with LSL 3, if you haven't made the proper preperations beforehand, you'll have big problems. The worst one is the magic marker, which is pretty easy to miss out on.

I haven't completed The Dig, so I can't speak for that. But the only other LucasArts game that I know of that have this kind of thing is Maniac Mansion. The rest is always completable.

[Nostalgeek]

That's right, most of Sierra games you can miss items in the very beginning that get you stuck 10's of hours later in the game...so frustrating, and so awkward in terms of game design....but still, I love Sierra games

As for the Dig, I did complete it, can someone clarify how you can actually get stuck??? Gimby?

[mcbpete]

I'm curious about this too, I thought all Lucasarts games from Monkey Island onwards (perhaps even earlier than that) were purposefully made so you never reached a dead end...

[jotd]

Cadaver is really unforgiving, specially in the higher levels.
For example: give the wrong item to a character => you lose the item => you're stuck.
Enter in a room without the key to go out => you're stuck

[Djay]

can't think of many games that completely stop you, but the Fighting Fantasy Gamebook, Creature of Havoc... had a printing error which meant you couldnt complete it...

from wikipedia

1, In order to escape the underground labyrinth of Zharradan Marr, you're instructed to identify a secret door that leads to the Dungeon Master's room by a text passage in the book starting with a particular combination of words (see reference number 237 or 290). But, when you find it, this text marker is mistakenly left out (see reference number 213), thus not identifying the secret door it hides. This mistake was in the original 1980s Puffin as well as the early 2002 Wizard prints. However, in later Wizard versions the fault is corrected but it reappears again in the latest version released in February 2010.

[Falcon Flight]

The Ultima games are famous for the plot getting stuck if you do something in the wrong order.

Talk to this person when you're not supposed to yet? FAIL.
Say this to the person instead of that? FAIL.

Losing items is ofc always a sure plot-stopper. I have bad memories of dropping items from my inventory onto the ground by accident then not knowing where I left them.

This one time forced a pixel hunt through vast areas to find a dropped key. Lucky for me the game flagged it as "no decay" since it was plot critical.

These days games tend to have some way to get an item back. There might be a chest of sorts where all plot critical items re-appear. Or the game might not let you drop, sell or modify an item in any way.

Another plot-stopper is killing or making hostile some character vital to the plot, which is why most games have seemingly invincible characters.
But sometimes this "invincibility" isn't "protect from absolutely everything", as I've experienced to my detriment.

[gimbal]

Originally Posted by Nostalgeek

As for the Dig, I did complete it, can someone clarify how you can actually get stuck??? Gimby?

Its too long ago... I know it was in some building and you could get locked into a room without any way to get out...

[sharprm]

Beneath a steel sky you need to conect a ligthbulb to scare off a spider, but you can leave it on the third floor (and can't retrieve it once you enter the tunnels).

Even though I have completed it on pc, pretty sure the place where you put the lightbulb wasn't there on the amiga version. Not sure but I searched pretty hard, maybe just missed it, long time ago.

[Hewitson]

Originally Posted by Falcon Flight

The Ultima games are famous for the plot getting stuck if you do something in the wrong order.

Talk to this person when you're not supposed to yet? FAIL.
Say this to the person instead of that? FAIL.

Sounds ridiculous!

I never got into the Ultima games, I was very heavily into the Lucasarts & Sierra adventure games though.

For those who don't know, theres actually been a recent official remake of Monkey Island 1 & 2 for the PC. "High Definition" graphics, full speech, etc. Well worth checking out.