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Mission variety. It is an essential component of what keeps most games engaging. Keeping gameplay fresh and exciting is a baseline expectation that drives developers to continually imagine and implement new ways for the player to interact with the game world. The only problem is that many times they don't.
I'm not entirely unsympathetic. Faced with a task like "come up with 50/70/100+ side quests or levels", I can see how it would be very easy to get halfway in and run out of inspiration. The temptation at that point is very clear -- either create slightly altered duplicates of the mission types you already have or go back to mission types that have been used before by other games, even if they weren't successfully implemented.
The sacred cow we're butchering today has a venerable tradition of fail in level/mission design for many years. I speak of games that take superheroes and secret agents and turn them into wet-nurses. I speak of games that ask a player to become a kindergarten teacher -- giving them the equivalent in gameplay of shepherding rambunctious cherubs with ADHD through a Toys 'R Us with candy spilled on every aisle. I speak, of course, of escort missions.
Escort missions -- worse than Arnold's acting. Conceptually speaking, the escort mission does seem like an excellent idea. From a narrative standpoint, it makes perfect sense. Most games put the player in the shoes of a hero, and what does a hero do? They save people.
The formula of Mario and Link travelling through countless dangers and enemies to a fixed endpoint to rescue their loved ones is both worthy and compelling, but it has gotten stale over time. The idea of an escort mission adds an additional level of drama and tension to the equation. Not only must the protagonist stay alive and defeat their foes, but they must also ensure that the object of their protectorship remains safe as well. The concept of defending your charge in real-time provides immediacy of concern that forces the player to take their actions more seriously.
Escort missions also are theoretically sound from a gameplay perspective. Once a player has mastered the mechanics of a game and the difficulty is reduced, having to provide for the safety of a follower is an excellent way to change the way a player approaches combat. They are usually forced to take a slower pace, abandoning the run-n-gun mentality they may have previously employed.
Escort missions force players to think about who they target and when. They push players to avoid explosive or area-of-effect damage that could go awry and kill an escortee in closed quarters. They ask a player to step up and take damage intended for the escortee at times. They provide additional levels of difficulty and layers of strategic concern.
So why, if escort missions are so conceptually sound, do they end up so irritatingly pathetic when we actually play through them?
Playing as a bodyguard is more painful than watching The Bodyguard. The reasons escort missions fail in practice are legion, my friends. In the interests of brevity, however, we'll confine our exploration to a few important elements.
Let's start with the woeful state of AI present in escort missions. What is it about escortee programming that makes them all behave like paint huffers in need of a fix? These NPCs simply aren't equipped with a sense of self-preservation.
The appearance of an enemy or the eruption of gunfire should be an automatic trigger for the escortee to make a beeline for the nearest cover. This is realistic and would force the player to take the NPC's hiding place into strategic consideration. Instead, they just stand in the line of fire like Robert Duvall in
Apocalypse Now.
Collision detection and pathfinding are another major issue with the AI. Nothing breaks the immersion (yeah, I used the 'I' word, what are you gonna do about it?) of an otherwise tense and satisfying escort mission than to realize you've left your NPC behind. Especially when you turn around to see the nimrod running full bore at a wall or a piece of furniture.
It's enough to make the player question their desire to save someone, when they can't navigate the environment without the player screaming "POLO!" every 5 seconds.
Dead Rising, you know I love you, right? We really need to talk about your sequel. Speaking of the desire to save a NPC, here's the other failure of 95% of all escort missions : the developers are mostly unable to make us genuinely care for any of the people we're supposed to be risking life and limb for.
Escortee dialogue is poorly written and poorly acted -- based on stereotypes and caricature, or simply so thinly characterized that it is impossible to to feel any kind of genuine empathy for them. When you care in some way about the person, failing at an escort mission gives you additional drive to go back and get it right for their sake. When there is no emotional investment in the character you're trying to save, a failure results only in frustration.
In terms of the story, we are also given very poor reasons for attempting to save these unfortunately impaired souls in the first place. In the majority of cases, we need the character in question to open a door, create an item, or provide a vital piece of information.
If that's the only purpose of the individual, then an escort mission simply isn't the proper means of pushing the story forward. Simple suggestion : If the NPC in effect only acts as a door key, then why not just make an item fetch mission instead and save us all the aggravation and broken controllers?
This escort is more likable, and gets better mileage. For those developers that just can't bring themselves to slaughter this particular sacred cow, here are a few suggestions to make your escort missions a little less wrinkle-inducing.
Consider adding in more responsive/intuitive controls to let the player determine when a NPC should follow, stay, and take cover. I have enjoyed a few of the escort missions I've played where I had to lead the escortee by hand and then drop them off where I wanted them to stay.
Two words -- more checkpoints. There's simply no excuse for making a player redo a huge chunk of gameplay because luck was a factor due to AI unpredictability or ineptitude.
Infamous did an excellent job of this during the bus escort mission -- Sucker Punch knew that there was no way to tighten up the gameplay enough to take the element of that random shot landing at the last second out of the equation.
In conclusion : whether the failings of escort missions lie in the realm of technological limitation or developer implementation is a matter still up for debate. I'll admit that tech limits probably do play a factor, but there is sufficient evidence to support the position that those are a relatively small slice of the blame pie.
It's my personal belief that if Alyx Vance can be crafted lovingly enough to genuinely care about and designed competently enough to act as MY escort through large portions of a game, then there's no excuse for creating unlikable NPCs that can't even manage to master the 5 'D's of dodgeball for a single mission. Do it right, or leave it out.
Contest:
6:40 PM on 10.28.2009
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Escorting is the main reason that Dead Rising was such a disappointment to me. In fact, I really do groan any time I encounter an escort mission. If you ask me, they really can't be saved. I'd much rather simply have an A.I. companion that cannot die, forgetting about the realism in favor of avoiding insane frustration. I like how Fallout 3 and Oblivion handled important NPC people--give them health, but make them impossible to kill, instead just going unconscious. This could be made even better if these NPCs provided some important support in tough situations, so that if they did go unconscious, it would make it that much more difficult to get yourself out of a bind. As for those NPCs that are totally useless in combat and just need to be led around on a leash...they can die for all I care.
ps nice stuff :)
... nothing much more to say... I was going to mention Alyx, but you even covered that! :)
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As a person with ADHD, I am offended...
That you couldn't get the name right. ADD is no longer considered a condition. It's so similar to ADHD that the international medical consensus is that they're the same thing presenting in two different ways.
... that's a total lie. I have never known anyone who did not greet an escort quest with anything but profanity. Is there anyone out there who actually enjoys these things? Anyone?
It was during Fade To Black (the sequel to Flashback).
You had to rescue this old scientist, escorting him slowly back through this huge level map...the long way around. This would be okay if it wasn't for the fact that if you moved more than three steps at a time, the old codger would stop and shout in a weird German accent:
'SCHLOW DAHWN! I'M AN OHLD MAAAAAN!'
Then he would refuse to move until you turned Conrad (who played like an unresponsive tank) 180 degrees and brushed against him...and this wouldn't happen every so often...oh no, this would happen every damn time you went more than a few steps. Considering there were no checkpoints in the level, you had to spend at least an hour before meeting the guy, clearing out all the rooms full of Morphs (who could kill you within three-four hits anyway) in case of an ambush later on.
It's probably not the worst escort mission ever created, but it's definately the one that pushed me over the edge back in the day.
Oh god, escort missions and how I hate them. This hardly ever gets done well even to this day. Although it may not be likely, I hope Dead Rising 2 does away with these or somehow do a much better job of them, although I don't know how they could pull that off aside from not having them.
Plus, the person you end up escorting often ends up dead later anyway outside of your control.
Great musing as always.
I would like to see a game design team make a whole game where one is escorting a person/people. This would really force them to make the AI work (I'd like to think) and create some interesting scenarios within the generally thought as limited mission variant. As it is I often feel escort missions are simple ticking one of the 'mission types a game should have' box, and so no real love is put into them. Where's the love?
Good stuff.
Some games do escort missions that matter. MGS2 made me really care about escorting Emma Emmerich.
Dead rising did what too few games do; give the escorted NPC some offensive capability. Being able to fight helps cut useless and annoying down to just annoying.
Escort missions, quick-time events, and lack of manual saves are the disgusting, red-headed stepchildren that need to be totally ripped out of all video games.
There needs to be one or two great games that does escort missions right so that other games can steal from them, although hopefully stolen properly. Since developers will keep feeling the need to add them, they should at least get it correct. This reminds me of how many action games these days add in a poorly done stealth segment in an attempt to "break up" the action.
The escorts in vanilla WoW....Unghh.
Dead Rising escort missions are the pits...god escort missions suck.
It's also why I hated Ico. I wanted to like it so much. If I didn't have to worry about that dumb princess, I would've kept playing. But nooo, she was an idiot I couldn't stand. Didn't make it very far before I said "screw this".
Come to think of it, it's not your stereotypical escort mission, but uncharted 2 did a brilliant job with the "carry the wounded" guy bit. i really enjoyed that part.
You had to escort a tramp. You were in a positions that if the tramp died and was not with you the next gate would not open....it was all for the main villains amusement. You did not care for the tramp and you were not meant too....he was vile. But when cruely killed at the end i felt something haha