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16 years ago
"Ahh! Something's trying to kill me! It's the best day ever!"
- The Chief of Knothole Glade's Son, Fable.
The Escort Mission. The bane of gamers everywhere, alongside the Timed Mission and Luck Based Mission.
Escort Missions are just that… you have to babysit an NPC, keeping them alive through one or more challenges without getting killed or seriously hurt, or sometimes even touched. This wouldn't be so bad, except that 98% of the time, the NPC you have to protect is gifted with all the common sense of a suicidal chipmunk. They die from minimal damage, run ahead into danger before you can clear it, step into your line of fire, and otherwise act Too Dumb To Live. Missions not formally meant to be Escort Missions sometimes become them, when you're saddled with aggressive but stupid NPCs whose survival is one of your victory conditions. Done deliberately, Escort Missions are usually Fake Difficulty. Either way they're a sure way to ramp up the frustration level and make a game Nintendo Hard.
Only very rarely are Escort Missions done well, and when they are, it can be amazing. One way to make them less annoying is to give the NPC some combat ability of their own. For example, whole sections of Resident Evil 4 are Escort Missions, but since the AI is exceptional all-around in that game, it's just a slightly added challenge instead of a cue to start breaking things in rage. Alternately, you can give the NPCs Gameplay Ally Immortality, but that tends to lead to You Call That A Wound.
Escort Missions are typically found in First Person Shooters, Third Person Shooters and flight simulator style games, as well as some styles of RPG. They also exist outside of games, where they're used as plot devices, yielding a Live Action Escort Mission, where The Load takes the place of the NPC.
(so true)
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.p...../EscortMission
- The Chief of Knothole Glade's Son, Fable.
The Escort Mission. The bane of gamers everywhere, alongside the Timed Mission and Luck Based Mission.
Escort Missions are just that… you have to babysit an NPC, keeping them alive through one or more challenges without getting killed or seriously hurt, or sometimes even touched. This wouldn't be so bad, except that 98% of the time, the NPC you have to protect is gifted with all the common sense of a suicidal chipmunk. They die from minimal damage, run ahead into danger before you can clear it, step into your line of fire, and otherwise act Too Dumb To Live. Missions not formally meant to be Escort Missions sometimes become them, when you're saddled with aggressive but stupid NPCs whose survival is one of your victory conditions. Done deliberately, Escort Missions are usually Fake Difficulty. Either way they're a sure way to ramp up the frustration level and make a game Nintendo Hard.
Only very rarely are Escort Missions done well, and when they are, it can be amazing. One way to make them less annoying is to give the NPC some combat ability of their own. For example, whole sections of Resident Evil 4 are Escort Missions, but since the AI is exceptional all-around in that game, it's just a slightly added challenge instead of a cue to start breaking things in rage. Alternately, you can give the NPCs Gameplay Ally Immortality, but that tends to lead to You Call That A Wound.
Escort Missions are typically found in First Person Shooters, Third Person Shooters and flight simulator style games, as well as some styles of RPG. They also exist outside of games, where they're used as plot devices, yielding a Live Action Escort Mission, where The Load takes the place of the NPC.
(so true)
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.p...../EscortMission
Grargarg
~grargarg
MGS2
