Losing in a cutscene

[Bowsette Plus-Ultra]

I'm pretty sure we've all had that one boss fight in a video game. The boss the game builds up to for minutes or sometimes hours. Usually they'll get a cutscene or two. Maybe the narrative dropped them in the background, setting them up for a grand confrontation later. Often it's even the final boss.

You're all geared up for a fight. You're kitted out and crab clawing your controller. After a fight, be it long or short, you drop them.

And then you lose anyway.

This is one of those design choices in bosses that really peeves me. I've seen too many bosses that are implied to be powerful, only for them to be incredibly easy. Worst of all is when they pull the rug out from under you and beat you in a situation during which you had no control.

A particularly aggregious example of this is the first boss of Darksiders 3. Despite carrying the weight of being a deadly sin by the name of Wrath, he's a pushover. He goes down with just a little dodging and a little whipping, only for the game to knock you down in a cutscene, have Wrath scarper away, and make the protagonist suggest that she has some sort of vengeful rivalry with the guy.

Meanwhile I'm just stuck going



That being said, I also know that a lot of gamers don't put as much stake in difficulty as I do. For me, a boss implied to be powerful should be powerful when you fight them. How do you guys feel? If this sort of thing bothers you the same way it bothers me, what bosses have you beaten only to have a cutscene draw all the wind from your sails?

 

[Fraxinus]

I'm not sure if I've ever played a game where they've had the cutscene following the fight indicate the loss, rather it's either conveyed in gameplay (featuring cheap and predictable one shot attack), or the fight ends when the boss is down to a certain amount of health for the event to progress as something going wrong after that point. I think this kind of design choice is very circumstantial, and there are some scenarios where it works especially in more jrpg-type games, but the boss shouldn't be beatable if that's the case. It should be communicated to the player somehow whether through the progress of the fight (however long it is intended to be if it does cut off) or in the events leading up to it, that this fight is a demonstration of that boss' power/threat level. Under no circumstance should there be a way to fully reduce its health, because that defeats the point of it.

It's probably harder to prevent this type of weird situation in a game that takes place in real time combat, though; in turn-based combat, devs can pretty reliably have a sense of how much damage output per turn a player in would be dealing at that point in the game. But in either case, in my small gaming experience, an instafail usually just sort of happens after a certain "phase" of the fight and you go down. And then your actually "losing the fight" (by questionable means) is what would transition into the cutscene. Sometimes when a bossfight isn't going to plan, I'm just sort of expecting it to be one of those types of fights honestly.

I don't really know about a workaround for the concept though. I'm all for using bossfights as a way to revealing plot points, but I think gaming storytelling will always be evolving and it's just a matter of waiting for the next people who are gonna experiment and pioneer a new method of doing so. Are there other ways to demonstrate the intimidation factor of a villain or sub villain through gameplay without giving you a cheap death like a badly written anime to which you must overcome with the power of friendship(tm)? I'm sure there are. And I think if the rest of the game falls less on cliches, then stuff like that could probably be handled more organically as well.

 

[Bowsette Plus-Ultra]

I'm not sure if I've ever played a game where they've had the cutscene following the fight indicate the loss, rather it's either conveyed in gameplay (featuring cheap and predictable one shot attack), or the fight ends when the boss is down to a certain amount of health for the event to progress as something going wrong. I think this kind of design choice is very circumstantial, and there are some scenarios where it works especially in more jrpg-type games, but the boss shouldn't be beatable if that's the case. It should be communicated to the player somehow whether through the progress of the fight (however long it is intended to be if it does cut off) or in the events leading up to it, that this fight is a demonstration of that boss' power/threat level. Under no circumstance should there be a way to fully reduce its health, because that defeats the point of it.

It's probably harder to prevent this type of weird situation in a game that takes place in real time combat, though; in turn-based combat, devs can pretty reliably have a sense of how much damage output per turn a player in would be dealing at that point in the game. But in either case, in my small gaming experience, an instafail usually just sort of happens after a certain "phase" of the fight and you go down. And then your actually "losing the fight" (by questionable means) is what would transition into the cutscene. Sometimes when a bossfight isn't going to plan, I'm just sort of expecting it to be one of those types of fights honestly.

I don't really know about a workaround for the concept though. I'm all for using bossfights as a way to revealing plot points, but I think gaming storytelling will always be evolving and it's just a matter of waiting for the next people who are gonna experiment and pioneer a new method of doing so. Are there other ways to demonstrate the intimidation factor of a villain or sub villain through gameplay without giving you a cheap death like a badly written anime to which you must overcome with the power of friendship(tm)? I'm sure there are. And I think if the rest of the game falls less on cliches, then stuff like that could probably be handled more organically as well.

I'd probably work around it by just making the boss hit harder. If the intention is to convey something as overwhelmingly powerful, then it should feel powerful mechanically. Take the first boss fight of Elden Ring:



This is a Grafted Scion. This is a fight that you are meant to lose. Even if you beat it, the game kills you after leaving the area via some crumbling rocks and a big hole. He hits hard and fast. Given that you're fighting him straight out of character creation, it's a very real possibility that one hit from him takes away two-thirds of your health. He feels powerful and sets a benchmark that you eventually overcome with better equipment and more developed skills or just beat right away by being a masterful Dark Souls player.

I just think it's important that a boss feel difficulty mechanically. Making a player struggle against something that feels like a thread just feels more compelling than letting them hit a set point and then killing them outright.

 

[Uwu_Oocoo2]

The big thing I hate about easy cutscene-defeat battles is that they feel too choreographed. One example of this is the fight with Bowser at the beginning of Paper Mario. There's limited actions available plus dialouge breaks, so it doesn't give you any options but to play along. In the end Bowser whips out a magic one-hit rod he could've used to start with, and he battle is over. By that point just give us a cutscene, no sense pointlessly dragging things out.

On the flip side of that, it feels cheap to give you a super hard battle if you're just going to get defeated anyway. The logic in these situations always annoys me. Like, if you get defeated pre cutscene that's a game over, but if you get defeated in the cutscene you progress? Bruh. I don't want to waste a bunch of health items on a fight I'm going to lose anyway. Sometimes it's best for them to be harsh and just take you down in one hit, if showing their power is the goal. That or dealing 0 damage should get the point across easily.

 

[TheGreatCthulhu]

Two articles from TV Tropes apply here:

Fission Mailed - TV Tropes

Phoenix Wright has lost, the trial has ended, and the judge has declared "Guilty". That One Boss smashed Link into powder and his fairies haven't done anything. Sonic the Hedgehog doesn't get there fast enough and Dr. Eggman wins. But don't worry …

tvtropes.org

But Thou Must! - TV Tropes

The video game version of You Can't Fight Fate. In video games, the main character has two jobs: in the plot, he is The Hero of his motley crew of rebellious aristocracy, mysterious girls, and many others. He's The Leader, the Designated Point …

tvtropes.org

 

[Fraxinus]

Yeah honestly I feel like they do need to somehow (subliminally?) indicate that the fight is going to be one you lose when you're going into it just so you dont waste so many dang resources on it if you're not getting anything out of it. I think this type of fight has become a common enough thing in gaming that its not really a "twist" anymore so I don't think we really need to be surprised about it. And I haven't played a whole lot of video games--and even fewer that have used this type of thing to progress the plot--but I usuallyyyy can tell which fights have the potential to pull this type of thing and I'm not actually sure what the fights do in particular to convey that to me or if it's just a pattern in how these fights are built up that I just know?

I don't mind these types of fights going on a couple turns or playing out for awhile in instances where turns arent a thing, but it shouldn't give you that sliver of hope that victory is possible if it isn't--if that even makes sense cuz I'm not sure if it does. But it's not fair to make you stall your death by just blowing through all these potions and stuff if you're going to lose by design anyway. But the idea of the boss just being overleveled or dealing much more damage or healing faster than you can damage them are all things that can make them harder to overcome in a more organic fashion, yeah. But these could still be beatable depending on what you have at your disposal--unless they have a guaranteed killing move at some point during the actual fight. But should it be required that you survive until they unleash this killing move or should it just be a failsafe in the game design if the player is surviving the fight better than planned? Non-linearity in games I think makes this harder to predict while designing this kind of boss, for how long a player would survive a fight they're designed to lose.

I will not pretend I know a whole lot about game balancing, and that's definitely an aspect of game design that intimidates the heck out of me, but predetermined losses in games seem to really rely on its own balancing system even if its more uh in design philosophy rather than the actual numbers attributed to the player and boss.

 

[mαrkαsscoρ]

Xenoblade 2 is so guilty of this and it's freaking stupid, its basically a waste of time to even have the boss fight, and it makes the story seem stupid if you have to ask yourself "why didn't they just use that power the whole time?"
not much else to say besides it's just dumb writing

 

[Mikey the Moblin]

I've experienced this 3 times I think

First, the opening boss fight against genichiro in sekiro. You can technically beat him, but it's a fromsoft boss so you're probably gonna die your first time. If you do beat him it plays an alternate cutscene where he cheats and cuts off your hand anyway. I like this because it feels like an Easter egg more than a cheap forced loss, and it's a teaching moment

Second, the battle against Entei in pokemon super mystery dungeon. This one weirds me out because I think Entei is supposed to be too hard to beat at first? I've never actually died to him so I don't know if it's meant to be that way. Either way, when I kick his butt phase 1 it plays a cutscene that implies I was getting my butt kicked the whole time before phase 2 starts. This also seems fine to me because it's just a phase change, not a full forced loss

Third, also in PSMD, is the exact opposite. Jirachi is one of the hardest bosses in the game imo and it's so hard that I just sack the fight every time because even if you lose the cutscene afterward acts like you won lol. I don't know if I'm just bad because other people seemed to think it was a pretty easy fight. Either way, losing saves reviver seeds so I've not tried to beat it on subsequent attempts

Idk any other game that does this but it doesn't seem like a big deal to me

 

[Dizzi]

If theyre gonna be like this maybe make it so you csnt use potions and that or make it obvious that it an unbeatable boss this time??