Games assuming I miss important information

[StaceyPowers]

Does it irritate anyone else when games assume you missed critical information? Like, I was paying attention in Mass Effect 1 to all the Cerberus stuff, yet for the next two games, the only dialogue options often seem to ignore the possibility I was fully aware of what was going on. That drives me crazy.

[killamch89]

I'd tend to agree - at least ask if we know what's going on instead of assuming we don't know.

[Family sedan]

In Gran Turismo 5 in the NASCAR trial section, Jeff Gordon will remind you that NASCAR cars are heavier than other cars you might have used.  I've been watching many forms of racing all my life, I really don't need that reminder.

[Razor1911]

6 hours ago, StaceyPowers said:

Does it irritate anyone else when games assume you missed critical information? Like, I was paying attention in Mass Effect 1 to all the Cerberus stuff, yet for the next two games, the only dialogue options often seem to ignore the possibility I was fully aware of what was going on. That drives me crazy.

I never had such problem. Most of the games have that in-game story mode, so even if you skip any part of the trailer or video, you can very well catch up the game midway.

[m76]

The opposite annoys me much more. When the game expects you to remember minor details or codes by heart.

They forget that you aren't going trough the entire game in one sitting, so if I don't play for a few days or even weeks how am I supposed to remember information my character was told in my last gaming session?

[killamch89]

15 hours ago, Family sedan said:

In Gran Turismo 5 in the NASCAR trial section, Jeff Gordon will remind you that NASCAR cars are heavier than other cars you might have used.  I've been watching many forms of racing all my life, I really don't need that reminder.

Even I know that and I didn't watch Nascar all that much except for maybe Daytona 500 and other major events. I used to watch Dale Earnhardt and Jeff Gordon go at it back in the days.

[Family sedan]

Yeah, those battle rocked.  Remember Jeff Gordon's Jurassic Park car?  That thing was insanely fast.

[Withywarlock]

Noah Antweiler of The Spoony Experiment had made a point of this in his Ultima 9 review, as part of a full-series analytical retrospective. The breaking point for him was "What's a Paladin?" which became a recurring joke in his later works, including his tabletop roleplaying game tale series Counter Monkey.

The gist is that the Avatar of the Eight Virtues, the main character of all Ultima games, asks "what's a Paladin," when he should know full well what one is given his history with paladins. This was all the more heartbreaking for Spoony due to his emotional attachment to Ultima, having learned to read and enjoy doing so thanks to this series. For context, this is the same as Geralt of Rivia asking what is a Witcher (in the third game, no less). While the question exists to help newer players getting into the game, the wording makes it rather off-putting.

On 8/20/2021 at 9:37 AM, m76 said:

The opposite annoys me much more. When the game expects you to remember minor details or codes by heart.

They forget that you aren't going trough the entire game in one sitting, so if I don't play for a few days or even weeks how am I supposed to remember information my character was told in my last gaming session?

This is true for me also. Pillars of Eternity is rife with this sort of nonsense, even with the helpful tooltips for each of their words, often derived from old Cornish and Danish language, I'll still forget a lot of it. Not helping matters is that this information is just dumped on the player, and because there's so many paragraphs to the tooltips it's sometimes hard to determine what's important to know and what isn't. I only managed to grasp the vaguest idea of what the game was about by the end of the second act.

[Shagger]

In certain games, especially open RPG's, there are times developers have to have characters repeat important facts and expositions that other characters have already conveyed because the developers can't necessarily tell what order the player will talk to people and explore the environment. So yes, it can be a little annoying, but I'm with @m76,  id's rather haver shit repeated than only said once, otherwise it's very easy to miss. I'm less inclined to defend this in more liner games and the dev's have far more control on how and when such information is feed to the player and can easily be made impossible to miss, but even there it would bother me that much.

Edited August 21, 2021 by Shagger

[Reality vs Adventure]

Some people lack attention span or play while wasted and forget. A little review is good though. It's like reading a book and 20 chapters later some things are summarized a little bit before moving on. In the game, they could at least be creative with it instead of just repeating the same thing. 

[killamch89]

3 hours ago, Family sedan said:

Yeah, those battle rocked.  Remember Jeff Gordon's Jurassic Park car?  That thing was insanely fast.

You mean the red and black one that got banned for some reason? If I remember correctly it was 1997 right?

38 minutes ago, Reality vs Adventure said:

Some people lack attention span or play while wasted and forget. A little review is good though. It's like reading a book and 20 chapters later some things are summarized a little bit before moving on. In the game, they could at least be creative with it instead of just repeating the same thing. 

At least put some kind of narrator like the one they had in DBZ just to make it sound epic or something.

[Family sedan]

Yeah, the red and black special paint scheme car from the 1997 Winston all star race.  Gordon kept passing and re-passing some of the best in all of racing.  Hendrick Motorsports, Gordon's team worked in a lot of gray areas of the NASCAR rule book.  They may have broken some rules too.

[Reality vs Adventure]

22 hours ago, killamch89 said:

At least put some kind of narrator like the one they had in DBZ just to make it sound epic or something.

That would be even better, and add a short clip. I like it when games do that, when it breaks from whatever is going on and you get to watch a clip.

[Heatman]

On 8/20/2021 at 1:24 AM, killamch89 said:

I'd tend to agree - at least ask if we know what's going on instead of assuming we don't know.

Seriously - I think that the developers do that on purpose thinking that there is possibility we're not well aware of what's going which is looking down on our commitment.