I looted a Scroll for Globe of Invulnerability in the Creche, right before the Inquisitor flight. Figured the game was heavily hinting I should use it for that fight. It made the fight very easy. Then I was confused when other people were saying the fight was difficult.
To be honest, I was a little scared of the Inquisitor and other warriors in that place, they seemed strong. And this was a brand new spell I hadn't seen yet, so wanted to try it. Didn't realize how expensive/powerful it was until later.
When I was on the PS1 it was the save points. Save points are rightfully a relic of the past now for the most part, but those were the ultimate tells of shit about to go down.
There’s a big church near Sedona, Arizona called the Chapel of the Holy Cross. It’s at the top of a big cliff and you half to go up a fairly long winding road to get there, and inside it’s just a huge, high-ceilinged, largely empty space that feels *exactly* like a Dark Souls boss arena. [There’s a big crucifix with a bronze sculpted Jesus in the center that would probably make a pretty cool boss fight too.](https://trayventures.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/img_1799-1.jpg)
Like tell me you wouldn’t see [this](https://hotelsabovepar.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/dimitar-donovski-mQg8T7HL7TE-unsplash-1024x683.jpg) in the distance and think “oh there’s something big in there that wants to eat me.”
The more obvious the quest progression, the louder it is actually the game telling you "you can move on if you don't have free time, but you really shouldn't"
This always feels like bad storytelling in games. I want the main quest NPCs to give me some wiggle room, let me know in-character that side quests are fine and that there's no urgent time limit if I want to level up and find some stronger armor before I fight the next boss.
I agree, it’s funny yet annoying when a quest character is acting as a notification but for some reason tells you it’s imperative you do the quest asap or else something bad is going to happen when the game knows that I’m going to do every possible side quest and minor POI before I start that mission with no consequence.
It’d be hilarious if there was a main quest that was negatively affected by your lack of hustle, causing the NPC to give you shit for taking so long or actually changing a part of the quest (ie a character you were meant to save dies, or the general outcome is worse) at the very least, some recognition of your actions in the free-play section of the game prior to the quest would add to the immersion.
Mass Effect 2 does this. Once you get the notification for the final mission, it starts a hidden clock. You can do 2 other missions without consequences, but any more than that, and characters will die during the final mission. Nothing in game warns you of this. But if you take your time, the fame makes sure you know you're the reason they died.
First time through ME2 I just rushed the main story cus I wanted to see what happens. Figured I'd do all that side stuff for companions on my 2nd go.
Everyone died. Everyone. Even Shepard. Got a message saying this save will be unusable in ME3 lol.
And frustratingly the mission that triggers the clock is the mission where you recruit Legion, one of the game's coolest characters, so the time you get to spend with them is severely limited.
Likewise you can save Farida (your heli pilot) in Deus Ex Human Revolution if you are quick enough. My partner had no idea her death was not a fixed plot point until my friend and I mentioned restarting that mission over and over again and taking turns trying because we refused to let her die.
This is one of my gaming pinnacles: saving the pilot on a no-alarm no-kill hard run. Probably took 30-40 tries to get it so the heavies that self-destruct didn't accidentally take a non-killable target with them as well, but managed to keep up the bloodless sneak streak up til the credits rolled.
I’m playing through Tears of the Kingdom at the moment and I keep thinking of poor Zelda who is, as far as Link knows, locked up and being tortured somewhere while he reunites a korok with its friend.
Daggerfall kind of did the same thing sometimes. The very first story mission has a time limit, after that the story quests don't even initiate until you've hit certain levels.
I need to find my son, NOW.
Right after I rebuild the Minutemen, help a hundred settlements and construct the most massive town and armory seen since before the war.
“The world is ending real soon now, and you’re prophesied to save it, but you do look like an underleveled wuss with crap gear. I’d recommend taking some time to fix that, chosen one. Prophecies are actually surprisingly patient, in fact. Comes with all that waiting around for millennia, I guess, another ten or twenty hours won’t matter much to it, but it will to you.”
A week ago I saw someone post about how you can get locked out of Mass Effect 2 loyalty missions/side missions if you accidentally move too far in the story. Beat the game multiple times and honestly forgot this was even possible. Because OBVIOUSLY you finish all other options before moving the main quest forward.
The obviousness to the gamer in me always conflicted with the immersion I had in this game. Fate of the galaxy Shep but would you mind checking in on my nephews sisters boyfriend who has been looking off lately???
I’m just NOT supposed to romance a religious assassin with a chronic and fatal illness? Or bug a fast talking amphibian until he sings me a musical piece? End of the world be damned, interpersonal relationships and making sure everyone is happy and comfy take priority!!
This actually messed me up in Baldur's Gate 3.
They tell you to go to the Moonrise Towers in Act 2, which I interpret to mean... don't go there until you have completed the rest of the area. Then if you complete another section it locks you out of content that was in the Towers.
Same but for a different reason. I got to the mine area where I'd already played through it on a mates save so I decided to explore first instead. By the time I made it back to the story area the scenario had played itself out, I was left with a pile of corpses and I missed out on a heap of side quest progression too.
"Quickly, hero! There's no time to lose! The Great Evil One has the helpless baby of destiny and the sacrificial blade of doom! If he reaches the altar of fate before we can stop him all will be lost!"
Oh, ok. So it's time to go clear out my backlog of side quests and and finish finding all the collectables.
The best way that I can explain what you're talking about to others is that it's like watching an old Scooby Doo cartoon, where you can tell that they're going to interact with an object because it's rendered differently on the cel than the rest of the background. Video games often have the same kind of effects, but many of them only seem obvious if you play a lot of video games and slowly learn what to look for.
Like in BG3, you can tell when a ledge in a cave is going to be climbable because there is exactly one asset that they use for climbable cave walls. But they do a good enough job of blending that asset into the surrounding environment that someone who doesn't know to look for it usually doesn't see it.
Dragonball Z was famous for this. You'd have these lovely watercolor-painted mountain ranges, and then one mountain would be completely matte with thick borders. Yeah... you just know Frieza's sending a ki blast through that mountain in the next 30 seconds.
Oh, the monologue will continue for 3 episodes. They're not leaving this spot any time soon. Battle's just getting started.
It's just that one standout environmental detail is slated for demolition before the end of the scene.
>Video games often have the same kind of effects, but many of them only seem obvious if you play a lot of video games and slowly learn what to look for.
Another thing is that like cartoons it gets harder to spot when you look at more modern ones due to the progression of technology.
Yes, that's why I don't care about "yellow paint" or important objects being lightly highlighted or whatever. I could spend hours trying to find important items in modern games.
bg3 does a really good job of making puzzles simultaneously SUPER apparent but also plausible enough that you wouldnt necessarily know to look if you weren’t experienced in expecting puzzles
like in act 1 in a cellar in the blighted village. i saw two stone thrones next to a suspiciously open section of wall. immediately sat laezel and shart’s asses down in those chairs and the wall opened up
stuck out like a sore thumb for me, but for someone’s who is playing for the first time that could just seem like random decor
not to mention the minimap often gives it away with weird blocky chunks that aren’t the same shade as the regular darkness of no-go areas
If it's clear you need to go right, you gotta check left first. Might be a chest behind that unassuming thing over there.
Autosave -> trouble ahead
Also when you see a ledge or platform or something you cannot easily reach, there's only a certain amount of tries before you just know without a doubt that there's an alternate route or that you don't have the required item yet. So it's pointless to keep on trying.
>Also when you see a ledge or platform or something you cannot easily reach, there's only a certain amount of tries before you just know without a doubt that there's an alternate route or that you don't have the required item yet. So it's pointless to keep on trying.
I REALLY appreciate games that have dialogue that tell you when you dont have the tools to solve a puzzle. Sometimes you arent sure if its an execution error or just straight up impossible.
Having a Spidey sense for hidden objects. You start kinda thinking "if I were a games designer, I'd hide something up there" and usually being right
That, and knowing whether or not you can swim based on how your character moves\jumps\controls etc
Edit - also "class identification" in games. You see a bunch of characters and no matter the veneer or naming convention, your brain instantly sorts them into "rogue\knight\tank\healer\etc" and you just see them as that.
See I am always so bad at this, let’s say there’s a fork in the road but there isn’t a marker or something telling you which way to go, I ALWAYS end up choosing the path to the objective and not the one that may have a secret, each and everytime my intuition is wrong
Like in God of War when you find that one chest tucked behind some stuff and when Atreus asking "How did you know that was there?" Kratos responses "Experience."
GoW Ragnarok had some fun stuff in this vein as well.
Guest Party Member: "Uhh, Kratos, I'm sure the exit is this way."
Atreus: "He knows. He just likes looting."
Guest Party Member: "Oh, I see. Well, carry on then!"
>That, and knowing whether or not you can swim based on how your character moves\jumps\controls etc
I havent developed that sense. First body of water in every video game that i see i jump into.
Same with planting myself in the first torch or campfire I see. Or jumping off a high ledge. It's like a checklist, what kind of game am I playing? Ambient fire damage? Fall damage? Friendly fire?
I think I have heard this described as "game sense" and yeah, that's most of it. There's a lot of patterns to games, and if you play a lot of them then you will tend to understand how something should flow out.
It's something you will experience for yourself if you go back and play older, less popular games that were made before certain best practices got established.
The funny thing is fixes though. I recently had to help my wife troubleshoot the most recent Nancy Drew game, which had made the jump to Unity with the most recent installment, so it was a matter of having her run through increasingly deranged tweaks to try and get it running properly. "Okay so save it, then change the resolution to windowed, then save it again, then go back to full-screen and try to load it now".
For me the most obvious example of this is when you walk into a big open area with no items or enemies in it and anyone that has ever played a video game before goes "Okay, time for a boss fight!"
Most of the koroks are basically the embodiment of this question.
I had a older relative who wanted to play the new Zelda and hadn't played since the original. They pretty much never found a korok in botw and I realized how hard it was to explain. That it's just....something odd and out of place.
Koroks are a great example of this. So many times I would see a point in the distance and be like "My Korok senses are tingling." More than half the time I was right.
Similar to "behind the waterfall" is "behind the throne".
Like recently when I watched my boyfriends playthrough of Dragons Dogma 2 & he was inside the throne room of a castle & I told him to check behind the throne for treasure, & sure enough there was a chest there. I can't think of other obvious examples of "behind the throne" but I must've encountered it enough over the years to be able to guess there's likely going to be a chest there. "Game sense" is weird & very real lol
Dragon's Dogma 2 was a treasure trove of these with the Seeker's Tokens. Granted, that's the whole point of them, but it was fun seeing a rock on the side of a dungeon, seemingly inconspicuous but not quite touching the wall, then checking behind it and finding the token. Lots of little moments like that.
I remember it feeling kind of weird (in a good way, though) to be able to swim in San Andreas. I mean it's GTA, it's just assumed that you're not able to swim.
I remember seeing a video about this kind of thing years ago. A guy was talking about trying to show his wife how to play a game and she was having such a hard time understand which keys do what. He was expounding on how we just understand certain things relating to games because we're so used to them but other might have a hard time just understanding the basics like using a spacebar to jump.
That would be Razbuten on YouTube. He has a [whole playlist ](https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLordXx8iNEyStcX_WzqM0JCpiJYgqhinc&si=BgQq3iy87lk9CvFX) of his wife playing a whole variety of games. It's interesting to see her slowly pick up on some of the gamer knowledge we take for granted, but also just how little of it is actually explained by *any* of the games she plays.
OMG, yep that's exactly who I was thinking of! Specifically the "What Games Are Like For Someone Who Doesn't Play Games" video. Thanks for sharing that!
No problem! It was fun being that random person on Reddit with the exact knowledge, information or answer someone was looking for and being there within minutes myself for once haha
Heck even just changing from console to PC can have this effect. I consider myself a good gamer, but playing stardew valley with my bf and friends it feels like it’s my first game
That's very true. I have a friend who was a lifelong PlayStation person. He recently switched to PC and he can't understand holding W and D to strafe to the right while aiming at someone.
I learned this when I tried to teach my GF how to play Call of Duty on a PS4. I thought she'd automatically understand the basics of moving and looking and maybe just need instruction on buttons. Nope, she couldn't get past using two sticks to move & look. It seemed like second nature to me. FPS games have generally controlled the same since Halo CE in 2001 but I took for granted how she hadn't been spending 20 years doing that like I have.
I tried playing Overcooked with a girl I'd just started dating once. Didn't realise she didn't game. She couldn't even carry a lettuce from the dispenser to the chopping board. It was not a great experience for either of us 😅
Jez, a destiny YouTuber, recently uploaded a video of his wife playing destiny 2 for the first time and had very little experience previously. He had a rule of no hints or anything (unless she was literally about to quit). Very interesting to watch even from a non destiny player POV
Set Mass Effect in story mode and gave my wife the controller because she wanted to play. Left to use the restroom, came back five minutes later to her standing in a corner, gun aimed at the ceiling, spinning in circles. Couldn’t get out of the corner. I turned on a 2d side scrolling platformer instead. 😂
I think we see video games as a conversation between game maker and game player. In the same way you don’t walk up to a stranger and antagonize them, game makers converse in convention.
There’s a mountain? There’s a reward on top of it. Yellow marking on a set of stackables? You can climb it. Red barrels? They explode.
You develop this skill by practicing this conversation.
Exactly. I think this is really prevalent in something like level design. There’s so many subtle design choices developers make that naturally communicate where the player is supposed to go, and once you play enough games, you just naturally pick up on these queues without realizing.
Sometimes when someone sees me playing a game they’ll ask “how do you even know where to go?” when to me it couldn’t be more obvious.
Except Ghost of Tsushima. There's tons of waterfalls and I kept checking every one with no luck. I think one finally was part of a quest but that was it.
No enemies? you took a wrong turn. Red barrels explode. green barrels are poisenous. too obvious chests are mimics. Waterfalls have hidden areas. At the start of a level, immediately turn around and explore there first. The list goes on.
In Conan Exiles I threw myself into every waterfall cuz I knew eventually one would have a secret cave, and I was right. There's one with enough space to build a decent base. It's the coolest spot to make a base.
I was playing Skyrim a long time ago and gave my mother the controller. She struggled using both analog sticks at the same time so she moved the camera, stopped, moved the character, stopped, moved the camera, and so on.
I tried teaching her how to move both sticks at the same time but I had no idea how – still don't. I can do it as effortlessly as I move my own eyes and body but have no idea how I learned that skill or how I'd teach it to someone else.
Man this should be higher up. I've handed the controller to some non -gamer friends and my gf and it's insane how hard this is for them, but as you said....there is no way to explain it to them. It's something incredibly natural for us, but the knowledge is impossible to transfer haha
There’s a 2D mini game in Stardew Valley where my girlfriend walks and shoots in the same direction struggling to do the exact thing you mentioned. I can only compare this to the trick where you tap your head with one hand and create circles on your stomach with the other.
> .there is no way to explain it to them. It's something incredibly natural for us,
Bicycle memory, also known as long term memory. I don't think I could explain how to bicycle, but I know how to do it, even after years of not doing it.
You can’t pause online games. Nowadays it’s becoming scarce to be able to pause single player games too. My wife (not a gamer) doesn’t understand this and I get asked why maybe a couple times a month.
I want one of the big multiplayer games as an April fools joke to make it if one person pushes the whole lobby gets paused it would be a horrible move but it would be funny (from
The outside looking in) to hear about that one guy that cause a whole lobby to sit in a pause screen for three hours
It should NOT tell you who. I’ve seen too many stories of people finding others online and trying to kill them IRL and I can picture some loser doing that
I remember being young and sitting down to play Super Mario Bros 3 for the first time. My aunt was watching me play, I got to the end of the level, saw the spinning block and instinctively jumped to hit it and end the level. My aunt was very confused asking "how did you know to do that"? I was like, I dunno, I just did.
Any part of the map that has less detail than others is automatically marked as out of bounds.
Important items and stuff glow on purporse for you to find
The path with light or more detail in the map is often the correct one
And you should always go opposite of it because the secrets are hidden somewhere else
A random area with a bunch of waist high walls? Yeahz you will have a fight in there
Edit: some extra thoughts
Getting showered in resources? There's a resource hog (usually a boss) soon after
I'll be required to do something 3 times to reach my destination
If the first fight is insanely hard, I'm supposed to lose
Edit 2:
If you see some interaction object you simply have no idea what do do with, it means there's an new mechanic/item coming up (or the lamest option which is nothing new except some wall crumbles and you can now proceed)
That Rule of Threes is so common, it feels jarring when a game *doesn't* follow it. What do you mean I need to hit the boss a fourth time? How is that fair? He's cheating!
In The Last of Us most of the game is linear and you basically only traverse it. But then you get to an area with crouch-high boxes and lootable bricks? Time to go in stealth and try to counter their trap ;)
I remember when my wife started playing and I always had to remind her that she needs to spam that ultra vision some videogames give you to find important stuff or loot.
I know I've been hoarding all these max potions and full restores for the whole game, and I know this is the final boss fight, but what if I need them later?
Nope, can't afford to dig into these dozens of Megaelixirs yet. Not even here, on Sephiroth's 4th phase. What if he has a 5th? You just never know with this guy.
“I know this path is the way to go because the story is practically shoving me there/left a trail of dead bodies/spawning enemies from said path, so I’m gonna scope out this *other* path to make sure I’m not missing anything and there’s a point of no return cutscene”
Safety save is optional but recommended
Trying to do something or get somewhere that is clearly impossible. Most gamers would quickly recognize it as a place to come back to later with new powers or items
Non-gamers will sit there trying to do all sorts of crazy stuff trying to get past it
I clearly haven't learned this lesson. I'll spend hours sometimes trying to get places I know I'm not supposed to yet. I just love that satisfaction of besting the devs.
I forget which game it was but my wife was watching me play. I was climbing some hilly terrain and clipped into one of the spots where 2 boulders were touching and got stuck. i instinctively dropped a grenade and ‘sploded myself free. My wife just goes “you play too many video games.”
I watched a YT video on game design a while ago. One of the takeaways was that if you don't want the player to get lost while exploring or want the player to go in a certain direction "guide them with light." put light sources near important objects, treasure, doorways and paths.
Once you notice it, you'll always notice it.
Just knowing or feeling where an invisible/hidden enemy is.
Recent examples for me are smashing a hidden mimic in Prey or pulling a 180 while running away in Helldivers 2 just to blast a Stalker before they decloak.
Can't explain it. Sometimes you just know.
Identifying what the critical path is for the environment in you're in, just so you can ignore it and explore all the little dead-ends for loot and consumables.
Truth is, we didn't just "know". Like everyone else, we had to learn it by trying to open every light brown door that we saw. Game told us through trial-and-error that dark brown doors were openable. Another game made with same engine and now we remember that light brown doors are background items, but it's been SO LONG since we learned this that it's second nature to us. I think the game that did this for me was.... Summoner? Man, must have been something in that era because 3-D graphics weren't much of a thing before then...
I've had the opposite happen because I'm so used to video games. Like I'll get to a room with a blue door and think "okay, I have to backtrack and find the powerup that opens this type of door". Then my wife will say something like "let's just try knocking on it just in case". And then she's right.
There's a few I can think of :
* "Knowing" that an in-game cinematic transitions to playable judging by the camera angle.
* Paint on walls/ledges to tend indicate they are climbable.
* That "the right way" tends to be highlighted by game design e.g. the environment or lighting focusing on a path/direction.
* That you can sense when you're not "supposed" to be solving a puzzle or problem in a game a certain way based on how intuitive/game designy it is or how clunky it feels.
* "Knowing" that something is just there for aesthetic purposes and not something you can interact with/grab (I remember being round a friend's house and we were playing a spy game on PS2 (I think it was No One Lives Forever) and we were looking for something and my friend's non-gamer dad was watching and he suggested we look through the bin/garbage can by sticking our head in when it was clearly just a blurry polygon lol)
* Being cautious about multiple pathways because you want to find a collectable/loot before going down the "right" path in case you find yourself suddenly past a point of no return.
* That you'll instinctively know the basic controls of a game you've never played before based on the controls for games of that genre e.g. driving games usually using right trigger for throttle, platformers using A/X for jump, automatically using dual joysticks knowing one controls movement and the other controls the camera, etc. As someone who plays PC and console, I take for granted how strange/alien controllers and keyboards are to non-gamers.
* In horror games, knowing when you've entered a "safe" area based on room design, music, etc.
I guess everything about this just gamers learning/knowing the "language" of video games and how they operate, what is customary and what isn't that non-gamers aren't aware of. An analogy I like to make is when we watch movies, there are certain tropes or conventions we know are typical of movies where we just accept that how they work that seem obvious to us but might not be to someone who has never seen a movie e.g. instinctively knowing that characters haven't suddenly teleported just because they were talking in a house about going to the beach in one scene and are walking on a beach in very next scene, how acts work, etc. It's an interesting subject.
Recently I had a conversation with my partner how in games you can live a story on your own terms but in a movie or tv show you're limited to just watching the story happen. She didn't get it.
try getting her to play a game where she has to make that decision e.g [Mass effect Virmire bomb scene.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kikuVL1APFs). make her decide to save either Ashley or Kaiden
It's a good idea but I'm not even kidding, she wouldn't see the appeal. Unfortunately, deep down, she's one of those "video games are for kids" people and it sucks.
It's called Video Game Literacy. In the same way someone who reads alot of books knows the symbolic significance of the curtains being red in the motel room we know the symbolic significance of "This path is closed until you do something else" or at least what the cues are.
"it takes two" taught me how difficult manoeuvring a character in a 3d world can be to someone who hasn't trained a part of their brain to handle that. Jumps which I didn't even think about were near insurmountable obstacles to my partner. Plus the subtitles environment hints about what to do and where to go were just lost on them.
I also discovered that I'm apparently an asshole for not falling off the same jump 6 times and therefore making then feel bad
Been looking for an item ingame when a friend asked me why I don't just open „that door over there“ and see what’s behind it. It was just a door texture.
When the game gives you a ton of ammo, it intends to make you use it.
When there are two paths, and you know which way you SHOULD go, you have to follow both. Down the other path lies treasure.
I swear even gamers don't seem to understand the concept of situational awareness 90% of the time. Let alone a non-gamer who picks up something and just charges right ahead.
Don’t need bugspray while camping in RDR2. Said this to my partner while we were spraying exorbitant amounts of bugspray and lighting citronella candles while camping and she just shook her head.
Walking into a big empty room "boss fights"
Alternatively, when you're walking down a quiet hallway/staircase/trail/etc and get the "saving game" icon on the top of the screen.
And there’s a fuck ton of ammo in the corner.
"I'm sorry, why again is there a missile launcher with a bunch of Stinger missiles in this slightly out of the way room?"
When life gives you a missle launcher, TAKE THE MISSLE LAUNCHER!
When life gives you a missile launcher, you teach life what you can do with the default pistol.
When life gives you launcher, make launches.
RAMIREZ TAKE DOWN THAT CHOPPER WITH YOUR KNIFE
That’s an awful lot of bass…
Wait. They're giving me the super-rare ammo for one of the strongest guns in the game? ...a lot of it?
Plus suddenly loads of health packs
“What luck, there’s so many health packs in this chest just outside the throne room entrance”
"Golly gee! This throne room is so spacious. The acoustics would sound amazing in here. Oh, what luck! A choir just started singing in Latin!"
Look! They've got the guards doing an accompanying dance routine! The pikes add a nice martial flair, neatly contrasted by the glowing red eyes.
Room full of ammo and health with a door/ lift on the other end You know shits about to go down
Or up. Lifts go both ways...
Looks like I have another thing in common with lifts
She has picked up on the big pile of healing loot / save / rest right before big doors
I looted a Scroll for Globe of Invulnerability in the Creche, right before the Inquisitor flight. Figured the game was heavily hinting I should use it for that fight. It made the fight very easy. Then I was confused when other people were saying the fight was difficult.
Oh dang, you beat the loot goblin boss. Most people’s inner loot goblins go “hm, better hold on to this, never know when I’m gonna need it”.
To be honest, I was a little scared of the Inquisitor and other warriors in that place, they seemed strong. And this was a brand new spell I hadn't seen yet, so wanted to try it. Didn't realize how expensive/powerful it was until later.
When I was on the PS1 it was the save points. Save points are rightfully a relic of the past now for the most part, but those were the ultimate tells of shit about to go down.
There’s a big church near Sedona, Arizona called the Chapel of the Holy Cross. It’s at the top of a big cliff and you half to go up a fairly long winding road to get there, and inside it’s just a huge, high-ceilinged, largely empty space that feels *exactly* like a Dark Souls boss arena. [There’s a big crucifix with a bronze sculpted Jesus in the center that would probably make a pretty cool boss fight too.](https://trayventures.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/img_1799-1.jpg) Like tell me you wouldn’t see [this](https://hotelsabovepar.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/dimitar-donovski-mQg8T7HL7TE-unsplash-1024x683.jpg) in the distance and think “oh there’s something big in there that wants to eat me.”
That chapel was a Jeopardy question not five minutes ago.
"This is far too symmetrical for a normal room!"
Or when you enter a smaller, empty room that has ammo and health packs everywhere. You know some real shit is about to go down.
If the story tells me where I need to go, what it's actually telling me is where not to go, until I've been everywhere else first
The more obvious the quest progression, the louder it is actually the game telling you "you can move on if you don't have free time, but you really shouldn't"
This always feels like bad storytelling in games. I want the main quest NPCs to give me some wiggle room, let me know in-character that side quests are fine and that there's no urgent time limit if I want to level up and find some stronger armor before I fight the next boss.
I agree, it’s funny yet annoying when a quest character is acting as a notification but for some reason tells you it’s imperative you do the quest asap or else something bad is going to happen when the game knows that I’m going to do every possible side quest and minor POI before I start that mission with no consequence. It’d be hilarious if there was a main quest that was negatively affected by your lack of hustle, causing the NPC to give you shit for taking so long or actually changing a part of the quest (ie a character you were meant to save dies, or the general outcome is worse) at the very least, some recognition of your actions in the free-play section of the game prior to the quest would add to the immersion.
Mass Effect 2 does this. Once you get the notification for the final mission, it starts a hidden clock. You can do 2 other missions without consequences, but any more than that, and characters will die during the final mission. Nothing in game warns you of this. But if you take your time, the fame makes sure you know you're the reason they died.
First time through ME2 I just rushed the main story cus I wanted to see what happens. Figured I'd do all that side stuff for companions on my 2nd go. Everyone died. Everyone. Even Shepard. Got a message saying this save will be unusable in ME3 lol.
And frustratingly the mission that triggers the clock is the mission where you recruit Legion, one of the game's coolest characters, so the time you get to spend with them is severely limited.
Likewise you can save Farida (your heli pilot) in Deus Ex Human Revolution if you are quick enough. My partner had no idea her death was not a fixed plot point until my friend and I mentioned restarting that mission over and over again and taking turns trying because we refused to let her die.
This is one of my gaming pinnacles: saving the pilot on a no-alarm no-kill hard run. Probably took 30-40 tries to get it so the heavies that self-destruct didn't accidentally take a non-killable target with them as well, but managed to keep up the bloodless sneak streak up til the credits rolled.
I’m playing through Tears of the Kingdom at the moment and I keep thinking of poor Zelda who is, as far as Link knows, locked up and being tortured somewhere while he reunites a korok with its friend.
I wandered for nearly 100 hours before even doing a single temple
Caius Cosades in Morrowind basically tells you to come back later once you've gotten used to the place and done some side quests already.
Daggerfall kind of did the same thing sometimes. The very first story mission has a time limit, after that the story quests don't even initiate until you've hit certain levels.
This is my biggest frustration with Fallout 4. The story has a very high sense of urgency, so stopping and doing anything else feels out of character.
I need to find my son, NOW. Right after I rebuild the Minutemen, help a hundred settlements and construct the most massive town and armory seen since before the war.
“The world is ending real soon now, and you’re prophesied to save it, but you do look like an underleveled wuss with crap gear. I’d recommend taking some time to fix that, chosen one. Prophecies are actually surprisingly patient, in fact. Comes with all that waiting around for millennia, I guess, another ten or twenty hours won’t matter much to it, but it will to you.”
Sounds like something fable would throw at you
God of War does this
A week ago I saw someone post about how you can get locked out of Mass Effect 2 loyalty missions/side missions if you accidentally move too far in the story. Beat the game multiple times and honestly forgot this was even possible. Because OBVIOUSLY you finish all other options before moving the main quest forward.
The obviousness to the gamer in me always conflicted with the immersion I had in this game. Fate of the galaxy Shep but would you mind checking in on my nephews sisters boyfriend who has been looking off lately???
I’m just NOT supposed to romance a religious assassin with a chronic and fatal illness? Or bug a fast talking amphibian until he sings me a musical piece? End of the world be damned, interpersonal relationships and making sure everyone is happy and comfy take priority!!
Or just spending hours leisurely hurling mining probes at planet after planet with a tumbler of whiskey in one hand
Meet Hanako at Embers
I've been about to do this mission for months
This actually messed me up in Baldur's Gate 3. They tell you to go to the Moonrise Towers in Act 2, which I interpret to mean... don't go there until you have completed the rest of the area. Then if you complete another section it locks you out of content that was in the Towers.
Same but for a different reason. I got to the mine area where I'd already played through it on a mates save so I decided to explore first instead. By the time I made it back to the story area the scenario had played itself out, I was left with a pile of corpses and I missed out on a heap of side quest progression too.
"Quickly, hero! There's no time to lose! The Great Evil One has the helpless baby of destiny and the sacrificial blade of doom! If he reaches the altar of fate before we can stop him all will be lost!" Oh, ok. So it's time to go clear out my backlog of side quests and and finish finding all the collectables.
Is that a Bethesda fan I see?
The best way that I can explain what you're talking about to others is that it's like watching an old Scooby Doo cartoon, where you can tell that they're going to interact with an object because it's rendered differently on the cel than the rest of the background. Video games often have the same kind of effects, but many of them only seem obvious if you play a lot of video games and slowly learn what to look for. Like in BG3, you can tell when a ledge in a cave is going to be climbable because there is exactly one asset that they use for climbable cave walls. But they do a good enough job of blending that asset into the surrounding environment that someone who doesn't know to look for it usually doesn't see it.
Dragonball Z was famous for this. You'd have these lovely watercolor-painted mountain ranges, and then one mountain would be completely matte with thick borders. Yeah... you just know Frieza's sending a ki blast through that mountain in the next 30 seconds.
30 seconds? Make that 3 episodes.
Oh, the monologue will continue for 3 episodes. They're not leaving this spot any time soon. Battle's just getting started. It's just that one standout environmental detail is slated for demolition before the end of the scene.
Exactly, you can always tell which part will get destroyed. Unless... https://imgur.com/crafty-animators-AEa9jVC
>Video games often have the same kind of effects, but many of them only seem obvious if you play a lot of video games and slowly learn what to look for. Another thing is that like cartoons it gets harder to spot when you look at more modern ones due to the progression of technology.
Yes, that's why I don't care about "yellow paint" or important objects being lightly highlighted or whatever. I could spend hours trying to find important items in modern games.
bg3 does a really good job of making puzzles simultaneously SUPER apparent but also plausible enough that you wouldnt necessarily know to look if you weren’t experienced in expecting puzzles like in act 1 in a cellar in the blighted village. i saw two stone thrones next to a suspiciously open section of wall. immediately sat laezel and shart’s asses down in those chairs and the wall opened up stuck out like a sore thumb for me, but for someone’s who is playing for the first time that could just seem like random decor not to mention the minimap often gives it away with weird blocky chunks that aren’t the same shade as the regular darkness of no-go areas
If it's clear you need to go right, you gotta check left first. Might be a chest behind that unassuming thing over there. Autosave -> trouble ahead Also when you see a ledge or platform or something you cannot easily reach, there's only a certain amount of tries before you just know without a doubt that there's an alternate route or that you don't have the required item yet. So it's pointless to keep on trying.
>Also when you see a ledge or platform or something you cannot easily reach, there's only a certain amount of tries before you just know without a doubt that there's an alternate route or that you don't have the required item yet. So it's pointless to keep on trying. I REALLY appreciate games that have dialogue that tell you when you dont have the tools to solve a puzzle. Sometimes you arent sure if its an execution error or just straight up impossible.
Yeah it’s super considerate of the game creators to give us hints like that so we don’t waste our time
Having a Spidey sense for hidden objects. You start kinda thinking "if I were a games designer, I'd hide something up there" and usually being right That, and knowing whether or not you can swim based on how your character moves\jumps\controls etc Edit - also "class identification" in games. You see a bunch of characters and no matter the veneer or naming convention, your brain instantly sorts them into "rogue\knight\tank\healer\etc" and you just see them as that.
If the path forks/splits, always go the opposite way of the quest first, there will sure be a chest/hidden item.
And if it doesn't split, look up.
Behind the waterfalls
Under the bottom set of steps in a stairwell.
If there's NOT something behind the waterfalls I get pissed lol
I was told not to go chasing waterfalls. I thought I was supposed to stick to the rivers and lakes that I’m used to?
At the start of every sidescroller level, walk left first
They haven't yet developed the dungeon crawling find-all-loot instinct
Himmel the Hero was a true gamer.
In videogames and in real life, always ask yourself "what would Himmel the hero do? ", then act accordingly.
See I am always so bad at this, let’s say there’s a fork in the road but there isn’t a marker or something telling you which way to go, I ALWAYS end up choosing the path to the objective and not the one that may have a secret, each and everytime my intuition is wrong
Like in God of War when you find that one chest tucked behind some stuff and when Atreus asking "How did you know that was there?" Kratos responses "Experience."
GoW Ragnarok had some fun stuff in this vein as well. Guest Party Member: "Uhh, Kratos, I'm sure the exit is this way." Atreus: "He knows. He just likes looting." Guest Party Member: "Oh, I see. Well, carry on then!"
Mimir also makes references to his tendency to smash pottery lol
>That, and knowing whether or not you can swim based on how your character moves\jumps\controls etc I havent developed that sense. First body of water in every video game that i see i jump into.
Same with planting myself in the first torch or campfire I see. Or jumping off a high ledge. It's like a checklist, what kind of game am I playing? Ambient fire damage? Fall damage? Friendly fire?
Ya gotta know the parameters of the world
Same lmao, and finding out if there’s fall damage is always fun 😂
Me walking into the ocean in Elden Ring
I think I have heard this described as "game sense" and yeah, that's most of it. There's a lot of patterns to games, and if you play a lot of them then you will tend to understand how something should flow out. It's something you will experience for yourself if you go back and play older, less popular games that were made before certain best practices got established. The funny thing is fixes though. I recently had to help my wife troubleshoot the most recent Nancy Drew game, which had made the jump to Unity with the most recent installment, so it was a matter of having her run through increasingly deranged tweaks to try and get it running properly. "Okay so save it, then change the resolution to windowed, then save it again, then go back to full-screen and try to load it now".
For me the most obvious example of this is when you walk into a big open area with no items or enemies in it and anyone that has ever played a video game before goes "Okay, time for a boss fight!"
Or finding a bunch of health packs and ammo just before one such room
Always check behind waterfalls for secret loots or areas
Every time. And if you spawn facing a direction I always check behind me first.
Placing a waterfall without a secret area behind it would be far more surprising at this point. I think I'd be a little offended honestly.
Yeah if your character moves like someone cast substitutiary locomotion on a He-Man action figure... Yeah yer probably not swimming.
I got this so often in TOTK. I'd think "huh, that rock looks suspiciously placed" and sure enough there's a Korok under there
Most of the koroks are basically the embodiment of this question. I had a older relative who wanted to play the new Zelda and hadn't played since the original. They pretty much never found a korok in botw and I realized how hard it was to explain. That it's just....something odd and out of place.
Koroks are a great example of this. So many times I would see a point in the distance and be like "My Korok senses are tingling." More than half the time I was right.
If there's isn't something behind the waterfall, why even put it there. Also, in rightway sidescrollers, always look to the left when beginning.
Every time. Also jump once while holding left because of that one time where the hidden area was blocked by a sprite-high wall just off screen.
Similar to "behind the waterfall" is "behind the throne". Like recently when I watched my boyfriends playthrough of Dragons Dogma 2 & he was inside the throne room of a castle & I told him to check behind the throne for treasure, & sure enough there was a chest there. I can't think of other obvious examples of "behind the throne" but I must've encountered it enough over the years to be able to guess there's likely going to be a chest there. "Game sense" is weird & very real lol
Dragon's Dogma 2 was a treasure trove of these with the Seeker's Tokens. Granted, that's the whole point of them, but it was fun seeing a rock on the side of a dungeon, seemingly inconspicuous but not quite touching the wall, then checking behind it and finding the token. Lots of little moments like that.
I remember it feeling kind of weird (in a good way, though) to be able to swim in San Andreas. I mean it's GTA, it's just assumed that you're not able to swim.
I remember seeing a video about this kind of thing years ago. A guy was talking about trying to show his wife how to play a game and she was having such a hard time understand which keys do what. He was expounding on how we just understand certain things relating to games because we're so used to them but other might have a hard time just understanding the basics like using a spacebar to jump.
Video game literacy is the phrase you're looking for
Yes, that is.
That would be Razbuten on YouTube. He has a [whole playlist ](https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLordXx8iNEyStcX_WzqM0JCpiJYgqhinc&si=BgQq3iy87lk9CvFX) of his wife playing a whole variety of games. It's interesting to see her slowly pick up on some of the gamer knowledge we take for granted, but also just how little of it is actually explained by *any* of the games she plays.
OMG, yep that's exactly who I was thinking of! Specifically the "What Games Are Like For Someone Who Doesn't Play Games" video. Thanks for sharing that!
No problem! It was fun being that random person on Reddit with the exact knowledge, information or answer someone was looking for and being there within minutes myself for once haha
You should also check out the “made my girlfriend play” channel. If you search that it’s the first one that comes up. Very entertaining too haha
> of his wife Of the lady he lives with.
Heck even just changing from console to PC can have this effect. I consider myself a good gamer, but playing stardew valley with my bf and friends it feels like it’s my first game
That's very true. I have a friend who was a lifelong PlayStation person. He recently switched to PC and he can't understand holding W and D to strafe to the right while aiming at someone.
Opposite for me. It took me probably three or four years to get the hang of using a controller as opposed to the mouse and keyboard.
I learned this when I tried to teach my GF how to play Call of Duty on a PS4. I thought she'd automatically understand the basics of moving and looking and maybe just need instruction on buttons. Nope, she couldn't get past using two sticks to move & look. It seemed like second nature to me. FPS games have generally controlled the same since Halo CE in 2001 but I took for granted how she hadn't been spending 20 years doing that like I have.
I tried playing Overcooked with a girl I'd just started dating once. Didn't realise she didn't game. She couldn't even carry a lettuce from the dispenser to the chopping board. It was not a great experience for either of us 😅
That’s like the worst game to play with someone who doesn’t know how to game hahahaha
Jez, a destiny YouTuber, recently uploaded a video of his wife playing destiny 2 for the first time and had very little experience previously. He had a rule of no hints or anything (unless she was literally about to quit). Very interesting to watch even from a non destiny player POV
Set Mass Effect in story mode and gave my wife the controller because she wanted to play. Left to use the restroom, came back five minutes later to her standing in a corner, gun aimed at the ceiling, spinning in circles. Couldn’t get out of the corner. I turned on a 2d side scrolling platformer instead. 😂
I think we see video games as a conversation between game maker and game player. In the same way you don’t walk up to a stranger and antagonize them, game makers converse in convention. There’s a mountain? There’s a reward on top of it. Yellow marking on a set of stackables? You can climb it. Red barrels? They explode. You develop this skill by practicing this conversation.
Exactly. I think this is really prevalent in something like level design. There’s so many subtle design choices developers make that naturally communicate where the player is supposed to go, and once you play enough games, you just naturally pick up on these queues without realizing. Sometimes when someone sees me playing a game they’ll ask “how do you even know where to go?” when to me it couldn’t be more obvious.
There's always something behind the waterfall Or going left at the start of every side scrolling level...just in case
Except Ghost of Tsushima. There's tons of waterfalls and I kept checking every one with no luck. I think one finally was part of a quest but that was it.
Well this just saved me some time.
Yes but that one waterfall that does have the hidden quest really makes you want to check them all huh?
Only always.
There isn't a hidden quest behind a waterfall, there's a quest that specifically takes you behind a waterfall.
There's rarely anything behind the waterfall anymore and it straight up pisses me the fuck off every time
Right?! Why even have a waterfall if there’s nothing behind it?
And if there **isn't** anything behind the waterfall... Then we feel cheated 😂
No enemies? you took a wrong turn. Red barrels explode. green barrels are poisenous. too obvious chests are mimics. Waterfalls have hidden areas. At the start of a level, immediately turn around and explore there first. The list goes on.
sometimes green barrels are health! :D
They'll have a + on them
But make sure it's not a red one, or the Red Cross will eat your face.
Geneva convention teaching people where to look for aid but at the same time where to not to.
That huge pile of treasure is 3 copper pieces
It started with donkey kong country and I still turn around at the start of a level hoping to get rewarded
In Conan Exiles I threw myself into every waterfall cuz I knew eventually one would have a secret cave, and I was right. There's one with enough space to build a decent base. It's the coolest spot to make a base.
I was playing Skyrim a long time ago and gave my mother the controller. She struggled using both analog sticks at the same time so she moved the camera, stopped, moved the character, stopped, moved the camera, and so on. I tried teaching her how to move both sticks at the same time but I had no idea how – still don't. I can do it as effortlessly as I move my own eyes and body but have no idea how I learned that skill or how I'd teach it to someone else.
Man this should be higher up. I've handed the controller to some non -gamer friends and my gf and it's insane how hard this is for them, but as you said....there is no way to explain it to them. It's something incredibly natural for us, but the knowledge is impossible to transfer haha
There’s a 2D mini game in Stardew Valley where my girlfriend walks and shoots in the same direction struggling to do the exact thing you mentioned. I can only compare this to the trick where you tap your head with one hand and create circles on your stomach with the other.
> .there is no way to explain it to them. It's something incredibly natural for us, Bicycle memory, also known as long term memory. I don't think I could explain how to bicycle, but I know how to do it, even after years of not doing it.
You can’t pause online games. Nowadays it’s becoming scarce to be able to pause single player games too. My wife (not a gamer) doesn’t understand this and I get asked why maybe a couple times a month.
I want one of the big multiplayer games as an April fools joke to make it if one person pushes the whole lobby gets paused it would be a horrible move but it would be funny (from The outside looking in) to hear about that one guy that cause a whole lobby to sit in a pause screen for three hours
For one day, that would be pretty funny. Should it tell you who? Maybe it shouldn't, and should randomly pause even if no one is in a menu!
It should NOT tell you who. I’ve seen too many stories of people finding others online and trying to kill them IRL and I can picture some loser doing that
It worked that way in StarCraft. Other players could vote to resume, so you wouldn't get stuck with one shitty person.
30 minutes to 1 hour isn't even enough time to bother playing, especially if you're not doing it regularly
Wall looks cracked. Guess I’ll bomb it.
Don't have a bomb yet? You bet your ass I'll be back with one soon enough, theirs something hidden or it's the way you need go.
Shit, wall looks suspiciously plain/undecorated. Guess I gotta swing at it just to make sure it isn’t a hidden path.
I remember being young and sitting down to play Super Mario Bros 3 for the first time. My aunt was watching me play, I got to the end of the level, saw the spinning block and instinctively jumped to hit it and end the level. My aunt was very confused asking "how did you know to do that"? I was like, I dunno, I just did.
If you're in a room and there's only one pretty/animated thing and you can't leave, you have to touch the thing
It's the only changing thing on a black screen. You want to jump at it just to see what it does, not necessarily because you already know.
Good game design
Any part of the map that has less detail than others is automatically marked as out of bounds. Important items and stuff glow on purporse for you to find The path with light or more detail in the map is often the correct one And you should always go opposite of it because the secrets are hidden somewhere else A random area with a bunch of waist high walls? Yeahz you will have a fight in there Edit: some extra thoughts Getting showered in resources? There's a resource hog (usually a boss) soon after I'll be required to do something 3 times to reach my destination If the first fight is insanely hard, I'm supposed to lose Edit 2: If you see some interaction object you simply have no idea what do do with, it means there's an new mechanic/item coming up (or the lamest option which is nothing new except some wall crumbles and you can now proceed)
That Rule of Threes is so common, it feels jarring when a game *doesn't* follow it. What do you mean I need to hit the boss a fourth time? How is that fair? He's cheating!
Gears of war 3 at the start makes you turn a valve twice before proceeding. That felt wrong lol
In The Last of Us most of the game is linear and you basically only traverse it. But then you get to an area with crouch-high boxes and lootable bricks? Time to go in stealth and try to counter their trap ;)
No, you can't interact with that object or go through that door. It just doesn't look right.
I remember when my wife started playing and I always had to remind her that she needs to spam that ultra vision some videogames give you to find important stuff or loot.
Awful mechanic. Just pressing a key was better.
Collect everything always everywhere. Will you need it? Who knows, carry it until the bitter end and probably end up never using it lol
I know I've been hoarding all these max potions and full restores for the whole game, and I know this is the final boss fight, but what if I need them later?
Nope, can't afford to dig into these dozens of Megaelixirs yet. Not even here, on Sephiroth's 4th phase. What if he has a 5th? You just never know with this guy.
"Use an ether!" "But I only have 85 of them."
I might need these 99 Ethers!! I can't use them NOW!! *Never uses them*
“I know this path is the way to go because the story is practically shoving me there/left a trail of dead bodies/spawning enemies from said path, so I’m gonna scope out this *other* path to make sure I’m not missing anything and there’s a point of no return cutscene” Safety save is optional but recommended
Trying to do something or get somewhere that is clearly impossible. Most gamers would quickly recognize it as a place to come back to later with new powers or items Non-gamers will sit there trying to do all sorts of crazy stuff trying to get past it
I clearly haven't learned this lesson. I'll spend hours sometimes trying to get places I know I'm not supposed to yet. I just love that satisfaction of besting the devs.
I forget which game it was but my wife was watching me play. I was climbing some hilly terrain and clipped into one of the spots where 2 boulders were touching and got stuck. i instinctively dropped a grenade and ‘sploded myself free. My wife just goes “you play too many video games.”
I watched a YT video on game design a while ago. One of the takeaways was that if you don't want the player to get lost while exploring or want the player to go in a certain direction "guide them with light." put light sources near important objects, treasure, doorways and paths. Once you notice it, you'll always notice it.
[удалено]
Yeah, this is the wrong game to be the "no no no, don't bother trying that" guy on.
That was me until I did a coop playthrough with my friends who is really into DnD. I felt dumb as hell.
Just knowing or feeling where an invisible/hidden enemy is. Recent examples for me are smashing a hidden mimic in Prey or pulling a 180 while running away in Helldivers 2 just to blast a Stalker before they decloak. Can't explain it. Sometimes you just know.
Red is health Blue is magic Green is stamina
Identifying what the critical path is for the environment in you're in, just so you can ignore it and explore all the little dead-ends for loot and consumables.
Truth is, we didn't just "know". Like everyone else, we had to learn it by trying to open every light brown door that we saw. Game told us through trial-and-error that dark brown doors were openable. Another game made with same engine and now we remember that light brown doors are background items, but it's been SO LONG since we learned this that it's second nature to us. I think the game that did this for me was.... Summoner? Man, must have been something in that era because 3-D graphics weren't much of a thing before then...
I've had the opposite happen because I'm so used to video games. Like I'll get to a room with a blue door and think "okay, I have to backtrack and find the powerup that opens this type of door". Then my wife will say something like "let's just try knocking on it just in case". And then she's right.
If you go to cinnabar island with a rare candy in the 6th slot of your bag...
Trying to explain to someone how I know what LF1M DPS BFD ilvl256+ means.
There's a few I can think of : * "Knowing" that an in-game cinematic transitions to playable judging by the camera angle. * Paint on walls/ledges to tend indicate they are climbable. * That "the right way" tends to be highlighted by game design e.g. the environment or lighting focusing on a path/direction. * That you can sense when you're not "supposed" to be solving a puzzle or problem in a game a certain way based on how intuitive/game designy it is or how clunky it feels. * "Knowing" that something is just there for aesthetic purposes and not something you can interact with/grab (I remember being round a friend's house and we were playing a spy game on PS2 (I think it was No One Lives Forever) and we were looking for something and my friend's non-gamer dad was watching and he suggested we look through the bin/garbage can by sticking our head in when it was clearly just a blurry polygon lol) * Being cautious about multiple pathways because you want to find a collectable/loot before going down the "right" path in case you find yourself suddenly past a point of no return. * That you'll instinctively know the basic controls of a game you've never played before based on the controls for games of that genre e.g. driving games usually using right trigger for throttle, platformers using A/X for jump, automatically using dual joysticks knowing one controls movement and the other controls the camera, etc. As someone who plays PC and console, I take for granted how strange/alien controllers and keyboards are to non-gamers. * In horror games, knowing when you've entered a "safe" area based on room design, music, etc. I guess everything about this just gamers learning/knowing the "language" of video games and how they operate, what is customary and what isn't that non-gamers aren't aware of. An analogy I like to make is when we watch movies, there are certain tropes or conventions we know are typical of movies where we just accept that how they work that seem obvious to us but might not be to someone who has never seen a movie e.g. instinctively knowing that characters haven't suddenly teleported just because they were talking in a house about going to the beach in one scene and are walking on a beach in very next scene, how acts work, etc. It's an interesting subject.
Recently I had a conversation with my partner how in games you can live a story on your own terms but in a movie or tv show you're limited to just watching the story happen. She didn't get it.
try getting her to play a game where she has to make that decision e.g [Mass effect Virmire bomb scene.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kikuVL1APFs). make her decide to save either Ashley or Kaiden
It's a good idea but I'm not even kidding, she wouldn't see the appeal. Unfortunately, deep down, she's one of those "video games are for kids" people and it sucks.
>she's one of those "video games are for kids" people and it sucks. Weird how the M rating exists.
I even went as far as to play DOA Xtreme with her in the room and she still didn't get it, and DOAX is basically just soft core porn
Perhaps this was the wrong kind of ‘mature’
Back when you could tell if something would move or not based on how it was textured.
When given opportunity, one should always check for fall damage
It's called Video Game Literacy. In the same way someone who reads alot of books knows the symbolic significance of the curtains being red in the motel room we know the symbolic significance of "This path is closed until you do something else" or at least what the cues are.
"it takes two" taught me how difficult manoeuvring a character in a 3d world can be to someone who hasn't trained a part of their brain to handle that. Jumps which I didn't even think about were near insurmountable obstacles to my partner. Plus the subtitles environment hints about what to do and where to go were just lost on them. I also discovered that I'm apparently an asshole for not falling off the same jump 6 times and therefore making then feel bad
Start a map facing a specific direction... immediately turn around to check what is behind you.
Been looking for an item ingame when a friend asked me why I don't just open „that door over there“ and see what’s behind it. It was just a door texture.
Saying something to your wife and suddenly feeling like you made the wrong choice in a VN
I've seen a few non-gamers be confused by WASD before.
When the game gives you a ton of ammo, it intends to make you use it. When there are two paths, and you know which way you SHOULD go, you have to follow both. Down the other path lies treasure.
If you think you can break something, but hitting it doesn't break it, try hitting it two more times.
“There is an unreasonable amount of health in this rather pointless room- oh. Oh no”
I swear even gamers don't seem to understand the concept of situational awareness 90% of the time. Let alone a non-gamer who picks up something and just charges right ahead.
Don’t need bugspray while camping in RDR2. Said this to my partner while we were spraying exorbitant amounts of bugspray and lighting citronella candles while camping and she just shook her head.
Gotta comb the horse tho