We’ve all played them. Backtracking, not knowing where to go. Going back and forth. Name some of these games from your memory. I’ll start: Final Fantasy XIII-2, RE1
Son, you’re talking to a guy who spoke no English when he first played the legend of Zelda for NES. Talk about playing a game that doesn’t tell you where to go next
I got echo the dolphin for Sega genesis when I was about 8. I don’t know how much of the game I got through, but thinking back it couldn’t have been more than a few percent. And I played that shit for hours trying to figure out where to go next.
I still have the fond memory of the Ecco the Dolphin being called like game of the year by many magazines. So I begged my uncle to rented it from Blockbuster. First few days, I struggled. Then I asked to extend the rental. After a week, I gave up. Game was bs. I played Nintendo hard games.
A decade later, I decided to read about Ecco and how brutally unfair it is and yeah, fuck that game.
I found the way to progress once, you have to like flip up out of the water and across to some other part of the level. I couldn’t ever remember how I did it afterwards though.
Yeah you have to free Willy yourself but before that you have to … do some sort of katamari thing(?)
Holyshit I forgot this game existed! I had the exact same experience, no idea what I was doing but for some reason I kept playing
I really need to try it again with a guide, I want to see the wild shit after that first damn level.
Ecco the Dolphin is literally impossible without a guide.
designed that way to make more money on people renting it over and over to try and beat it IIRC
I am not really seeing it. I did finish it without a guide back then. It was the Windows 9x port, but I don’t think it changes much.
Really in my case a guide would not help for the hardest parts, which were mostly the crazy moves needed to push those floating things to break rocks and to swim against currents with boulders.
That game was like an unforgiving crack rock
Morrowind.
Can you find this person whom wandered off into the ashlands? They went east-ish.
I’ve spent more time than I’d like to admit in the Construction Kit to find out where in Vivec’s name I had to go this time. Usually it turned out I just barely missed the person or location I had to go before starting an hourlong search.
But despite that still a game I deeply love.
That’s what I like about the game. The NPCs tell you where to go to the best of their ability, and you follow to the best of yours. I like it a hell of a lot more than quest markers.
There is at least one occasion where NPCs just straight up lie to you in quest directions though. I can’t think of it off the top of my head but I remember it existing because I complained about it on a forum.
On one hand - great worldbuilding! “Local dumbass gives you bad directions” is a funny and memorable point on top of what might otherwise be a forgettable side quest. On the other hand, I spent the better part of four hours looking for whatever egg mine or ancestral tomb or whatever it was he asked me to find before getting fed up and having UESP tell me “lol no actually it’s off in this complete other direction”, and I’m pretty sure I assassinated that NPC after I turned in his quest.
Yeah I remember some fuckin guy said you can find the herb east of balmora. Que an hour long search and epic journey for the ages only to finally read a guide that says the guy lied
The number of times I totally overshot distance based on the quest description and ended up in the Ashlands…
Jesus, the finding people thing was tough, but finding the quest item that I had already looted from a grave and either dropped or sold to a random merchant? Game ending, man.
This was me lmao. On my first playthrough of Morrowind as a teenager I dicked around and did everything except the main quest for ages. Around level 18 I decided to actually progress the main quest. Hasphat, check. Arkngthand, no sweat. Talk to Sharn Gra-Muzgob, she says to fetch the Skull of Llevule Andrano. Cool, go to Andrano’s tomb, looks kind of familiar. Where is the Skull of Llevule Andrano? Cause it sure ain’t here in his tomb. Whoopsie.
Never found the skull, never progressed the quest, had to start a new character to actually experience the main story. I wonder how many potential Nerevarines failed to ascend due to missing minor quest items. Wish I could ask em that inside the Cavern of the Incarnate.
Yes! That’s the one! That damnable skull!
So many failed nerevarines. If only they knew they were just an
exploitINTENDED FEATURE away from saving Morrowind
Disco Elysium for me. Too many open directions. Too much player agency. I had no idea where I should go.
The funny thing about Disco Elsyium is that there’s so much to do in the opening area and it builds such a rich picture of the city that you assume it’s a much bigger world than it really is.
It really isn’t that much bigger than the first part, but they did such a great job you don’t end up minding.
I always took Disco as just a “stumble into the plot” kind of game. You’re not supposed to go anywhere.
True, but the problem (at least for me) is that I was simultaneously going nowhere and running out of places to go. I legit wasn’t sure how to progress literally any of the opened quests and felt like nothing was getting done.
Myst 3 and hollow knight got me that way. Hollow knight was the worst, I simply couldn’t tell where I needed to go and where I’d already been 😅
I like hollow knight, but i don’t think i can ever go back to that game. I had so much fun for a few hours and then i walked around for an hour or two, being beyond lost.
Interestingly that’s the exact thing I loved about Hollow Knight. I got so immersed in the exploration specifically because I got lost. On my first playthrough I ended up sequence breaking the game and cleared out deepnest, ancient basin, hive and kingdoms end before the city of tears. I was way out of my depth and I loved every moment of it.
Myst 😭
La Mulana for sure! It’s a game where you play as professor Lemeza Kosugi (i.e. Japanese Indiana Jones) exploring an ancient temple. I admit that I did not have the patience for it. The map is huge and exploration is very non-linear. You also have to solve fairly obscure puzzles. If you really wanted to give it a go, I’d keep hand-written or typed notes separate from the in-game notes. They only let you save so much data at once, and you need more notes (or a good memory). I still kind of loved exploring the maps even partially though. It’s pretty huge and ambitious in scope.
The combat and movement are not fantastic though. Not bad, but they feel very limiting compared to typical metroidvanias that let you style on enemies as you get better at the game. The game is not very shy about how it enjoys killing you too! I respect it, but it was tough for me to enjoy.
Came here to say this!
Riven
Most 90’s and late 80’s point and click games (Sam and Max, Full Throttle, Monkey Island, The Dig, Loom, Maniac Mansion, Day of the Tentacle, Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis, Zack McCraken and the Alien Mindbenders, Kings / Space quest, Dark Seed, Beneath a Steel Sky)
Dark Seed was old school hard and explained nothing. Gave up multiple times, wasn’t playable for me. Sucked because I’m a huge fan of H.R. Giger.
Morrowind, but in a good way
I still remember the first time playing morrowind and being blown away by the freedom. For some reason my clearest memory of that game is a dude falling from the sky and splatting. Then I stole his magic boots and died the same way.
Old DOOMs up till 64. Halo 1 was also very repetitive in its lookalike hallways and got me lost multiple times. I don’t miss the get lost mechanics of these games. Especially in doom where the function of the many look alike chambers was unknown to me so the architecture made no sense.
Halo 1 was never difficult with Cortana telling you were to go and the waypoint on screen. Assault on the Control/Two Betrayals has arrows on the hallway floors and I never got turned around in The Library.
If you really want labyrinth level design from Bungie, the Marathon series is were it’s at and completely explains why there’s so much hand holding in Halo CE.
I remember playing Assault on the Control Room on Halo 1 and one of the doors glitched and didn’t unlock. I must have walked around those hallways for hours trying to work out where I was supposed to go
OMG! Yes! classic doom had some of the most frustrating level designs. I started to hate the game after being lost forever on some maps.
I think Hexen takes the cake among the “old Dooms”, since it has a hub map and you have to revisit some levels to toggle switches that became accessible after toggling another switch in another map.
Any metroid game.
Halo ce?
I got lost a few times in that game as a kid. I do not htink it is too bad these days. I think it was a matter of being put in a significantly larger world from what we were used to.
I’ve played it so many times at this point, I think I could navigate it without enemies or needing to click on consoles it with my eyes closed.
Star Flight. I played it on Genesis, and it’s still one of the greatest games I’ve ever played.
One space ship, 270 solar systems, and 800 planets. The manual included a captain’s log that was sent back in time from the future, but without that you’d just be scouring the stars for clues, interrogating aliens, digging through ancient ruins, and watching slowly as a rash of planet-destroying solar flares spreads through the galaxy.
So fucking good.
Sounds interesting. Reminds me somewhat of Uncharted Waters, which is a naval RPG set around 1560. You could visit ports all over Europe, Middle East and Africa, probably over India and Japan, too, doing trade runs or living a pirate’s life.
A lot of the game is scanning planets, gathering resources, and upgrading your ship. The upgrades allow you to gather more resources, explore further, and get better weapons so you can survive hostile alien encounters.
If you ever have the opportunity, I highly recommend giving it a try.
You want the absolute “guide damn it” example? Try playing the OG Dragon Quest games. They’re nonlinear by nature and there’s a spot in 2 (or was it 3) where you need to literally check an unmarked floor for an item. No indicator, save maybe a vague NPC dialogue in another part of the planet that didn’t get adequately translated in English so you’re truly aimless.
It’s in 1 where you find the item to avoid swamp damage
It’s a secret to everyone!
Reminds me that Nintendo had help lines you could call for stuff like Zelda secrets, and they may have intentionally added things like secret caves to incentivize that lucrative service.
