Major content you can easily miss in RPGs

[MrBuzzKill]

I'm replaying Baldur's Gate 2, it's been a while since I last played and I just realized that there're huge chunks of content you can very easily miss and not even realize you missed it.

I'm talking about

Spoiler

The City of Caverns aka the Sahuagin city.
Like holy shit, there's a whole minor city you're able to miss due to making a certain choice and not even be aware of it.

And BG2 is not the only older RPG that does it, obviously. Fallout 1&2 both have major content (areas, characters, really cool items) that you can completely miss out on. So does Arcanum, Bloodlines, Wasteland 1, etc. (I'm sure you guys can name more). This is yet another example of the greatness of some games (and game devs who go to such ridiculous lengths without any assurance that most of the players will ever see the results).

Seems like stuff like that is missing in today's RPGs (post-2005) which take great care to handhold the player through every map, every piece of content they have available. The Kickstarter RPGs seem to suffer from that as well, for example in WL2 yes you can either go to save the AG center or Highpool but you're well aware of the choice, devs make it so that you know what to do differently when you replay.

Anyway my question is, off the top of your head, can you guys give examples of games where you can easily miss cool and substantial content like that? preferrably specifying/giving examples of what exactly can be missed - companion characters, really cool weapons, major locations, etc. Post even stuff that you think is obvious or well-known, because I'm sure there are things anybody could miss and not even know about. Spoiler tags, of course.

Spoiler

Sorry if a thread like this has already been created, in that case please point me to it and remove this one. Thanks.

 

[MrBuzzKill]

retarded response deleted

 

[V_K]

Are we talking AAA titles (then why?) or indies? I'd say indies, at least some of them (DOS, Voidspire Tactics, Heroine's Quest, Grimrock) have quite a lot of hidden stuff.

 

[Lady_Error]

Age of Decadence is kind of obvious. TTON has some interesting outcomes in quest that are easily missed. Other than that, I can't think of too much in recent games.

 

[Transfiguring Roar]

I miss all the content in modern games because I don't play them because they're all shit.

 

[Infinitron]

This is probably going to turn into a thread about any RPG with content you can miss, regardless of whether it's easy to miss.

But before it goes there, I don't think things like BG2's Sahuagin city were that easy to miss or to not realize you missed it. Good RPG players explore an area thoroughly before moving on to the next, so they'd see both the ship and the portal and try both.

I think the games that are best at implementing "easy to miss" optional content are adventure games where you can miss content due to not realizing there was a puzzle you could solve.

 

[Sizzle]

Mask of the Betrayer's Ashenwood.

The first time I played MoTB, I completely missed this area. Don't really remember how that happened (guess I wasn't paying enough attention), but on my next playthrough, years later, I was shocked how I could have missed something as huge as a whole other area, especially one as fun and interesting as that.

 

[Carrion]

Good RPG players explore an area thoroughly before moving on to the next, so they'd see both the ship and the portal and try both.

I don't think "good" has anything to do with it. Some players just like to savescum to see the best optimal outcomes for their choices while others will suck it up and stick with the consequences.

In general modern cRPGs (the AAA ones, that is) definitely have less hidden content, as the games usually go out of their way to make sure you don't miss anything too important. You might finish Daggerfall or Morrowind without even realizing that Daedric quests or certain factions exist. In Skyrim you simply need to enter a city, and within two minutes some NPC will walk up to you and tell you about this mysterious Daedric shrine in their basement, while another will tell you about that Dark Brotherhood initiation quest on the other side of the province, and from that point onwards you'll only need to follow the quest compass. The Witcher 3 has an insane amount of optional content, and even the most thorough player will almost certainly miss some of it, but you can't possibly miss any of the biggest side quests since they're either started off by main quest NPCs or found on notice boards with big exclamation marks attached to them.

It's probably a direct result of quests requiring more and more resources with all the voice acting, animations and so on, as it's harder to hide a piece of content when it took dozens if not hundreds of people to create it. That, and the damn quest markers and other modern conveniences.

On-topic: Recruiting Nordom in PS:T requires buying a seemingly random item and fiddling around with it for no apparent reason.

 

[laclongquan]

UFO Afterlight: the sudden raid on the alien's Headquarter.

We usually miss this chance due to the way missions are structured. This one is an icon on enemy's HQ land, provided that our lands touch it, so we can miss it due to busy fighting the perimeter.

 

[Wayward Son]

Wizardry IV Grandmaster ending anyone

 

[Projas]

Pillars has Mowrghek Ien, since getting there requires you to go to Stalwart after you are probably done with the area.

Mask of the Betrayer's Ashenwood.

The first time I played MoTB, I completely missed this area. Don't really remember how that happened (guess I wasn't paying enough attention), but on my next playthrough, years later, I was shocked how I could have missed something as huge as a whole other area, especially one as fun and interesting as that.

Wells of Lurue are missable as well, but I wouldn't say either of those are exactly easy to miss. Speaking of MotB, I think recruiting OoM is pretty easy to miss. Also geting all of the mask fragments.

 

[Unkillable Cat]

Lands of Lore 2 takes the crown in this department for me.

The start of the game has you running from some guards and ending up in the Draracle's Halls. There's a tapestry here on a wall that you can click on to move, and then click on the wall behind it to open up a passage to the Draracle's Museum, full of strange items and strong references to Lands of Lore 1, including a portrait of the character that "won" LoL1 (which of the 4 champions beat the game is supposed to be random, but for me it's always Kieran). You can take items from the museum (like a throwing axe that returns to Luther's hand) which really help you out so early on in the game.

 

[almondblight]

Sahuagin City was kind of silly though. You're given a choice of going back by portal or by boat, and nothing really indicates what content the choice will lead to. If you choose to go back by boat you go to Sahuagin City and then the caverns. If you choose to go through the portal, you go directly to the caverns. The choice ends up being "do you want to miss content or not?", and unless you've played it before you have no way of knowing which choice leads to missing content.

Also, it's kind of bizarre that people think savescumming is "thoroughly exploring."

 

[Luckmann]

mutually exclusive routes were a mistake, it's far more enjoyable to stumble on new content while exploring than to be forced to support Lord Bodkin against Baron Knobend to see new content

Nothing is inherently wrong with mutually exclusive content, the issue is that they've adopted a principle of relative balance dichotomy, meaning that for whatever reason, if you lose out on one route, you absolutely need to be offered an equivalent route, and the choices need to be obvious. And that is fucking rubbish. Missing out on content because you've done other content, maybe even by mistake, is great. Having to choose route A or B at junction X, or push the green, blue or red button? Fuck that in the ass forever.

 

[MrBuzzKill]

Age of Decadence is kind of obvious. TTON has some interesting outcomes in quest that are easily missed. Other than that, I can't think of too much in recent games.

Can you spoil me on both of those, especially TTON? Give some examples. (Spoiler tag, if you would.)

nothing really indicates what content the choice will lead to

unless you've played it before you have no way of knowing which choice leads to missing content.

See, this is the kind of hardcore, unforgiving approach I thought Codex would like. The opposite would be to give obvious ques as to what leads where and that road ends with the likes of Mass Effect where every experience™ is handed to you on a platter.

Missing out on content because you've done other content, maybe even by mistake, is great. Having to choose route A or B at junction X, or push the green, blue or red button?

Sorry, I'm probably being dumb but I don't understand the difference between these two. Wouldn't picking route A necessarily mean that you get route A content, while missing route B content?

 

[Lady_Error]

Age of Decadence is kind of obvious. TTON has some interesting outcomes in quest that are easily missed. Other than that, I can't think of too much in recent games.

Can you spoil me on both of those, especially TTON? Give some examples. (Spoiler tag, if you would.)

Sure.

Spoiler

A good example is the monster in the cage quest in the beginning. There are like 6 or 7 different ways of solving it and one of them involves breaking the clock in another quest on the same map, so that it becomes dark and you can talk to the monster. If you free it after that, you can encounter it later in the game.

As to AoD, there are certain storylines accessible only to certain classes, plus depending on how you spend your skill points, you will be able to access some areas and quests while not others in one playthrough. The same goes for the energy cells that are very rare and there are not enough of them to use in every available way in one playthrough.

 

[Dorateen]

Pretty much any of the pre-1998 classics that were open ended in exploration. Might & Magic, Crusaders of the Dark Savant, Blade of Destiny, and the less linear Gold Box games like Pool of Radiance or Death Knights of Krynn.

Completely missed Thorne’s dimension the first time through Pools of Darkness, and Arcam the beholder had to send us back there.

 

[Baron Dupek]

Played P:T 2-3 times but never touched other factions that you can join nor did any quests for them.

 

[Dorateen]

Some further thoughts.

This is an interesting subject if we define Major Content as, not optionial stuff the player can choose to do or not do as they wish, but rather critical elements necessary for completion of the game. And yet are avoidable or still easily missed. Once again, we can look back at elder games to find this situation is not uncommon. There were no glowing neon signs to point the player where to go or what to do next. Important clues could be passed over just as often as they could be picked up by through diligent observation. This is where map making and note taking all come into play, before the age of the Internet. The player was expected to pay attention and put things together, thrown into a gameworld to wander about and discover its secrets. And when they finally hit a brick wall, would have to buy a cluebook or call a 1-900 hint hotline. This goes right to the heart of a lack of hand-holding; the kind which is typical and prevalent in modern computer role-playing games.

I can think of end sequences that were hidden behind illusions, or skills required for characters to obtain, without the game telegraphing this knowledge to the player. Items to posses or conditions to be fulfilled before a successful resolution can be triggered. None of it railroaded, and entirely dependent on the player investing some effort to figure out what the hell is going on.

To me, that is the pinnacle of RPG design.

 

[Pirata Alma Negra]

As long as they don't lock part of the game out of you by some shitty yes or no dialogue, more optional content is always a good thing.

 

[Max Stats]

*pick up keyboard and smash it on the monitor*

I picked that. It will be quite a feat seeing as I'm on a laptop, but hey, I appreciate the challenge.

Anyway, to me missable content usually just means something put in to sell guides, so in the era of everything being a click and google away on teh interwebs, it wouldn't surprise me if "Yes; older RPGs had, or seemed to have, a lot more hidden/avoidable content." was the true answer. Instead of hiding stuff to sell guides, just take it out and sell it as DLC.

 

[DemonKing]

Doesn't Witcher 2 have a completely different middle act depending on who you decide to side with at the end of the first chapter?

There's also a few recent games which have "hidden endings" where the game will end in a different (not necessarily better) way if you make some fairly obscure choices (eg Grimrock 2, Dark Souls 3 etc).

 

[MrBuzzKill]

Doesn't Witcher 2 have a completely different middle act depending on who you decide to side with at the end of the first chapter?

Yes, exactly, although the choice is really obvious and so falls into the category of "Hey guys, you see this? You see these two clearly branching paths? That's our way of letting you know what to do differently the next time you play! Just making sure you got that!"

missable content usually just means something put in to sell guides, so in the era of everything being a click and google away on teh interwebs, it wouldn't surprise me if "Yes; older RPGs had, or seemed to have, a lot more hidden/avoidable content." was the true answer. Instead of hiding stuff to sell guides, just take it out and sell it as DLC.

That's true

I wish people would give concrete examples, though. Not just the names of the games but what features exactly are out there to be missed or found. I kind of meant this to be an informative thread.

Spoiler

And of course if people don't want to be spoiled about a particular game they can just not click the spoiler tag.

 

[Serious_Business]

I would say this is a good criteria as any to determine good design, or at least passionate design. The very idea of creating content that requires particular input (exploration or choice) to be experienced makes game that much more interactive. The old Bioware design mentality after at least NWN, which I've always despised, was always to erase the possibility of unexplored content ; eliminate a kind of interactivity, in other words. The idea here is that making such things would be wasted effort - it's a purely economic and superficial consideration. Indeed if many players "do not experiment" all the design, they "miss out" on the game ; and so the solution is to make a tree of choices which lead all to the same outcome. Any player who play their games more than once (or rather, 7 times) figure this out and then become bitter little fuckers like myself. But, really, I don't think that games need to be ever-expanding trees of choices and consequences ; that would be clumsily simulating what is the free pen and paper experience, based exclusively on the imagination of the storyteller and players. Computers can't manage that, so they need to think interactivity differently. I do think that having significant content that can be miss is a good way to approach this. The idea of the thing possibilty being *missed* is what is important ; the very experience of ignorance is at the root of a kind of wonder that is made possible by "superfluous" content. The superfluous nature of it makes it feel like a great excess, something that shouldn't be there, but is... it creates wonder. So it needs to be able to be missed - when you finally discover it, you realise that you were missing something, and that creates another kind of accomplishment, and another kind of interaction. The other thing is that the content needs to be "significant", which is more complicated to get your head around. Open worlds present a lot of content that can be missed, and a lot of wonder - until you realise that it's mostly a question of how much time you're willing to spend to discover all that content that's on your chorelist. But open world designs are inherently problematic. They are shit. Like myself

 

[PorkyThePaladin]

Personally, I think the Bethesda meta-RPG was always the best in this department. You always had two clear choices, the Bethesda RPG or Uninstall.exe. No one ever complained about missed content when they went with the latter.