Inverted Escort Missions

You know, for a mission structure that is so widely loathed, I'd kinda surprised you don't see that many Inverted Escort Missions.

I could see a dynamic working really well in a survival horror game, such as Amnesia The Dark Descent where your mission is simply to survive while a powerful AI ally tries to keep you alive.

If done well, it could be really scary.

Can anyone here think of a time they saw the Escort Mission inverted? How did you find it?

edited 17th Jan '11 12:59:19 PM by TibetanFox

Only once, in world of Warcraft, when Harison Jones beats up a gigantic snake god while you shoot/stab its minions to death.

It wasn't too bad, and personally I would quite like to have seen it used in some other capacity.

Well, in Dungeon Fighter Online you have a few missions where you have to "escort" GSD, a level 60 some Asura (to compare, you're in the 20s at the time). He runs you through a dungeon or two you'd have a very hard time to do by yourself and heartily earns his Memetic Badass status along the way.

Also, though I have not played it myself, I heard that Half-Life 2: Episode One has a segment where you only have a flashlight and had to rely on Alex and her gun to stay alive.

Haven't played it, but didn't Fallout have a portion where you had to "escort" a Humongous Mecha as it killed everything for you?

Command And Conquer sometimes has missions where you have to take out a base or installation in order to allow your allies to get through. What comes to mind are two missions from the Allied campaign of Red Alert 1 and the penultimate mission of the GDI campaign of Tiberian Twilight.

There is a segment late in Kingdom Hearts where you lose the Keyblade and left with a wooden sword and Beast. Sure you could do some damage to the weaker heartless, but it was so insignificant that you had to rely on the slightly-overpowered-at-the-time Beast to actually fight.

I notice that most of you seem to have found these inverted escort missions to be an enjoyable diversion.

It's usually like this whenever you have to get something somewhere.

Like the Flag.

Liberty Prime was awesome. That's all I'm gonna say.

The parts in Doom 3 where you have to follow a sentry bot. You're supposed to escort them once but it really feels like the opposite.

Hey, I like the feeling of power as much as the next guy, but having something to mix up the flow and not rage at dumb AI is very enjoyable.

There's an early quest in Gothic where a representative of one of the factions offers to show you their headqaurters. He takes you through the wilderness which is filled with monsters and kills everything in sight. The cool part is, you get XP for all of his kills.

At the beginning of Infinite Undiscovery there is a small segment where your character has to carry a party member and can't fight back, meaning you have to rely on the rest of your party to protect you.

The final sections of Bioshock 2 feel like this, if only because there've been lots of protecting the Little Sisters up to that point.

Yeah, it happens. Only really enjoyable for being an inversion of an annoying mission type, though

There's a bit in STALKER where you have to Escort a scientist who claims to be not much of a fighter. As it stands, he's actually a fairly good one who'll hang back and let the Marked One (you) do all of the work, firing from a distance and not getting too close. I actually died more than he did (three times as opposed to once when we both died), but that was mainly because one of my friends talked me into playing on the hardest difficulty, so bullets hurt. Especially the weapons those Mercs were using.

Luckily, you can do the same to them. It was actually pretty fun, especially since I didn't have to worry about anomalies for a change.

edited 17th Jan '11 4:32:06 PM by Legionnaire

I hate this kind of thing. Damned NPCs stealing my experience. While escort missions can be annoying when they're badly designed, being protected by a strong character just feels like a waste of time. Either there's no threat so you just stand next to him and chip away at the enemies or the enemies are so dangerous that you just hide in the corner and wait for them to finish.

edited 17th Jan '11 4:35:24 PM by Clarste

One rather traumatic example that leaps to mind for me, putting myself in the other guy's shoes for a moment: You have to drag this puny little creature through the Library (you've tried so many times already, this one has a combat skin at least, even if it's a low class one,) most of your robotic units are offline, you constantly have to leave the thing alone to go off and diddle with switch puzzles and open doors for it… Poor 343 Guilty Spark.

basically, any multiplayer fps that you, the infantry escort teammates in a tank.

I would think it would be reversed since Guilty spark was useless in a fight (then), Master chief is a One-Man Army, and your robot minions barely helped.

edited 18th Jan '11 12:03:29 PM by stuffhappens