Are there games where RandomEncounters fit the plot?

Random Encounters in video games, particularly jRPGs, have mutated into a form that bears little resemblance to the original. This has major implications for the game settings that use them, but few settings have been changed to match. I bet it'd be interesting to see ones that have.

As originally conceived for Dungeons And Dragons, random encounters worked like this:
"Every so often, the heroes encounter local wildlife or inhabitants. This happens once every couple of days on a plain, or every hour or so in a dungeon. Encounters can be things like giant ants or bandits, but also camels, bisons or even things like lights in the distance."

The jump to computer games simplified things:
"Every so often, the heroes are attacked by monsters."

Improved special effects made things flashier:
"As the heroes travel, they're under constant attack by monsters. Battles tend to be spectacular affairs, heavy on magical blasts and feats of strength and acrobatics. If the heroes have not developed these to match the monsters' powers, they're dead meat."

How exciting! But what does a world like this look like for everyone else? Oh no! It looks like this:
"The animal kingdom is homicidally insane. Save for a few outliers like cats, dogs and chocobos, everything that sees a human will charge and fight with no regard for its own survival. Animals will team up with entirely different species to kill humans better. What's worse, most of them can call down the lightning or bite a man in half: anyone who's not a heavily armed death machine will die in seconds."

The Random Encounters heroes face make for a deadlier world than a Zombie Apocalypse. How does your average jRPG address this? By having a couple of NPCs comment on the way monster activity has been increasing, and by having a sidequest about rescuing Timmy from the gigaslugs.

So please tell me: what games have Random Encounters without Gameplay and Story Segregation wide enough to drive a Mack truck through, or at least try to address the matter?

edited 21st Mar '11 6:27:55 AM by Kizor

Tales of Phantasia has some random nun who says she used a ton of the enemy repelling Holy Bottles when getting between two different towns. Although the world is at war, so no one would be travelling anyway.

Pokémon games eventually explained that Pokémon attack randomly to test your strength.

There are also a fair number of games that handle random encounters more realistically, with much, much fewer of them. In particular, there is Fallout 1 and 2, where random encounters occur at a fairly low rate, are not always hostile, and are location-based in ways that make sense ( you encounter supermutant patrols near the supermutant base; you encounter trash bandit mobs most civilized regions ).

In FFIV, random encounters are explained as normally docile wildlife being driven insane by Golbez's mind control, on a grand scale.

Similar for FFV, it's the crystals' waning power or Exdeath's reign of terror that explains it.

Thanks, Zendervai, Enlong, metaphysician, Kinkajou! This is working surprisingly well. Enlong, that Pokemon revelation is bizarre. What edition has it?

I remembered a few while I was at it:

Legend Of Legaia is an otherwise mediocre Playstation RPG where the appearance of random monsters caused global downfall of civilization. The game begins in the last human settlement.

Star Control 2 is a scifi game where every race is only encountered in the region of space it inhabits, and most are non-hostile. The exception are self-replicating hostile robot probes. Those become more common as the game progresses and stopping them is a sidequest.

Final Fantasy 6 and UFO: Aftermath have non-viable enemies, both created by their respective Cataclysms. I love this. They don't explain why humans haven't been overrun yet, but they acknowledge wonderfully how #¤%&/#" the world is, which is more than most games do. FF 6's die within seconds of battle. Aftermath has what look like bird skeletons. They flop around.

edited 21st Mar '11 7:02:52 AM by Kizor

Enlong, that Pokemon revelation is bizarre. What edition has it?

I'm pretty sure it was explained this way in the 3rd or 4th generation, although it may have been sooner. The anime mentioned it somewhat in the first episode.

From Bulbapedia.

edited 21st Mar '11 7:08:08 AM by Customer

Take note that in most of these cases, it's a Hand Wave mentioned only once or twice within the game. Not something that would form a core of the plot.

The World Ends With You has all the Noise exist as either negative energy reigned in by a reaper, or as negative energy generated by someone under stress. When full on random encounters start happening later, it's because someone engineered even more hostile taboo noise, and half the city is under the control of brain washing clothes pins.

There's a book in D/P/Pt's Canalave City that sort of tells an origin myth. It explains that Pokémon approach humans in tall grass because they want to help them/test them. Handwavey, but it works.

Final Fantasy X handles it pretty well actually, as Lulu works as Miss Exposition to Tidus, and the player.

"The dead envy the living. And in time that envy turns to anger, even hate. That how fiends are born."

At a few points, if I recall correctly, you even see a few fiends form from pyreflies right infront of you.

Yaaaay for Chaotic Evil physical manifestations of the souls of the dead! It even handily explains why Everything Fades.

... Except for the humans you fight. Corpses are still all around in some story scenes though.

And not only are the player characters the only ones capable of dealing with them, since every town has a bunch of guards or crusaders and we also get the whole huge fight scene that has the Nightmare Fuel moment of Sin vaporising everything in sight. They hold out againts the fiends pretty well, untill Sin decides to say "fuck this, I'll end this now."

Still makes me wonder how the hell is a child safe on the fiend scattered highroad???

So yeah, it does have it's logic fart moments.

edited 21st Mar '11 7:25:26 AM by KuroFox

Persona4

Since Persona 4 has been mentioned, seems like a good idea to mention Digital Devil Saga. Namely, everyone in the Junkyard (there doesn't seem to be much actual wildlife) is infected with the Atma Virus, which allows them to turn into demons, at the cost of becoming cannibalistic, and resulting in permanently going berserk if they fail to consume something after an extended period of time. (due to requiring magnetite to survive, with humans being the richest source.) As such, you're being attacked by incredibly hungry Atma infected humans.

edited 21st Mar '11 2:20:05 PM by Saigyouji

@Enlong

Nah, Pokemon actually makes the "Pokemon will maul you just outside of town, criminals will sometimes try to have Pokemon maul you specifically" a decent part of the universe.

Thanks again, folks. Indigo Dingo, Saigyouji, can you elaborate on Persona 4? I've never played it.

I'm curious about the game, so this is going off-topic but how big is Persona 4 on the "SATAN RULES, GOD DROOLS" angle that pervades several earlier games in the Shin Megami Tensei series? I suck at Christianity, but I still wouldn't enjoy a plot like that.

edited 21st Mar '11 3:43:17 PM by Kizor

I see FF 10 has been mentioned. I'll just leave this then; MARDEK similarly justifies its random encounters. One of the books in chapter 3 explains it.

edited 21st Mar '11 3:52:58 PM by TARDISES

The random encounters of Persona 4 are done when wondering through otherworldly manifestations of other peoples minds, filled with wandering ideas and thoughts, referred to as shadows. These shadows are naturally hostile to anything that would be a threat, and considering they're just thoughts, they can and do look like all manner of things, but attack powerfully. As Teddy is the only non hostile entity of this world, it is thus not unexpected for the shadows to be hostile towards any invaders, as well as co-operating, even forming symbiotic relationships.

As for the religious aspects, its hard to say too much without spoiling the ending, but there is very little of that. Only two gods appear, both Japanese. In fact, the "bad" god is the japanese equivilant of satan.

Final Fantasy XIII, sort of. You're generally either fighting the military or the local wildlife, and the fact that the wildlife is incredibly dangerous is repeatedly mentioned

edited 21st Mar '11 3:50:00 PM by Hylarn

For a bit of the intro of Golden Sun, there are no random encounters. Then apparently whatever magical catastrophe that's happening causes monsters to start roaming around, and from then on, boom. Monsters. The Pokémon Mystery Dungeon games usually say that the Pokémon who attack you are driven aggressive by the natural disasters, or something similar to that.

edited 21st Mar '11 3:50:28 PM by GlitchMaster

In Dragon Age, all the random encounters are unique, and some are plot related Zevran's ambush, for one/

In Sigma Star Saga, you're infiltrating a group of Alien Invaders as a pilot, but you don't spend the whole time flying your ship. You wander around on the ground until an unoccupied ship's automated sensors pick up hostiles, then you're teleported into the ship to dispatch them. When you finish, you're sent back to whatever you're doing. (This allows the aliens to produce ships outnumbering pilots at a rate of 100 to 1, so they can effectively patrol much larger areas than they should be able to given their manpower.)

Thx for the lowdown, ID. I do so love mind-spelunking, and will look into it.

If I ever program a game, it'll be a flash or possibly a RPG Maker affair. The player begins as the king of a fantasy realm. The Evil Overlord drives the world's animals mad - and the thing he was planning with the amulets proves redundant. Grain farming becomes suicidal. Livestock either mauls its owners, or is slaughtered or outright lynched to protect humans. Trade becomes impossible. Then come the rats.

The game begins properly with the player as the leader of a secluded outpost. It ends once the outpost's descendants have achieved food security, safety, and a plausible degree of education and trade.

In Tales Of Vesperia it's a major plot point. People can't survive without magical anti-monster barriers around their towns, which are Lost Technology. Only the military and a few rare adventurers can travel between cities, and the Lost Technology research is driving force of the plot. Cities that lose their barriers are evacuated and abandoned.

edited 22nd Mar '11 8:06:04 PM by Clarste

A couple I haven't seen mentioned yet:

• Mega Man Battle Network: Random encounters are computer viruses you periodically run into on the Internet. Naturally, there are no offline random encounters.
• Inazuma Eleven: At the start of the game, there are no random encounters. Then early in the second chapter, Natsumi (the Tsundere Absurdly Powerful Student Body President) shows up and says she's ordered every club in the school to "help you practice" by challenging you to a battle whenever they see you.

edited 23rd Mar '11 4:20:18 PM by Poochy.EXE