^^^^^^ It can be fairly difficult to decern what actually has an impact on not, particularly since there are a number of games that have hidden relationship values. Dragon Age has visible relationship values, but it's still hard to figure out because they give you some points regardless of how the actual conversation went.
There's also often some NPCs who just give you the option to say yes/no without having any sort of story impact what-so-ever.
I think if we have a trope for that, it should be separate from But Thou Must!. They are different ideas with different impacts on the player.
edited 4th Aug '10 10:21:39 AM by Meophist
Helpful Scripts and Stylesheets here.Not every game dumps you back to a previous save at one of these questions, if it's the Non-Standard Game Over variety. I think a soft split between the two or three kinds is probably best.
But there's no way you can merge this with Non-Standard Game Over, since that covers way too many tropes.
"Proto-Indo-European makes the damnedest words related. It's great. It's the Kevin Bacon of etymology." ~MadrugadaNobody said we should merge; the question is whether Non-Standard Game Over examples should be allowed. So far consensus seems to be that they shouldn't be, if I'm reading it right.
The question was if examples in the format "You're given two choices. Choice A progresses the plot while choice B gives a Non-Standard Game Over." Should be counted as examples.
Honestly, I think they should.
The trope, as I see it, is "there is only one response you can give to continue the plot". If giving the other response kills you, the conditions of the trope have still been fulfilled.
But I'd like to point out that a response that just gives a Bad Ending or a non-canon ending isn't But Thou Must!; it has to immediately end the game there. Preferably with a black screen that says something along the lines of "Because you wouldn't agree to collect the Plot Coupons, the Big Bad destroyed the world. Nice Job Breaking It, Hero!."
...That's what a Non-Standard Game Over is most of the time when it stems from a conversation.
edited 5th Aug '10 7:03:31 AM by Twilightdusk
Some Nonstandard Game Overs have long cutscenes describing how everything plays out - Persona comes to mind. In P4, when I played, I fucked up a dialogue tree (it was a whole series of questions, I don't think it counts for this trope, there were no obvious answers) and only after a few minutes of cutscene did I suspect I'd earned a game over (specifically, since the games are based heavily on the date, the fact that it skipped a few months to the endgame and didn't give me control back clued me in). It details quite a lot of plot wrapup before giving you basically a mediocre ending, one of those "You'll never know the truth but you're not dead" kind of things.
There's only one way to progress to the real ending at that tree, but it's not immediately obvious and messing up gives you a good deal of plot information rather than immediately resetting you.
BTW, I'm a chick.I still think that the repetition of a question until the player answers correctly is very different from an ultimately meaningless dialogue choice or giving a non-standard gameover for answering wrong.
The first is a roadblock that the player cannot pass until they does what the game wants them to do. The second is a choice for choice's sake, made to give the illusion of freedom to the player, and allows the player to proceed regardless. The third is an alternate ending obtained by going through the wrong choices.
Helpful Scripts and Stylesheets here.I suppose we could split Illusions Of Player Freedom from But Thou Must!. Then the examples like Paper Mario where it lets you say no but then ends the game, only to restart you right back where you were, would be Illusions Of Player Freedom. It'd probably also be a supertrope to... whatever our tropes about invisible walls blocking off seeming sandboxes and plot railroading are.
BTW, I'm a chick.Actually, re-going over what I said. I recall in Final Fantasy VI, the player gets the option to hear about how save points work via yes/no dialouge box. Selecting yes or no has no effect beyond the specific "conversation" tree, other than adding more time to your clock if you say yes. Under our current definition, wouldn't that fit under But Thou Must!?
Helpful Scripts and Stylesheets here.If that's not already a different trope, it should be. It happens a lot, but...
To me, But Thou Must! needs to have some bearing on the plot, not just information screens or tutorials.
BTW, I'm a chick.Seems to me that the trope is less about choices that don't matter and more specifically when the scope of the consequences for your decision doesn't match what the game presented it as, because the game needs to railroad you.
That covers:
- The situation where the game makes up an excuse for going on as if you had said yes even if you said no
- The situation where the game keeps asking until you say yes
- The situation where your answers are all yes
- The situation where your answer has an effect on something completely different from the scope of the decision as presented (as in Tales Of Symphonia: sure, your answers affect something, but they don't affect the decision you were supposed to be considering)
- The situation where you get unceremoniously dumped to a Game Over screen if you say no (This is a bit of a special case; I think it should only cover situations when the plot just throws up its hands and gives up, and even that's a little subjective.)
But doesn't cover:
- The situation where you get a Game Over, but with effort put into the plot (this is sort of borderline, but a fully-fleshed-out bad ending shouldn't count)
- The situation where your choices don't have impact in a certain manner, but the choice wasn't framed as a decision with that kind of impact in the first place (such as Dragon Age conversations where you're just making small talk, so your conversation choices are never presented as things that should have impact beyond your relationship with the character; or Persona conversations where you can only pick different ways to cheer on your friend, because the possibility of suddenly hating your friend and acting like a Jerkass is just something that never comes up)
- The situation where someone asks you whether to repeat a tutorial speech (because that decision does exactly what it says it will)
And stuff like the Super Paper Mario game-over-if-you-say-no-20-times is just playing with the trope.
edited 5th Aug '10 12:38:30 PM by Comonad
Torment liveblog is still hiatusing. You can vandalize my contributor page if you want something to do.The game over or other effects for saying no many times are a sort of parody or lampshading of this trope I think. Another example is in Golden Sun, you have a number of But Thou Must! choices, where saying no just loops the conversation back to the choice, but if you give the wrong answer at least once to each of these conversation, there's a minor change later on where a character you would be escorting to an area scolds you for not taking things seriously and goes ahead without you.
If we're including examples with NonStandardGameOvers, then combat is a But Thou Must!, since losing yields the same effect.
Axe 'em.
^ Dead, but without the thread closed the banner still shows up on the trope page.
It looks like a soft split was done on the page a while back (didn't check the history), though, so the issue here may not need further addressing. I think we can close this thread, barring evidence to the contrary.
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Is that its own trope? The repeating an explanation thing.