I am NOT the strongest.

[Paul Debrion]

Sometimes I don't want to be a super-hero. Sometimes I don't want to be super soldier. Sometimes I don't want to be the ultimate mary sue.

Being awesome can be awesome of course, but it can get old really fast.

So many modern mainstream video games focus on player empowerment, and there's nothing wrong with that. However, sometimes it feels like it's a requirement for popularity.


When you think about it there are a lot of reasons why you wouldn't want an over-powered or ever strengthening player character. It's not exactly good for balance when you have to constantly shift to more powerful enemies because you're making the player character more powerful. It doesn't help your story much either.

What I think is sad is that it seems like many genres that don't focus on or are against player empowerment have for the most part declined or have been seriously altered. Survival horror games aren't very "survival" or "horror" anymore and true tactical shooters are few and far in between these days.

What do you think?

[shinyjam]

What about start out weak and then strong after months of training?

[axman36]

I do actually like games where you're not the strongest thing in the world ever and you rise above your enemies merely through skill and intelligence alone. Especially things where your enemy is faster and stronger than you in every way.

Things like Chris and Sheva vs Wesker, Leon vs Krauser, and probably my favorite example is Snake vs Liquid.

Spoiler:

Especially since you learn that all along, Liquid had all the "superior" genes while Snake had all the recessive ones.

[shinyjam]

Interestingly I also read a article today about how Genius are self-made, not born gifted even if gene does play a very small part in it.

[Doomsday]

I agree with axman. I've always liked games where the enemies are much more powerful than you, and to defeat them, you are forced to use skill and strategy to defeat them. It makes the experience all the more satisfying that way.

[E-Nazrin]

:(

[Paul Debrion]

I agree with axman. I've always liked games where the enemies are much more powerful than you, and to defeat them, you are forced to use skill and strategy to defeat them. It makes the experience all the more satisfying that way.

For me there has always been a huge difference between having an enemy you have reason to fear and having an enemy you willingly seek out so you have more dudes to murder.


In my one of my more recent favorite games, Penumbra: Black Plague, the player's ability to kill off his enemy is pretty much zero while the enemy can kill the player quite easily. You genuinely don't want to run into any enemies in this game, and you came into every room hoping that they wouldn't be there. Just having them show up at a bad time can really ruin things for you.

As much as I liked Half-Life, my favorite shooter of 1998 has to be Rainbow Six. Sure you didn't get to murder as many dudes as you did in Half-Life, but if I had to rate them based on how satisfying they were every kill in Rainbow Six was probably worth about ten or more from Half-Life. Why? It was because the enemies you were fighting against were not significantly less capable than you were. They were firing bullets just as lethal as yours and you were just as killable.

Even in more conventional adventure games and shooters, my favorite portions tend to be the ones towards the beginning where you weren't powerful enough to mow down wave after wave of bad guys.

[Cadmas]

I think we are entering the 80s action movie period of video game history.

Plot and artistic value wanes for badassness and overall violence.

A Rambo video game on today's gen would be pretty cool.

[Fightest]

Personally, I like being a mover and a shaker in a story, and that generally means that I like a character to be exactly as powerful as he needs to be to dramatically alter the status quo of his environment. This becomes very situational, of course - if I'm playing Phoenix Wright, whose story is about personal-level cases/conspiracies/trials, I only want the main character to have the power to truly get to the bottom of the latest case/conspiracy/trial. If I'm playing God of War, whose story is about betrayal by the very gods, then I want the character to have enough power to topple the gods.

It comes down to a sense of closure - if the character was able to finally bring down that which is causing him/his allies/everyone grief (permanently or temporarily, doesn't matter, I like sequels), then I am satisfied. Of course, this doesn't mean that they should always be able to always punch Cthulhu in the face personally - if they could, through toil and effort, bring about events that then cause Cthulhu to be punched in the face, that's fine too.

Uh, that said, I do want my enemies to be as competent as I am, otherwise I always begin to wonder "how did they get there in the first place?"

[Helion]

That's why I love Gothic: you're a wimp, from start to finish, and even with flashy Rains of Fire and an enchanted steel full armor anyone can kill you in at most 4 hits. You're always scanning the horizon for Shadow Beasts or anything that can kill you, you're always on your toes. And that's how adventuring is done: be careless for a second and you die. In those games, since hand to hand combat is useless, it's not as much twitch skill that keeps you alive but strategic planning, fighting enemies on your terms and never drawing a fight out long. And you're still a crucial part of the story, so it means even weak, puny you can make a difference.

[Chainsaw Guitar]

This is the exact reason everyone should play Mega Man X. :V

[Widermelonz]

Resident Evil is a great example of this. I loved the first Resident Evil and the REmake as well. As for Resident Evil 4 and 5, they didn't fare so well for my tastes. Granted, those two games are fun to play and employ lots of action, but I just didn't enjoy either of them as much as RE1. In RE4 the enemies aren't so strong anymore, and in RE5 they seem even weaker. A lot of people liked RE4 and 5, but it just wasn't my cup of tea. In the first RE, each zombie was extremely difficult to kill, and you had to make the choice of either killing it or running away. It really added to the overall tension of the game. In the situation in which you do manage to kill an enemy the gratification is much greater.

If everything in a game is so easy to accomplish, where's the challenge? There needs to be difficult goals that the player wants to accomplish. But the main character of a game doesn't necessarily have to be weak; it's just that the opponent has to be stronger or of equal strength, but at a reasonable level.