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Games that don't stroke the player's ego
- Thread starter Phediuk
- Start date
Everybody arguing for Dark Souls is kinda wrong. Even if you're not the only chosen undead, the game still directly says you're the only one in your timeline to actually get as far as reaching Gwyn with all the Lord souls.
If you link the fire, you have been duped, yes, but the game still paints it as a triumphant blaze of glory.
If you don't, you literally walk out to the primordial serpents bowing down to you, the new Dark Lord.
Even Demon Souls had the narrative of you being the only one who managed to go on while everyone else gives up.
These games 100% stroke your ego, they just don't do it quite obviously because of the way the narrative is, so some people miss it.
If you link the fire, you have been duped, yes, but the game still paints it as a triumphant blaze of glory.
If you don't, you literally walk out to the primordial serpents bowing down to you, the new Dark Lord.
Even Demon Souls had the narrative of you being the only one who managed to go on while everyone else gives up.
These games 100% stroke your ego, they just don't do it quite obviously because of the way the narrative is, so some people miss it.
To continue the dark souls thing, the game celebrates every victory with "great soul defeated!" and lots of audiovisual fanfare. It's still pets your ego in important ways.
Katamari is the best answer for this thread. When you fail an objective your father tells you "it's not your fault, but ours for trusting you." or something like that.
I don't know if it fits this thread but I'm replaying Bayonetta and I'm rusty as hell, almost as a beginner, the game just relentlessly kicks your ass and then you see all the fancy cutscenes with Jeanne and stuff and I'm just not up to par. I feel dirty for being so bad at the game while Bayo herself is so good and cool lol
Also the Witcher games, yeah, everybody treats Geralt like shit except his friends and the games (and the books) insist that Geralt is just a dude way out of his depth. You really feel he's an outcast and the games do a good job of showing this plus the stoicism Geralt has always displayed. And in 3 you have Lambert who shows a Witcher who's salty and angry at the world (and himself, and Vesemir lol), to see both sides of the issue.
Also the Witcher games, yeah, everybody treats Geralt like shit except his friends and the games (and the books) insist that Geralt is just a dude way out of his depth. You really feel he's an outcast and the games do a good job of showing this plus the stoicism Geralt has always displayed. And in 3 you have Lambert who shows a Witcher who's salty and angry at the world (and himself, and Vesemir lol), to see both sides of the issue.
Seriously this. This is one of the most fuck you games around. I can't imagine playing that game blind without guys and someone who is experienced, otherwise you just get fucked up all the time as you wander around clueless as fuck.
I was about to say Spec Ops!
I'd say The Stanley Parable too. There's a bunch of endings that just mock you or waste your time. Valiant Hearts makes it pretty clear you're a tiny part of a bigger struggle (though it does sometimes go grandiose). The Emily is Away games can also end with them just ripping you to shreds.
The Silent Hill games. Odds are, you are playing a terrible being who is only stuck in Silent Hill due to their own sorted past.
The game puts you in your place really quickly and it usually by a peon around the corner.
Henry from Kingdom Come. He sucks at absolutely everything for the most part of the game and he's just this random dude that happened to get mixed up in ugly business.
Yep, this is my answer as well.
Rain World. That game does not revolve around you, the player, as a rather pathetic prey animal. One of the best games of last gen.
Darkest Dungeon
That's a good one. Lots of mocking and belittling from the inner voices
Chaos;Child.
Would've been nice if it actually told a good story, but it did nonetheless succeed in emphasizing what a pathetic screw-up its lead was who only wished that he was special, with every single progressively more horrible thing that happened ultimately being his fault.
Would've been nice if it actually told a good story, but it did nonetheless succeed in emphasizing what a pathetic screw-up its lead was who only wished that he was special, with every single progressively more horrible thing that happened ultimately being his fault.
That's a good pick too.
I also agree with everyone posting Pathologic
Ninja Gaiden Black
If you died 3 times on the first level and unlocked Ninja Dog mode; for the remainder of the game you have to wear a ribbon on your arm instead of armlets and you receive passive aggressive notes telling you how to proceed through the rest of the game or give you hints.
If you died 3 times on the first level and unlocked Ninja Dog mode; for the remainder of the game you have to wear a ribbon on your arm instead of armlets and you receive passive aggressive notes telling you how to proceed through the rest of the game or give you hints.
Spelunky, Silent Hill and KOTOR II.
Spelunky is fucking tough, Silent Hill puts you through utter torment with very little payoff and KOTOR II saddles you with a 'mentor' that loves to constantly berate you. Katamari is also a good shout.
Spelunky is fucking tough, Silent Hill puts you through utter torment with very little payoff and KOTOR II saddles you with a 'mentor' that loves to constantly berate you. Katamari is also a good shout.
I'm thinking of games where either your goal is ultimately impossible or gameplay wise you're never given the resources to flourish and are always picking lesser evils to get by. Games that have both an oppressive narrative and oppressive mechanics, and/or feature a doomed protagonist.
Darkest Dungeon, SOMA, and Pathologic II are the examples that come to mind immediately. Hell, I would even say The Stanley Parable in some playthroughs.
Darkest Dungeon, SOMA, and Pathologic II are the examples that come to mind immediately. Hell, I would even say The Stanley Parable in some playthroughs.
Eeeeeehhhhhhh, totally debatable. "The chosen one" is a very loose mantle that shifts from plane to plane, more often than not, failing to succeed at doing anything other than dying or becoming a simple tool of dead gods and their forces.
if you don't think Souls games stroke people's egos, explain what happens whenever someone suggests an easy mode
"Hmmm, what was that noise?! Looks like it wasnt anything" - MC from K:CD probably.
The souls series is like the primary example of games that DO stroke your ego. The entire marketing campaign is built around it even. "Prepare to die, ooh its so tough and hard, only a real cool gamer could handle this game!"
To be clear, I like the souls games. I played through demons souls when I was a kid and was really excited for Dark Souls, got it day 1. Even as a kid who liked the first game, I was rolling my eyes at that marketing.
To be clear, I like the souls games. I played through demons souls when I was a kid and was really excited for Dark Souls, got it day 1. Even as a kid who liked the first game, I was rolling my eyes at that marketing.
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Definitely a lot of people in this thread approaching this question from different perspectives, leading to wildly different answers.
Hell yeah, love Dragon Age 2.
Uh, marketing and game contents are usually very different. Also, marketing is kind of besides the point about gameplay yeah?
I mean, in order to git gud you have to be beaten mercilessly by enemies that seem impossible.
when you want to talk about souls games stroking egos, why don't you take a look at Let's Plays of the Glock Saint or Orphan of Kos or Sister Freide or Lady Maria or The Nameless Storm King or Manus or Kalameet or Capra Demon or Demon of Hatred or hell any of the mini bosses from Sekiro with full health, maybe some Undead Ape action for true player flattening..
Hell, watch a blind playthrough of Sens Fortress if you must. The games are not stroking the hollow's ego LMAO.
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Dying doesn't really mean anything though. You're an unstoppable force, if some random mook kills you it's about as much of a hindrance as getting scratched. In a meta-game level, sure, you are being punished for being careless, but your infinite retries are part of the game's narrative, and the guy who just keeps getting better with each death is absolutely a power fantasy. Not to mention that as you level up, you get defenses so powerful that you can literally ignore multiple enemies whaling at you to little effect.
Like, just because you start the game struggling doesn't mean that your character is not "the special one". The whole Siegmeyer questline is him getting frustrated at just how much better you the player are at this quest than he is.
If you mean V3, then yes. If you've played the whole series this is undoubtedly the answer on so many levels.
the marketing is egregious enough that bringing up dark souls as an example of not stroking ego is wild, even if the games didn't (which they do).
The entire souls franchise is based around setting up situations that seem insurmountable but are actually extremely doable once you put your head down and learn the attack animations of the various enemies. Things that are challenging at first and become easy pretty quickly. Than when you beat the challenge it gives you huge fan fare. These are games that want you to feel like you have accomplished a lot by playing them, they are 100% stroking your ego. And that's fine, there's nothing wrong with a game that makes you feel good.
Metal Gear Solid 2. It was a deliberate contrast from the first game where the player's character was known as a legend and often praised for doing action hero-like exploits. In the sequel you instead play as someone who is inexperienced, naive, and frightened of all of the things happening around him. He never receives praise, he is instead constantly told to stop questioning what is going on and do the next part of the mission.
Disco Elysium for sure
But it usually ends up like this:I don't know ... Being these guys certainly feels awesome and badass.
That's... not ego stroking though
I feel like you cherry picked my post here Morrigan to quote that line and none of the explanation.
The entire gameplay loop is about making you feel like you are constantly accomplishing things by playing the game. A gameplay loop designed to make you feel like you are constantly accomplishing a great feat, that you are doing the impossible, is the clearest example of stroking the players ego I can think of. There's nothing wrong with acknowledging what the game is. I'm a big fan of them too.
"You couldn't suck more if you tried" is basically Disco Elysium's leitmotiv.
But yeah, not that rare in the general sense. A lot of graphic adventures had a weak/stupid/incompetent protagonist as a premise, for one.
But yeah, not that rare in the general sense. A lot of graphic adventures had a weak/stupid/incompetent protagonist as a premise, for one.
This is a good choice and a very cool game I need to play again.
Anyways, Darkest Dungeon for all of the obvious reasons.
You're sending many men and women to their dooms and outright sacrificing them with reckless abandon once you get over any attachment to your units. Failures and setbacks are present every step of the way.
Does Pathfinder Wrath of the Righteous count lol? even on normal this game is quite brutal hahaha.
Yeah but I still disagree. Games that "reward" you for persevering != games that are "stroking the player's ego", as defined per the OP:
That said my personal example is more Disco Elysium or TLoU2 than Souls, but I really don't think Souls games "stroke the player's ego" either.
One side of me wants to say yes, I know, I tell people to git gud all the time, they git gud, they find out Souls games are very fun and not as hard as people say, it's true! The other side of me wants to say what you just typed is basic risk reward game structure...
I guess we shrug at eachother on this one.
I have never been made to feel like I was cooler person by a game than the first time I was able to kill Genichiro, but at least Sekiro was actually brutally hard. I feel like the souls games are mostly designed to give you that feeling synthetically.
I don't think Souls games stroke the ego but I feel that with the sequels, starting with DS2 onwards, started pandering a lot to players. Excessive and needless references, praise the suns in your face wherever you turn and ridiculous description that harken back to previous games. That's one aspect of the Souls sequels which I really didn't appreciate.
Shadow of the Colossus doesn't tell you, the player, you're awful for doing this, but it heavily implies it.
Surprising it took this long for someone to reference Isaac. The game is sadistic.
State of Decay 2.
You can promote a community member to Leader, which starts a storyline which revolves around a particular archetype (i.e. Warlord, Sheriff, Builder, Trader) which generally means interacting with surrounding communities.
You're not curing the zombie plague. You're not saving the world and any of your people can permanently die at any time.
It keeps a pretty grounded approach throughout and on higher difficulties will go out of its way to humble you, repeatedly.
You can promote a community member to Leader, which starts a storyline which revolves around a particular archetype (i.e. Warlord, Sheriff, Builder, Trader) which generally means interacting with surrounding communities.
You're not curing the zombie plague. You're not saving the world and any of your people can permanently die at any time.
It keeps a pretty grounded approach throughout and on higher difficulties will go out of its way to humble you, repeatedly.
Being awesome and being told you are awesome are different things. Though I want to say in some of these games they say "oh great hunter" or something like that.I don't know ... Being these guys certainly feels awesome and badass.
What? V3 is nothing but ego stroking for like 75% of the game as most of the cast over-credits the protagonist for doing the most barebones amount of thinking during trials.
To me, this would disqualify games where you are a central part of the story or where you routinely do more damage, have more health, or can easily "outsmart" enemies. So that might actually end up disqualifying games like Spec Ops: The line or TLOU. That's funny but I do think other characters viewing you as "important" or having any special abilities is part of ego stroking.
Hellblade works since the entire game is you fighting with yourself. That's literally the only big game I played that seems to fit that criteria. It sounds like I should finally play Disco Elysium though.
Games like RDR2, Deus Ex, and The Witcher do get credit for making it clear that the world views you as a freak/outcast but obviously your character is way overpowered compared to the average enemy.
Hellblade works since the entire game is you fighting with yourself. That's literally the only big game I played that seems to fit that criteria. It sounds like I should finally play Disco Elysium though.
Games like RDR2, Deus Ex, and The Witcher do get credit for making it clear that the world views you as a freak/outcast but obviously your character is way overpowered compared to the average enemy.
Resident Evil 2 Remake. I swear that game is out to just kill you . The better I did the harder it got .