[shmerl]

> One could wish that Roberta’s ambivalence about killing her new female heroine at every possible juncture had led her to consider the wisdom of indulging in all that indiscriminate player-killing at all

It's interesting, how in comparison in Loom[1], there are practically no such deaths at all. The most that can happen - you'll get stuck with progress and will have to return to previous areas to finish what you missed. King's Quests on the other hand are infamous for brutal deaths caused by all kind of mistakes, like failing to feed hungry chicken in time.

[1]. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loom_(video_game)

[zerocrates]

Others have mentioned that LucasArts games in general avoided deaths and failstates, but just frequent death wasn't the real issue with the Sierra model in my mind. An immediate "Game Over" is not a huge deal, you just lose progress back to your last save (or less in today's checkpointed and autosaved games). It's like choosing the path with the deadly spiked pit in a choose-your-own-adventure book, and just flipping back to go the other way.

The much bigger problem comes when you can make the game unwinnable, but not actually lose right away (well, you've lost, you just don't know it yet). You merrily continue on for hours until much later you realize (if you do realize) that your mistake those many hours ago doomed you, and you need to go all the way back to a save from before then. Killing the player character right away (or at least soon) would be a much more merciful outcome than letting them blindly proceed down a path to nowhere.

I assume the dual intent of such dead ends were to make things seem more "realistic," as real-world errors are often permanent and aren't always immediately apparent, and also to extend the playtime.

Sudden brutal deaths are still a staple of many games and genres (even the new "modernized" King's Quest), but the silently-unwinnable state has happily fallen more or less totally out of fashion.

[Reedx]

I think the fail states in Sierra's games were actually part of the fun. Just because of the variety and how tongue-in-cheek many of them were. It was amusing and sort of an easter egg hunt to find all the ways you could die.

> The much bigger problem comes when you can make the game unwinnable, but not actually lose right away

Yeah, that sort of thing instilled a life-long habit of constantly saving my progress and having saves that go back many hours. I specifically blame King's Quest II for that. There was a bridge that you could only cross a handful of times and then it collapsed. If it collapsed too early in the game, you are screwed and need a save prior to crossing it unnecessarily.

[DrStalker]

I remember in one of the Kings Quests games you could throw either a shoe or a stick at a dog chasing a bird; both awarded you points, but one led to not being able to complete the game.

In addition at the very end the bad guy casts a spell at you, and the bird flies into the way and you don't die... if you didn't save that bird 4 hours earlier you have no way to possibly know that is why you are doomed to failure in the final fight.

It felt like shitty game design at the time, and by today's standards it would be completely unacceptable to most players.

[Razengan]

I think those kind of stretched consequences could work well with a time-travel gimmick in a modern game.

[Razengan]

That "Dead End Dread" had a more sinister form, where you weren't sure whether the lack of progress was due to an unwinnable state, or a bug, which caused me to look up walkthroughs and cheat despite having the best intentions not to (I swear!)

[sevensor]

Prompted by this comment, I went and looked up Conquests of Camelot. Turns out I missed about a third of the game. Always wondered why the ending was so unsatisfactory! If only I'd had internet access in 1992.

[shmerl]

> I assume the dual intent of such dead ends were to make things seem more "realistic," as real-world errors are often permanent and aren't always immediately apparent, and also to extend the playtime.

Yeah, I'd consider it a design flaw of the game, if it would reach a dead end that way. A better solution would be to turn mistakes in consequences of the story itself. I.e. not mechanically being stuck on something, but the plot taking a different turn, environment changing in different fashion and so on. I.e. reactivity of the game should reflect those choices and mistakes in more organic fashion. Even better, the game could provide alternative solutions to problems, allowing to work around previous missteps even at later stages (but may be requiring more effort and time).

[rangibaby]

Also a good reason to call their helpline ;-)

[mmastrac]

"Save often, restore a lot"

[danso]

That's the case with virtually every Lucasfilm game I've ever played, including Indiana Jones: Fate of Atlantis, Full Throttle, and Grim Fandango. I believe you can die in the climaxes of those games, otherwise you just get knocked unconscious at worst.

That feature was a nice reprieve after playing the Sierra-designed games. Though sometimes the abrupt endings in the Sierra games had their point; for example, forgetting to secure your weapon before taking an inmate into jail would result in a game-over scene in Police Quest 1. Not sure how that could be resolved the LucasFilm way.

[frandroid]

In a LucasFilm game, the inmate would escape and return to where they were hanging out before, and you would have to apprehend them again, as many times as it takes before you remember to secure your weapon before taking the inmate into jail.

[SmurfJuggler]

There was one death in Monkey Island. When Guybrush first talks to the pirates in the Scumm bar they ask if he has any special skills and he proudly tells them he can hold his breath for ten minutes. Much later in the game he finds himself underwater, if you let him idle he proves it.

I never found any other ways to kill him, but I certainly tried.

[shmerl]

Yeah, I don't think you can even die in the minefield in Full Throttle (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aDpMfjfiqt4).

From reasonable abrupt endings, the most hilarious one was in the Neverhood: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S4MARAsx1Vo

[DrStalker]

You could die in one section of Full Throttle, at which point the screen faded to black and the protagonist spoke.

"No... that's not what happened."

Then you start the scene over.

[gnarbarian]

Han would solve it by shooting the inmate first.

[nolok]

Not in the HD re-release he wouldn't

[blakeyrat]

LucasArts made their name by being the "anti-Sierra" and having far more respect for the player's time.

[Razengan]

Me and my friends grew up playing these games and we never saw Sierra as being "disrespectful" of us. If anything the -Quest games were always seen as more epic compared to LucasArts', but they were all equally loved and looked forward to.

[Natsu]

What about the junk mail in Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy?

Stupid cleaning robots....