Larian Studios Forums Divinity: Original Sin 2 Divinity - Original Sin 2 - General Bosses and cinematic events - Can it be improved?

I still stand behind my point that no bosses would be best. Lacrymas post just confirmed all my reasons for that.

I also have a hard time remembering good boss fights since generally they just suck, and they are a pro-active point in making me stop repeat game's or just not want me to play again. That's... not something I actively want support stuffing more in the game.
Yes, the "bosses" in Deus Ex were great, but that's because they aren't bosses. They are memorable since they appear a few dozen times before the encounter. They are great because you can GEP-Gun them in the face as they walk up to you, rather than being a forced 15m combat encounter (Deus Ex: Human Revolution I'm looking at you!)
Anna Navarra, Gunther Herman, Walton Simmons are all memorable because of their setup, not at all their fights. And do you remember the name of the guy who was send to destroy the rocket, the only 'true' boss in Deus Ex 1, a forced kill? Nope, I bet you don't since come out of blue, fight and then never seen/heard again is not a setup for memorable events.

What I remember from my The Old Republic MMO fights is... 1,2,3,4,1,2,3,1,2,3,4,1,2,3... Yeah, total fun. You know what to do? Good! Now just do it 20x more. Not exactly what I would want in my SP-gameplay since if I was pretty much in for the social fun, SP RPG's don't got that so horrible gameplay will become all the more jarring.

For Baldur's Gate Durlag's Tower was far more memorable than The Watcher's Keep just because it didn't have so boss-fights every level. Just one final boss (which, too, sucked). Actually I pretty much end my BG2 playthroughs as I end Athkatlala since afterwards it's just far less fun, with boss-heavy Throne of Bhaal taking the throne of being the least fun to get through. I never bothered a second time due to that, even if replaying BG2 much more (and I have to admit, yes, a few of the names you throw out there I don't remember at all, and the others only in a "I really hated them, never again" way.

So yeah, I still totally stand beside my choice. I would be extremely content with a system like madscientist suggests though .

If I remember the Arkham games I mostly remember the fun with the random mook fights. And how horrible the bosses are. They just aren't any fun at all.

Uuuuhmm, like I said, bosses are used mostly for climactic points in the story and aren't random mooks with 10x the hp bar. Since Deus Ex is a completely different genre, making them something more than they are is bad design and storytelling. They were people, just like you, and that was the point. You might also want to remove their names since it's a spoiler and Deus Ex deserves to be played in general.

You are basically regurgitating my points, but you somehow arrived at the opposite conclusion. Bosses are good for this type of game, no matter how challenging they are. Though they should be since it's a tactical TB RPG. They just have to be set up properly.

I think I know what hassat hunter means with his Deus Ex example.

You should have a personal connection to the boss. You need to hate them before you kill them. There must be a reason why they attack you.

If you like more drama you may have to fight somebody but you donｴt want to. Circumstances that you cannot infuence force you to do something you do not like.

It is bad when the game puts a big boss in your way, you ask why and the dev sais: " Well its a dungeon. There is a rule in RPGs that there must be a boss at the end of the dungeon. You cannot get the treasure for free. This dungeon is a crypt so we thought an undead mage would be a good idea. And because mages are so fragile, we gave him 10x HP and a spell you can never learn."

something different: Somebody said about Portal1, that after beating the final boss he was sad that he killed her. I like to hear more such things in the future (not only sad, also other emotion than "great, I killed a boss and now I have 100exp more and a weapon with +10 damage."

about MMOs: This was my biggest problems with MMOs. Other players expect you to have a program that tell you what to do. In WOW it was DBM. It tells you: The boss will use skill X in 5 sec. Gather in the blue circle and interrupt spell Y. You also need a program that shows you the aggro list. The devs know that people use such programms and so the bosses get more and more complex (= you have to look at 3 timers at the same time at least) so everybody must have this programm.

uhm, exactly? Quoting a fragment of my post on the first page -

Sorry, I read only the new posts.
If I read everything every time I will never write something.

Yup. That's why you can remember bosses from bioware games. They always follow the same pattern, which is kinda sad, of a random sod ( you ) who is friend / student / mentor / you name it of what will actually be either the bid bad guy or the second to last big bad guy.
Jade Empire was the best example. Death Hand is quite easy to remember, you meet it a few times, but the real boss behind him was someone very close to you character.
Mass Effect had Saren, in 1. 2 had The Ellusive Man. 3 had every Reapers, which is a bit more generic but by that time you didn't really need a specific villain.
Kotor had Darth Malak and the "ellusive" Revan.

Other cRPG examples include BG1's Sarevok and BG2's Irenicus. FO:New Vegas had Benny, and Caesar ( although I always felt the last "boss" was quite crappy ). FO2 had Frank Horrigan...

Other genre also have a few very specific final boss you ( or well the character ) have a personnal connection with.
Try the ending of God of War 3 - after 2 games, if not 3!, pursuing Zeus, that ultimate sequence where you're just prompted to hit him in the face is nothing short of exhilarating, and you can go and go and go even when the screen turned red. You just want him to die.
Resident Evil 3's very own nemesis. Who didn't choose that ultimate prompt to fight him ?
Far Cry 3 heavily used Vaas as promotion material, and the guy was really cool. Too bad they didn't offer him a decent ending and he turned out to be a mere lieutenant.
Borderlands 2's Handsome Jack, mocking you throught the entire game. You want him to die.
Blizzard had a gallery of really cool villains they mostly manage to let go to waste. Illidan and The Lich King are complete failures in WoW. Kerrigan is a complete faillure in SC2.
FF6 Kefka, FF7 Sephiroth.
List could go on, and on, entirely made up of villains that mattered in various games, various genres, even if the ultimate fight was a letdown.

A good villain is one you love to hate. He isn't something that pops out in your game during the last 5 minutes. You create it, you build tension, you make them do terrible things you want to stop them for.

A good villain in the Divinity universe is now of course Damian. But by naming DOS2 villain right there in the KS campaign, Larian already took a step in a possibly good direction. Now we should just have to run into him a few times rather than just hear about what he is doing "somewhere else".




Yes. This is because players have been getting more and more stupid and incapable of analyzing what is happening and why, as well as getting lazy. MMOs have become a huge idiocraty, sadly.. But that's because of the players rather than the game, although the game went out of his way to adapt to the player base rather than force THEM to adapt. Again, Blizzard, looking at you. The leader show the way, and WoW clearly destroyed the genre in its complexity. More things now, more things easily, more, more, more, or else players are unhappy and leave. *shrug* I guess by now we know that I'm really bitter at Blizzard =)

Kreia, as in a complete opposition of this statement. That is all.

Also Transcendent One.

Also THE Boss. From MGS3

A good villain is one that you don't hate, but is an equal and maybe a deeply flawed/damaged individual who you can sympathize with and even agree with. (Kreia) It's easy to write villains you can hate.

I didn't play kotor2, damn those console release. It's funny I learned about Jade Empire when they finally released it on PC but Kotor2 completely went under my radar.
Bottom line, I'll trust your judgement but I can't fully understand it sadly.

I also though of Big Boss, but I'd rather point Liquid Snake and The Boss, as I didn't do the classic Metal Gear. Liquid is one villain that you just want to deal with once and for all. The Boss is indeed an exception, a villain you can't really bring yourself to hate because she isn't really THE villain of the game.

It's true that sometimes, a good villain also is a just tragic villain. It may be someone you rather hate to love, because you know they have to go, leaving you, the player, on a bittersweet note.
Writing a villain you hate is not that easy : he may just turn up annoying. Writing a great villain to hate is hard. Let's not dismiss this kind of villains : I actually am starting to feel annoyed by all those sympathetic villains with a noble but distorted goal we are presented in every game and movies these days. It seems writers feel the need to give ulterior motives, dark childhood, trauma or whatever to their villains. Sometimes, it's just refreshing to have one that only want to see the world burn.
Batman analogy time : The Joker is just as good a villain as Freeze, and one is genuine while the other merely had to resort to villainy.

But technically it's still the same , and we're back to the very first posts : if you have virtually no idea who this last boss because the game never cared to introduce them, it's probably a bad design :p ( hello, Lucifer from Castlevania Lords of Shadow! )

edit : you sneaky you :p

It isn't about a tragic past. It's about his/her motives/reasoning regarding the current situation we are in. If s/he's right (Kreia) then so be it. They're quite one-dimensional if they simply want the world to burn.

You haven't played KotOR2?

Get on it ASAP

http://www.gog.com/game/star_wars_knights_of_the_old_republic_ii_the_sith_lords

Also get the restored content mod (this is absolutely necessary)

Yes, I think I'll have a look for real on that one. I remember skipping it each time it went on sale on Steam because of the numerous tales of bugs and unfinished polished. However, with a proper patch like the one Bloodline received...

And really one dimensional villains aren't bad. Or well, yes, they ARE bad, but ... you understand. It was a old formula in old games that worked and still work imho. Kefka from FF6 was a pure villain and there was nothing more to it, and he still managed to shine because of his writing. That mad clown who actually manages to destroy the world was really the man you wanted to kill :p

However it's better to at least give the villain a deeper reason to fight the hero. Just... I don't know. I find it easy and a bit cheap when nowdays you find yourself sympathizing with the devil. I miss the old James Bond, or even Disney, villains, who were just bad guys deep to the core. Or even Palpatine, that good ol'kidder, who has zero redeeming qualities, but is still the enbodiment of evil whose death is unconditionnal to freeing the galaxy. ( I'd agree we remember Vader more, but isn't it because of his looks and because he's been there since the very beginning, leaving too little room to the Emperor when he finally appears in Return of the Jedi ? Vader backstory isn't fully explored before the end of ESB after all. )

But I digress. I just wanted to point out that villains need introducing, and really good reasons to being the villain against your particular party of heroes. It doesn't need to be personnal, but it sure helps if it is or if it becomes personnal.

The restored content mod fixes 99% of the bugs and adds the cut content. It really is great and is mandatory.

I suppose that's all we can extract from this thread. That villains shouldn't be random, but are introduced properly and you should know why they want to kill you/stop you. The topic of writing a good villain is another thread entirely.

Yet every single Baldur's Gate encounter you mention is exactly that. Barring Mellissan. You don't even LIST Sarevok or Jon Irenicus so actually plot-backed BG bosses don't get your preference it seems.

*pouts on me for posting DX villians of the first 3 levels than posts the final baddie of KOTOR2*
*facepalm*

Dr Koin... SHAME ON YOU. Go play it now. Don't forget to get TSLRCM. And M4-78EP. And let me know what you think after you're done. Don't return here till you do! :p

And we probably remember Vader more just because of all his buildup in A New Hope (and a great introduction too wouldn't you say?).

Also it's rather awkward to see Lacrymas disagreeing with me constant (and I with him) and here he's praising TSLRCM.

Good bosses are a tricky subject, but they are perfect for RPG's, because of the mechanics of the games. In most of them it's all about power (technically in Planescape Torment too, but the game didn't use a lot of the combat mechanics) and Bosses are the perfect tool to show how powerful you got after X hours of Gameplay.

There doesn't need to be a lot of context, but it is better for the immersion and gives the writer a reason for existing .

But I have to say, that at least the last boss in the first act was build up throughout the whole map. There where a lot of clues about what he did and how he did, so it wasn't that surprising to fight him at the end. It was a fun fight and I still grin widely when I read his lines. He's so wonderful over the top .

King Boreas (maybe even better endbossmaterial) was also very fun and I have a feeling that Bishop Alexander could be a interesting Antagonist, if they pull it correctly together. The small excerpt at the Kickstartercampaign gave me good impression of his character. At least he seems to have some guts and isn't that stupid. Can't say that about every villain in a fantasygame.

I didn't list them because they were the whole point of the game. We are talking about bosses that aren't the main antagonists, or am I misunderstanding? Melissan isn't the point of ToB though, so that's why I did list her. She was just a middle-man in Bhaal's grand scheme. She's just incidentally the last boss.

Just to be clear - I'm not saying any bosses in the Baldur's Gate series are well-written, just presented well.

You don't need bosses for that, regular enemies do fine.

Of course then you do have people who go all "level scale them! I don't want to feel like I've made any progression!!!"

Indeed. In the old Infinity Engine games most enemy encounters were hard and challenging, not only bosses (at least on higher difficulty settings) - and that's the way it should be.

Indeed. I liked the battles against other adventurer groups. In BG1+2 there were several groups that consisted of a mage, cleric, fighter, thief, . . . ). Some were hostile to begin with, others were just waiting in an inn. (If they are not hostile, you should walk into a good position and start combat by backstabbing the mage. It is fun to see protection spells trigger on death.)
But in D:OS (and the videos of D:OS2) most encounters are already groups of different humanoids.

As some people have written before, Bosses are a good way to show players that they have finished a section of the game, if they are implemented well into the story. The final boss on the first map (under the church) is one of the better examples. You have heard of him several times before and you have an idea who he is and what he wants.

In a discussion at obsidian somebody said this: When you know what enemies you will face, your group prepares for it and tries to exploit its weakness. This way your party feels more intelligent and they do not simply charge at the big monster at the end of the room.

examples:

I strongly agree with most of the points being made for well crafted bosses. Although, I've got to admit, one or two of original sins bosses (graveyard and lighthouse), I didn't hear about before venturing into the wild, and holy s--- that was fun getting stomped on and being unprepared!

Bosses are a necessity. They stick in my mind, almost all of them. 110% keen for challenging boss fights that are well scripted and challenging in D:OS 2

Don't know how you jumped from "No bosses!" to "Level scaling". One thing that regular enemies can't deliver is the feeling of an personal one-on-one-fight, between two worthy opponents. A good boss has basically the same skills as you, but he is a cheating bastard (because real KI wouldn't be implemented in an video game, let's be honest) and you win trough skill. And when you have an reason to hate, it's more delicious and like some already have written, you get an personal connection with him, if the writing is good.


@madscientist

The problem with your examples is, that this was part of the story and not part of the gameplay. A good boss fight is something like the fight against ... let's take The End from Metal Gear Solid 3. Because it's all about skill and knowing the territory. Your examples were all part of the script, but it wasn't you, that had the ideas.

@Zelon: It is true that this was not part of gameplay.
Maybe it is more importent that the boss is well implemented in the story than the actual gameplay. This might sound strange, but D:OS is not a Zelda like game or an MMO, where the boss has a certain attack pattern and the player must adapt to it. You cannot control the bosses movement, interrupt the boss or evade an attack and do a counter attack. Those are tactics for action games (real time). D:OS is turn based combat. The only attack pattern a boss can have is to use a special attack every x turns. The boss under the church did it (Fireball) and some bosses in PoE (undead readric and the fampyr lord in the endless paths, fireball) and it was more annoying than interesting because you could not influence or avoid it. All you can do is survive it. The only thing your group can do in D:OS is to chose how much they scatter themselves so not all of them are hit by AoE. The combat system of D:OS is interesting because of the elemental effects (poison+fire=BOOM, . . .). But in the end, all you can do is CC the enemy and deal as much damage as possible.