Guess I made the title inflamatory enough.
Anyway, I was thinking about Gale's personal quest. The way he has this contrived system to resurrect him in case he dies, etc.
And then you talk to him and learn more details about his condition, but above all, the fact that...
...keeping him dead for more than two days would be incredibly dangerous. That the magic forces at play inside his body would turn him basically into a nuke bomb capable to leveling an entire area and kill people in the hundreds, maybe thousands if the region is crowded enough.
So OF COURSE any self respecting RPG player will put this to the test. Kill him, leave him on the ground, rest for two, three, four days, expecting to wake up a morning with the scene of a massive explosion, or with a lot of NPCs dead, or HELL, even just with a lazy pop-up saying "You died in a massive explosion, reload your game".
And guess what? Yeah. Nothing fucking happens.
Either the story will reveal he's lying to you about this "side effect" (meh?) or worse, the game doesn't have the courage to inconvenience the player for the sake to keep consistency with its own narrative (MEHH!).
Needless to say this isn't an isolated example, just one of the most immediately notable ones, but games do this stuff all the times.
"Oh, it's urgent, you are risking a whole lot if you don't hurry". Except don't worry too much, we are never actually going to do anything about this.
"What? You are making a powerful enemy in a noble family? Sounds bad". Except there will hardly ever be a meaningful follow up except from two unthreatening hired thugs ambushing you two hours later.
"Oh, you need a very specific and bizarre ritual to ress your companion? You better pay attention to it!". Except any random-ass revivify scroll will do the job just fine (but FINE, I can see the reasoning for this one).
Etc, etc.
I can't be the only one who perceives these half-assed timid attempts to suggest "urgency" and "great danger" without the proper courage to inconvenience the player, by committing to them, as a bit of spineless cop out.
