tagsug: task un-failure


2016-11-01
We have taskfailure. But games with taskfailure and alternativesolutions may also include the ability to succeed after a task has failed and even after the game has told the play that a task has failed.

For instance, in Perfect Dark there is an explosive crate used to blow a hole in a weakened wall. If the crate is prematurely blown, 'mission failed' flashes across the screen. Checking the menu, sure enough, mission failure. In most any game, there's no coming back from this state. Perfect Dark, however, is not one of these. The player can then, possibly, get a hold of a grenade, or an explosive impact weapon, or a certain assault rifle that can set to proximity destruct and dropped. If the player manages to get such an explosive and blow the wall, 'alternate entry found' will flash on the screen and the mission is no longer in a fail state. But this is not the only way, the player can unfail the mission by luring an enemy to open a locked door from the other side. This is not just alternativesolutions, it is alternativesolutions after failure

2016-11-01
Perfect Dark was IIRC very meta with messing with conventions and with player's sanity, so in its case I think it's more that the game outright lies to the player that they've supposedly failed.