A version of this article first appeared in the August 2001 issue of Game Developer magazine.
There’s an epidemic sweeping across the games industry. It’s a sweeping onslaught of gaming tedium that makes an average day of C-Span seem like New Year’s 2000. I am referring to our boss monster encounters. The elements of the game that should act as the climaxes of our gaming experience are devolving into boredom and frustration, instead of providing the pure gaming bliss that they should.
Now, I’m not naïve. I know that boss encounters are usually lackluster because they require special code and art, which in turn translates to money, time, and bugs. Also, they are often moved to the schedule’s end, which makes them ripe for gross oversimplification (if they don’t get cut altogether). Complex bosses also cannot be reused easily – and resources you can only use once per game are extremely expensive. Still, we can do better.
In this age of beautiful graphics and sound and well-crafted stories, most boss encounters are still “whip out your biggest gun, go mano a mano, and hope you don’t die.” Which usually devolves into a health meter that moves down too slowly and way too many quickloads. We’ve seen minor progress, but this usually “Shoot him when he taunts”, “shoot him in the stomach”, or if we designers are really clever, “Shoot him in the stomach when he taunts.”
Been there. Done that.
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