something i think about a lot with video games is how boring loss conditions that aren't 'your character dies' are

'the npc dies so you lose', 'the thing you're protecting gets destroyed so you lose', etc are super boring and feel like the devs placing their strictly scripted narrative over anything emergent and interesting the player might encounter

you failed and the npc died? it'd be super interesting to see how the story changes because of that, how much more difficult it is for your character without that npc to help you at the crucial moment, that sort of thing, and all that is taken away from you when it's a game over

i just... i really don't think video games are the right medium for the type of story where the beats are so strict like that. and i get that it's not plausible to make content for all the endless permutations, but it really wouldn't be that much to make a few variations instead

it takes away the player's ability to experience their own unique version of the story in favor of pushing the strict dev-authored always-the-same story on them. and i honestly find that really fucking annoying, and kinda bounce hard off of games with those kinds of objectives

it's especially annoying in rpgs and other types of games where you've got some degree of choice and customization of the story and the experience because it's basically the devs going 'no, you can't have your own version of the story in this way! go back and do it again!'

i feel like my frustration is rooted in the fact that it's something very possible, and something games have been doing for a long time. you see different permutations of content based on who you kill, who you let live, how you handle situations even, in deus ex, from 1999, etc.

i feel like what makes this issue even worse is the fact that you never run into people who like the non-death loss conditions like that. you never see people talk about how much they loved that bit. you see them bitch about the npc and how annoying the quest was.

when it's something no one is really a fan of, and there's an alternative that isn't especially expensive or complex, why is this sort of thing still a thing outside of experimental games that use it for some interesting/artistic purpose?

(dragonfall got me thinking about this a lot. in particular, the second-to-last mission where you have to protect the terminal while it's purging the AI and there's people trying to attack it and then if it gets destroyed, it's just game over)

(sorry for ranting about narrative in games in the middle of the night again! i've been developing really passionate opinions about story in games as i've been playing all kinds of non-authored stuff and getting better stories than the most detailed story-rpg or walking sim)