What do you wish videogames did that they don't already do?

[Ack]

Yeah, but that's effectively what happens. Whereas if you survive you can continue flying around in your ship, if the party dies in the end, you technically beat the game, but you don't get to play anymore.

[Lord_Santa]

if we're talking current gen:

I'd like them to entertain me.

[Lord_Santa]

I wish a game made me feel like my decisions actually mattered. I mean, if I make bad decisions that lead to my character's demise then I have to retry or I miss out on seeing future content of the game. That's about the extent of making choices matter in games. And forget about small choices having an impact, usually doesn't matter whether we kill a character or not. I would like to see something where I really felt something for characters where I actually might care about them enough to NOT shoot them, despite having the option to do so in the game and the fact that "it's only a game" keeps me from ever really feeling too attached to game characters. The only characters I've ever really cared enough about in a game that I would not kill them are the colossi in Shadow of the Colossus, and I really didn't have much choice to NOT kill them if I wanted to play the game.

JT, you should really try Mass Effect 2.

you should really, really try Fallout 1 and 2

[Pulsar_t]

Developers go out of their way trying to create characters that have distinct personalities and behaviour (still paling compared to film, however), but the moment you gain control of them they become puppets. Why not have them retain a bit of self-determination e.g. in old school adventure games you could seldom order your character to plunge to their doom knowingly, for instance, whereas in any sandbox game the character has no qualms about going Thelma & Louise on you, a few moment after watching a lengthy cutscene after which the protagonist was supposed to do something rather than drive straight off a cliff. Likewise if your character is deemed 'good' by your actions early on in the game why would he or she turn a 180 and do something utterly nasty, out of the blue? Stuff like that takes a lot of suspension of belief, and whilst the player is the ultimate puppet master there should be some reasonable limits within the context of the game.

Just sayin'.

[J T]

^ That's one of the things I like about Agro, the horse from Shadow of the Colossus. He has his own AI. He is a horse, so he will comply with a lot of your commands, but there are some things he kind of fights you on a little bit. He doesn't always jump when you want him to, he doesn't always turn exactly in the way you want, and there usually is a delay between your button commands and when he decides to act. He can also run independent of you while you are trying to shoot arrows, which can be helpful and is crucial to defeating some of the colossi. The ways in which Agro can be both helpful and frustrating make him feel more real, like an actual horse. You have to learn how to relate to his AI, and since Agro is the only other soul on the planet that you can befriend on your journey, you have to learn to befriend him. I friendship between Wander and Agro is one of the better friendship stories in a videogame, and I think it is due in large part to these design choices in how the horse does not control like a perfect puppet.