TBM: Ep 9 EXTRAS

I'm a little obsessed with taking "feels bad" moments in board games and giving them thematic justification in order to expand the emotion palette designers have access to. I really latched on to the idea when I read Achievement Relocked, but I think we should be looking beyond just loss aversion. However, since that book is the only show in town for this type of topic, I reference it a lot. 

I own Pandemic Legacy: Season 1, but it's still in shrink. I'm beginning to worry about sticker integrity, tbh. 

If you don't like a paragraph of bullet points with no elaboration, I'm not sure how you can stand to listen to TBM. Although, I think I get better after the first dozen episodes. 

I haven't played Portal or Death Stranding, but I have watched my husband play. 

Not sure my point about Death Stranding comes thru without completely describing the whole plot. If you speed run this moment, you can barely tell the difference between the cut scenes and the player controlled parts, because the entire location is a gate with only one action you can take in order to advance. And it is the most extreme example of thematic loss you could possibly have in a game. My husband did not want to advance from this scene. I just wish the game had made the brave action the gate (instead of the immediately following cut scene) rather than the "following orders" action. 

There's another major gate in Portal and Death Stranding, both near the end of gameplay. Each one demands players take the correct action before the game progresses, resetting after every incorrect action. The pay off of these gates is frankly better than the earlier loss gates. But they aren't loss gates, so I left them out of the discussion, especially since that sort of reveal gate is easier to pull of in video games. 

I know Death Stranding is apocalyptic magi-science fiction, but with a very few thematic tweaks it could have been a really great cyberpunk setting. I'm not a fan of what I've seen of the gameplay in Cyberpunk 2077. I would prefer cyberpunk that is a little less GTA.