The Escapist Issue #124 Now Available
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Category: News ArchiveHits: 960
Escort missions, in a word, suck.
"Anyone with more than a few years of videogame experience can summon up a spirited and generally caustic opinion of this game mechanic given half the chance," says Larry Sonntag, a reporter and longtime gamer. He describes his least favorite escort mission, a level from Peter Molyneux's critically acclaimed RPG, Fable, in which the hero is asked to enter a cave filled with monsters to recover a woman's lost child, as "very unsatisfying, even annoying."
Sonntag points to one of the main frustrations with this kind of scenario as he describes his attempt to save the child, and the child's patent refusal to stand in a safe place while being protected.
"Every time I swung the hammer," he says, "I'd both clean out some enemies and give a mighty smack to the young lad. Soon enough, my hammer reduced the boy to a bloody pile at my feet, and I walked across the room to turn off my Xbox."
Sonntag's experience is fairly common. Most players suffer through escort missions (often referring to them as "the dreaded"), unsure of why they're even in the game. Even the designers and writers I spoke with for this article - many of whom have designed escort missions of their own - confess to a closet dislike of the convention.
I agree - they need to go. Take note, developers!
