Combine?: Bosses and Boss Fight.

This is a weird one. We seem to have a page both for Bosses and for Boss Fight. They both appear to describe the exact same thing. Is there a meaningful difference between the two? Can you have a boss fight without a boss? And can somebody in a game be a boss if you never fight them? If either of those are true, then these pages need some serious revising to make the distinction clear.

A character can be a boss in a certain situation, but you might be able to talk your way out of it. It might not be a boss on your play through, but could for someone else maybe?

@fallen189:

But both boss and boss fight still coexist within that game.

Is there a page for non-violent boss encounters? And are there games where that sort of thing happens? Because otherwise, I don't see how we can have both pages.

Bosses are people/characters/enemies, Boss fights are events.

They should be separate pages.

I'd say they probably should stay separate, although I agree the pages need significant work.

I don't think a boss has to be exclusively "fought" you can probably also compete with a boss through other means as well (such as Racing). I can't think of anything atm, but I'm sure I've played games where you've raced the clock against the boss in some way sans combat.

This is a bit of deep cut, and not sure if this is what you mean, but, you guys remember Porsche Challenge on the PS1? X was basically a random boss you raced against. I suppose Boss Fight could also include Boss Races though... A fight is a pretty general term... :S

In some games with heavy dialogue choices this happens. Planescape Torment may be the most famous "Talk Your Way Through Everything" game so that's one example. I'm sure if we thought about it we'd see it happens in ME/DA/Fallout and similar games.

In Guacamelee! the Alebrijle plays on the expectations of bosses, as it is very obviously a "Boss Character" but, spoilers, you never have a boss fight with it.

To me "Boss" is a way of defining a character in a game, versus regular enemies or even "Mini Bosses".

A "Boss Fight" as a concept is special because often boss fights demand something different than the usual gameplay mechanics, though there are many exceptions to that rule.

Never played or heard of Porsche Challenge, but I'll take your word for it!

you are right "fight" is a pretty catchall term so perhaps I was thinking too narrowly. VGK was asking if a Boss always came with a Boss Fight, I'm not sure that they do, that's what I was getting at. But for the life of me I can't really think of many instances at the moment.

I like the distinction you made better between boss and boss fight, I think that sort of clarification makes more sense for the sake of the wiki. A Boss is often a major anatagonist in the game's narrative as well.

I could also argue a boss may consist of multiple boss fights.

ex. Kael'thas Sunstrider is a boss who appears in 2 seperate boss fights.

Each individual boss is a character or enemy but as a collective bosses are a concept. It's sort of like how Pikachu the character is a character, but pikachu the species is a concept and so there are separate pages for them both. Boss fights are also a concept, which is how we've come to this issue of the two being potentially similar enough to combine the wiki pages.

But I agree that they are separate concepts that should have separate pages.

Have you played Wolfenstein yet? (I say yet because it's awesome and should be played!).

If I recall correctly a certain evil Nazi women *definitely* comes across as a Boss but you never fight her. Spoilers?

Also, lol, nobody remembers Porsche Challenge. I just updated the wiki with a little more info anyways. Now it can be slightly less forgotten.

That room full of walls and shooty things in Megaman 2 that you have to sparingly use Crash Man's weapon on comes to mind. It's definitely a boss fight, but lacking a well-defined "boss" exactly. There's probably some other, better examples.

I know for a fact that we've definitely been through this before - and it wasn't too long ago.

There are several games that I have played where you have a boss encounter, but you do not actually fight the boss - A good example is Super Meat Boy.

Edit: I found the previous thread. Note that I am there arguing the complete opposite. But that was back when I was young and naive. Also, you posted there too...

Nope, don't know when or if I will to be honest. Not really a FPS guy, definitely heard good things though. But my backlog is insane enough as it is.

@geraltitude: I'm just here to say I remember (and own) Porsche Challenge.

Also, this topic has come up before years ago and it was determined to keep them separate. I'm not seeing any reason to change that decision.

@marino: hahaha, awesome. My copy's at my mom's place so I've been watching a lot of YouTube to try to research the game. If you play it for some reason one day jot down the racers' likes/dislikes. Hard info to find.