i know this is nothing new but fuck escort missions. I've been playing watchdogs and I had probably the most aggravating couple of hours of play I've had in a very long time. There Is a mission kinda near the end where you have to protect this dude while a bunch of bad guys try to kill both of us. Anyway he dies a few times, no biggie, mission restarts it's total bullshit but that's escort missions. However the shitty game keeps breaking, over and over, I clear out the guys we are supposed to move forward but the guy doesn't move. I restart the mission, the same thing one spot further on over and over. I turn o the game off turn it back on and I get stuck at the initial spot again. Then I have the bright idea to start a different game, get it out of the system memory. That fixes it the fucking asshole actually moves and I beat the mission.

In a game so weirdly made some of it is really slick some like the traffic totally fucked ( just park a care in the road) traffic will just back up eternally, the ai won't go around your car)don't add weird things that can fuck up, especially in story required missions.

Whenever I hear escort mission I have flash backs to Jak 2 and all the terrible escort missions in that game.

Isn't The Last of Us just one long escort mission? Like, the most literal application of escort mission imaginable?

@ninnanuam: It took me awhile to figure out what this topic was actually about - please try to use the appropriate game specific forums when you can. Otherwise, this thread just looks like a general complaint about escort missions when put into GD. Moved to Watch Dogs - thanks.

I said this in another thread, but the Bedbug one out of the three is the only one that requires you to guide the dude around. You can just go in shooting and hope for the best with the other two.

@video_game_king said:

No. Ellie's invulnerable, can provide assistance in combat, and she'll never blow your cover during any stealth encounters. Though that's because she's practically invisible to enemy AI more so than her having effective pathfinding.

@yummylee:

But isn't the narrative literally about Joel's mission to escort Ellie across the country?

Yeah, agree. That whole chapter was extremely aggravating for me. If you're talking about Bedbug set of missions it doesn't really get any better. The end was a big load of bullshit. Patrick said it before but this I can't recall a game that was more taped together than WDs. The bedbug chapters especially force you into combat so frequently that I rage quit more than once.

I recently completed Prototype. It also featured some absolutely shitty escort missions. I feel your pain.

I don't hate escort missions as a fundamental concept as much as a lot of people seem to. There are some problems when your mission objective is programmed with AI that does not prioritize their survival or where it's too fragile, but there are some games where the priority is less to kill everything and more to slow it down and neutralize it as an immediate threat to who you're protecting that I really enjoy.

Can't comment on Watch Dogs, though.

It could be a lot worse.

I'm not sure I remember which mission you are talking about. The only annoying escort like sequence was when you had to guide people from cover to cover. That was a lot of trial and error bullshit.

I also don't know which mission particular you mean. When you guide Bed Bug through the crackhouse I thought that was pretty interesting. I never really had to do anything over more than once before I got where I needed to go and checkpoints were pretty good so no real problems there.

@video_game_king: Well, yeah, that's the gist.... but it has no bearing on the gameplay; you're not constantly having to baby sit Ellie like a typical escort mission.

@djou:

No I was talking about the T-Bone mission where the bad dudes invade his compound, once Ministry started playing, he locked onto some cover and wouldn't budge even with everyone dead. If I blew him up with grenades he ran back to the same piece of cover.

Then he did it again once we got to the last section of the mission just before the tunnel.

@ninnanuam: I think you may have just hit an unfortunate AI bug. I don't recall having much trouble with that mission.

The only problem I had with that mission was me dying, not the AI dude. I think I blew him up on one try, but I played on 'realistic', so it was me who was the most vulnerable. Just keep activating those traps and equip the grenade launcher!

Out of all the missions, this one was not that hard, I felt there were a couple of missions at the end of the game that were poorly designed or somehow rushed.

Great, that is what I must be coming up on. I cannot recall right now, but I have played a very few escort missions that are fun.

For an awful one, I just got the platinum on Dark Void. During one mission you escort Atem, I believe. He just runs head first into enemies and does not take cover. So many restarts just so I could bum rush the bad guys before he got there. Playing on hard I was getting wrecked doing that too. Finally just got lucky when he got stuck on a wall for a bit.

Hah, that's where I dropped Dark Void, I wasn't particularly enjoying it anyway.

I had no problem with the Watch Dogs escort missions because I actually enjoyed the game when you are hacking cameras and puzzling around to kill them by just using the environment because it makes it feel less like GTA. You get pretty ridiculous weapons by like mid point of the game so I felt confident in fire fights but I feel aiden is super squishy and you die rather quickly.

Funny because I don't even know what mission you are referring to. The only mission that was annoying and hard was the very very last one simply because cops would chase you the entire time. You could lose them and they would get back on you within seconds.

You do realize that over half of The Last of Us is Joel getting separated from Ellie or clearing out an area so Ellie can come through unimpeded.

Heh, yeah, one of my favorite moments of The Last of Us was when I was hiding against a wall and one of the non Ellie characters you team up with was running tight circles around a creature before literally attempting to shove his face up its ass, which I guess was an effective way to hide from said creature because it didn't notice him.

Why can't I use the shove my head up the creature's ass strategy, Last of Us?! The AI character seems to be having a much easier time sneaking through these sewer tunnels than me.

You've seen a Clicker's face. Do you really want to see its ass?

@ninnanuam: Oh yeah, that section was no fun either, come to think of it there's a bunch of sections in that game that were no fun. The most frustrating part of that chapter for me was the driving. There were a bunch of fetch quest missions were these stereotypical militant hilly billies would chase you down. There was one mission in the rain where I drove around the city for 40 minutes trying to lose them. I didn't upgrade along the driving skill tree so it was crazy frustrating. (fyi, fuck whoever designed the AI for the helicopters.)

The infuriating thing is that chapter had one of the most interesting story points and one of the best stealth missions combined with annoying shooting/driving missions. The end mission of that chapter made me feel like a total badass evading security officers and throwing down distractions.

Yah weird bug cause otherwise that mission was pretty awesome.

Don't ask questions if you don't want the honest answer.

The honest answer being yes.

That is where I quit Dark Void four years ago. When I put it back in to give it a shot again I was 2 days shy of it having been exactly four years sine I played it. When I pick a game up after a long hiatus I get a bug in me to get further and often beat it. So I beat the dang thing twice since I was so close to getting platinum.

I'm going to be so bold and say everything but the multiplayer is pretty terrible. They better change the fuck out of this series as they move forward because it's soulless and dumb. It needs the Assassins Creed II treatment of a complete revamp. Even though Watch(_)Dogs is clearly an evolution of Assassins Creed.