Consider this common gaming scenario: You sneak in behind enemy lines undetected in search of a person. This person is vital to the completion of your mission and failure to secure them will result in a swift and immediate restart. You manage to find the person you’re looking for all without wasting too much ammo or health kits but, naturally, there’s a catch. You must now escort that person through the battlefield in order to finish the level. The enemies have magically respawned in greater numbers and your escort is utterly defenseless (and useless) against their firepower. This my friends is the harsh way of escort missions in gaming.
Rick “32 Footsteps” Healey wrote a lengthy post on Netjak describing the tedious task known as the escort mission that has remained virtually unchanged since it was first introduced so many years ago.
The main problem with escort missions is your so-called partner artificial intelligence (AI). Most of the time they walk blindly into the line of fire with no regard for themselves. This makes the character we control more vulnerable to injury because we have to become meat shields to guard our precious escort.
Naturally, any chance of stealthily making it to your destination goes up in smoke in this high pressure situation. Some developers see this as a chance to get our hearts racing due to the enemy somehow knowing the prisoner has escaped regardless of how many of them we’ve already killed on the way in. In reality, our hearts are racing because of the large amounts of frustration we endure trying to make sense of this pointless turn of events.
There are some games that handle escort missions quite well. Resident Evil 4, for example, had a long session of gameplay where Leon must guide Ashley through the environment. Ashley wasn’t that annoying to have around because she responded to what was going on around her. She ducked whenever Leon aimed his gun at her therefore she doesn’t get shot easily, she stayed very close and in view of the camera so we didn’t have to keep checking on her whereabouts and Leon could control when he wanted her to move, wait, or hide while he took out the trash.
Maybe RE 4 did a decent job of escort missions because a large portion of the game depended on it, while other games throw it in for filler. Either way, intricate care must be taken whenever these missions pop up especially if the escorted has no combat abilities.
Read [Netjak] Also Read [Escapist Magazine]
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