When creating a remake of a game with sequence breaking glitches, do you think the glitches should be removed because the people who appreciate these things can play the original if they want to or do you think they should be kept in, potentially ruining a new players first playthrough on the remake?
I don’t see how the glitches are ruining people’s playthroughs in the first place, unless they’re easily triggered and can prevent you from completing the game. My big thing is, you should treat glitches like they’re just another feature.
Toggle Escape in Dark Souls is done by mashing to switch your weapon, it can cancel stunlock and let you escape when you might otherwise die. Of course if you roll then that can be punished and you might lose ground, so it’s not without risk. This is something the developers probably should have considered when they made the game in the first place, a way to escape stunlock. Poise was already a measure in that direction because stunlock was such a problem in demon’s souls. Meanwhile, the infinite dragon head duplication glitch that let you infinite dragon roar or spit an infinite number of knives or sparkling stones to lag the game to hell, definitely something that should be patched, because it’s broken and there’s no fixing it.
Cancels in Street Fighter 2 aren’t good because the developers decided to include it in future games, they were kept in because they were a good mechanic. This isn’t something determined by the developers, because someone can entirely deliberately make a game that is stupid and horrible. Someone can also intend to make a great game and it ends up stupid and horrible because they have no vision or understanding.
We need to stop thinking of glitches as some alien thing outside the game, glitches occur in board games too. Sometimes the rules read as written resulting in a funny interaction, Magic the Gathering is full of this type of thing, it’s practically how the game is played at this point. Not to mention the yata-lock in yugioh or peasant railgun or Pun Pun in D&D 3.5. When you have a system of rules, there are going to be some interactions that are strange and can’t realistically be predicted in advance, which is why every TCG has a ban list (though I am impressed with how short cardfight vanguard’s is). And video games are about as complicated systems of rules as you get in games.
The primary question should be, is this something that is realistically likely to ruin someone’s experience or make the game impossible to complete? The second question should be, does this overshadow other aspects of the game so nobody uses those other things? Do you gain more in the main active decision-making part of your game from having it or losing it? Alternatively, take the example of Wind Waker HD, by patching out storage and making zombie hover useless, a lot of other tactics suddenly came into prominence, making it a different glitchy experience from the original (the WR is even 2 minutes faster).
Consider glitch patching like any other piece of game design. Would you patch out save states in Half Life 1? You should.
Okay rephrase, Lets say there is a glitch that can be performed that allows the player to travel into an area they aren’t supposed to be in yet. This area requires the games “HI-JUMP item” to get through but if a speedrunner takes a very careful route then they can avoid falling down pits that need the “HI-JUMP” to get out of. This glitch could create interesting routes for speedrunners and could add depth to the game by allowing you to get certain weapons early for example, but if someone playing through the first time were to trigger it and accidentally save the game, their playthrough is potentially ruined. Should such a glitch be patched out in a re-release, on the chance it could ruin someone’s playthrough or should it be kept in as it makes the game more interesting to play for some players? Would the difficulty of executing the glitch change your opinion on this matter?
I answered this in the original ask actually, you should under no circumstances allow the player to create a state that makes progression impossible.
In such a game, the pits should either have exits that lead back out to areas where the player can get the high jump to progress normally, or the player should have a function to warp back to a prior point, a la the souls games where you have homeward bones and the like, so even if you do get stuck out of bounds or some business you can always warp out.
In the rerelease the route shouldn’t be patched out, the way it makes progression impossible should be. This of course means that it’s still open for speedrunners without impeding ordinary players.
Actually I think there is a case like this in La Mulana, if you save in the Temple of the Moon without picking up the holy grail that allows you to warp between checkpoints then you’re screwed. I think this is true in both the original and the remake.
Celia Alexis Wagar's CritPoints 