But a Jape

“Make sure the guards don’t notice you! Otherwise they’ll throw you back in your cell without questioning how you got out in the first place!”

– Phil’s Helpful Dungeon Tips

There are a number of ways a video game can set up a scene in which your characters are canonically defeated by the villain for narrative purposes. The simplest way to the do this is to just have a cutscene in which this occurs. But a lot of video games instead choose to have you actually engage in an in-game battle in which you’re intended to lose. I actually really like this idea, especially if you get a cool reward if they make it possible to win the fight. But so many of these games just kind of ignore your accomplishment and have the villain pretend you never stood a chance in the first place. Even more insulting is when the story has your characters lose to the low-level mooks you’ve been slaughtering by the dozens for the past few hours.

– James