Incline Your favorite encounters

[JarlFrank]

It is well known that I hate filler but love myself a good, challenging, interesting encounter. To celebrate the art of encounter design, I am creating this thread where we can talk about our favorite combat encounters. This is an inclusive thread where you can talk about any and every RPG ever made. A particular boss in a Diablo-like? A particular shootout in Fallout 4? A particular level in Silent Storm? Anything goes (except roguelikes and any other fully procedural games because getting a good encounter there is pure chance, not deliberate design).

- The fight against Lareth the Beautiful in ToEE's moathouse. Lareth is a relatively strong caster and has several melee grunts around him. You gotta manage a decent amount of enemies and deal with spellcasters while you're still on the lower end of the level range. The entrance to the room is also a chokepoint, you can use it defensively but it's also useful to the enemy cause the melee dudes can block you from rushing the casters. Good fight. Getting to this encounter is always my favorite part of ToEE.

- The tower ruins in ToEE's temple outdoors. Close quarters, two witches who cast spells at you, a few archers, and a bunch of melee guys protecting them. Like the fight against Lareth, the close quarters make it exciting. Plenty of opportunity to use area effect spells but you gotta be careful not to hit your own girls. And it's just at the perfect level range where you get plenty of spells but aren't overpowered yet.

- The fight against the slaver lords in KotC. It has a dragon, casters, melee fodder, and enough space for maneuvering and using area effect spells. Other dragon-involving fights in this game are cool, too. Deadly beasts but doable (especially if you spam ray of enfeeblement!) and you also have to deal with human enemies while you're at it.

- The optional fight after completing KotC. Your party is at max level and you get a bunch of hard as fuck enemies dumped on you which will utterly rape your butt. I have tried it a dozen times and still didn't manage to beat it. Pure rape. It's not even among my favorite encounters, but it's definitely memorable for just how hardcore it rapes you. If you want a post-endgame challenge, this is it.

- Drassen counterattack in JA2's 1.13 mod. Deactivate it if it's your first time playing the game, because this hits you hard. First town you liberate, and you immediately get hit with a massive wave of enemies long before you're properly equipped to deal with them. Great fun on re-plays of the game.

- The shootout against raiders in Fallout 4's Corvega Assembly Plant. Yeah, it's Fallout 4, but the game has some genuinely fun locations and encounters. Plenty of raiders to fight in a highly vertical environment. You'll be shot at from above and below and you'll scramble up and down to get the perfect position where you have both cover and good firing angles. Very memorable fight. This one is all about the verticality of the environment.

- Firkraag (and his entire dungeon, really) in Baldur's Gate 2. Lots to love there. Big dragon who's a challenge at the level you encounter him at. Plenty of interesting encounters on the way to him (the entrance has some archers positioned behind walls so you can't just rush them with your melee fighters). For most people, it's their first dragon fight in the game, and it's the best dragon fight the game has to offer.

- One of the early missions in the Silent Storm axis campaign, the one where you have to get some information from an allied officer in the British countryside. It's a small and not too complex map, but I greatly enjoy the encounters there. Several angles of approach, a stationary MG that will rape you if you get in its field of fire, and once you got what you need an enemy counterattack will spawn - and they will approach right in the stationary MG's field of fire, so you get to use the enemy's own weapon against him. Great fun.

- The Twisted Rune encounter in BG2. Nice optional high level encounter that will rape you with powerful spells unless you prepare properly. Most players will miss this due to how well-hidden and out of the way this place is, and there's nothing to point you to its existence. Probably one of the hardest fights in the game. Great fun.

- The final battle in Dark Sun: Shattered Lands. The rest of the game is pretty easy, with most fights in the midgame being a cakewalk for a well-built party, but the final fight throws everything at you the game can muster. Great ending for one of the most underrated games of the early 90s.

So, which encounters are your favorites?

 

[LizardWizard]

Came to post to Moathouse but you already covered it. Was sweating balls and party with a couple HP left barely pulling it out my first attempt. One of the few RPGs encounter I will never forget

 

[octavius]

Bandit Camp in Baldur's Gate with SCS installed.

And these.

 

[SausageInYourFace]

Now before all you combatfags start yakkin about the particular mechanics of encounter design, let me tell you something about feels:

Traveling south from Beregost .. fighting my way past Hobgoblin ambushes .. getting pretty fucked up in the process .. its getting dark .. it starts raining and thundering .. but I am almost there, such a relief when I finally reach the town .. and there on the side of the road it is, a cosy and warm inn to sleep .. my exhausted group steps into the light and warmth of the place .. when suddenly a warrior approaches and asks for my name ..

That night I got my ass kicked by that assassin, being caught unawares. This was such a ride of excitement and differing emotions and it felt epic. You just knew you were in for a big adventure, that the world is large and that a lot of shit can happen to you.

I know we talk a lot about systems and tactics when we talk encounter design, but stuff like context, placing, atmosphere, music and all that plays a large role in what fights we are going to remember and which ones we won't.

 

[Lord_Potato]

The Tribunal in Disco Elysium.

The one and only obligatory violent encounter in this game. Heavily scripted, but at the same time based on stats, skills, prior knowledge and deeds of your detectives. Part dialogue, part shootout with numerous variants and results. Due to the actual deadliness of actions conducted during the Tribunal, each success or failure has much stronger impact than in usual RPG combat. A truelly memorable and nail-biting experience.

 

[Tigranes]

My vote goes to Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds

 

[Black Angel]

The locusts in the Black Sea.... not.

The Fetid Marsh......







NOT.

 

[Strange Fellow]

Tixa in JA2.

Isle of the Dead encounters in Wiz 6.

 

[Ghulgothas]

KOTOR 2's Restored Content Mod. On Nar Shaddaa, your ship is hijacked by a gang intergalactic slavers for stealing their landing pad. If you'd been playing your cards right, you'll have trained two of your party members as jedi and gotten your hands on 2 lightsabers just before you're given the opportunity to fight them. Slicing your way through the legions of Trandoshan Gunmen as your first encounter as a properly realized and fully equipped party of jedi remains one of the biggest highlights of that game for me.

 

[Bester]

So, which encounters are your favorites?

I always said this: if MMA was solely about fighting technique and not about the drama, then try watching a fight with no sound on. You'll get bored real fast.

The reason we have these iconic fights, is because of all the context and drama. Jon Jones may be an excellent fighter, but nobody's watching his fights, because he's unbeatable and he generates zero drama. We know he'll win, so who cares. But the last two fights he won by a razor thin margin, and all of a sudden everyone wants to see his next opponent. Same thing happened to Mike Tyson, until Buster Douglas came in and knocked him out.

To have an epic encounter, you have to build it up. It won't be epic just cause you put demi-liches and beholders in there. Modders tried it, fails every time.

An excellent demonstration of my point. A tactically boring fight, but it was a catharsis in the story, so it's uniquely memorable:

The Tribunal in Disco Elysium.

 

[Incendax]

When the Mighty Nein tried to cross a silent bridge with a gibbering mouther below them that burbled at any noise they made, and a roper above them.

Such a simple setup, but memorable as hell.

 

[Dorateen]

The orc/hobgoblin assault in Sokol Keep from Pool of Radiance.

 

[ValeVelKal]

When you get all your stuff in your "safe chest" stolen in STALKER : Call of Pripyat. First, it hurts you in the balls because you assumed the safe chest was just a game mechanic and everything there is super safe, second it happens when you come back from a mission so, in typical STALKER fashion, you are by that point super low in ammo (or maybe you only have an handgun for one reason of another possibly linked to a previous mission that happened to ask you to be lightweight). Then you get to investigate who stole your shit but of course now you have to be sneaky sneaky in zones that used to be safe because you are out of everything. And you really pay close attention to this investigation, instead of just doing the investigation like you do in all other where you just ask everything to everyone, because you know the game can fuck with you and you REALLY need to find asap who stole your stuff because the game suddenly became insanely hard, and because "traveling" in STALKER from one suspect / witness to another is dangerous when you are almost naked.


And when you find the bastard you did it, well, that's the only time in a game where it felt PERSONAL because it is a character that you heledp before. Here, you really can't wait to deliver payback.

Found the quest :

https://stalker.fandom.com/wiki/Theft

 

[ValeVelKal]

Gothic I when you come back to the Old Camp to see it seized and you my boy have people who want to kill you.

Or the whole Gothic II when you come back to the old Gothic I place, everything is destroyed, Orcs are everything and they are tough as nails

 

[ValeVelKal]

Ah - I really like the encounter against the Intellect Devorer in Neverwinter Night. It is actually the only NWN boss I remember. Plenty way to approach it, the "evil" solution is also the easiest (kill the civilians), boss is very mobile so you need to follow him while fighting. Really nice.

And yes, TOEE has plenty of such fascinating combats, but I don't really remember them sadly.

 

[ValeVelKal]

Ah and finally. The whole "Smart Kobold" short game. I mean, you are a max level warrior who one-hit kill kobold 100% of the time, you have a bazillion HP, a magic item to see what occuring far away and another magic item to remove all traps around you in just one action. You need to clear a nest of Kobold. What could go wrong ?

http://www.zincland.com/7drl/kobold/

 

[Butter]

Yxunomei in IWD, Concelhaut in PoE, the Khans in FO, the Emperor in DR.

 

[Arbiter]

Taking Vault 15 by force in Fallout 2. Firing bursts with Bozar and watching the resulting carnage. Also facing the supermutant "magician" and his deathclaws in Mariposa.

Shaengarne bridge in IWD.

 

[Darth Canoli]

ToEE (on top of those already mentioned)

• The swamp encounter with the Frog King, the giant crocodile, the lidzardmen and the lizard sorceress.
• Your first Troll in the moat-house.
• The giant and his bear, if you fight them at level 2/3 is epic in the ancient battle area.
• The fight against the assassin(s) when you're doing the temple orb quest (between the ruined tower and the temple)
• Fighting the Commanders/High priests, the water one and his leviathan, the fire commander and his legion of salamanders, the earth one a little less with all the earth elementals.

KotC (on top of those mentioned)

• The Greater Balor in the tower (and his minions)
• The ambush when you exit the orc blockade.
  
• The spiders ambush in the spider's cave.
• The lizards ambush in Corinth, the one with their chief in the middle.
• The bandit ambush entering Corinth.
• And so many more...

Wizardry 8

• The first King Crab in the Monastery sewer level.
• The Giant roach fight on the ground level.
• The demo swalower fight on the ground level (replacing the giant roach), this one was epic on so many levels, when traveling in the sewers, under him, the whole dungeon was shaking, you were hearing giant feet steps so you were expecting to meet your doom since everything was already lethal, and then you finally get there level 2/3 think you can take him and he swallows your fighter ...
• The tomb fight with the guardians down from the path to ascension peak where you meet Bela.
• Sometimes, even early on, you can meet elite "troopers" in Arnika, the hulk ones armed with pickaxes stunning you, if they take you by surprise (weakened team or unprepared) it can go very wrong.
• The giant Toad fight.

Shining Force 2

• The Kraken fight
• The Giant atlas fight
• The laser flowers fight

UFO

• Your very first encounter with a crysalid, that moment when you realize your soldiers with 60+ reaction aren't going to fire at all and you're fucked ...

Dark Sun: Shattered Lands

• The gladiators fight right off the bat when you launch the game.
• The optional dungeon wizard boss fight when escaping the arena.

Warbanners

• Siege missions
• The first great battle with allies and catapults
• All the castle defense missions, trying to stop the trolls before they reach the gates ...
• The shadows ambush at night

 

[Mark Richard]

I know we talk a lot about systems and tactics when we talk encounter design, but stuff like context, placing, atmosphere, music and all that plays a large role in what fights we are going to remember and which ones we won't.

In the dwarven clanhall of Stonekeep an elder relays a Beowulf-like tale of their finest warriors being cut down by a foul creature of darkness roaming the eastern halls. Follow a long winding passageway eastwards until a feeling of isolation creeps in, accompanied by an unnerving change in music that surely heralds nothing good. At the end of the bone-littered passage stands an eight-foot tall stone sarcophagus. Inside is... well, you'll never know, because you've turned around by now.

 

[zool]

In BG2, the Chosen of Cyric encounter (part of the Rogue Rebalancing mod) is great. The best part about it is the prelude before the fight itself starts where, depending on who you have in your party, your party members will provide specific knowledge based on their class about the enemy setup, like the thief warning you about the fact that the enemy party has laid down traps and so on.

 

[Zanzoken]

Soloing the Archdemon in Dragon Age Origins with no potions. My character was an Arcane Warrior, which if you remember the classes from that game, is limited offensively but has insane durability. I could only chip away at the dragon, but because of my defensive magic it couldn't do more than chip away at me. So the fight was essentially 30 minutes of me getting smacked around a bunch, landing the occasional hit, and timing my heals just right so that I wouldn't run out of either health or mana.

Maybe not the most tactically interesting, but it took a lot of intense concentration, and by the time it was over I really felt like l had slayed the fuck out of that dragon.

 

[Duralux for Durabux]

My vote goes to Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds

Mine goes to Robotcops.

 

[Sranchammer]

1st Dragon fight in Skyrim

W
O
W

 

[luj1]

Wanted to mention ToEE, but you guys did already. Man, what a great game.