One GLARING issue with this game

[Anyanka]

I want to start by saying this game is fire. It's extremely well written and makes me feel like I'm in the world. I can't wait for the sequel. But I found one issue that completely changed my original score of 9/10 down to 7.5/10.

I had just finished my first run all the way through, getting the Lem and Mina Sidereal ending at 37 cycles. Credits roll, and immediately I want to see a true failed run. In the last run I barely dipped below fading before administering stabilizer, so I wanted to see the effects of truly going past empty. Would my life flash before my eyes as my body rots? I just rest through the cycles, only completing mandatory events, until the bar depletes fully.

Then, a breakdown occurs. "Okay", I think, "so it's an obvious penalty, even if I'm not dead. My mind is shutting down, so these skills I had access to before are now under permanent disability." I wonder how many of these breakdowns I can take before I game over. 2? 4?

I go through 6 breakdowns before I realize that this CRPG doesn't have a failstate.

I hate that I did this now because it feels like some of the weight of the game has been lost. There's way less stakes now that I know I physically cannot die, or really even fail that bad. It sucks that I've been cursed with this information, especially coming from CRPGs like Disco Elysium and Pentiment, where failure is a very real threat. I'm still gonna do at least one more run, but this irked me and I wanted to see if anyone else agrees. I hope they bring a true failstate to Citizen Sleeper 2, maybe even a permadeath mode.

[Mr. Fusion]

I don't think Citizen Sleeper aims to be a true RPG or anything like that with any sort of fail condition, nor that you should expect it to be one.

Its main, or rather only focus appears to be the story of consequences which your choices drive and move forward. Granted, one of those consequences could be that you, like many other escaped sleepers before (as it is hinted at through various points in the story) will perish, and the whole "get stabilizer by any means necessary or you will die" threat that looms over your head through most of the story suggests that being a real possibility... whereas, as it turns out, it is not.

On the other hand, actually dying because of a streak of bad choices or unlucky choice options, and thus being forced to restart the story, and make the choices up to that point again (and potentially again and again) could (would?) disrupt the story (or rather, a story that you shaped for yourself) being perceived as a singular, coherent experience as it unfolds through a single continuous flow.

So while I also felt that at certain points when I was like "ok, this is it, I made a bad decision and now I'll die" and it still didn't happen because some unexpected (even a little bit "forced" at times) lucky turn saved me was a bit too much of a "plot armor", I could sort of understand that if telling a whole story is the main goal, and that appears to be the case, then killing the player character half way through might not be the best way to achieve that.

[Anyanka]

Originally posted by Mr. Fusion:

I don't think Citizen Sleeper aims to be a true RPG or anything like that with any sort of fail condition, nor that you should expect it to be one.

Then why have skill checks? Even without the skill checks, there are story failures that can happen through your decisions (such as the Sleeper being shot in the Silo ) which implies to me that the Role you Play in this Game and the way you spec your Character are supposed to be influential. The game literally starts with you picking a character with differing stats. If they wanted to make something that WASN'T an RPG, they could've made a visual novel. Including all these TTRPG type systems doesn't make a ton of sense if you just want to tell a story. I'm not complaining either. The system is awesome, reminds me a little of Kids on Bikes.

Originally posted by Mr. Fusion:

On the other hand, actually dying because of a streak of bad choices or unlucky choice options, and thus being forced to restart the story, and make the choices up to that point again (and potentially again and again) could (would?) disrupt the story (or rather, a story that you shaped for yourself) being perceived as a singular, coherent experience as it unfolds through a single continuous flow.

Save points negate that. They're already built into the game and I found that after almost every action die use or significant decision I made, the game would autosave. Hundreds of
CRPGs do this exactly the same way.

Originally posted by Mr. Fusion:

I could sort of understand that if telling a whole story is the main goal, and that appears to be the case, then killing the player character half way through might not be the best way to achieve that.

Here's the killer for me though. At the very beginning, you're told multiple times that most Sleepers die pretty soon after escaping. In the escape sequence, by Dragos, by Sabine, even by Ethan. You're occupying a rotting corpse, that's like the whole setup. You're supposed to degrade and die at some point anyways.

IDK, I see where you're coming from, but it still rocks me that they couldn't just include a little death "GAME OVER" screen...

[Entaris]

Yeah, I figured that was going to be the case when you encounter both Ethan and The Hunter without a single Engage check. You just auto-fail or auto-escape with a little damage, as the narrative requires. Then the writing goes on to have Ethan mock you like he earned the win. Then he proceeds to get wasted on your dime for weeks and you can do nothing to deal with his sodden presence.

[Anyanka]

Originally posted by Entaris:

Yeah, I figured that was going to be the case when you encounter both Ethan and The Hunter without a single Engage check. You just auto-fail or auto-escape with a little damage, as the narrative requires. Then the writing goes on to have Ethan mock you like he earned the win. Then he proceeds to get wasted on your dime for weeks and you can do nothing to deal with his sodden presence.

Someone is hunting you, tracking you using your own body, and you only have a few cycles to prepare before they find you. That's such an awesome premise that I was thinking that either you would have to hide in the Wastes or disable your tracker to continue the game. But no, instead it's just a money sink. Super wasted opportunity IMO.

[Hekateras]

I too would have liked to see a little more done with the tracker quest (although I did not come away unsatisfied).

However, I don't agree with your original post.

Originally posted by Anyanka:

IDK, I see where you're coming from, but it still rocks me that they couldn't just include a little death "GAME OVER" screen...

What would the benefit of this be?

Deliberately messing around with the game on a secondary playthrough to test where the limits are and then complaining about what you find feels like an extreme nitpick. The fear of the failstate was enough to keep you playing the game a certain way, why does it matter that the failstate is a lot more lenient than what you assumed?

In other words, why would you frame this as a flaw? Failstates are a useful principle of game design but this feels very silly, and I can think of more than a few reasons why this would have been a bad idea for CS specifically. It sounds like you're complaining about it not meeting arbitrary RPG genre standards. Can you frame your reasoning in terms of benefits to game design?

Sure, Disco Elysium has many failstates, often to the point of comedy, but Disco Elysium also lets you savescum/save and reload, is a bit faster-paced overall, and has a lot more replayability to it right from the beginning. Different games, different mechanics. Apples to oranges.

EDIT:

Then why have skill checks?

I think I've figured out the disconnect here. The answer is that at its core, CS is less a story of survival and more a story of forging new connections and finding your place in the world. Why do you think the word "Citizen" is in the title? "Citizen Sleeper" is a quote from dialogue, yes, but what do you think is the meaning conveyed through making it the title?

So I'll answer your question with a question.

What is the difference between a failed skill check and a successful one in the arc with Feng, when he depends on you to do hacking to cover his tracks, or in the arc where you help Peake and the refugees prepare for the new Flux event, or when you're trying to help Neovend escape the vending machine and then the Hunter? Can you not think of anything that would be affected by the outcome?