The Tactical Design of Into the Breach
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- Опубліковано 15 гру 2023
- Into the Breach dares to ask,
"Can you care more about little grey apartment buildings than your kickass kaiju-fighting mechs?"
There are very few tactics games that make you care about something other than your squad of units. But it's only through freeing the player to focus on the objectives (these little grey buildings) rather than your monster-crushing mechs, can the player engage in some of the deepest, most tightly designed tactical combat in gaming.
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Hey everyone, back with another video -- this time, it's a little more of an an analysis and introspection as to why I really love the design of INTO THE BREACH, and hope its design ideas become more widespread in the tactics genre.
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Games, in order of appearance,
Into the Breach
XCOM 2
Fire Emblem: Awakening
The Banner Saga 2
Wildermyth
Baldur's Gate 3
Divinity Original Sin 2
Advance Wars (during the GDC video)
Wargroove
Civilization 6
Halo 2
Halo: Master Chief Collection
Battlefield Bad Company 2
Music used,
The Presidium - Mass Effect 1 - Jack Wall
Into the Breach - Into the Breach - Ben Prunty
The Jungle Provides - Guild Wars 2 - Maclaine Deimer
Secunda - The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim - Jeremy Soule
Finish the Fight - Halo 3 - Martin O'Donnell & Michael Salvatori
#intothebreach #tacticsgame #xcom2 #baldursgate3 - Ігри
Hey everyone! Hope you enjoyed. Here's the full link of Mathew Davis's talk at GDC on his postmortem of Into the Breach. Definitely recommend you checking it out if you want to delve deeper into what this video is about -> ua-cam.com/video/s_I07Iq_2XM/v-deo.htmlsi=5t-MrqTr7TaS9VAP
As someone who came from Starcraft as opposed to various other strategy games, the idea of buildings being more important than units is more or less just baked into my mind haha
Haha yeah that's probably one of the biggest differences between RTS vs. tactics games for sure! You definitely would have a leg up on Into the Breach then compared to someone who comes from playing stuff like XCOM or Advance Wars ;)
To me one of the most genius things about this design choice is how perfectly it reinforces the mechs vs kaiju fiction that the game is about. Not only are your mechs tactical decisions made heroic and self sacrificing but also you feel the incredible destructive power of these machines anytime you accidentally destroy entire blocks of buildings with a hasty miscalculated attack. High powered weapons also have their own built in balance, like reading the laser mech you are blown away by it's amount of fire power, but then you use it in game and realize how hard it is to use without leveling tons of buildings every fight.
This is a really great point and something I never consciously realized - it just felt so natural. You really do feel the weight of the mech's power - and also there's a few times where I had to weigh destroying a single building to setup a really effective turn otherwise (to get optional objectives and otherwise). Which just reinforces the 'narrative' undercurrent!
One compelling thing I find about into the breach is rarely is a mech's primary interaction with a unit damage or an elemental interaction amounting to do more or less damage based on target. Many mechs don't even have a means of directly damaging an enemy. Instead, its often push this unit one or more space, or freeze it, or whatever.
Pushing enemies is a lot of fun. From the kick in Dark Messiah to now the shove in Baldur's Gate 3.
I guess we all know why games don't have more enemy manipulation (physics hard? expensive? probs both) but man I really do wish games had more push, pull, freeze, launch, etc.
@@QuestMarker I think that the main reason amounts to most player's having the uncreative mindset and tools to fight enemies without ever having to get creative doing so. Why bother setting up some super combo when its easier and just as effective to hit'em hard?
@@QuestMarkerDark MessiAAAHHHHHHHHHHhhhhhh!
Well in nearly all "tactics" games, what was often considered the worst mission, were Escort Missions. Namely because the thing you had to escort often had no survival sense and would just walk into the threat and die resulting in mission restart.
In Battle for Wesnoth you keep your units for the intire campaign and all units have personalities and names.
Its a Turn-Based-Strategy-RPG...
I've heard/seen this game before, and I'll need to check it out!
Interesting insight, I always loved trpgs but never noticed that they were almost always 'attack the enemy before it kills you' type. Then again most games are just like that. This game was not on my radar before cos I'm not much a fan of mechs, but now that I know it has this system I'm definitely more inclined to buy and play on my free time. Great vid!
And "kill all the goblins" is a totally valid thing to design (and heck even some of Into the Breach's missions teeter really close to being that).
But I really do think it often leads to uninteresting choices.
If you like trpgs and want something that's more bit sized but just as tactically interesting, I do heartily recommend it!
@@QuestMarker It's worth mentioning that oftentimes Into the Breach makes "kill all Vek" a bonus objective, pushing you to maximize slaughter efficiency, which can lead you to take more risk.
@@melvinjones6862 but the hardest objectives are still "Kill less than 7 Vek" or not killing the big and dangerous one. Which happen to occur as often as killing everybody
Since you have to allow a lot of veks to enter the battle field and then have to contend with 7-10 attackers at once
I love that you played Secunda for a few seconds. Tiny detail, but I love that song!
The soundtracks of Skyrim and Oblivion are some of the first I fell in love with. I always enjoy dropping bits of them where I can.
Across all my videos, I probably spend a lot more time than people might suspect in finding and arranging music haha
Recently playing this game and I have a lot of fun! This video is really nice to watch for what game is
glad you're having fun! and thanks so much, glad you enjoyed :)
Hey! BG3 and other games have one of those 'rescue' mission, too!
The dev make it sparingly for reason. If the bots is anything close to competence , protecting NPC might be undo able at all.
They are not you dope up super human squad/party, a tip form enemies NPC and they are lying flat on the ground.
Haha they definitely have some of those objective-y missions, but I think a lot of the time they are more setpieces and exceptions to the rule (which is typically why they are usually super awesome and memorable), rather than the norm in games like ItB. :)
I've played Fire Emblem back ways on the GBA and remember that there were two-ish maps where the opponents actually would rush to destroy a village. If you prevented that, the reward was a unit or a rare item, but the principle was there to a degree. I had to move my own units that I protected so vehemently a lot more aggressively and recklessly to get this bonus objective done.
And that was probably one of the most rewarding parts of the entire game. Same with the few encounters where a future recruit was an actual enemy unit you had to leave alive or talk to with a certain unit of your own.
I think into the breach is this concept at one extreme, while your usual tactics rpg is the other end - and something in between is probably what I'd love to play if I was still playing these games a lot.
Thanks for making this. These kinds of videos show me how gamedesign can still be innovative while using concepts that have been small details or nonexistent in previous works by making them a key mechanic. And it also adds a good deal of nostalgia c:
Fire Emblem games always seem to have those handful of levels with a really tough objective that totally warps how you play, but otherwise has so much of the same lol. Re: the recruit thing is also sometimes really tricky. I've definitely missed out on characters not really realizing it - I learned quickly form that.
I also remember in Sacred Stones there's a mission about half-way through where you have to BEELINE across the map to save some of your party members, and it throws a lot of the threat management stuff out the window as you're trying to figure out how to get there without sacrificing anyone along the way, but also being in the position of not being surrounded when you survive. It's great!
Really glad you enjoyed! I hope to be making more of these little design-y videos in the future. and while I'm no expert, I definitely try to be thoughtful!
@@QuestMarker Honestly these kinds of small but heavy gameplay changes used to be what really excited me about games as a kid back when the internet was it's most helpful in a random local forum with 20 people arguing. I got to figure a lot of this out myself, which made that one run with - to my knowledge - every character in Sacred Stones alive and recruited so much more rewarding.
Those were the times where you could be the coolest kid in school for having the regis :D Nowadays it's hard to provide that kind of challenge while dodging limitless information exchange..
Meanwhile games like the first Digimon World just totally escalated what level of knowledge is necessary to do well in the game lol.
But I'm sidetracking x) Thanks for answering, looking forward to more of this c:
Brilliant video as always! Its so interesting how seemingly similar strategy games play on our psychology in different ways.
Really glad you enjoyed it!
It's always interesting seeing some of the layers of design peeled back. Mathew Davis's talk was really great.
Excellent video! The ideals of tactical combat do seem underserved by "To The Death" zero sum fights (like a lot of basic 5e assumes). The tactical movement, pushing, blocking, and objective based scenarios makes me think of the rpg MCDM are developing right now, drawing more on 4th edition while making combat abilities more deterministic (no to-hit roll, you just do damage and can spend accumulating combat resources to power abilities up further). I've had Into the Breach in my library for a while, maybe this winter I'll finally give it a shot!
Hey really glad you enjoyed this! "Zero sum fights" is some encounter design language, love it!
I have also been tangentially following MCDM's new system, but I clearly haven't been up to date. Deterministic combat sounds awesome in DnD. I need to catch up.
If you like the pushing, blocking, pulling, and objective-based stuff... man, you gotta fire up Into the Breach! A really great example is the new "ice mech squad" they added, and their 3rd unit has a, "freeze yourself and 1 target at range" and at first you think this is really bad because it takes 1 action to unfreeze a mech. But then you realize you can setup sequences where you can freeze a Vec, freeze yourself, but then be in the line of fire of some other environmental/enemy attack to UNfreeze (1 point of damage gets rid of your freeze status) yourself so you're ready to go on your next turn.
Really clever design. It leads to some even more finnicky (but super interesting) combat scenarios. Into the Breach is ripe with them. I do heartily recommend if you want bite-sized tactics. It's not some game you sit at the desk for hours pouring over - even Davis in his talk says they wanted to make a game you could play multiple encounters over a lunchbreak, and this is definitely it!
@@QuestMarker That sounds finicky but rewarding to solve! Looking forward to watching the post mortem when I get time this weekend.
For a very long time in my D&D campaigns, I have cared too much about the nameless NPCs around me, and not enough for my own PC. So many games treat civilians as numbers, or objectives, rather than people we should care about, even when we're supposed to be rescuing them! It just makes more sense to protect yourself, because nameless NPCs are 'meaningless.' Little more than cardboard cutouts. The rebels you need to rescue in XCOM 2 just ... sit there, cowering. Though they all have names (and scream horribly when they die), your only real feedback is yet another voice line from Central telling you to move your ass. I don't care about them, they're objectives to capture and that's it. They literally disappear off the map when you 'rescue' them, which makes those missions fundamentally identical to the supply salvage missions where you have to tag boxes for recovery. Move up next to an objective before the enemy removes two, seemingly at random, from the map. Really? People aren't boxes to be skyhooked away ... except in Metal Gear, apparently.
Thus, it was incredibly refreshing to play _Into the Breach_ for the first time, because my job was to genuinely to rescue helpless civilians trapped in harm's way. The game makes me think, put myself in danger, and sacrifice for both the people in immediate danger, and the greater good. It also makes me care. That's rare. You get feedback from your pilots, other civilians, and the island's CEO. You also immediately get told how many people just died because you didn't play well enough. That's on top of losing precious grid power. There's so many way the game makes you care about little grey boxes.
One of my proudest achievements in D&D was a _retreat_ from a desperate fight against two werewolves and two battlemages. After two of our party had been captured, my last companion had fled the mage's tower, abandoning four of the soldiers we were with to their fates. He abandoned me too, because I wouldn't leave them to die. Thus, I stood alone with just four nameless NPCs against what would have been a dangerous fight for our exhausted party when all together. I was playing a weak multiclassed Bard/Paladin, without the melee prowess to defeat my foes, nor the spells to subdue them. It looked hopeless.
However, through prior deceptions, careful positioning, and tactical use of an obscure Bardic Music option, I began the fight halfway to the exit, kept my charges close, and locked down the spellcasters. It was desperate fighting, but I held off the enemy long enough to see us all out the gate, and away into the breaking dawn. That's what I'm looking for in video games, and that's what _Into the Breach_ delivers.
There are plenty of games, of all genres, that comment on the low cost of human life in a variety of ways. There aren't many that make you stop and care about someone so insignificant as the little person who cries out "Get my glasses! I want to see!" when the badass mechs drop in.
Dude this comment made my day. Thank you so much. That sounds like an epic D&D tale worthy of song and drink.
I feel very much the same way with you, re: cost of life. On the flip side, I actually think this is why games that have you play as 1 character but with an AI-controlled companion hit really hard (TLOU, Bioshock Infinite, Titanfall 2), because you care very deeply about an NPC. Almost more than your own player-controlled character.
I will say the CEOs are a bit under-written, and their commentary never hit me as hard as having to abandon a timeline and seeing the Vec swarm those little grey buildings.
@@QuestMarker Thank you! Whenever I type these comment-essays, I always kinda just assume people will roll their eyes and scroll by. Anyway...
Yes! I believe you've got the right idea about tag-along NPC companions. Even dear old "Hey, listen!" Navi from _Ocarina of Time_ is well loved and remembered. We see ourselves and our relationships in the (well-written) dynamics between player character and companion NPC, so we care about what happens to these people. We want them to succeed just as we want ourselves and our friends to succeed. Stories are about meaning and connection, after all, and you can find all the meaning in the world among the people you chose to be with.
As for the _Into the Breach_ CEOs, I was quite pleasantly surprised by them! They all have distinct personalities, and they all seem to be genuinely decent people. That's rare to see in games with hyper-capitalism present, but it makes sense here! After all, these four people have been forced to carry the weight of the world on their shoulders. The entire human race is looking to them to find the answers, and save the day. There shouldn't be room for greed at the end of the world, and I'm glad it's not present in _Into the Breach._
I do wish there was more dialogue and feedback from them, however, and I can say the same for the generic pilots. It's a shame that there's only four faces for "Bob Smith" et. al. It's a world I'd love to explore more. I hope the game gets DLC, or an expansion like FTL.
Comments are my favourite, and I always appreciate it. Never eye-roll inducing at all.
It does seem to after the design idea in D&D that "npcs are there to get PCs being emotional and attached." Which I sometimes disagree with, but in video games, it certainly does work.
It's interesting you think that about the CEOs! I was very shrug about them all, except for whoever spoke to you during the final 'plant the bomb' mission.
I actually think one of the devices that doesn't work in favour of ItB is the whole "breach" / "timeloop" thing vs. an actual fail state. (Is carrying forward a single pilot that relevant?) I know they wanted to insert this meta-roguelike element to it, but it's not even that much of a *thing* so why even bother? It could have been a bit more of a story to build up these relationships and just... fail. But we do know they cut a bunch of writing stuff, so maybe that was in the cards.
@@QuestMarkerAh, I didn't know that they cut a bunch of story elements. That does make sense, and it might have been cool to see the pilots develop. With the way it is, though, it kinda makes sense that they don't. These heroes all know each other, but they can _never_ build relationships with each other.
There's an infinite number of each pilot bouncing through an infinite number of timelines. When I finally saved the day, and realized what was happening, I was struck hollow by the realization of how bleak the future was for these people. Suddenly, the timeloop narrative tied itself together and the result was striking.
Haven't watched the video yet! But I've hit save to watch later and I'm glad to see you back at it!
I do like that XCOM is in this video
cant talk about tactics games without talking about xcom!
I play polytopia and it's all about cities, leveling cities makes them have more population so they can make more units, and they produce more stars. You have to take all the opponents cities and there are many unit types and terrains. Its fun.
As someone with hundreds of hours in both XCOM 2 and ITB, this video was a joy.
I find it so interesting how even when the two align closely, the incentives are totally different. In an X2 relay mission, its a relief when the aliens target the relay, bc thats one less shot going at your squad. In ITB however, even 1 power grid damage feels just awful, both narratively and mechanically. I love both of these games so much.
Subbed instantly ❤
Really glad you enjoyed this- and that it resonated with another tactics fan!
My favourite parts of XCOM 2 are actually the early handful of missions - they're incredibly tense, because losing a soldier (particularly a promoted one) really really matters and has a cascading effect that's way more substantial early game than late game. It makes choices a lot more interesting than when you can just shrug off accidentally alerting an enemy pod when you're squad can wipe out 3 berserkers and an archon no sweat.
ITB still has so many "huh" moments that it's so much fun.
But all tactics games hold a place. I'm just really excited to see how they evolve in the 2020s - and I hope BG3's shove/jump/fall really becomes a lot more commonplace.
Is that...SKYRM MUSIC!?!?!
*subbed*
Great music bro
thanks man! sometimes, you'd be surprised how long I fiddle with finding the right tracks haha
this game is hell for perfection run for hard mode with every squad.
god speed, sir. that sounds like a mission.
NGL, it hurts to lose buildings in this game. Especially when I know kids are inside
Nice video! I think your lament here is fairly specific to newer (post 2010-ish?) tactical games, both video & tabletop. Truth is, most of the older systems and games *were* more diverse in their tactical "problem space" and encounter-design. That crunchiness applied generally to both Western and/or D&D-based (SSI Gold Box, Bioware, et al) or not (early Fire Emblems, Tactics Ogre, and many other classic Japanese SRPGs). On tabletop, D&D 4e is my fave for modern tactics, but that aspect of it was harkening back to how combat had been approached in [A]D&D, when wargaming and strategy were emphasized a bit more than narrative/worldbuilding (2e) or character-builds (3/3.5e).
It would be interesting to explore *why* the shift happened, and whether it'll ever shift back across the genre.
I do seem to recall older Fire Emblem games being way more tactical than some of the newer entries (I think Awakening really marks a turning part in the genre, and its waifu-ism. Not saying bad! but a turning point.)
I do think the wargaming aspect to a lot of classic RPGs really has been diminished, to your point. It's an interesting observation! You can even see it a bit on a micro-scale in Dragon Age - from something original more tactical to then really really becoming character/action driven.
Maybe part of the reason is that tactics games are just Harder? in both design and in onboarding players. The "single screen" design of ItB is really to be commended - a lot of tactics games have so many sub-screens and other menus that you have to navigate.
@@QuestMarker I'm making a Tactical RPG, so I've given it a lot of thought 😅 I think it's due to two main factors, one technical, and one experiential. On the tech side, more complex combat AI calculations couldn't make the jump initially from 2d turn-based to 3d real-time play. GPUs do a lot of the heavy-lifting in 3d, but the CPU handles physics, some UI, & visual effects, and in the early days couldn't handle a lot of AI on top.
Hence moving from squad vs squad combat to 3v3, and then 1v1 combat as SP games shifted into real-time. Only server-based MP games tended to really have those CPU-intensive fights with loads of chars, and particles splashing everywhere.
@@QuestMarker On the human side, figure that those early TRPGs and cRPGs were chasing the tabletop games they were familiar with - early D&D editions, GURPS, et al. Crunchy af 😄
But the players & designers of the 2010s/20s would've been more familiar with D&D 3/3.5e, and with video games that were going simpler for tech reasons, as above. More recent TRPGs are dropping the grid, decreasing the combat field size, less enemy/ability variety - encouraging a more reactive vs strategic playstyle.
Players get used to that, and then find mechanics that require forethought/planning to be too challenging, or at least, hard in an unexpected way. So it becomes a bit of a feedback loop to design a game that suits.
That's my take, at least 😅
That's surprising interesting! I really appreciate your thoughts. It's cool to know about the technical side and the gpu vs cpu stuff.
I do think it's fascinating how bound up a lot of the genre is in traditional TTRPGs. But then we've left a lot of the trappings behind ... I almost kinda want a tactics game that returns to more of the "survival horror" bits of D&D from the 90s and early 2000s.
@@QuestMarker That recent Lamplighters League game is basically "We have Call of Cthulhu at home" 😅 The XCom revival games probably come closest, that and certain aspects of BG3 (Tyranny, maybe?). Older games exist too, but usually will lack modern quality of life features.
I think the trend is definitely towards never letting the players really "lose", so that kind of undercuts the horror factor. Risk-of-failure is tricky to hit just right, since everyone has a diff tolerance for frustration vs challenge. Midnight Suns made the design decision that the heroes can never miss an attack, they can just do more/less damage. Takes some of the fun out of it IMO.
I'm not sure if Baldurs Gate 3 is different. Saving all gondiands in all places was goddamn hard. I still did it
I absolutely recommend Fights in Tight Spaces. It is a pretty cool game that utilises the idea behind ItB very well.
It's on my very long list, but this'll put it higher up!
wow thanks man
Alot of tatical strategies are about efficiency and costs let's say a rifle cost 1 dollar while the a machine gun 10 if 15 rifles are more efficient than. Say 2 machine guns and areas where it makes sense to see a something less efficient take out better unita
Parasocial relations are core of the game, that can be removed and game still will work.
xcom2 is ok but Front Mission III from PS1.. omg..