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Post by dragonwarrior8 on Dec 31, 2020 14:11:41 GMT
I read Warlock of Firetop before I ever tried a CYOA so I felt like that spoiled me a bit towards interactive fiction. I wanted dice with my gamebooks! Wasnt there a CYOA though whereby it was literally impossible to win and it was done on purpose? "Inside UFO 54-40" I think it was but Im sure someone can tell me otherwise. Im interested to know what people here thought of it and if you were infuriated by that design choice.
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Post by petch on Dec 31, 2020 14:30:04 GMT
I read Warlock of Firetop before I ever tried a CYOA so I felt like that spoiled me a bit towards interactive fiction. I wanted dice with my gamebooks! Wasnt there a CYOA though whereby it was literally impossible to win and it was done on purpose? "Inside UFO 54-40" I think it was but Im sure someone can tell me otherwise. Im interested to know what people here thought of it and if you were infuriated by that design choice. Yes, I had that one. My memories are very vague and I am sure someone with a better recollection (or who still has the book) will step in to correct me if I'm wrong, but from what I can remember, while there were other 'good' endings in the book, it tells you in paragraph 1 that the 'ultimate' good ending is to make it to Utopia. There is a winning paragraph where you reach Utopia, but it is impossible to be sent there from any other paragraph in the book. If you read that paragraph, it congratulates you, saying something like that only by outside-the-box thinking could Utopia have been reached. Even as a child I was a bit bemused by the apparent message that cheating was the only way to achieve your goal!
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Post by dragonwarrior8 on Dec 31, 2020 15:12:29 GMT
Even as a child I was a bit bemused by the apparent message that cheating was the only way to achieve your goal! Ian Livingstone must have taken inspiration from this book!
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Post by petch on Dec 31, 2020 17:55:06 GMT
Now I've thought about it some more if I remember rightly the book included a brief glossary which explained the meaning & origins of the term 'utopia'. So despite the questionable design choice the book did at least help to expand my vocabulary as a youngster, similarly to Greenspine's experience above.
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Post by bloodbeasthandler on Dec 31, 2020 19:42:56 GMT
Generally speaking I do think there is a place for full victory, partial victory, pyrrhic victory or even some sort of a draw in the books. Isn't there an ending in Portal of Evil where if you lack the igneolite you do win after a fashion, but fail to reach the hallowed para 400? That sort of thing is what I'm on about.
Maybe not every book and certainly not in the frequency of CYOA though.
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