Lunchtime Discussion: Exhaustion

So I’m an idiot. Due to a series of events and my general idiocy I’ve had to work for most of the night to meet some deadlines (which I luckily met all of), meaning that today I’m absolutely exhausted and running largely on autopilot today. That’s why there’s no fancy intro today talking about how awesome it is that I’ve returned from my short absence at the end of last week – if you follow me on Twitter you’ll know why I vanished from TSA Towers. Anyway as I’m completely wiped out today the only topic I can think of is exhaustion in games.

See most of the time we play as people who are basically superhuman. Even characters like Lara Croft and Nathan Drake, characters who are supposedly entirely human, never seem to tire no matter how much you run, jump or climb through the level. You can, as far as I’m aware, hang from ledges for as long as you feel like. Now as these characters are ostensibly human they should suffer at least a little.

I know when we’ve talked in the past that people don’t want hyper-reality in games, and I can understand where that comes from. You don’t always want to stop to nip to the loo quickly or stop to have a bite to eat, you’d break up the action sequences quite a lot for a start. On the other hand I think some sense of exhaustion or tiredness in characters could add to the game; it would certainly increase the difficulty level in games having to make sure you’ve got enough energy before making a jump.

When exhaustion or tiredness does play into games it normally just means you slow down a bit whilst running; you don’t even have to stop to catch your breath in most cases, which is distinctly odd. Then again I don’t think I’ll ever win anyone over to my ‘more realism’ argument, so I’m bracing myself for today’s comments. What do you think about character exhaustion? Should characters tire more, or do you like to feel near invincible?