After last week’s post, I got to thinking a little bit. Despite all of the cool games that are still coming out, it’s still awfully easy to focus on the gaming business’s negative aspects. Like, it’s really tempting to talk about the Microsoft layoffs and all of the resulting studio closures and game cancellations, but, well, I suppose there’s not much to say right? It’s a cruddy situation all around. Anyway, let’s talk about missables in games and why they’re a good thing instead, yeah?

I was talking with a friend recently about Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, and well, they were very concerned about whether there was anything that was missable (“missable” meaning something that you can either not find or get locked out of obtaining). See, if there were too many missable things, then they were considering not playing it at all. Fortunately, there’s very little in Clair Obscur that’s missable; just a single fight and a (not very valuable) picto. So, my friend was, thankfully, able to start enjoying the game.

It kind of got me thinking about missables, though, and whether they’re really all that bad of a thing. I don’t think there’s any sort of objective answer here, but I do think there are some things worth considering when arguing in their favor. For one thing: the existence of secrets in games. Everyone loves finding secrets, be they little developer jokes, items or even whole areas. Secrets are fun, but since they are, well, secret, doesn’t that make them missable by their very nature?

You can’t have it both ways. Either everything is obviously plonked right in front of you (so to speak) so that there’s little to no chance you’ll miss it, or the game has a secret or two that you need to put in a little effort to find. Fail to put in that effort, and, yeah, you’ll miss it. That’s part of the thrill of secrets isn’t it? The fact that you can almost miss them? Well, it is for me anyway.

Another reason that I like missables in games is that, well, they give you another reason to come back. Right now, I’m playing through Signalis again to try and get the achievement for beating it on hard. I thought that’d be the end of it for me, but now I’m thinking that I’d like to try one more time after this to see the secret ending. I’ve seen just about everything else in the game already, though, so it would be nice if there were a weapon or something that I’d missed previously. You know, something to change the game up just a little bit more.

I’d also like to put forward the idea that missing something in a game isn’t the end of the world. Whether you get everything or just a certain portion of it, you still get to enjoy the core of the game and still get to forge your own unique journey through it. You don’t need to get everything in order to get your full enjoyment out of the experience. It’s still your unique playthrough, you know? Well, that’s how I see it, at least.

There are arguments to be made against missables in games, I suppose. The biggest one I can think of being that, well, it can be a little unfun to realize that you missed something interesting. Like, I suppose I wouldn’t like it if I missed out on a cool secret boss fight at the end of a very long game (but then it’d just be a reason to come back, you know?). 

Another occasion I could see missables being annoying would be when they’re related to trophies. If you’re a trophy hunter, I imagine that the last thing you would want to do is to have to run through a game another time just to get a single trophy. I’m not one to care about trophies most of the time, but I do know a few hunters that worry about them quite a bit.

But, yeah, I’d say that, on the whole, missables are a good thing for games. They can provide a little extra fun for those who like to delve for secrets, and they can make for a solid reason to come back to a game later on for those who need a little extra incentive. Sure, they can have their downsides, but I think the tradeoff is worth it.

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What do you think about missables? Would you prefer they weren’t in games at all, or would you just like to see them handled differently for the most part?

Image from the Steam page