Video games have objectives. These objectives tend to boil down to about six basic goals, and several variations and modifiers. These are those objectives.
Common objectives include:
- Escape, or get to the exit. ("Escape from the prison.", "Find a way through the tunnel.")
- Go to point A. ("Get to the chopper!", "Find Roger and tell him about the crashed chopper.")
- Go to point A, and interact with X in particular manner. ("Plant a bomb on the structural support", "Listen in on the conversation between villains, making sure not to alert them to your presence.")
- Kill X. ("Kill the Dragon!")
- Kill everything in X. ("Remove all the monsters in that cave")
- Kill every X in Y. ("Kill all the Giant Flaming Heads in this dungeon.")
- Kill or defeat X in a particular way. ("Take Roger down non-lethally"; "Kill The Dragon with his own poison, so that his death looks like an accident.")
- Kill a certain amount of X without getting hit. ("Kill 3 enemies without dying.")
- Kill [number] X. ("Kill 20 Zombies, and get back to me.")
- Find X and bring it to Y. ("Find a purification potion and use it on the cursed altar")
- Bring me X Ys. ("Bring me 20 Bear Asses.")
- Kill X, and bring me his Y. ("Kill the Dragon, and bring me his head.")
- Carry/transport X to deliver it to Y in Z. ("Take this letter and bring it to the King of the Undead in the Forbidden Kingdom")
- Escort X to Y. ("Escort me back to town.", "Escort Roger through the maze so he can unlock the door.")
- Solve a puzzle. ("Find a way through this Block Puzzle", "Find your way through the unlit caves.")
- Deal with an Unexpected Gameplay Change. ("Escape on the mine carts!", "Win a Cupid Doll from the Archery Booth.")
- Survive until X happens.
- Survive for X amount of time.
- Don't let Party Member X die. ("Protect Lucia", "Make sure Hal has at least half of his HP after the fight.")
- Obtain the legendary X.
- Collect the Y pieces of X.
- Pull the sword of X out of the stone.
- Collect every item of type X.
- Rescue X. ("Rescue Alice")
- Rescue every X in Y. ("Rescue all the villagers in the Dungeon")
Common modifiers (may be stacked):
- Protect X. ("Don't let Roger die!", "Don't let the building collapse!")
- Don't take damage. (Do we really need to provide an example?)
- Don't do X. ("Don't fall into a hole.")
- Don't alert X. ("Don't alert the guards.")
- Don't kill X. ("Take Roger down non-lethally.", "Avoid shooting the hostages.")
- Don't use X. ("Don't use guns", "don't Heal Thyself")
- Do any of the above, to multiple targets. ("Plant bombs on the eight structural supports.")
- Do any of the above, to X of Y possible targets. ("Kill eight of the 12 Giant Flaming Heads.")
- Do any of the above, to a particular sequence of targets. ("Place the crystals in their matching altars in the order of the rainbow.")
- Do any of the above, at a particular time. ("Shoot the Giant Mook in between his opening the door and his going through it.")
- Do any of the above, in a particular amount of time. ("The tower is rigged to blow in five minutes; escape before then!")
- Do any combination of the above...
- in any order. ("I'll tell you about Roger if you kill the Dragon and rescue the Princess.")
- in a particular order. ("If you don't kill the Dragon first, he'll kill you when you try to rescue the Princess.")
Rewards include, but are not limited to:
- Scoring Points
- Experience Points
- Gold
- Equipment
- Plot Coupons or other plot advancement.
- New Class
- New Character
- New Area
- Bragging Rights Reward - Often awarded for completing "bonus" objectives.
- A secret ending
- New gameplay feature (e.g. Harder Than Hard, Boss Rush)
- Information regarding what you have to do to actually get something.
They might be displayed on the Status Line. Compare Stock Video Game Puzzle. See also Variable Player Goals.
Examples:
- The goal of Five Nights at Freddy's is, well, to survive for five nights at Freddy's, a Suck E. Cheese's restaurant with haunted animatronics
- Super Mario Bros. has the goal of finding and saving the princess. Except that your princess is in another castle.
- An early alpha of Don't Starve had goals such as "survive 5 days" or "collect 12 logs". These were eventually cut out because players became too dependent on them and didn't know how to actually play the game. Played straight in Adventure mode, where your goal is to complete all five levels to meet Maxwell and free him. If you do so, your previous character will become trapped and you will go back to the normal gameplay with Maxwell as your player character.
- The objective of Portal is to complete all the puzzles and get the cake at the end. except the cake is a lie. Your real goal is to destroy GlaDOS and escape the facility
- While The Sims are fairly open-ended, from TS2 onward your sims will have lifetime goals or aspirations that you get in-game rewards for completing. Players can also set their own goals, such as having 100 babies or collecting every mineral in the game
