I don't agree with the restriction against bosses addeed freely either (especially since some games had their intended final bosses added after release, such as Narwa the Allmother in Monster Hunter: Rise. But the restriction was enacted after a TRS thread, so mods won't care about disagreements. We just have to comply.
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Sounds good on paper (he/him)
Per TRS, a Trope Transplant has been done with Bonus Boss, with the original definition being moved to Superboss and Optional Boss being converted from a disambiguation page to a supertrope:
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/posts.php?discussion=1632070992006577400&page=5#comment-106
So you took a broad page that covered many categories and created two pages that don't cover nearly as many as the one. And you haven't merged optional boss with skippable boss. Great job!
I'm surprised Bonus Boss redirects here rather than to Superboss. Which, by your own admission, got its original definition.
"And as long as a sack of shit is not a good thing to be, chivalry will never die."
Regarding DLC, free updates, ultimate editions, endings, etc....
So, here's the thing. I don't think it's fair to call 'by default' any boss that gets added in a DLC an optional boss. Sure, you may not need them to get the actual credits, but if they are on the DLC's critical path (when there is one, of course), I don't think they should count as optional. Can you choose not to engage them and do the rest of the game? Sure, but then you're not ending the quest which you chose and paid money to do, in the same way a late game base game boss is also "optional". For a couple concrete examples, let's look at Artorias of the Abyss and The Old Hunters, respectively for DSI and Bloodborne. Both feature several of bosses, but only of them is actually optional to completion of their quests: Kalameet and Laurence.
You might argue that if a player bought the GOTY/ultimate edition then said bits of content were not a choice but rather just a full option, but I don't believe we should apply this distinction retroactively.
Things get blurrier, though, with free updates. Plenty of indie games do them, and for the most part bulk of the new content is not part of the critical path. So most of these I think would qualify for optional boss qualification, except... What about new endings? This becomes a bit of a minefield for a bunch of reasons: sometimes the new route is fairly straightforward and can be reasonably done by any new player, but other cases (such as Hollow Knight's Embrace the Void endings) they're clearly intended for seasoned completionists only. What about bosses that can be tackled separately from the new questline, or who were originally optional but are now required for the new ending?
Edited by LordSpy Hide / Show Replies