It really depends, but the most important thing is the enemy design:I don't quite understand this bullet sponge critic. Would you prefer bosses like Sasquatch die in 1/2 shots like a random trash npc? Because I've never seen a boss in an rpg get kill in 5 seconds. You've got to add something to make the fight last longer than you can blink
Royce has an autonomous shield probably provided with AI that blocks bullets. He is a bullet sponge until you destroy the shield's generator on his back. Then he goes down with 2 shots. Good design, nobody complains.
Sasquatch is a very muscolar woman with a pump that provide her with a drug that gives her super strenght. Bullets hit her body, blood comes out. Lots of bullets, lots of blood. She is a bullet sponge until you destroy the pump. Then she dies in 2 shots. This is not realistic at all and completely immersion breaking. Terrible design (and lazy since it's just copy-pasting royce's).
Then we get to another horrible design: enemies who share the same model and abilities, but
- one matches your level and dies with few bullets (realistic)
- another is 5 levels higher than you and is a bullet sponge (not realistic)
- a third one is 5 levels lower than you and dies after a single punch (not realistic)
Totally immersion breaking and easily avoidable when designing a game (many exemples in videogames' history)
the same is applicable to levelled weapons and yada yada yada.
To answer your question, I'm fine with bosses being bullet sponges if their design makes sense and I'm fine with bosses dying with 1 headshot if the boss encounter is designed in a way that the difficult thing is to get to shoot the boss. It can be a room full of enemies, it can be a robot protecting him, it can be several traps, it can be the boss being super fast, it can be you first need to find a way to access the room where the boss is, it can be that first you need to catch the boss during a car chase, it can be an invisible boss you need to find first or you need to hear his footsteps, it can be that you don't want to kill the boss at all but just defeat him with a dialogue... These are already 9 design for 9 different bosses in a videogame, 10 with a bullet sponge.
It took me 30 seconds to think about them. And I'm no game designer, go figure how many ideas CDPR guys have. The question is: do they use those ideas in the game or just go for "people are used to bullet sponges, look at all the looter shooters on market, just go for that"?
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