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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/q/36266
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

In my game, you have a companion with you, who offers you assistance in combat. During gameplay, the companion basically acts like an activated ability, where he becomes a human shield and absorbs incoming fire for you. After receiving enough damage, the ability goes on cooldown for a few seconds.

This is all fine for the gameplay, however it clashes with the story of the game: the companion is invulnerable. He literally can't be killed in any way, that's why he acts like a human shield for the player character, who can die. However, having an ability that can always block damage for you would make the game incredibly boring to play, hence why I wanted to limit him for the gameplay.

I want the game to be fun to play, but I also want the story to make sense. Should I worry about these kinds of things? Is it ok to bend the rules of the story for the sake of the gameplay or would that take the player out of the story too much? Or should I keep gameplay consistent with the story?

I know many games would simply throw story or lore out of the window for the sake of gameplay (I'm not criticising them for that, just saying). Celeste for example never once acknowledges the dash ability the player has (it only alludes to it in the last chapter) and Overwatch give characters abilities in gameplay that they're not supposed to have in the story/lore. I assume most players would be ok with the gameplay not being consistent with the story, but I'm unsure if that would be ok for my game, which is a lot more story focused than those games.

Original score: 7