Story mode Bear killing with spear

[bownan]

I am loving story mode but I am seriously ready to rage quit now.  **slightly spoilery**  I am trying to complete the quest for the radio tower parts. The number of times you have to fight the bear is game breaking. Currently I am in the bears lair and you still need to stab and button mash three times to try and kill him (I hope this is the last time). Is this the same stupid game loop 4 times (3 bear fights with 3 sets of stabbing plus the final one in the lair) with 3 more sets of stabbing not counting the number of times I fuck up timing or fingers slip off mouse? Each time you lose you have to watch the same bear tearing you apart animation without being able to skip it. I've had the same stupid fight in the lair for the last half an hour and my interest in this game is fading by the minute. I have vented, one more go and then I am skipping the story mode unsatisfied.

 

Update: once again died by blood loss on the third bear charge. I have no idea how people mash buttons too long, heaven help anyone with a disability or an ergonomic mouse that hasn't been designed to stupidly mash buttons repeatedly.

Edited May 27, 2020 by bownan

[bownan]

OK I got past the bear and all is good again. I basically paused between each round and did something else for 15 minutes... I still think its a silly mechanic though

[wilsonaka]

Under the main menu(or pause menu) under Options is the "Accessibility" menu. You can change the way that you fight during a struggle. You can have it set to hold the mouse button down rather than click repeatedly. This does work, as I have tried it. This really should only be used for someone who needs it (such as carpal tunnel, etc) as I feel it takes away from the experience of a struggle and clicking makes it seem as if you're actually "fighting back" during a struggle. In survival, obviously, this only works for wolf struggles.

[JMK]

On 5/27/2020 at 11:25 AM, bownan said:

I still think its a silly mechanic though

Yes, it's quite silly and frustrating. And you have to look the whole animation of the bear tearing you down everytime you miss. 

[Doc807]

I have been stuck on the bear/spear fight and had to set aside story mode for a while. I’m partially disabled and find it hard to find the bear and aim, then stab the spear in time, before the bear overwhelms me and tears me apart.  I’m getting the feeling the feeling that I’ll just need more practice in order to overcome this scene. I do have the adaptive setting for holding down the button on my Xbox controller. I was enjoying Story mode and would like to move on, but I guess this is, for me, one of those challenges that’s a little harder than most. 

[ManicManiac]

@bownan, and anyone else still having this issue...

This has been discussed a lot over the last year, so to save on a lot of typing I will just echo what I've mentioned in some of the many previous posts:

On 5/19/2019 at 11:55 PM, ManicManiac said:

It's very possible to beat this bear.  I managed it after redux and well before steadfast ranger.  While I can understand the frustrations, it's not impossible.  With steadfast ranger they site is being tuned to be less frustrating... though I don't know what that means, I've not been back to play Wintermute since the last update.  I can't offer much advice for console players... but for PC, I can say that if you have a situation where you have low frame rate I can confirm that it makes the struggle mechanics very very difficult - to the point of being a losing proposition every time.

If this sound familiar (and you are a PC player), then frame rate might be a contributing factor for you.  You can try tuning the graphic settings down a bit, it may not look as nice but if you can get your frame rate above 60-70 FPS things should work a lot better.  I had two different games behave like this... on my old laptop my hardware was easily 5 years old, and my frame rate on those two games was something like 23-32 FPS.  Turned out that with the frame rate so low, the game was basically "missing clicks" (meaning as I was tapping not all of my taps were being registered by the game).  Once I got some new hardware and improved my frame rate, suddenly click-struggles weren't a problem anymore and things were much more responsive.

There is my two cents, I hope it helps someone.  I know one player here was having a similar problem, and she was finally able to defeat the old bear - her temporary solution was to turn down the resolution a little and that gave her enough of a performance boost that she was able to conquer the bear before Steadfast Ranger dropped.

On 5/5/2019 at 6:43 AM, ManicManiac said:

how's your frame rate?  I know that low frame rate can make struggles very difficult.  I don't remember exactly why... but I remember before I purchased my new(er) laptop, the frame rate on my old one was comparatively very low and I always had a lot of trouble with the struggle mechanics.

I don't know if that's your situation... but that was mine.  Once I was getting a better frame rate, it was much more responsive and struggles got a lot easier.

On 5/5/2019 at 6:49 AM, ManicManiac said:

As far as increasing it... you can try to tweak your graphics settings a little lower, you can get better performance that way at the cost of some visual quality.

In my case the issue was I had very old hardware... so I got some newer hardware with more capacity (RAM, better graphics card, ext...)

I went from an awful 23 FPS to about 75 FPS... which by most gamers' standards is still low, but it works for me.

On 8/30/2019 at 1:55 AM, ManicManiac said:

From what I've seen in these forums folks with lower frame rates do tend to have a problem with struggles.  It was the same for me, I'd be clicking the mouse... but for whatever reason my clicks weren't registering because my frame rate was really low (something like 23 fps at the time).  Once my frame rate was at a respectable level, struggles where not an issue anymore.

On 11/13/2019 at 11:39 PM, ManicManiac said:

I've found that (at least for PC players) most often low frame rates are the problem (not really a bug per se, but a user equipment performance issue).  Once I got my system up to where I was getting a consistent 60-70 fps, then the all the mouse clicks would register as expected and the struggles were not difficult anymore.  I don't claim to know the particular technical details, but it seemed to me that low frame rates would contribute to input lags that made struggles horribly difficult.

For those who can't do anything to improve their hardware can try to maybe tune down resolution & graphics settings to try and get better frame rates.

Failing that, a lot of people had success with switching over to the accessibility option of setting struggles to "press and hold."

Edited July 17, 2020 by ManicManiac

[lisaintx]

I am at the second tower past the ranch. Bear attacks at the tower and I die. No visual of anything but a bear in my face. So don't have a clue as to getting past this point. Love the game, but this is a killer for me. Did not like Survival and this was a surprise, as to how much I liked the story mode. But guess I will never get to Episode 3. Died so many times, that it seems pointless. I looked at what others tried, but no joy here. Acts like its a story "telling" and I have no control over it. Any ideas?

[lisaintx]

Absolutely right and it did work, not having to press the button a hundred times. Made the story move more smoothly and LOVE IT still!  In fact, got so engrossed that I went on to Chapter 3 and played until 4 a.m. this morning. Had to make myself get off and go to bed. Fighting my urge to start up, when I have so much to do - after playing all day yesterday instead of working. lol  

Thanks to you for your post, for everyone who does post in forums. They save my life more than you know. lol  And thank you Hinterland! But hurry up with Chapter 4. The way I am playing, will be there soon. hehehe

Thanks again survivors.