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Heroes, Anti-Heroes, and Pure Evil
April 8th 2008, 23:52 CEST by Caryn A couple of months ago a friend insisted that I should play Jade Empire, a classic Xbox game from Bioware, and I found myself completely hooked. I didn't expect to be so won over given that I really disliked KOtOR, but Jade Empire really turned me around. And so having finished that game last week, I started playing Mass Effect this weekend. These games have gotten me thinking about the Good and Evil spectrum that's such a standard in recent Bioware games (I'm not too familiar with Bioware games pre-KOtOR). I notice that when I'm given the choice to move my character along these spectrum, I find I want to initially play the evil bad ass because that would be dark and cool, but I'm hesitant to do so for what seems like such a stupid reason: I get the sense that developers always build a game around the idea that you're a hero, and thus inherently good, and that playing the evil path is really more of a side game that you play later just to see what it's like, after you've seen the "real" game the developers intended you to see. And I don't know why I think this, but I suspect it's because games are typically built on very black and white stories with simple concepts of good and evil, and the hero always prevails even if we're being given the option to play the bad guy and even win as that character. This is where Mass Effects gets interesting for me. Rather than creating a simple good and evil spectrum, they have the Paragon and Renegade spectrum, a spectrum with names that are less associated with black and white concepts of good and evil and more associated with taking the high road versus getting the job done no matter what it takes. I created a female marine and chose the Spacer and Ruthless options for my character, because she looked like the type of person who was career military and who wouldn't take shit from anyone. Then I worried that I would be forced to take her down a purely dark and evil path, but have happily found out that you can play your character as an anti-hero without losing too much of the hero aspect. It makes me wonder what most people like to see in these types of games -- do you like your choice-based games to have strong concepts of good and evil? Do you always choose one particular side to play, and what do you choose first if you play more than one? Do you feel that having morally ambiguous paths for your character waters down the enjoyment of a game and makes it less heroic and epic? Does it take games closer to other forms of storytelling like movies and novels when your character isn't so black and white, and is this a good or a bad thing for games? |
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Topic: Heroes, Anti-Heroes, and Pure Evil
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Kill all the Haitians! |
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I'll always play the good side, but then I'll play the bad side to get the most out of the game, but I never once harvested a little sister in Bioshock. That's the only game I have never toyed around with the evil side. |
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Dungeon Keeper and Overlord are great games...you really have no option but to play evil, and it's tongue-in-cheek delicious. |
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Shadarr: They got it quite right in Mass Effect. Main story arc doesn't change but about half of the side quests do. Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want and deserve to get it good and hard.
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I never felt evil harvesting the little sister, especially with their "stomp on his face Mr. Bubbles" and what not. I felt bad, for real, when I met the saved ones and they said I was the one that hurts them. Then I stopped the harvesting but the game still considered me evil. <Hugin_len> Basically, cheesy doesn't have awful taste in music, he's simply very white.
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Even BioShock was pretty pussy about it what with making it up to you for not harvesting the little bitches. |
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While I didn't like previous Bioware choices of "be a hero or a retard," I don't think what Mass Effect did was particularly special, because it seems to me that it was just a step backwards. I replayed a few sections of the game, and in a lot of cases it didn't matter *which* dialog choice you picked. You'd say the same thing, and get the same response, only it would affect your magical statistic. Which, in turn, didn't affect much at all. I want a game that lets me be truly evil. So far I haven't seen one. I want a game where I actually play the villain, not a hero who acts like a villain. I'd love to see an RPG that essentially burns the candle at both ends, so you can start as a villain to achieve the villain's goals, or the hero, to defeat the villain, and it's in the same world with the same story, but told from completely different angles. And eventually, you have a showdown with the other side. Also I think Bioshock's moral choices were BS, since it came out early that there were better rewards for being good. Oh, that and it didn't actually matter one lick, except for the crappy cutscene at the end. The whole second half of the game should've been completely different. Videogames! Why waste good technology on science and medicine?
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I don't think any game companies are daring enough to devote the effort to crafting what is essentially two different games (in terms of narrative, anyway), because they will consider half of that effort as wasted no matter what. How many would play through such a game twice to see each side of the story? Anyway, tell us about the game Hugin and you are making. |
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No. Videogames! Why waste good technology on science and medicine?
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Hugin? |
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Charles brings up a good point. I mean, if all the assets are the same, we're really talking about storylines and scripting, right? Maybe someone could make a short game with this dynamic to see how it would work. |
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#26 by lwf How many would play through such a game twice to see each side of the story? I don't see why not, RTS games pull the play both 'good' and 'evil' all the time and nobody cares one lick. In fact it's usualy considered a bad sign when one doesn't do it. There's really no reason why the same can't happen with other genres. |
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A good point, but in RTS games it's a little different, since you don't generally play the same missions from each side, rather the overall story progresses as you complete campaigns in order using the different races. Also, one reason RTS games do this is to teach the player how to play as each race, prepping them for the multiplayer aspect of the game. But I don't play a ton of RTS games, any counterexamples? |
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RTS games = micromanagement Micromanagement = boredom Boredom = evil Therefore, All RTS games are evil. |
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I think one of the problems I have with roleplaying is that my mind is mostly geared to a linear game mindset where I look at what the developer would expect me to do next in order to advance. This sort of ties in with the feeling that any choice you make, excludes you from a certain amount of game content. Usually I play goody-two-shoes. Perhaps because I'm just gay like that, or perhaps because I sort of feel that's the route you're expected to take. "It's called treaty mode. It's there for people who want to enforce that kind of play. In other words, it's there for the Dutch."
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I don't like this in Neverwinter Nights either. Good choices are always the "I love to help everyone!", evil ones are the "I don't care about your problems" and neutral always is "When do I get paid?". Meh. Any game where competence can be measured by the amount of clicks per minute is not a strategy game.
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Holy shit, Neverwinter Nights was a flat tire, in terms of moral choice. When you're faced with a screaming "DEMON" child saying, "NO! NO!" to your influence, only then does morality mean anything. The reason I only played good in Bioshock is because it was the only game that brought morality screaming home. |
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#31 by lwf A good point, but in RTS games it's a little different, since you don't generally play the same missions from each side, rather the overall story progresses as you complete campaigns in order using the different races. While you may not be playing the exact same missions from both sides they do tend to parallel quite a bit, some are direct time shifts showing what happened between or before missions on the opposing side, other are simply similar goals with a different map, and a few times there are direct confrontation between sides on the same mission. That sounds a lot more like what Charles was talking about then trying to create a hero and villian perpective on the exact same missions through out the entire game. After all it'd be rather difficult to craft a believable story where good and evil are battleing from the very begining and don't immediately put an end to the plot right there. Rather the two stories will need to weave in and out of each other until the final showdown at the end. |
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bago beyond good and evil. Now that was a truly good game. To improve the RP part of RPGs I'd go the route of an indie game experiment. Something small and manageable, and centered around a core idea of, say, chose Evil or Good in a series of morally ambiguous choices. Well, something a little more multi-dimensional than that would be nice though, but you get the point. "the accusations are such nonsense that I have found it difficult to treat them with the contempt that they deserve." - Clarke
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Also, this is so goddamn true. Haha, it's a short movie called Digital Grunt, and it's "a comedy about working in the visual effects industry". And, no shit, it is entirely 100% factually correct through and through. "the accusations are such nonsense that I have found it difficult to treat them with the contempt that they deserve." - Clarke
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#36 by None-1a That sounds a lot more like what Charles was talking about then trying to create a hero and villian perpective on the exact same missions through out the entire game. After all it'd be rather difficult to craft a believable story where good and evil are battleing from the very begining and don't immediately put an end to the plot right there. Rather the two stories will need to weave in and out of each other until the final showdown at the end. Mine wouldn't be mission specific, it would be over the course of the whole game. Villain has a a bunch of things to do to take over the world, say, and the good guy has to find out what the villain is up to and try and stop him. Preferably in real time. Videogames! Why waste good technology on science and medicine?
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(long) Good and Evil in games I have a REALLY hard time playing the "evil" (see McBain's comments for a better than I oft do explaining good and evil) part in a CRPG. I just don't like making the choices that then have people suffering on the screen. It bothers me on a deep level. In an Pen and Paper game though...? I can play the most evil bastard that ever was. I'll do horrible things that advance my character or don't, just because I'm a chaotic asshole who likes to see things go to hell (assuming I'm rping that type of character). I think the biggest difference is that it's easier to see it as pretend when I'm not seeing even digital characters react because of my choices. Sure, the DM has to rp the npcs when I do evil things, but it just doesn't have the same effect on me. Mass Effect I really like how Mass Effect did their choices. Instead of Good and Evil, you got, as others stated, Nice/Hero vs. Asskicker/Get It Done Now type of choices. I haven't seen as much of the Asskicker side because that's now how I play CRPGs, but my wife is playing through and just laughs and giggles as she tells people to quit being big babies and just get the shit done. Charles is right in the aspect that it often doesn't change a lot how the game reacts, no matter which choices you pick. BUT, who gives a shit? Yeah, those of us that might replay it might find out, but for most people that play it through once or don't make it all the way through even once, they never know the difference. What they see is their character either being the virtuous hero or the I'm not going to coddle you bitches almost anti-hero. I think that was a really smart choice on Bioware's part. They created a huge game with the ability for it look like you're playing your character as you choose and it's affecting things without having to create a mess of extra content. That being said, yeah, I much prefer it when the world really reacts to you, but is the payoff really there in the long time? Especially with something like Mass Effect where they had HUGE amounts of media they had to create for each choice they allowed you to do. I can't fault them for not doing more since they really created an amazing amount of content. Most people will never see all of it. "Thug means never having to say you're sorry." - UTurn
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BUT, who gives a shit? I played KotOR through once but still knew the paths were alike. I could feel it everywhere. In fact I blogged about it: I was watching this clip, and they suddenly showed exactly what I hate about Bioware’s games (besides their “convince three judges” puzzles). At 7:14 they show three outcomes of a single scene: If you play hardball, pacify or threaten a bartender to give up information. I’m sure the point of the clip is to show how cool the game is, but all I see is how obvious the outcomes are. They’re always the same. Knights of the Old Republic, their previous game, was in my opinion saturated with that exact feeling of sameness. That no matter what you answered you’d at most get a single response-specific line before they hooked you back into a linear conversation flow. I’m not saying Mass Effect sucks, hell even if conversations really do suffer from that linear feel it still has the much-anticipated pseudo real time fighting and shooting. And story and characters to get into. And weapons to collect and upgrade. No I have plenty confidence that I’ll enjoy the game, I just really hope they’ve learned from Old Republic and have made conversations a much smoother experience. Even though that particular clip fails to inspire confidence :S "the accusations are such nonsense that I have found it difficult to treat them with the contempt that they deserve." - Clarke
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Gaggle Did you play Mass Effect? While pretty much anything relating to the main story line does end up going the same no matter you do, a lot of the other stuff will at least give you a different comeback when you respond. I've played through most of it now (I'm sitting at the end sequence, not wanting it to end) and I'm loving watching my wife play through it as the brutal bitch. It's pretty damn funny how much of a do it now bitch the game lets her be. And since she wasn't paying that close of attention to the dialog choices when went through it, she doesn't have a clue when it's the same answer or not. Only that she's intimidating people into doing what she wants instead of asking nicely... "Thug means never having to say you're sorry." - UTurn
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Also, this is so goddamn true. Haha, it's a short movie called Digital Grunt, and it's "a comedy about working in the visual effects industry". And, no shit, it is entirely 100% factually correct through and through. Holy shit, that's the game industry to a T, hahahahaha. Bellydance!
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I'd write something about Black & White's good vs. evil aspects, but that game was so boring I gave up on it after an hour and sold it on ebay. "Action stars of two decades ago shot .44 bullets out of their cocks. Honestly, if me and Charles Bronson were in the same room I'd kill myself just to make sure he didn't hurt me."
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Actually, Black & White was one of the games where I didn't mind playing the evil side. I can't hear your insipid singing now that you're skipping across the ocean to your inevitable demise. Lady, people aren't chocolates. But you know what they are, mostly? Bastards. Bastard-coated bastards with bastard filling.
Blog. 194 lbs. 14 to go. |
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So, I showed that Digital Grunts clip to a friend of mine who does editing for a production house in my area (his complaints about his job are in the clip to a T)...it turns out he used to work with one of the guys in the clip (the "client"). Small world. "Bioshock, sadly, is no Painkiller." - BobJustBob
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Did you play Mass Effect? No I haven't really played it, outside of an hour or so at a friend. It didn't grab me as much as I was expecting it to do, so I never got into it. Sounds like your wife is getting the best of experiences though, if she's oblivious to the linearity it must seem so damn cool. It's probably a result of my job or something that I couldn't overlook it in KotOR… sometimes it'd be nice to turn off that critical designer eye, but alas it never sleeps. "the accusations are such nonsense that I have found it difficult to treat them with the contempt that they deserve." - Clarke
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Oh that's cool Hugin. They really nailed exactly how it is, it's scary. "the accusations are such nonsense that I have found it difficult to treat them with the contempt that they deserve." - Clarke
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Did you play Mass Effect? While pretty much anything relating to the main story line does end up going the same no matter you do, a lot of the other stuff will at least give you a different comeback when you respond. I'm a huge fan of Mass Effect so far, but I'm understanding the criticisms that people have here in response to my original questions, and I think that's what gaggle's main criticism is. Sure, the game gives you a different comeback in that conversation, but does it give you a different outcome? I like the idea mentioned previously of presenting a player with a game in which there is a clear Good and Evil, with a main character on each side that must eventually defeat the other one in some way, and your actions make you become one of the two characters over time. Developmentally I'm not sure how you'd pull that one off, it sounds awfully difficult. But conceptually I don't think players would be as resistant to that as some people here think. People do play these types of games multiple times just to see the content or outcomes they missed. Bellydance!
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Charles is right in the aspect that it often doesn't change a lot how the game reacts, no matter which choices you pick. BUT, who gives a shit? I give a shit. I give a lot of shit. That's exactly what bothers me about RPGs generally and Bioware games specifically, the feeling that your "choices" are all just for show and don't have any real effect. I don't want Charles' paralell good and evil campaigns, because that's more like two linear games rather than one game giving you real choices. Games that let you be evil, like Overlord, are great for their uniqueness, but what I'm looking for in a game that deals with good and evil is the ability to actually role-play my character rather than just playing out the script to an interactive movie. Bioware games feel like a choose your own adventure book where all the choices at the bottom of each page have the same page number. "If you apologize and beg forgiveness, turn to page 88; if you punch him in the face and tell him to get over it, turn to page 88." Witnesses in the house heard Jones say "why did you pee on me Pooh Bear?" A few moments later, the witness heard the son say "Mama you done stabbed me."
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Shadarr, if Charles' game idea of parallel good and evil campaigns doesn't fit the bill for you, what do you feel would allow you to really roleplay your character and fit what you're looking for? Bellydance!
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Caryn, comeback vs. outcome is definitely it, yeah. That's probably the most succinct way to phrase my complaint. Often, it seemed to me, KotOR barely had any consequences for a particular response. Like if you answered "evil" you got a one-liner that read "Don't be rude", and the next sentence was literally what you'd've read if you had answered "good". That's way too consequence-less, even if I understand the huge (huge!) undertaking it'd be to actually make each answer matter. Could you develop the opposite character as the player progressed? Always a ying to your yang? I guess Fable sort of did that, your companion friend girl was aligned opposite whatever you chose I think. But like the more evil you are the more a hero will emerge as the game goes on. As you accomplish your goals, good or evil, you will be slowly introduced to your mirror opposite. Idunno *shrug*, the basic idea is kinda high concept, any practical implementation we can come up with will probably sound lame :) "the accusations are such nonsense that I have found it difficult to treat them with the contempt that they deserve." - Clarke
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*spoiler alert* In ME you can convince the last boss to commit suicide. Saves you a boss battle. Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want and deserve to get it good and hard.
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Huh, do you break in on his psychologist session or something? Is he so emotionally unstable that talking him over the edge is doable? "the accusations are such nonsense that I have found it difficult to treat them with the contempt that they deserve." - Clarke
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A game like Space Rangers 2, where the "story" actually plays out differently every time you play. Sure, you pretty much have to fight the robot armada or they'll over-run the galaxy, but how you go about it it totally up to you. You can be a trader or a pirate or a vigilante (and at any time you can change how you're playing) and the other characters in the game react to you based on your reputation and the circumstances. You have similarly limited dialog choices to a standard RPG, but the NPC reactions are dynamic rather than scripted. You never get into a situation where you have 5 dialog choices and you click through all 5 to extract all the information from the NPC before moving on. When you talk to someone, you have to actually choose what you say carefully because there will be consequences. Basically, the game makes you feel like one character in a world full of other independent actors, albeit a very important one. I would love to see a game that combined that with Fable-style good vs evil choices. Make it so that all your actions have consequences, not just the occasional dialog choice turning off a side-quest. I should be able to go into a town and kill everyone there and raze it to the ground, and that village should be gone for the rest of the game. A lot of the problems games run into is that they rely on scripting and those scripts have dependencies like "you have to visit the inn in Quaintville in chapter 5, therefor you can't destroy it and if you get banned from the city your record will be erased in chapter 5." But if you replace scripting with goals, that problem goes away. The simplest goal being to take over the whole map. Maybe you do that by being the champion of the people and riding the tide of popular support to the throne, and maybe you do it by intimidating people and killing the ones who stay in your way (or a clandestine combination of the two). But the point is, to make the player's choices meaningful they have to have real consequences. Even if you only have three things you can say and five things you can do to other people, just the fact that you have to actually think about the result of your choice makes it much more powerful than 50 choices that all lead to the same outcome. Witnesses in the house heard Jones say "why did you pee on me Pooh Bear?" A few moments later, the witness heard the son say "Mama you done stabbed me."
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By my "who gives a shit" comment, I was referring to it mainly as a mass market consumer. From the point of view of someone who isn't going to be playing it again, it won't seem like a empty decision / flare. Being that most of the ME players are those players, that's why I was saying it worked for Bioware and might not be a horrible use of their resources to fake it rather than implement it for real. I like Shadarr's idea for sure, and I've really liked games like that in the past, but the problem with doing that in ME is that you would lose the focused storyline they were working so hard to achieve. So you either a) can't have a focused storyline or b) have to have many different focused storylines that tie back into each at specific points... Right? gaggle (#48): Oh that's cool Hugin. They really nailed exactly how it is, it's scary. Yeah, not just in the game industry either. I used to have a job EXACTLY like that doing business software. "Thug means never having to say you're sorry." - UTurn
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From the point of view of someone who isn't going to be playing it again, it won't seem like a empty decision / flare. I disagree. I never play through RPGs twice (I seldom finish them once) and I can still tell when the dialog options are having no real effect. It's the whole "comeback" thing Caryn and gaggle were talking about. The dialog options each elicit a specific response but have no consequence beyond that. They may put a special quip in if you keep asking the same question or something, but even when you get totally dumped out you can usually just talk to the person again and get reset back to the beginning. It makes the dialog engine feel like a puzzle minigame where the goal is to pass the level, rather than an actual conversation. Witnesses in the house heard Jones say "why did you pee on me Pooh Bear?" A few moments later, the witness heard the son say "Mama you done stabbed me."
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That's pretty much inevitable. Hell, even Fallout had a perk that highlighted dialog choices that were recommended / going to get you killed fast. #10 - Why not both come out of a window?
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It's only inevitable in games that lean toward story over interactivity. I want more games that lean the other way. Mostly because the stories in games suck balls. And Bioware is one of the worst offenders. Witnesses in the house heard Jones say "why did you pee on me Pooh Bear?" A few moments later, the witness heard the son say "Mama you done stabbed me."
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#59 by Shadarr And Bioware is one of the worst offenders. I'm with you on that. NWN looked ok for the time, but the story was nothing short of incredibly boring. Same for the BGs... probably KoTOR as well (no idea, only played that for two hours or so). #10 - Why not both come out of a window?
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NWN could have used more sex like in the Witcher. Any game where competence can be measured by the amount of clicks per minute is not a strategy game.
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Shadarr (#57): From the point of view of someone who isn't going to be playing it again, it won't seem like a empty decision / flare. I disagree. I never play through RPGs twice (I seldom finish them once) and I can still tell when the dialog options are having no real effect. It's the whole "comeback" thing Caryn and gaggle were talking about. The dialog options each elicit a specific response but have no consequence beyond that. They may put a special quip in if you keep asking the same question or something, but even when you get totally dumped out you can usually just talk to the person again and get reset back to the beginning. It makes the dialog engine feel like a puzzle minigame where the goal is to pass the level, rather than an actual conversation. Hmm... I guess I can see that, though in the specific case of ME a lot of conversations are one time things. Once you leave the conversation or make a choice in the matter at hand, you don't get another opportunity at it. But definitely not the majority of them, so yeah, I see your point. Ok, so I get your example with Space Rangers...but how about a workable example in something like ME that wouldn't require a huge ramp up on content to be created? "Thug means never having to say you're sorry." - UTurn
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Ashiran (#61): NWN could have used more sex like in the Witcher. NWN could have used a storyline that wasn't the most boring thing ever. "Thug means never having to say you're sorry." - UTurn
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In a way Shadarr's argument reminds of some of the arguments Bob makes. Or I make, for that matter. Which is that the game feels unsatisfactory due to deliberate design decisions. From what I understand Mass Effect isn't an open-ended RPG, it was never designed that way so there's not much to blame it for when it fails to deliver on open-endedness, and yet Shadarr's criticism remains entirely valid in the context of gaming in general. I guess I don't have much of a point, so I'll stop here. "the accusations are such nonsense that I have found it difficult to treat them with the contempt that they deserve." - Clarke
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Heh, NWN1 was terrific fun. I loved it. But not so much for the game itself, I don't even really know the story, but just because I played it coop with a friend and it was entirely enjoyable from start to finish. We played an hour/a few hours each day for a good while and I recall the whole experience as pretty evenly relaxing and fun. "the accusations are such nonsense that I have found it difficult to treat them with the contempt that they deserve." - Clarke
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the sex in witcher is stupid though. I mean, conversation trees like this: 1) I don't believe you and think you are evil, stay here while I got tell the angry mob outside that wants to kill you that you suck 2) Hey, I'd like to get to know you better. Let's have sex while the angry mob just sort of waits outside the cave till I finish it's pretty funny. But that one in particular didn't have a natural flow to it at all. The first time at least was sort of natural, the second one light hearted, but that third one I was like, what the fuck are you doing? You had plenty of time to bang her at her house, and now, in a cave full of guys you killed, with an angry mob outside and apparently a bunch of abused children, you get it on? What? "Testiculos habet et bene pendentes" - "He has testicles, and they dangle nicely."
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Pfft. Everyone knows that having sex while an angry mob awaits is the best kind of sex. Invention is the Green Goblin of Necessary Lemonade.
--Flowers |
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There is another kind? |
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