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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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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.
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There is another kind? |
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Thinking... #10 - Why not both come out of a window?
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No, actually, there isn't. Also - do not explain the plot! #10 - Why not both come out of a window?
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I didn't. I'm not sure I could, actually. "Testiculos habet et bene pendentes" - "He has testicles, and they dangle nicely."
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I'll still cut you up. #10 - Why not both come out of a window?
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Don't bring a knife to a gun fight. "Testiculos habet et bene pendentes" - "He has testicles, and they dangle nicely."
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As so many have pointed out, the toughest part about making a truly reactive experience is that at some point you're developing content that only a fraction of the player base will see. Ideally, I think we all want a game where you can play any number of different ways with the capability to branch out into new experiences with completely different outcomes. It seems sort of unlikely that something like that would come out of a studio with the firepower to make a decent AAA title. 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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McBain There is another kind? Sure is. Sex while the angry mob watches. Funk. |
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Re Mass Effect I initially liked the ass kicker vs. negotiator choices, but I quickly realized this fell into the same good vs evil thing that goes on and has little relevance to the results. It would have been nice that if you chose to be the ass kicking dude that you would gain more fear from folks and less respect. Funk. |
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#50 by Shadarr 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. No! The way I'd do it is that you have a complete world, but there's a 'seed' which starts you as good, or you can choose the seed that starts you as evil. If you start as evil, you find a book or artifact which lets you know about some way to control the world -- then you play your game, and your goal is to overcome the obstacles facing you to achieve those goals. Some of the obstacles would be a stream of heroes trying to stop you. Not scripted sequences, but actual AI playing the game from the other side. Now flip it around, and you are a good guy hearing rumors about some guy looking to control the world (who is run by an AI playing from the other side). And you are out to stop him. 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." God, that's such a perfect description of Mass Effect's dialog choices. All that talk about their innovative system, and all it is is a clever "Press any key to continue." #74 by Jibble As so many have pointed out, the toughest part about making a truly reactive experience is that at some point you're developing content that only a fraction of the player base will see. Yeah but that's kind of a moot point -- the holy grail for games nowadays is replayability, so that kind of stuff is actually more desirable. You *want* someone playing your game through ten times, because that means you are still talking about it (and thus selling copies) months down the road. I mean, in AC, each mission had something like 6-7 different investigations (maybe more, can't remember), but you only had to do 2-3 of them. We had to do scenes and dialog and voices for each one. This counts exactly as the content that people don't see, via old thinking. Videogames! Why waste good technology on science and medicine?
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Yeah, but AC had about 4 different investigations that you do over and over again depending on what city you are in. |
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Charles is just always trying to remake Ultima VII. |
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Funk: Sure is. Sex while the angry mob watches. Often followed by: sex with the angry mob joining in. "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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Oops, I promised not to do that anymore. "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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You gotta have a montage! Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want and deserve to get it good and hard.
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If you want competing campaigns of good vs evil in a multiplayer setting why not just play Starcraft or Command and Conquer? You see, I think the whole idea of "playing evil" is bunk because there is no such thing unless you're playing "laughably diabolical" which will always seem jarring. No one plays Zerg and thinks "I'm playing evil", but there is not really a good way of rewarding players for choices made in their own good judgment and tell them they are evil. This is why games like Dungeon Keeper 2 correctly take a humorous or tongue in cheek tack to mitigate this phenomenon. |
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the holy grail for games nowadays is replayability I think replayability too often comes at the expense of a single cohesive experience. |
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But haven't unique gamer experiences been the whole animus behind the idea of game playing (especially emergent)? If I wanted to read a static novel, I could. But then it's not interactive and not really a game. 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 agree with McBain, but that it's a temporary limitation because the gaming "language" is so limited. Maybe in ten years. "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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I'm not sure why replayability matters. The only games I replay are either 1) games that can be finished in 30 minutes or 2) games that are 10-15 years old. I'm perfectly fine with companies adding in different branches so that players aren't on rails, though. I don't have to see them all. |^^^^^^^^^^^^ |||__
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But haven't unique gamer experiences been the whole animus behind the idea of game playing (especially emergent)? If I wanted to read a static novel, I could. But then it's not interactive and not really a game. I think the GTA model fits this well. I don't really understand why people complain about the "missions" "unlocking" more sandbox, because I don't see another way to effect change on the institutions and geography of the world of the sandbox without some kind of mission model unless you have AI that is supremely beyond current or near future capabilities. The missions are going to be on rails too much for some, or you will have such divergent factions that you are essentially pouring resources into content many gamers will never see. I like the GTA model because I will see all the content I paid for without having to replay the stuff I've already done over again to find every option in the choose your own adventure book. Even with incredibly advanced heuristics, you're going to create content many people never see. Its going to be such a matter of taste that the sweet spot between rails and personalization will never be reached for everyone. That sweet spot is kind of like the spaghetti sauce story from Gladwell's ketchup thesis. And I doubt anyone will find a Heinz ketchup style sweetspot in videogames, because there isn't decades of naturally selected genetic programming to back it up. (hat tip to Jibble on that analogy). There is another problematic aspect to making choices in a game that cause the player to exclude content from their particular experience that is inherent to entertainment, and its part of the reason some people (including me) just don't like it. The phenomenon is common to most other entertainment or pastime (books, movies, sports), and that is one of "shared experience". Part of what's fun about great entertainment is the shared memory of experience with other humans. If you find someone who read a book you like and enjoy talking to them about it, that's part of the fun. It's as simple as saying to a friend "remember the part in Aliens when they barely escaped before the whole base blew up". Whether you're analyzing the implications of Proust or just repeating lines from your favorite comedy, you're sharing memories and learning more about the human experience through that sharing. Without that, there is nothing to share, or it is much more difficult to glean more from the post-consumer socialization aspect if you consumed a vastly different work than other people. That's the whole joke of "Shakespeare is much better in the original Klingon!". Or maybe this is all post modernist claptrap and its just pong. |
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That said, I liked Dreamfall, where you would do some task or solve some simple puzzle, get 30 minutes of story, and carry on. Gameplay wasn't too deep, but deep enough that I felt like running through in character so I could be a part of the co-operative narrative. Not so much the constant oblivion style twinging, but more the objective based bits you focused on to be treated with another reveal, ala BG&E. Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want and deserve to get it good and hard.
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3D Sex Villa is quite ok, too. "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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decades of naturally selected genetic programming Should read "millennia". |
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