|
| T O P I C | |
|
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? |
| C O M M E N T S |
|
Home »
Topic: Heroes, Anti-Heroes, and Pure Evil
|«« - Previous Page - Next Page - »»| |
|
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."
|
|
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
|
|
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."
|
|
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?
|
|
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."
|
|
#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?
|
|
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.
|
|
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
|
|
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
|
|
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
|
|
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
|
|
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."
|
|
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 |
|
There is another kind? |
|
Thinking... #10 - Why not both come out of a window?
|
|
No, actually, there isn't. Also - do not explain the plot! #10 - Why not both come out of a window?
|
|
I didn't. I'm not sure I could, actually. "Testiculos habet et bene pendentes" - "He has testicles, and they dangle nicely."
|
|
I'll still cut you up. #10 - Why not both come out of a window?
|
|
Don't bring a knife to a gun fight. "Testiculos habet et bene pendentes" - "He has testicles, and they dangle nicely."
|
|
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. |
|
McBain There is another kind? Sure is. Sex while the angry mob watches. Funk. |
|
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. |
|
#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?
|
|
Yeah, but AC had about 4 different investigations that you do over and over again depending on what city you are in. |
|
Charles is just always trying to remake Ultima VII. |
|
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."
|
|
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."
|
|
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.
|
|
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. |
|
the holy grail for games nowadays is replayability I think replayability too often comes at the expense of a single cohesive experience. |
|
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.
|
|
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
|
|
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. |^^^^^^^^^^^^ |||__
| こんにちは | ||'|"\,__. |_..._...______===|=||_|__|...,] (@)'(@)"""*|(@)*(@)*****(@) |
|
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. |
|
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.
|
|
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."
|
|
decades of naturally selected genetic programming Should read "millennia". |
|
Gladwell's ketchup thesis Hm? Link? "the accusations are such nonsense that I have found it difficult to treat them with the contempt that they deserve." - Clarke
|
|
Magic Google-Fu |
|
That's a fascinating article if I ever read one. "the accusations are such nonsense that I have found it difficult to treat them with the contempt that they deserve." - Clarke
|
|
That's actually a pretty fascinating read. That's an interesting point, really. There's a constant conundrum in gaming where gamers can't really fully flesh out what they want, but they ask for it anyway. It's "I'll know it when I see it" disorder or, as I believe Charles called it, Whating the What. 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. |
|
Yeah it definitely applies to games. Somehow. The exact connection isn't so easy to make, but there's something there. Games has a creative spark that changes things up a bit, but still… "the accusations are such nonsense that I have found it difficult to treat them with the contempt that they deserve." - Clarke
|
|
McBain (#84): the holy grail for games nowadays is replayability I think replayability too often comes at the expense of a single cohesive experience. This I'll agree with. I think FAR too much hype and talk and effort is put into replayability, when most people just don't bother with it. It another thing you can say, "Our game has multiple story paths and 100's of hours of replayability!". But how many people are actually going to play that? Less than 3% is the number I'm pulling out of my butt. If we're talking and RPG, replayability isn't that big of a deal unless the game is REALLY different each time. Meaning, if I create a Thief type character this time, the entire game starts different, I do different things to win the game and the end is different than if I create a Paladin character (to use common archetypes). That isn't what happens though. What happens now is that you create a Paladin or a Thief and playing the same game over where you make a few different choices. If you discount the hardcore players (a vocal minority), almost no one is going to play that game back through as multiple different classes. Yeah, the holy grail of RPGs is to have a truly different world based on your choices (be it character creation, choices in game, etc). But that's not easy nor cheap. As least not with the current way of thinking about games. "Thug means never having to say you're sorry." - UTurn
|
|
Really interesting article, but I don't think it really applies to games unless we're talking about creating the Heinz of games. And is that even possible. "Thug means never having to say you're sorry." - UTurn
|
|
I appreciate the dialogue changes you get for your background, gender, and "alignment". Has made the 3 playthroughs so far enjoyable. Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want and deserve to get it good and hard.
|
|
Has anyone played Assassins Creed on the PC? I just saw it's for sale on Steam, but I'm wondering how the controls translate. |
|
#98 by Matt Perkins Really interesting article, but I don't think it really applies to games unless we're talking about creating the Heinz of games. And is that even possible. Well that's just it, I don't mean you can make a Heinz-like game. But the approach they show, the methodology, is hugely interesting. If you made a game entirely based on focus testing, i.e. the way they made new sauces, well that sounds kinda harsh to me. Like it'd result in a commercial and soulless product. But by taking parts of the methodology maybe… getting the kind of statistical data available for the sauces… there's huge potential there. "the accusations are such nonsense that I have found it difficult to treat them with the contempt that they deserve." - Clarke
|
|
Valve works like that, non? The steam-data feeds straight into their design. but watching changes every fact
and your curves are best described by mathematical approximation anyway so I use fingertips to trace our play |
|
Yeah that's some of it. The article describes an even more meticulous approach though, but yes I'd say Valve is on that sort of path. "the accusations are such nonsense that I have found it difficult to treat them with the contempt that they deserve." - Clarke
|
|
Really interesting article, but I don't think it really applies to games unless we're talking about creating the Heinz of games. And is that even possible. I think you missed the point. What we have right now is Heinz. Nearly every FPS is a derivative of the old Wolf3D model: pick up guns, find keys, shoot things, progress on rails to the end of the game. You keep playing it for the same reason you keep buying Heinz: you don't know any better (because there's no real alternative). What we're talking about is creating a number of World's Best ketchup flavors that are well received within their target market. No game has universal appeal, and by trying to cater to everyone you wind up with something that everyone just sort of settles for. It would be better to determine which segment of the market you're going for and really hammer away at making those people happy. Of course, that would require an alteration to the all-or-nothing viewpoint that seems to (understandably) dominate the gaming industry. 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. |
| C O M M E N T S |
|
Home »
Topic: Heroes, Anti-Heroes, and Pure Evil
|«« - Previous Page - Next Page - »»| |
| P O S T A C O M M E N T |
|
|
| C R A P T A G S | ||||||||
|
|
| There are currently 77 people browsing this site. [Details] |
Powered by blah 0.9-dev •
PlanetCrap is © 1997-2004 Hendrik "Morn" Mans
|