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[Valthaur]

So, I was inspired to write this post by the discusion of Mass Effect vs. Dragon Age (following the announcement of Dragon Age 2), which basically focused on the issue of player choice vs. having a well-defined character. The question I'm posing is whether it's always a tradeoff between the two? You can think about a spectrum from older Bioware RPGs, where the player has a lot of choice, but the main character's personality does not come through as strongly as, say, some of the side characters. Dragon Age comes a little further along with the spectrum with at base a similar sort of dynamic, but with some fleshing out of the player character owing to the origin stories (conversely, you have to have one of the six origins). Mass Effect is arguably a little more to the other side, with full voiceover helping to give Shephard some sort of a personality at the expense of more dialogue and customization choices (you're the tough Alliance marine no matter what). At the far end you'd be going into action adventure games, where you have gameplay choices, but the main character (and much of his dialogue) is pre-defined.

So do we always have to restrict player choice to give a main character a strong sense of identity (or the converse)?  Or is it possible to develop both simultaneously, or at least advance one a lot without much loss in the other? I think in theory it is.

Think of a storyline where in the beginning (your formative years, if you will) the player has a great deal of choice in developing his character, but gradually, as these choices are made, they affect not only the development of the story but also the development of the main character's personaliy, possibly changing the nature of or even limiting player choices/dialogue later in the game to conform to the character's developing personality.

To give a concrete example, suppose in your formative years you always choose to unconditionally help the helpless. Later on the game adapts (kind of like a computer adaptive test) so that when someone's asking you for help, dialogue choices like 'I'll only do it for the money' or 'why the hell should I help you, go get lost' are no longer options and are replaced by 'I wish I could help but I don't have time to divert from the main quest.' Or conversely, if you've always been doing it for the money and the person can't pay you, you could accept the quest but only very grudgingly, muttering that maybe you'll find some loot on the way.

Note that the above two examples don't actually restrict your choice, but they try to shape dialogue in a way that conforms to the personality you've built up in the early game. Some situations, however, may be so clear cut that they will merit altogether restricting choices that are completely incompatible with your character. This would be a limitation of choice, but one that the player has actively contributed to.

Of course, people sometimes do change a lot later in life, and there should be points in the later game where you can change some facets of personality you decided on in the early game. This could be in response to dramatic events; for example, tough-as-nails mercenary guy saves a village/world and begins to think about how he liked that even though it didn't benefit him. Or it could happen through dialogue with party members. In Dragon Age and Mass Effect, as in KOTOR 2, you could influence your party members through conversation - it would be the logical next step that they too should be able to influence your character, if to a lesser extent. Your conversation choices would then be about more than just pleasing them; they would also shape your own personality and future choices. (If you are deliberately just trying to please them, that could be handled by a mechanic like 1. [Lie] Say x. But presumably if you do that too often they would figure it out...)

In passing, it strikes me that Dragon Age 2, with its action taking place over the course of a decade, would be well suited to this dynamic, with your choices in the early years affecting not only the state of the world but the state of your character in later years. But of course all of this would require pretty sophisticated storytelling in order to not appear crude/contrived and to latch on to a decent range of the (potentially infinite) character concepts that players come up with. It would be pretty daunting to code. But I think in some ways it's not too far off the changes that Bioware have already been making to RPGs. I'm curious to hear what people think.