83 réponses à ce sujet

[Ulicus]

@ In Exile

DA:O tells you what your companions think is good and bad. And, in the post above, all you've done is tell us what you think is good and bad.

[Querne]

In RL I know what I will say, before I say it.

If I don´t know, it´s not my character.

Simply as that.
I haven´t played ME, but playing Leliana I clearly felt it as third person cause I accidently chose things I didn´t want to say or didn´t know she would say that way.

I would have less problems if the WHOLE sentence or even the beginning was displayed.
If I see it before, I can decide what fits my played character best.
The shortcuts are unpredictable and detached me from the character.

As Lel is NOT me, it was ok. But as Hawke is supposed to be me or, better I´d like to be Hawke.
I don´t want any stupid wheel with two words as options where "wood" can mean "I´d like to save the wood" and "lets have a quicky in the wood".

Modifié par Querne, 15 juillet 2010 - 08:09 .

[AntiChri5]

And yet youve never actually tried it.......

[Querne]

Missed the point where I wrote about Lelianas Song?

[Gegenlicht]

To be fair, neither ME nor DA:O had a tight morality meter.



BG had, KOTOR had. 'Paragon' and 'Renegade' are really just too shades of badass where Shepard is concerned. Renegade is selfish and will do whatever it takes to get the job done. Doing the latter is usually something we praise when the people doing so are on our side, and damn if they're on the other. Paragon is simply a more compassionate stance, one that extends to consider the needs of others above and beyond Shepard's goals.



Jack's romance is a good example of this. The Renegade path leads to steamy sex but nullifies your chance of having a meaningful relationship with her, while the Paragon path reveals her to be a little bunny that just needs to be held. I'd rag on about how Bioware always feels that their outwardly confident and aggressive females need to be revaled to need a man to fix them, but I can't be arsed. Oh wait.



At any rate. This is not a matter of good vs. evil, it's a matter of style.



There is no Dark Side of Biotics you can fall to (though to be fair, I thought Bioware did a great job of making the Sith about 500 times more likable than the Jedi in KOTOR, in spite of the whole infighting).



DA:O simply takes the grey zones a step further by giving you choices that are ambiguous and massively shape the world, where ME mostly just lets you decide the style in which you tackle the big problems, and allows you less far-reaching choices.

[geekeffect]

I do believe that Shepard is a more complex character than DAO fans tend to recognize. For example, I've played default male Shep, soldier, and I did feel he was a very scripted character. My second playthrough as a female colonist vangard was more interesting. I could imagine her and her upbringing. I figure colonists are a bit low class in the social scale, relating to Earthborn and Alliance personel. So I imagined my female Shepard developing cool biotic powers and becoming an Alliance hero, therefore becoming somewhat of a symbol for the colonies. And so my choices for her where a reflection of that. She tended to go Paragon but could easily become ruthless (Renegade) towards enemies or characters she thought to be cruel, prejudicious or xenophobic.

Still, that was it for me. I've played ME2 several times, but these are the two main routes I relate to.

In DAO I find a lot more room for extrapolation regarding your characters. For example, the way you relate to the world and other characters can be very different - in perception, even if the main storyline is essentialy the same - wether you are a human warrior or a dalish rogue. And that's the richness of Dragon Age. I'm a bit sad also that BW seems to be reducing this scope of character creation. I am very confident that I'll love DA2. Maybe I'll enjoy playing it even more than DAO. But will I find the motivation to replay it as much? I don't know. And that's really my only issue with it at the moment.

[Sylvius the Mad]

In Exile wrote...

Where was the grey choice in DA? There was no morality metre, but it was still very black and white.

In general my characters had no difficulty making these supposedly difficult choices, each immediately seeing the correct path.

But, they didn't always choose the same paths.

Whether to save Redcliffe, for example.  One of my characters would have seen saving the town as grossly irresponsible, while another would have seen abandoning it to its fate as abhorrent behaviour.

That's what I think the grey decisions are - where two people can honestly disagree about what the correct choice is.

[Gegenlicht]

Sylvius the Mad wrote...

That's what I think the grey decisions are - where two people can honestly disagree about what the correct choice is.

But that's virtually all the decisions in DA:O.

Except whom to send to save the imprisoned Warden maybe.


At any rate, with the way DA:O will apparently influence DA2, we can now see that these decisions were never about morality above and beyond their ambiguity, ie. there was no 'good' or 'evil' path to choose, but it was rather about shaping the Dragon Age world in your image. Setting up your own customized sandbox to play in if you will.

[Sylvius the Mad]

Gegenlicht wrote...

Sylvius the Mad wrote...

That's what I think the grey decisions are - where two people can honestly disagree about what the correct choice is.

But that's virtually all the decisions in DA:O.

Yes.

Often in games the designers think there's a good option and a bad option, but then I disagree with the them and it breaks the game.  DAO allowed me to disagree with the designers (assuming they had an opinion) without breaking the game.

In Exile (I keep wanting to call him Virgil) seems to think that there were objectively right and wrong answers to these questions.  I cannot agree with him.

[_-Greywolf-_]

Lord Aesir wrote...

I actually agree with you. Shepard felt more like my character because he was actually involved in the story as opposed to a mute avatar. I always felt a little awkward with my character being the only one unable to speak.

I suppose different people are going to have different opinions but for me my biggest gripe with the Mass Effect series is Shepard never felt like my character at all, I always felt like I was playing the character Bioware wanted me to play.

[Sylvius the Mad]

_-Greywolf-_ wrote...

I suppose different people are going to have different opinions but for me my biggest gripe with the Mass Effect series is Shepard never felt like my character at all, I always felt like I was playing the character Bioware wanted me to play.

Shepard absolutely was not my character, as she routinely said and did things that surprised and appalled me.  She was as alien to me as any NPC.

[In Exile]

Sylvius the Mad wrote...
In Exile (I keep wanting to call him Virgil) seems to think that there were objectively right and wrong answers to these questions.  I cannot agree with him.

I wanted to call myself Virgil. I really liked that name. Apparently it was taken. Bothers me to no end.

We've debating morality before. It is not that I think that there are objectively right and wrong answers to a moral question, so much as I think that there is a common place moral system that laymen have, and that it is plausible to divide decisions as "good" or "bad" in an informal sense along that spectrum. You know me, Sylvius - you know I favour very strongly integrating versus rejecting the commonplace experience.

If we take your claim, that it is sufficient for something to be a grey moral system so long as there are two legitimate opinions regarding the right action... then we can certainly include all of Mass Effect purely grey in morality, as there is plenty of evidence that shows that each of the decisions in Mass Effect can be argued as being justified by either a paragon or renegade approach.

That being said, appealing to paragon=good and renegade=bad is, IMO, a meta-gaming distinction that we shouldn't be making when talking about whether or not any one particular choice is moral.

[mopotter]

El Codge wrote...

mopotter wrote...

 I must be a very easy simple player. 

Shepard was my character but so was my warden.  In any of the games I play if I'm making the decision, I fall right into the character's brain.  I fall easier when it's a female because I can relate easier, but I fall almost as deep into my male characters, sometime playing them the way i think a guy should act,  which my husband sometimes finds very funny and sometimes agrees that yes he would do that.

it doesn't really matter to me if they have a real voice or not.  I actually like having a voice better than not, but I can see where if I didn't like the voice actor it would throw me off.

I'm right with you. I've never had problems playing other characters before: Link, Kyle Katarn, Solid Snake etc. ME and ME2 allows significant customisation of your avatar - gender, facial features and outfit, plus enough dialog options to form a personality unique to yourself.

The problem we've had is that Bioware have utterly and irrevocably spoiled us by creating the be all and end all of character customisations with Origins. I'm on my fourth playthrough and i'm still finding new things in familiar scenarios.

It comes down to time and budget - there isn't enough of either to tell a quality tale that accounts for full customisation. DA:O took 5 years - this is out in what, 8 months time?

Anyway, i'm looking forward to taking "Tomma" out on his adventures next year.

I agree, BioWare has definately spoiled me.  I have 13 games for the pc and xbox 360 that I haven't sold and they include all of the BioWare games from KOTOR to Dragon Age.  I'm still playing ME and ME2   do we know they have only been working on it for 8 months?   I'll just hope for the best.

edit getting rid of spaces I didn't notice.

Modifié par mopotter, 16 juillet 2010 - 12:24 .

[Gegenlicht]

Said commonplace moral system that laymen have usually flies out of the window as soon as their own interests are in the furthest concerned. Which is a good thing. Enlightened self-interest is the best guideline one could hope for. Stress on enlightened, mind.



The thing about morals is that everybody likes to talk about them, but few people really care to live by them. A computer game decision never really being as hard as making actual sacrifices for the greater good (especially since you can always load an old save if you don't like the payoff) is always easy for people to put in a moral context. If they actually had to make similar decisions in the real world, I doubt they'd think about morality first, but would rather focus on their net gain.

[Sylvius the Mad]

In Exile wrote...

I wanted to call myself Virgil. I really liked that name. Apparently it was taken. Bothers me to no end.

Virgil is taken.  Virgil Romanus is not.

We've debating morality before. It is not that I think that there are objectively right and wrong answers to a moral question, so much as I think that there is a common place moral system that laymen have, and that it is plausible to divide decisions as "good" or "bad" in an informal sense along that spectrum. You know me, Sylvius - you know I favour very strongly integrating versus rejecting the commonplace experience.

Right, whereas I generally claim to be unaware of this supposedly commonplace experience.

In the case of Redcliffe, Sten makes very good arguments for why it would be reckless and immoral to help defend the town.  His are easily the strongest arguments made on either side of the issue within the game.  Given that, I don't see how anyone (even someone with the layman's perspective) could hold that the opposite is obviously and undeniably true.

[errant_knight]

If what you say is a surprise to you, then you're in the third person. We exist in the first person, and we always know what we are going to say or do before we do it. Unless there is something frighteningly wrong with us. For many people, being in the third person feels more like you're steering another person through the game than like you are that person.

Modifié par errant_knight, 16 juillet 2010 - 12:55 .

[CoM Solaufein]

Might as well be FPS since this isn't really a role playing game any more. Seeing that they removed choices in the game.

[Vaeliorin]

*feels stupid not realizing In Exile was Virgil...waves*

Anyway, as to the initial question...I feel that the major difference between 1st and 3rd person narrative (as defined by the Bioware people) is mostly a matter of degrees of control. In Mass Effect/2, you basically have a broad brush to paint Shepard's personality, but you don't have any control over the finer details. Shepard is always going to basically be Shepard. In DA, you have a much finer brush to paint with, and as such you can truly make your character much closer to who you want them to be.



If you're only looking to identify with the broad strokes of a character (essentially, if you're happy playing an archetype) I can certainly see how a 3rd person narrative would be more appealing. However, if you really want to get down to nuts and bolts, to have control over every nuance of your character's personality, you need to have a first person narrative.



Admittedly, having a very active imagination also helps with the enjoyment of a first person narrative, and probably hurts enjoyment of third person narrative (as there's nothing quite so annoying as knowing how you character would say something, and then the voice actor saying it in a completely different manner.)

[Gegenlicht]

CoM Solaufein wrote...

Might as well be FPS since this isn't really a role playing game any more. Seeing that they removed choices in the game.

They removed two choices compared to DA:O

Race and Origin. Considering that in DA:O, the Origin was mostly irrelevant in the main game, barring the odd return to one's roots or settling of old scores that's not really a big loss.

[Gegenlicht]

errant_knight wrote...

If what you say is a surprise to you, then you're in the third person. We exist in the first person, and we always know what we are going to say or do before we do it. Unless there is something frighteningly wrong with us. For many people, being in the third person feels more like you're steering another person through the game than like you are that person.

Wrong in as far as narration is concerned. For one, there is such a thing as an omniscient third person narrator, secondly, you'd be surprised how many things you say, do or think that you didn't know you were going to before you did them. Some are automatisms, some brain mishaps, but you hardly actively think through most things you do.

[Sylvius the Mad]

Vaeliorin wrote...

If you're only looking to identify with the broad strokes of a character (essentially, if you're happy playing an archetype) I can certainly see how a 3rd person narrative would be more appealing. However, if you really want to get down to nuts and bolts, to have control over every nuance of your character's personality, you need to have a first person narrative.

That's just it.

To pull out a possible example from ME, suppose there was something Saren says to you at the end of ME that really irritates your Shepard by virtue of it being a particular type of failure of reasoning that bothers you.  This detail would be unknown to the game's designers or the game itself, but it could well have a gameplay consequence as it harden's Shepard's resolve.

Then, let's say at the beginning of ME2 the Illusive Man makes exactly the same sort of failure of reasoning.  You're playing the same character, so the same negative reaction should result.  But ME and ME2's interface is such that you might choose a suitably derisive response only to have Shepard be derisive about the wrong thing, and in fact praise the Illusive Man's thought process, the very thing that you had wanted to criticise.  That Shepard did that (and he did - it was explicitly portrayed there before you) suddenly invalidates all of the decisions you made in the previous game as far as they related to that hardened resolve.

As you say, if you're willing to direct your PC only very broadly without paying any heed to the underlying details behind his behaviour, then the ME approach works fine.  I find that I don't really know how to do that (I'm having a better time of it in ME2 - despite what I think is an inconsitent interpretation of Paragon vs. Renegade - but through 3 plays of ME I simply didn't get it), so the ME approach pretty much isn't fun: the gameplay feels inconsequential.

[In Exile]

[quote]Sylvius the Mad wrote...
I wanted to call myself Virgil. I really liked that name. Apparently it was taken. Bothers me to no end. [/quote]
Virgil is taken.  Virgil Romanus is not. [/quote]

I couldn't register the name when I tried to when the forum started. So I picked this name as a play on that, since as Virgil I am forced to be in exile from the old forums that I really liked.

...Maybe it only works for me as a thing. Meh.

[quote]Right, whereas I generally claim to be unaware of this supposedly commonplace experience.[/quote]

Is that it? I would have thought it was because you take normative positions, which I don't. At least the impression that I get is that you feel that speaking in "ought" about the world is appropriate in a way I don't.

[quote]In the case of Redcliffe, Sten makes very good arguments for why it would be reckless and immoral to help defend the town.  His are easily the strongest arguments made on either side of the issue within the game.  Given that, I don't see how anyone (even someone with the layman's perspective) could hold that the opposite is obviously and undeniably true.[/quote]

It is because morality is a feeling to the average person. Psychologically (if you're interested) morality works like disgust (it uses the same biological mechanism). So once people internalize a kind of moral framework, which is generally the social moral framework that is a mesh of a variety of different ideas, from religion to philosophy, to culture and so on, their reaction is automated.

To put it this way: Sten arguing the action would be moral (supposing it is against the societal view) would be akin to Sten discribing maggots as delicious and eating a few, and asking others to try. To the majority, the reaction is nausea. It is not a conscious or cognitive reaction - it is simply a knee jerk reaction because this is the institued moral framework.

We tend to disagree often because we disagree to the extent things are and should be conscious. Morality is, despite the feelings of philosophers on the matter, empirically speaking a very knee jerk reaction.

[Kalfear]

Querne wrote...

In RL I know what I will say, before I say it.

If I don´t know, it´s not my character.

Simply as that.
I haven´t played ME, but playing Leliana I clearly felt it as third person cause I accidently chose things I didn´t want to say or didn´t know she would say that way.

I would have less problems if the WHOLE sentence or even the beginning was displayed.
If I see it before, I can decide what fits my played character best.
The shortcuts are unpredictable and detached me from the character.

As Lel is NOT me, it was ok. But as Hawke is supposed to be me or, better I´d like to be Hawke.
I don´t want any stupid wheel with two words as options where "wood" can mean "I´d like to save the wood" and "lets have a quicky in the wood".

I just finished Leliannas Song and you right.
You never feel you are Lelianna, you feel you are just controling Lelianna

This is my concern for Hawke and the Dialog circle as well.
You just dont know what the character going to say so it doesnt feel like its you saying the things!

I had same issue with ME2 and I never felt connected to any characters in that game
This was one of the reasons why

[In Exile]

Vaeliorin wrote...

*feels stupid not realizing In Exile was Virgil...waves*

Hey! Good seeing an old face. *wave*

I switched to the old Neverwinter eye I had on the old forum for the sake of familiarity.

Anyway, as to the initial question...I feel that the major difference between 1st and 3rd person narrative (as defined by the Bioware people) is mostly a matter of degrees of control. In Mass Effect/2, you basically have a broad brush to paint Shepard's personality, but you don't have any control over the finer details. Shepard is always going to basically be Shepard. In DA, you have a much finer brush to paint with, and as such you can truly make your character much closer to who you want them to be.

Ah. I think I see. So you would say that to you, the details of your character's past are more important than the personality tendecies in the present? I have a very gestalt-like view of creating a character - the essence of the character is the series of traits, feelings, attitudes and intuitions that make the character up. So long as these are respect and actively reflected in the world, I am that character.

If you're only looking to identify with the broad strokes of a character (essentially, if you're happy playing an archetype) I can certainly see how a 3rd person narrative would be more appealing. However, if you really want to get down to nuts and bolts, to have control over every nuance of your character's personality, you need to have a first person narrative.

But I feel as if what I am looking for, control over attitude, intiution, feeling - these are fundamental bolts of the character. Yet I happen to feel the game which is in 3rd person narration is easier to connect too.

Hmm. Let us try some more background on my taste (I want to get to the bottom of this!).

I could not connect to characters when we had 2D portraits. I felt those characters had a particular... personality given to them by their artist. They were in a sense never mine, and I could never relate to them. There was something uniquely alien about that.

This is not something per se restricted to portraits. The fact we had essentially a fixed apperance in JE (3 character models per gender) made it very hard for me to relate to the character as it felt I was playing someone alien. Yet being able to switch heads on an identical body in KoTOR did not make me feel this way.

I know for a fact that to many, the addition of 3D and the removal of 2D portraits actually constrains the ability to RP. Yet I feel it does the opposite. So I think there is something here in particular that captures why I feel the 3rd person narrative game is more appropriate for RP. But I'm not sure what as of yet.

Admittedly, having a very active imagination also helps with the enjoyment of a first person narrative, and probably hurts enjoyment of third person narrative (as there's nothing quite so annoying as knowing how you character would say something, and then the voice actor saying it in a completely different manner.)

It is more than that. I have an incredibly active imagination. Probably moreso than most. Yet I cannot use it in a game because I feel restricted by the game as a whole. I will try to copy and paste what I wrote in another thread since it is really tiring trying to say the same thing in several threads:

"The problem is my imagination does poor work when giving garbage material. My imagination works when I'm free to control the environment and shape it as I please, not when I have A and B and have to create a logically consistent, non-contradictory (relative to known facts in the game), character consistent linkage between the two. Then it's just a rationalization. I get that for some people this is really fun. But not for me, and for others who argue for a voiced PC. To us, there is no possible way to involve your imagination in the game.

It's like saying - no, imagine that instead of Duncan dying, he lived, and Alistair is just confused (this is to the well, if you read the non-VO dialogue wrong and it leads to an outcome not consistent with your character's tone pretend it is a mistunderstanding). In both cases we have the same evidence after the fact: Alistar's voiced dialogue. The difference is that in one case you have explicit evidence of coming up with a counterfactual that contradicts an in-game event (because you saw it) while in the other you have to recognize it abstractly.

I get that not everyone plays the game this way - but to those of us who do, VO is a good thing. I say this constantly as I want your side to appreciate we care about RP and connections to our characters as much asyou do; you're just not getting why we're connected in the first place.


Alistair brings up his parentage. One of your options is "Ah, you'regoing to tell me you're an idiot." I took this to be sarcastic. It was offensive beause Alistair played it straight. There is an associated approval loss (-5). Now, you have two events: at the start, you decided,based on your character, that sarcasm was appopriate. The line was not delivered sarcsitically. But you now have the "opportunity" to use your imagination to have a made-up interaction with Alistair where this is rectified. But if you rectify it in any way that ends with him increasing his approval, you have broken from the reality of the game. So the game must resolve itself with no change in approval. So you are  effectively inventing a scenario for the sake of not feeling like the dialogue system constrained you. Which to me is just a rationalization.

Thisis what I mean by the example - that if there is physical evidence something took place, I cannot simply ignore it or wish it away. This is why I look to roleplaying very differently than other individuals. "

Modifié par In Exile, 16 juillet 2010 - 07:08 .

[Sylvius the Mad]

In Exile wrote...

I couldn't register the name when I tried to when the forum started. So I picked this name as a play on that, since as Virgil I am forced to be in exile from the old forums that I really liked.

...Maybe it only works for me as a thing. Meh.

I'm sure I'll get used to it.

Is that it? I would have thought it was because you take normative positions, which I don't. At least the impression that I get is that you feel that speaking in "ought" about the world is appropriate in a way I don't.

With regard to cognition, that's probably true.  I'm willing to ask people to do things that are possible, as opposed to simply typical.

It is because morality is a feeling to the average person. Psychologically (if you're interested) morality works like disgust (it uses the same biological mechanism).

Some things disgust me, but I see no reason why I would take the further step to assert that those disgusting things are immoral.  Partly because I don't see why one would be relevant to the other, and partly because I have no reason to believe that others share my preferences (so who am I to tell them what is right and what is wrong, and conversely who are they?).

So once people internalize a kind of moral framework, which is generally the social moral framework that is a mesh of a variety of different ideas, from religion to philosophy, to culture and so on, their reaction is automated.

I'm well aware that's how people apply their moral framework.  What I don't get is how they get one on the first place.  Almost every person does, and to happen again and again millions of times there must be some sort of common mechanism, but I've no idea what it is, and don't think I can claim any first-hand experience of it.

Modifié par Sylvius the Mad, 16 juillet 2010 - 07:07 .