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[upsettingshorts]

maxernst wrote...
Ah, I had forgotten that.  Still don't think the cinematic with him getting hired adds anything to the game.

Well, if you're watching it as a third person narrative, it shows Howe as rather comfortable with doing the nasty business of doing away with potential rivals.  Loghain seems to strike me in that scene as somewhat uncomfortable and burdened by such necessities.

It adds nothing to the Warden's perspective, but in terms of it informing on the overall narrative and Loghain and Howe's characters, it does.  But you may or may not care about them. 

Modifié par Upsettingshorts, 31 octobre 2010 - 02:16 .

[soteria]

Ah, I had forgotten that. Still don't think the cinematic with him getting hired adds anything to the game.

It made killing Howe that much more satisfactory for non-human nobles, who had less motivation to kill him. That's something.

[maxernst]

AlanC9 wrote...

maxernst wrote...

Jedi31293 wrote...

I prefer a real cutscene over a scripted event. While some games have done scripted events well (Call of Duty, Half-Life) a lot of games can't pull off good scripted events (*cough* Assassin's Creed *cough*). To be honest, a scripted event is simply a cutscene with only one camera (the player's). It's not like you can actually change what happens during the event.
In my opinion, a cutscene does far more to immerse the player in a situation. Not only are there different and dramatic camera angles, the music fits perfectly with the cinematography and everything is choreographed for a certain purpose. These things just cannot be achieved by allowing the player to control the camera or having one camera.
Would any of the intense conversations with the Council in ME1 have been as dramatic or effective if the entire thing had taken place from over the shoulder of Commander Shepard? Close-ups, arms waving, fingers pointing, and facial expressions were all choreographed together during these scenes to make a point.

See, this is where we fundamentally differ.  Changing camera angles makes the game much less immersive; it reminds me that I'm watching something, and I'm not really there.  And when they do it in battle, it disorients and confuses me.  Besides, you actually can (sometimes) interfere with a scripted sequence.  It depends on the game and the scene.  And even if you can't, at least you're in control of how your character reacts to the script.  But as I've said before, dialog cut scenes don't bother me that much, it's the "it's a boss battle" cut scene, the "I have to hit the player over the head with the fact that new enemies have entered the room" cut scenes, the cut scenes portraying events outside my characters knowledge that bother me.

Reading this, it occurs to me that you two are thinking of different things when you think of cutscenes, with only minimal overlap. I doubt Jedi31293  is a huge fan of the Noveria in-battle cutscenes, and I'm pretty sure you're not actually objecting to the way ME handled the Council cutscenes.

Yes, and no.  I don't mind the way they handled the Council scenes, but I don't think it's more immersive.  I'll concede that it may be more dramatic.

[Maria Caliban]

soteria wrote...

Actually, I killed him the first time I played as well, but I still interrogated him first. From my character's perspective, I was trying to learn more about whoever sent him. It didn't make sense to kill him outright without getting some information first. But, I agree that taking Zevran along at all is a questionable decision without metagaming. I suspect a lot of the players who RP more loosely just figure, "Eh, it's a game; if he betrays me or something I can always just kill him." After all, it's not as though the player has to worry about dying if he chooses wrong.

That's a good point.

My own take on things is that my Warden has internalized the implicit and explicit rules of the game. For example, she doesn't think it's odd that a helpless villager wearing only clothing can be cut down with a single blow but a hardened warrior wearing only clothing can take sword blow after sword blow and be fine.

Likewise, if an assassin swears to serve you, then they probably won't betray you because that's the way people work.

Modifié par Maria Caliban, 31 octobre 2010 - 02:33 .

[Bullets McDeath]

Maria Caliban wrote...

soteria wrote...

Actually, I killed him the first time I played as well, but I still interrogated him first. From my character's perspective, I was trying to learn more about whoever sent him. It didn't make sense to kill him outright without getting some information first. But, I agree that taking Zevran along at all is a questionable decision without metagaming. I suspect a lot of the players who RP more loosely just figure, "Eh, it's a game; if he betrays me or something I can always just kill him." After all, it's not as though the player has to worry about dying if he chooses wrong.

That's a good point.

My own take on things is that my Warden has internalized the implicit and explicit rules of the game. For example, she doesn't think it's odd that a helpless villager wearing only clothing can be cut down with a single blow but a hardened warrior wearing only clothing can take sword blow after sword blow and be fine.

Likewise, if an assassin swears to serve you, then they probably won't betray you because that's the way people work.

In the case of Zevran and Sten I usually RP that my Warden intends to have them undergo the Joining later and that is why he rescues them. If you think about it, they are both likely candidates considering they have no future unless they join the Warden. Of course, this falls apart slightly when you never get the chance to conscript them, but... just sayin.

[Mr. Man]

Jedi31293 wrote...

I prefer a real cutscene over a scripted event. While some games have done scripted events well (Call of Duty, Half-Life) a lot of games can't pull off good scripted events (*cough* Assassin's Creed *cough*). To be honest, a scripted event is simply a cutscene with only one camera (the player's). It's not like you can actually change what happens during the event.
In my opinion, a cutscene does far more to immerse the player in a situation. Not only are there different and dramatic camera angles, the music fits perfectly with the cinematography and everything is choreographed for a certain purpose. These things just cannot be achieved by allowing the player to control the camera or having one camera.
Would any of the intense conversations with the Council in ME1 have been as dramatic or effective if the entire thing had taken place from over the shoulder of Commander Shepard? Close-ups, arms waving, fingers pointing, and facial expressions were all choreographed together during these scenes to make a point.

^^ YES ^^

[soteria]

That's a good point.

My own take on things is that my Warden has internalized the implicit and explicit rules of the game. For example, she doesn't think it's odd that a helpless villager wearing only clothing can be cut down with a single blow but a hardened warrior wearing only clothing can take sword blow after sword blow and be fine.

Likewise, if an assassin swears to serve you, then they probably won't betray you because that's the way people work.

I always have the hardest time forgetting that my character has HP. It's really hard for me to take a threat to my character's life credibly, because I know that a single arrow or spell isn't the threat it should be. Likewise, the decision to abandon Redcliffe feels more evil than it ought. The question that is posed seems to be, "Are these villagers worth your time," when it ought to be "Are these villagers worth risking your life?" Maybe if I played a no-reload game on my first time through I'd get a better RP experience, but I don't have the patience.

[Elvhen Veluthil]

I don't remember having played any game with scripted sequences recently, but I think that I prefer cutscenes also. The problem with DAO for me was the dialog system with the full VO and the close-up camera at every single dialog in the game. It was like watching a cutscene every time I spoke to someone. Never had that problem with Baldur's Gate, where the few cutscenes shown was nice to watch (Gorion death, Irenicus meeting with the drows in the Underdark, etc).



The discussion about what kind of facts are presented to the PC through a cutscene is an interesting one, then again not a single cutscene annoyed me in BG in this aspect, and I bet some meta-gaming information was given through some of them, so I'd say that if rightly done cutscenes can work just fine and even enhance the epic feeling of a game.

[AlanC9]

soteria wrote...

I always have the hardest time forgetting that my character has HP. It's really hard for me to take a threat to my character's life credibly, because I know that a single arrow or spell isn't the threat it should be. Likewise, the decision to abandon Redcliffe feels more evil than it ought. The question that is posed seems to be, "Are these villagers worth your time," when it ought to be "Are these villagers worth risking your life?" Maybe if I played a no-reload game on my first time through I'd get a better RP experience, but I don't have the patience.

Isn't this an issue with the incentives in RPGs generally? Even if you're not getting kill XP or playing in a learn-by-doing system, all the quests involve the character doing things that are supposedly dangerous. They can't actually be dangerous with out a no-reload game, as you mention.

Of course, there are plenty of historical examples of men willing to run atrocious risks in pursuit of gold, or fame, or some such reward.

Modifié par AlanC9, 31 octobre 2010 - 05:05 .

[soteria]

Isn't this an issue with the incentives in RPGs generally? Even if you're not getting kill XP or playing in a learn-by-doing system, all the quests involve the character doing things that are supposedly dangerous. They can't actually be dangerous with out a no-reload game, as you mention.

Of course, there are plenty of historical examples of men willing to run atrocious risks in pursuit of gold, or fame, or some such reward.

Yeah.... it is. I'd rather not get into that whole "equal rewards for non-combat solutions" thing, though. It's true that people take great risks for things they value, but like I said, you're really not ever taking a risk. This whole discussion is tempting me to attempt DA2 as a no-reload for my first complete playthrough--I'm curious how it would affect my decisions when I don't know what's around the corner.

[maxernst]

soteria wrote...

That's a good point.
My own take on things is that my Warden has internalized the implicit and explicit rules of the game. For example, she doesn't think it's odd that a helpless villager wearing only clothing can be cut down with a single blow but a hardened warrior wearing only clothing can take sword blow after sword blow and be fine.
Likewise, if an assassin swears to serve you, then they probably won't betray you because that's the way people work.

I always have the hardest time forgetting that my character has HP. It's really hard for me to take a threat to my character's life credibly, because I know that a single arrow or spell isn't the threat it should be. Likewise, the decision to abandon Redcliffe feels more evil than it ought. The question that is posed seems to be, "Are these villagers worth your time," when it ought to be "Are these villagers worth risking your life?" Maybe if I played a no-reload game on my first time through I'd get a better RP experience, but I don't have the patience.

I think I usually do play my characters to be cautious about accepting certain risks, but I've always felt Redcliffe to be worth the risk because I couldn't see any ;point in going back there (game mechanics aside) if you don't.  If you don't save the village, Teagan probably dies with it, Eamon is probably dead anyway and even if he isn't, shouldn't the undead army still block you from getting to the castle?  Do we assume that Teagan conveniently kills the very last undead?  So I figure, either I abandon the idea of getting help from Redcliffe completely or I try to save the village. 

On the other hand, my canon PC didn't kill the dragon at the ashes or Flemeth because he did't see that the potential gain was worth the risk.  A lot of smaller quests-dealing with bandits and so forth--my character has confidence in his abilities and I guess you could argue that he has OOC knowledge that he can't die from a random arrow wound.  But is that just OOC knowledge or just confidence based on experience?   

[Sylvius the Mad]

soteria wrote...

It made killing Howe that much more satisfactory for non-human nobles, who had less motivation to kill him. That's something.

I think that knowledge of Howe would only be interesting if the Warden chooses not to kill him.

If I have the Warden act only on information he actually possesses, then he might choose to let some very bad people live.  If the player is aware of how bad those people are, that might make the encounter more interesting.

Though I suspect most players would have the Warden kill those people, even if that would be out of character.

[AlanC9]

IIRC, the game doesn't actually give you a choice to not kill Howe as it stands.

[Sylvius the Mad]

AlanC9 wrote...

IIRC, the game doesn't actually give you a choice to not kill Howe as it stands.

I know.

SInce the information available to the Warden is sufficient to cause him to want to kill Howe, the extra information available to the player (but not the Warden) adds nothing.

[soteria]

IIRC, the game doesn't actually give you a choice to not kill Howe as it stands.

It probably should. That encounter feels a little forced, at times. That one and Jarvia--I feel like if they're going to berate the player for doing something (slaughtering Jarvia and her henchman, killing Howe), then you should have some sort of choice in the matter.