75 réponses à ce sujet

[Xilizhra]

And Grunt, Legion and Samara aren't mandatory recruitment either. So, yeah, it looks like Mordin is going down.

[RiouHotaru]

GodWood wrote...

hong wrote...
Hiding the death behind layers of subtlety and hinting, or having it occur only several stages later in the mission, or having it occur to someone else not referenced in the dialogue, will only serve to make the player feel cheated.

If thats the case then said player is childish and needs to understand in mature forms of media not everything is sunshine and lollypops.

Also fully agree that making the death a random die roll only leads to save-and-reload.

Indeed, hence why the deaths would have to be scripted and unavoidable.

But then how does the game decide WHO dies?  That's what'll lead to the save-and-reload.  We understand the death itself is scripted and unavoidable, but how is the unfortunate character picked for the role?

Also, this will just lead to people hacking their saves to ensure everyone lives.  People have already hacked their saves to say who's alive or not (aka Worst Possible Importable Playthrough thread), mandatory deaths will just lead to the opposite, hacking saves to say that everyone is alive.

[RiouHotaru]

hong wrote...

A mandatory death should be the immediate result of a clear decision on Shepard's part, made in the knowledge that the person on the other end (and only that person) will die. Hiding the death behind layers of subtlety and hinting, or having it occur only several stages later in the mission, or having it occur to someone else not referenced in the dialogue, will only serve to make the player feel cheated.

Also fully agree that making the death a random die roll only leads to save-and-reload.

Also, this.  Virmire worked because it fit this criteria.  You made that decision, knowing rightly so that the other person was going to die and that there was nothing you could do that would enable you to prevent said death.  You should NOT remove the choice from the player's hand, in the case of this style of RPG.

[kraidy1117]

-have a character vs character for everyone

-you have to pick a side, no charm or intimidate thus people will always be unloyal.

-more ship upgrades

-more missions in the suicide mission

-Miranda will try to kill you if she is unloyal and if you destroy the base

-other characters doing stupid things if they are not loyal in YOUR squad.



There is many ways the SM could have been harder.

[Xilizhra]

Having to always pick a side is really rather silly. In general, there's no reason for Shepard to do so; it's bad form to favor one crew member over another.

[Jenova65]

Xilizhra wrote...

And Grunt, Legion and Samara aren't mandatory recruitment either. So, yeah, it looks like Mordin is going down.

Yeah, pretty much and that would be a crying shame because he is better than most squad mates in ME2!

[ScooterPie88]

GodWood wrote...

hong wrote...
Hiding the death behind layers of subtlety and hinting, or having it occur only several stages later in the mission, or having it occur to someone else not referenced in the dialogue, will only serve to make the player feel cheated.

If thats the case then said player is childish and needs to understand in mature forms of media not everything is sunshine and lollypops.

Also fully agree that making the death a random die roll only leads to save-and-reload.

Indeed, hence why the deaths would have to be scripted and unavoidable.

How is it mature to have meaningless mandatory deaths?  I fail to see a connection.  Yes people tend to die more in media made for an older audience but they live just as often.  This might sound rediculous but I remember The Rugrats mother's day episode.  Chuckie could remember his mom even though she had died (granted it was in the past and not shown) but that show was for a fairly young, immature audience.
Death in and of itself does not make something mature or immature.

Another example:  I'm a big fan of the Halo series (probably more of one than a lot of people).  I play the games, buy the special consoles, get the legendary editions, read the books, own lots of posters, etc.  Still I couldn't get into Halo Reach's campaign because I knew they were all going to die from the start.  Now one might argue that knowing the end is only part of it and I agree to an extent.  I saw my brother beat ME1 before I did and a friend beat ME2 before I finished and I asked him to show me the ending.  But if I know everyone is a deadman walking what's my motivation to care?  Why should I emotionally invest in characters and make attempts to connect with them if nothing I do is going to matter?  It worked in ME1 because I didn't really care that much about Kaidan.  Still if I had the oppurtunity to save both people on Virmire I would have.  They did it once in ME1 and it was cool and unique and innovative and all the rest of that crap.  But if they do it again it doesn't have any of that.  I much prefer ME2 where who lives and dies is completely in my hands (though I always save everyone; seeing the bad results is what Youtube is for).

[Lunatic LK47]

ScooterPie88 wrote...
Another example:  I'm a big fan of the Halo series (probably more of one than a lot of people).  I play the games, buy the special consoles, get the legendary editions, read the books, own lots of posters, etc.  Still I couldn't get into Halo Reach's campaign because I knew they were all going to die from the start.  Now one might argue that knowing the end is only part of it and I agree to an extent.  I saw my brother beat ME1 before I did and a friend beat ME2 before I finished and I asked him to show me the ending.  But if I know everyone is a deadman walking what's my motivation to care?  Why should I emotionally invest in characters and make attempts to connect with them if nothing I do is going to matter?  It worked in ME1 because I didn't really care that much about Kaidan.  Still if I had the oppurtunity to save both people on Virmire I would have.  They did it once in ME1 and it was cool and unique and innovative and all the rest of that crap.  But if they do it again it doesn't have any of that.  I much prefer ME2 where who lives and dies is completely in my hands (though I always save everyone; seeing the bad results is what Youtube is for).

Coming from someone who played the Halo games and loved reading the novels (I'm only sticking with the Eric Nylund ones, for the record, and could not finish Contact Harvest, and hated both the Flood and Cole Protocol equally.), I can understand where you're coming from. On one hand, you're right about the "Hard to connect with the characters if they're going to die" part, but on the other hand, Reach's campaign was miles better than all of the previous campaigns combined in terms of tone, setting, and character development. To be honest, I felt like Reach was an overglorified prototype of "This is how Fall of Reach would play out if they made the novel in a game format." The one problem I somewhat had with the Halo GAMES was that Halo's story just felt shallow and was nothing more than a typical "We humans are good guys, aliens bad, let's kick ass with a Terminator clone." Hell, if it weren't for Fall of Reach, I wouldn't have even cared about the Master Chief, nor even care about humanity's survival. There is something wrong with the story design in that aspect: If you're forced to rely on secondary material just to get the basic backstory, the storytelling is either mediocre or bad.  Even Gears of War has that problem (i.e. who's who is only answered, but why we're in war with the Locust, why Sera is being attacked, not to mention why the hell I should keep Marcus Fenix alive is not even answered. It's more or less "Fenix, we need you because we don't have the manpower" and nothing else comes of it.)

Fall of Reach is how I felt the main games should have been from the get-go, where every battle was a pyhrric victory, but at least you're making *SOME* difference in the war (whether it should end on a happy ending or "heavy price paid" ending, I'm open to either), but not on the bull**** level that Fallout 3 throws at you (i.e. Path A is "Keep status quo the same" and Path B is "You'll FUBAR things more than you do in Path A."). The main trilogy however, felt meh because of the faux "Biblical" references and the shoehorning of the Flood race in pretty much almost every single title (I only like ODST and Reach because we don't have to deal with those annoying bastards)

[GodWood]

RiouHotaru wrote...

GodWood wrote...

hong wrote...
Hiding the death behind layers of subtlety and hinting, or having it occur only several stages later in the mission, or having it occur to someone else not referenced in the dialogue, will only serve to make the player feel cheated.

If thats the case then said player is childish and needs to understand in mature forms of media not everything is sunshine and lollypops.

Also fully agree that making the death a random die roll only leads to save-and-reload.

Indeed, hence why the deaths would have to be scripted and unavoidable.

But then how does the game decide WHO dies?  That's what'll lead to the save-and-reload.

No it would not because no matter what the character would die.  

We understand the death itself is scripted and unavoidable, but how is the unfortunate character picked for the role?

Whatever fits best story wise.

Also, this will just lead to people hacking their saves to ensure everyone lives.  People have already hacked their saves to say who's alive or not (aka Worst Possible Importable Playthrough thread), mandatory deaths will just lead to the opposite, hacking saves to say that everyone is alive.

You really didn't understand what I said at all did you?
Scripted and unavoidable deaths means this certain character (or characters) dies in everyones game.
Hacking won't save them.

[GodWood]

ScooterPie88 wrote...
I couldn't get into Halo Reach's campaign because I knew they were all going to die from the start.

Do you take this approach in RL too? why bother meeting these people they're going to die anyway. 

But if I know everyone is a deadman walking what's my motivation to care?  Why should I emotionally invest in characters and make attempts to connect with them if nothing I do is going to matter?

Same as above.

It worked in ME1 because I didn't really care that much about Kaidan.

If you didn't care about the character then it didn't work.

[hong]

GodWood wrote...

ScooterPie88 wrote...
I couldn't get into Halo Reach's campaign because I knew they were all going to die from the start.

Do you take this approach in RL too? why bother meeting these people they're going to die anyway.

Indeed, fiction would be so much easier if it was just like reality.

If you didn't care about the character then it didn't work.

We can paraphrase this approach to storytelling as follows.
Step 1. Assume a pliable audience.
Step 2. ???
Step 3. Profit!

[Jenova65]

GodWood wrote...

It worked in ME1 because I didn't really care that much about Kaidan.

If you didn't care about the character then it didn't work.

This is a very valid point, by Virmire I cared for Ashley and Kaidan, it was a choice that made me cry (in the same way that watching 'Beaches', makes me cry, but more so because I carried the weight of the decision)
But given that this has already been done it doesn't need re doing, it is pulling on the same strings as last time and wouldn't work so well, just imo you understand.
I do see the point of mandatory death, and I do think it can work well, as I stated it worked well on Virmire but because of that another mandatory death or deaths like that in the franchise just would seem forced like the worst kind of cheesy movie that is trying to ''pull at the heartstrings'', that tends to have the opposite effect on me and I am a blubber at movies..........

[RiouHotaru]

GodWood wrote...
You really didn't understand what I said at all did you?
Scripted and unavoidable deaths means this certain character (or characters) dies in everyones game.
Hacking won't save them.

You also realize the game just has flags in the file that marks who's alive and who's dead.  They're easily adjustable.  People have done games in ME1 where Ashley/Kaidan "died" on Virmire but they kept using them in the game anyway.  Scripts and events can be broken.

[Dean_the_Young]

Xilizhra wrote...

Having to always pick a side is really rather silly. In general, there's no reason for Shepard to do so; it's bad form to favor one crew member over another.

There are occassions, though, where it's impossible to get any resolution without picking a side, and the other participants won't allow you to middle along. It's already well past good form when one crewmate is nearly attacking another.

Modifié par Dean_the_Young, 11 novembre 2010 - 10:50 .

[GodWood]

RiouHotaru wrote...

GodWood wrote...
You really didn't understand what I said at all did you?
Scripted and unavoidable deaths means this certain character (or characters) dies in everyones game.
Hacking won't save them.

You also realize the game just has flags in the file that marks who's alive and who's dead.  They're easily adjustable.  People have done games in ME1 where Ashley/Kaidan "died" on Virmire but they kept using them in the game anyway.  Scripts and events can be broken.

You still do not understand.
The character who dies death would be unavoidable.
Yes, you could hack your game so the character still appears alive but that wouldn't matter as they are dead in the story and thus would not be in ME3.

Just like Saren, Benezia etc.

[Dean_the_Young]

As you'll never be able to access all possible content in ME3 in a single playthrough regardless considering all the choices (and variations of choices) to date, limited survivors is not 'gutting' content from the player any more than being male gutted your love interest path, being a certain background gutted another, or even paragon and renegade choices in general.



It's a different path. Which, as you have to replay at least once anyway in order to do another gender/do the other binary choices, means that it would be simply a matter of not choosing the same people who would die on the second play through.

[Stick668]

Interesting topic.

I agree that the forced binary choice of Virmire 1) worked and 2) should probably not be repeated.

One way of making a mandatory NPC death work, would be to make it inevitable.

No, stay with me.

What I mean is, give the character a story arc with a logical conclusion. That conclusion being "getting killed in appropriate circumstances quite possibly by their own choice". (If this steps on the toes of "player agency"... well, we are talking about mandatory death. Why even pretend it's in the Shepard's hands?)

Options include:

Heroic sacrifice (pick a story, any story), logical consequence of the character's unique case of bonkers (everyone in Reservoir Dogs), unrequited love making a point (I dunno, Annah in Planescape? Not mandatory, I know), suicide-with-style (Thelma & Louise) or... well, "I'm a leaf on the wind." (Serenity. As in, "Hey, I completed my specific job-" *SHURK* )

That's the most workable approach I can think of, at any rate.

Modifié par Stick668, 11 novembre 2010 - 02:01 .

[Killjoy Cutter]

Dean_the_Young wrote...

If you've been around awhile, you've probably heard the argument for how the Suicide Mission could have been improved by making it impossible to have a perfect run-through, versus that not adding anything/being too hard to do/being a punishment..

Honestly, I think the best solution would have been for BioWare to never refer to it as a "suicide mission" so that people didn't get hung up on it. 

[SimonTheFrog]

I can see why there is a demand for more mature story elements. And it's always startling to see what happens if films and what doesn't happen in games. Games are incredibly retro in that matter.

But games are more intense because you spend more time with each character. I spend countless (well, they can be counted... i mean a lot) hours with certain characters if it's the ones i take to missions. I feel much more connected to my ME-squadmates then to some secondary character in any movie. It is a bit different in TV-series. But they also usually make an immense deal out of a characters death, even if it's a secondary one. 
Also, it's not just screen-time spent it's also the active role the player takes. This intensifies feelings also because we feel a bit responsible for what happens to the NPC's around our hero. This is not the case in films.
Therefore a death of a secondary protagonist in a film cannot be easily equaled with the death of a secondary protagonist of a game. Mainly, the game one is likely to hurt much more.

Therefore game devs need to be much more careful how to "kill" important allied characters. As has been pointed out, copying Virmire is a no-go. It would feel artificial and the emotional impact of the first would turn into frustration or indifference.

Also, another problem with ME2 is, that there are too many new characters and not enough dialog with each. They are not as close to the player as Kaidan or Ashley were (if you let them come close anyway). In one of my first runs i had Jacob do the vent-run because he said he want's to do it. You cannot imagine how little i cared when he got rocketed (nice i invented a new verb ^^).

So, for some players and some character's it's not even a big deal if they die in the SM, so there would be no improvement in maturity at all.

Generally i think maturity comes with vulnerability and complexity of characters. When Shep says in LotSB that he or she feels depressed how all he or she's ever doing is trying to survive fights against neverending waves of enemies (it's not working here but it does when she says it, believe me ), than this is mature and awesome. Or the ambivalence within Ash's character. There's stuff i like and stuff i think she should work on (e.g. her xenophobish traits)... but that's great, people are self-contradictory and multi-faceted and a mature fiction reflects that. 

So, i think it shouldn't be about who dies and who lives but what are they talking about while they live.

Modifié par SimonTheFrog, 11 novembre 2010 - 03:28 .

[Jenova65]

SimonTheFrog wrote...

I can see why there is a demand for more mature story elements. And it's always startling to see what happens if films and what doesn't happen in games. Games are incredibly retro in that matter.

But games are more intense because you spend more time with each character. I spend countless (well, they can be counted... i mean a lot) hours with certain characters if it's the ones i take to missions. I feel much more connected to my ME-squadmates then to some secondary character in any movie. It is a bit different in TV-series. But they also usually make an immense deal out of a characters death, even if it's a secondary one. 
Also, it's not just screen-time spent it's also the active role the player takes. This intensifies feelings also because we feel a bit responsible for what happens to the NPC's around our hero. This is not the case in films.
Therefore a death of a secondary protagonist in a film cannot be easily equaled with the death of a secondary protagonist of a game. Mainly, the game one is likely to hurt much more.

Therefore game devs need to be much more careful how to "kill" important allied characters. As has been pointed out, copying Virmire is a no-go. It would feel artificial and the emotional impact of the first would turn into frustration or indifference.

Also, another problem with ME2 is, that there are too many new characters and not enough dialog with each. They are not as close to the player as Kaidan or Ashley were (if you let them come close anyway). In one of my first runs i had Jacob do the vent-run because he said he want's to do it. You cannot imagine how little i cared when he got rocketed (nice i invented a new verb ^^).

So, for some players and some character's it's not even a big deal if they die in the SM, so there would be no improvement in maturity at all.

Generally i think maturity comes with vulnerability and complexity of characters. When Shep says in LotSB that he or she feels depressed how all he or she's ever doing is trying to survive fights against neverending waves of enemies (it's not working here but it does when she says it, believe me ), than this is mature and awesome. Or the ambivalence within Ash's character. There's stuff i like and stuff i think she should work on (e.g. her xenophobish traits)... but that's great, people are self-contradictory and multi-faceted and a mature fiction reflects that. 

So, i think it shouldn't be about who dies and who lives but what are they talking about while they live.

And here endeth the lesson............... Very well said!

[ScooterPie88]

Real life and a game are COMPLETELY different. Most times people I meet in real life aren't 10 hours away from death (like in a game). You're making an invalid comparison.

[Gokuthegrate]

Why is everyone obsessed with having charecters die. You dont need charecters to die for it to be a SM. The fact that the odds say someone will likely die doesnt mean you cant prove them wrong.Since when was beating the odds and getting everyone out alive a bad thing?

When I first did the Virmire mission do you know how long I replayed that mission thinking i screwed up.

Forcing you to kill off charecters doesnt make the game better.I admit that the roles were easy to figure out maybe BW could of added some that werent so obvious.

[tallon1982]

SDCrush wrote...

Moiaussi wrote...

Obi wan died in Star Wars.. who EXACTLY died in Empire Strikes Back?

Gandalf seemed to die to the Balrog in Fellowship of the Ring.  Boromir dies at the start of The Two Towers, but
Gandalf returns, not dead after all. And Boromir's betrayal had happened in Fellowship rather than Two Towers as well.

I think you need to find better examples

Empire Strikes Back:
rebel base on Hoth destroyed
rebel forces thinned considerably
Lando - coerced to betray his friends.
Han - frozen in Carbonite.
Luke - loses a hand and is sunk in depression

Two Towers:
Boromir - dies
Sarumon - betrays humankind (could be argued he did so in Fellowship, but he never did anything more than hold Gandalf, so...)
Helm's Deep - yeah, they won.  How many died?  And not even fighting Sauron, either....
Frodo - poisoned, loses ring (to Sam), captured deep behind enemy lines

If you're looking strictly at main character death, you might not be finding much.  Keep in mind that a trilogy of books can afford to do things differently here; ending a video game, even the middle of a trilogy, on a depressing pseudo-cliffhanger like either of those books would cause riots.  End with a victory over Collectors/Harbinger, though, and it's just a story of triumph and perseverence and kittens and rainbows.  The whole atmosphere of this game is darker and grittier than ME1, obviously, but IMO the developers didn't go far enough.


On a more relevant note:

Big stupid jellyfish wrote

If I could re-make the suicide mission I guess I would've played with
loyalities more. At least that's the first thing that comes to my mind.

If there had been one major change I would have loved to see this.  It just makes so much sense.  I know it would have been a lot more work for scripting/implementing but it could have added so much.

Not all is entirely accurate...

ESB the entire RA isn't on Hoth because they wouldn't be foolish enough to put a majority of their forces there. The only reason ESB is considered dark is because of the events that happen but no one does die as was pointed out. Yes a lot of crap happens but the ending holds hope and the main characters survive. Lando seeks to redeem himself by doing all he can to save Han and only betrayed them to save Cloud City. Leia discovered her feelings towards Han and Luke found out the truth despite the loss of his hand which he regains in getting an 'implant.'

As far as the Two Towers...Boromir dies in Fellowship and Saurman's betrayal is also in Fellowship. Also Frodo is stabbed by the Nazgul in Fellowship which poison's him and thus saved by Elrond in Rivendell. TT's brought back Gandalf to show that he has become the successor to Saurman, he frees Theoden from his nightmare and he turns the tide of the fight in Helm's Deep which doesn't have all the soldiers in Rohan thus not being a total wipe out. You get to see in ROTK that the army of Rohan is fairly big and most couldn't make it in time which is told to Theoden by one of his men.

Sidenote...Best line ever..."I am no man!" Eowyn for the win!

Back to topic lol

Both of these movies showed that despite the coming darkness there is still hope. If you weren't able to save your entire team then the third game would be the same as the first two and how boring would that be? Gather a team, lose someone or a few and defeat the bad guy. I'd rather not have to jump through hoops to get team members and go through a bunch of loyalty missions again when I could be kicking Reaper ass. It was said before that if we just had to pick who has to die like in ME1 it wouldn't have the same feeling. It becomes a running joke because we'll expect it in the third game. I have no doubt that in the next ME game we'll be given some sort of major decision that could wipe out a lot of our favorite teammates. It would imo be more emotional to kill off teammates in the 'final chapter' of the trilogy to show what it took to sacrifce in the final showdown. -shrugs- I could be totally wrong though and it wouldn't be the first time

[GodWood]

ScooterPie88 wrote...
Real life and a game are COMPLETELY different. Most times people I meet in real life aren't 10 hours away from death (like in a game).

You don't know that, they could drop dead at any minute.
Besides you're never going to see these characters after the series anyway so might as well have some go out with a bang.

[Lumikki]

kraidy1117 wrote...

I still find it sad that Virmire was a better suicide mission then the attack on the Collector base. O_o

How?

I mean Virmire was just run trough, one of easyest mission ever. Only real different was that one of you team member will die in Virmire. It doesn't matter what you do, one allways dies. Is that better? In Collector base at least you needed to think who's doing what, as what your squad members abilities where and it affected the outcome. meaning in Collector base missions players choise had meaning. In Virmine you only had one choise, you want to kill Kaiden or Asley. Wrex was maybe other choise as you can deside to kill him or not.

Modifié par Lumikki, 12 novembre 2010 - 11:17 .