Guest_Luc0s_*
bEVEsthda wrote...
As I see it, this is a Skyrim thread. You are, for unknown reasons, intellectually unable to discern or sense the RPG experience in Skyrim (I and others have that, so it does exist). That is the only question of interest for me. Yes, a lot of it is in the head. But that is always true. Always. You can't dismiss this by saying it's "just a fantasy in your head". That is also true about any story you experience. It's true about watching a movie. The means to guide and nurture that fantasy differs, but it always takes place in your head.
Well, if it's all in your head then you can't really credit the game for it can you? After all, everything in your headi is a product of your own imagination, not a product of Skyrim.
But my issue is not that the roleplaying takes place in my head. My issue is that I find myself unable to express my roleplaying properly in the game. I can created the most complicated characters inside my head, but they will never be properly protrayed in the game, they will always be stuck in my head and seperate from the game.
Skyrim does not really give you the tools to truly roleplay your character within the game itself. There will always be a barrier between your imagination and the video-game. This is obviously not due to poor game-design, but due to technical restrictions and limidations. Therefor roleplaying of this kind is near impossible in video-games. They work fine in a Pens 'n Paper environment because the other players and the game-master, who represents the world, can directly react to everything I do. When I roleplay a character in a PnP environment, I can express them through acting (I act as my character), and then the game-master and other players acknowledge my acting and react accordingly. This action-reaction, this back-and-forth interaction between my acting and the game-master's reacting is the core of roleplaying as I see it.
Being acknowledged is really important to me. I want the world around me to acknowledge me and my actions. Without such acknowledgement, roleplaying seems meaningless.
In Skyrim, you can do whatever you want, but it does not change your character or the environment. It has no consequences. I can basically murder the entire family of Lars Battle-Born (the annoying kid in Whiterun), then pay off my bounty and then when I walk up to Lars Battle-Born, he greets me as if nothing has happened. Not a single f*ck was given that day. The character dialogue also doesn't change. No matter what I do or how I do it, I always have the same limited dialogue options when I talk to people. This really bothers me and makes roleplaying in Skyrim meaningless to me.
bEVEsthda wrote...
And rather than talking about Skyrim, we might get farther on that subject, by discussing why and how you experience "roleplaying" in games like DA2, ME,... Or maybe overall in games which heavily depend upon cutscenes?
I'll use The Witcher 2 as an example, as I think it's a better roleplaying game than both Mass Effect and Dragon Age, but also really cutscene-heavy.
I think The Witcher 2 comes much closer to the traditional PnP RPG experience than Skyrim does. In The Witcher you get to think and act as Geralt. You get to be Geralt. You make the decisions as Geralt and you interact with the world as Geralt. The Witcher provokes you to think "what would Geralt do? or what would I do if were Geralt?". That is roleplaying. And the world of The Witcher reacts beautifully to it.
The back-and-forth interaction between player input and the game-world is what gives roleplaying in video-games a meaning. If there is no such interaction, roleplaying in video-games is meaningless.
bEVEsthda wrote...
To you, I assume Skyrim is less satisfying because you perceive reactions are missing or not solid enough?
Indeed.
bEVEsthda wrote...
To me, I have far more trouble with having actions taken, or taken in a way, by my protagonist, which don't fit my role.
That's why I prefer The WItcher 2 over Mass Effect. Mass Effect tries to be a bith of both. It has character creation and lets you create your own character, but at the same time it also tries to tell a story that is already set in stone for the most part. This does not really work fantastically well in my opinion and that's why I prefer The Witcher, because it completely takes character creation away and basically gives you a character to roleplay. In that sense, The Witcher 2 is more like a theatrical play and you are the actor that has to play the role of Geralt in this theatrical spectacle.
Geralt, by all means, is a character created for you. Geralt is Andpzej Sapkowski's character, not your character. But does that mean you can't roleplay Geralt? I think not. The Witcher 2 provides you all the tools you need to become Geralt and roleplay him. When I play The Witcher, I'm no longer Luc, a 23 years old game-design student. No, when I play The Witcher, I'm Geralt, a monster slaying mutant freak with a heart of gold.
I feel as Geralt, think as Geralt and I act as Geralt when I play The Witcher (2). That is per very definition roleplaying and it works extremely well.
Modifié par Luc0s, 20 mai 2012 - 01:38 .
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