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[pitchblaq]

Maria Caliban wrote...

Having destroyed the undead horrors in the town and castle, and the demon having fled from me, the narrative tension for that section is gone. I now come across a choice 'What to do with Connor?' but there are no goals or obstacles. It's a question of values. It might inspire reflection but not tension.

The goal was the Arl, the reason you go there in the first place. The undead were an obstacle, but removing them was an ancillary objective. When you reach Connor, who plays much the same role as the Lady of the Forest, you still haven't met your goal. Dealing with him should be the point where tension is relieved.

You have a choice that you have to address, one that admittedly would have been better served with a sense of urgency. You need to deal with Connor to save your best hope to take down Loghain, and you're proposed a moral dilemma.

Weighing life and death, in my opinion, is fundamental to tension.

The third option takes the threat of death away, and by that, robs the moment of its impact entirely.

I personally would have loved to see the warning of 'hurry, we don't know how long Conner will remain dormant' to bear fruit, to preserve that tension with an impending threat.

That said, what you're suggesting could quickly destroy narrative tension for me. My meta-question is 'Can I be a hero?' A selection of no win scenarios quickly tells me 'no.'

Being a hero is entirely a matter of perspective. Loghain doesn't view you a hero, nor does whatever dwarf you decide against, and so forth. You're saving Eamon. You may be saving Connor. It's not necessary, nor should it even be encouraged to have everything go the way you want it to define heroism, or there is significantly less weight behind your choices.

What use is choice without consequence?

At no point, with no amount of work, does the player get to feel as though they've unequivocally done the right thing.

In what world is there something unequivocally right?

Modifié par pitchblaq, 05 janvier 2011 - 05:47 .

[soteria]

@Maria Caliban

Excuse me. When I said they were all "Redcliffe Choices," what I meant was that it was always pretty obvious which choice was best. The only exception was Bhelen vs Harrowmont, and most of my characters really didn't care since they didn't know anything about Dwarven politics. To a dwarf, it was just a question of which origin you chose.

I disagree that a monetary sacrifice is an awful idea. You're thinking of it backward, though I didn't really elaborate. We can imagine that saving Redcliffe led to some sort of monetary award--we'll stick with 70g. The character can pocket that money, or use it to save Connor and Isolde. Or, the sacrifice might not be money--you could be skipping out on a great weapon, or a skill tome, or anything of high value to the player.

The point is, being a hero shouldn't mean taking the path of least resistance, as it did so often in Origins. I enjoy playing a hero, but it's just not as rewarding when the "heroic" choices are the easy ones with equal or better rewards. It also makes playing shadier characters less fun, because taking the "evil" choices becomes acting like a douche just for kicks.

Yes, I know there were a number of minor choices that are exceptions to what I'm saying, but I'm talking about the major choices.

Modifié par soteria, 05 janvier 2011 - 06:01 .

[Ziggeh]

SpockLives wrote...

One of my biggest complaints with the "tough moral choices" some people seem to prefer is that they are a false dichotomy. Rarely in life are there only two options.

Missed a chance to be pedantic here:

They're not false. They're just dichotomies, the setting has been built around them to create mutually exclusive options, unlike real life.