[quote]mrcrusty wrote...
It was a silly aside to the point you made about everything in the game being wholly pre-scripted. It actually wasn't meant to be a serious post until you ran with it and claimed that there is no such thing as emergent gameplay. [/quote]
It's still scripted. There are some emergent actions (maybe I'm the only one who wanted to use a gun this particular way), but insofar as the game is concerned via reactions, these are all scripted (so the actual outcomes are fixed, in contrast to something like a cellular automata, where a different input changes the fundamental output each time).
When you can use your skills, how you can use your skills, how characters can react to you, how characters react to your faction score, how different faction scores interact... all of these are set and predetermined.
[quote]]I didn't argue with that, I even said I agreed with that... you're trying to respond to points I didn't make. [/quote]
You claimed that merely being able to kill Caesar is emergent, because you can do it in differnet ways. My point is that you cannot; there are only a set number of ways to do it: "general", plus the options you gave for a different scripted effect.
[quote]Except the gameplay. Hence, emergent
gameplay. I didn't claim that an emergent narrative occurs. That tends to happen in Sims games. In fact, that's the entire point of Sims games, emergent narratives. [/quote]
There is a big difference between "invented" and "emergent" narratives. If it only happens in your head, and is a fiction based on elements in the game, to which the game does not react to, then it is "invented" or (if you like) "imagined" narrative.
Whereas an emergent narrative would be the game itself presenting you with a different narrative based on your input choices.
[quote]So you believe that the playing component is irrelevant to roleplaying? [/quote]
Don't mischaracterize what I said.
The playing compontent is relevant insofar as there are unique consequences to your behaviour. "Kill Caesar" is only something more than "Kill Caesar" if the game recognizes different ways you do it.
[quote]I disagree, while it doesn't have your 3 tiered character system or something similar (which ironically becomes harder to make meaningful with both a VA and set protagonist at the same time), it has a lot of what you've argued for, from set protagonists, to the tonal based dialog system, to the branching narrative. [/quote]
No, it doesn't.
The protagonists are too fixed. There is no visual customization. There is no gender customization. There is no statistical customization. These things matter. Even more fixed that Geralt, who I already think (and believe said) is way too fixed.
The tonal based dialogue system is not actually something I advocate for; I simply argue
for tones as neccesary information for RP. If the dialogue is anything like AP (which is is, from what I heard) that makes it less than useless.
Beyond that, the actual gameplay is no fun.
[quote]Or is there some other reason it's not your type of game? The setting, perhaps? The gameplay?[/quote]
Aside from what I described above, the gameplay.
[quote]Some of us like to create our own characters and inject them into the game's narrative (the blank slate), others like to see how fixed characters evolve as they make decisions with them. [/quote]
The issue that you're having is that I like to create a character and inject it in the narrative, not see how a fixed character evolves.
What you are having a very hard time grasping is that I have a serious objection to what it means to
insert a character within a narrative. And that's where I object to the idea of a ''blank slate''.
My argument, in a nutshell, is
that it is impossible to insert a character without reactivity, and that reactivity requires removing any and all ambiguity from the character you are being/created. I will address what ambiguity means below.
I am saying that it's reactivity that allows us to ''insert'' a character into the story.
More importantly, 'inserting a character into a narrative' is not the same as 'having the majority of consequences from that happen only in your head and not in-game', and that's the core argument.
[quote]I feel like the silent protagonist works better with the former, the voiced protagonist works better with the latter. For example, would an Elder Scrolls game work well with a voiced protagonist? Not so sure, because a voiced protagonist cannot capture all the subtleties and possibilities of a player-made character in that environment and prevents players from trying to have them.[/quote]
I think the Elder Scrolls are actually a very good example of how you don't actually have a character that can be "inserted" into the narrative - because the narrative never flows around and alters with your character. You are simply
there, and the game never acknowledges that you exist except in very non-descript and general ways, and otherwise you are a tide of destinity that alters things less like a human and more like a robot.
[quote]In a similar fashion, Geralt is much less effective without a voice. The voice gives him personality and context, making him a stronger character.
I don't consider either way "doing it wrong", just a preference. [/quote]
I don't object to these two ways. What I am object to is what it means to do the first kind of thing,
because that's the kind of game I want.
[quote]I don't buy the "removes ambiguity" or "reactions" lines whatsoever. You keep using them yet you never actually show why they are problems inherent to a silent protagonist. Removes ambiguity? From what? The tonal delivery? Then just make tones explicit. There's also the concept of context. If you've taken a serious tone for most of the conversation, you won't suddenly be slapstick silly sarcastic in your responses halfway through the conversation. Reactions? Well, if you have prescribed tones, then why would NPC reactions be a problem? [/quote]
No, ambiguity needs to be removed for the player's sake, as an issue of information.
To RP properly, you need to know what it is that your actions can reasonably do, what it is the game-world allows you to do, and the ways in which you can go about achieving those goals (in broad terms).
cRPGs are scripted. The actual actions you can take are dramatically limited. It would be (for example) impossible to create a Cousland in DA:O will be King
alone. You cannot have a character in DA:O who will ban the Grey Wardens from Ferelden forever, or who will execute Riordan or Morrigain.
Ambiguity does not allow "freedom" for the imagination, because the imagination can't actually
do anything in game. It just does - at best - what J.C. Blade criticized DA2 for - demanding you write fan-fiction between points of the game. At worst, it actively
breaks your character concepts and forces you to start from scratch or re-create your character on the fly.
Without getting into too much of an aside, ambiguity is bad because it prevents you from ever knowing what it is your character does.
Hell, I mean
this is exactly the complaint that people have about the paraphrase: it's so ambiguous that you can't actuall know what picking the dialogue option will make your character say. I'm not even preaching some new or radical; I'm just applying it very differently.
[quote]Also and I think this is important too (though it is a tangent).
Dialog is not the only way to RP and until recently (say Fallout 1 or Baldur's Gate), was actually a minor aspect of roleplaying. [/quote]
That's irrelevant. The mere fact that previous games didn't do it doesn't mean anything.
More importantly, I actually agree. I think non-dialogue RP is very important... but it is not something any RPG has
ever done well, and we've just gone through different kinds of bad implementation, from the 80s era SSI goldbox games, to Bestheda style open-world RPPs.
The real problem is that RPGs confuse ''action'' for ''statistical abstraction''. So, to keep our example consistent, in New Vegas you don't really have unique content as a doctor (you can't set up a clinic, you don't have patients minigames, you don't get to perform surgery on others as a minigame) - you just get flavour choices.
It's always flavour choices with old RPGs, and you're expect to act as if having those minor aesthetic or gameplay differences means you have a different character.
Well, I'm saying that having fewer options but more meaningful options (so you just get to put skills in Medicine or Mechanics, but once you do 30% of the game is different, you have different quests, different minigames, characters react to you differently, etc.) then you have a real RPG.
Dialogue is just one facet of this, and I'm making a big issue about it because one thing I absolutely hate about RPGs is this incredibly focus on superficiality.
Things were done at the height of abstraction in the past because, by and large, that's all that could be done. But now we have what are veritable supercomputers cluttering our desks. We can and should be able to do more to ''insert'' a character into the narrative.
[quote]Namely because roleplaying was typically done through the character system and the gameplay. Of course, as you lose aspects of the game to roleplay through, all you have left is dialog. So it's not too surprising. But sadly, I see Heavy Rain as the logical conclusion to that type of design. [/quote]
No. Heavy Rain is, being blunt, garbage, and nothing like what I would argue for (ever) in an RPG design. I don't know why you think I somehow favour dialogue as the
only way to RP through.
[quote]A character concept and/or personality extends to the entire character, not just how one reacts in dialog. Yet you seem to think that the character exists entirely in a bubble of dialog and nowhere else.
Apologies if that's not true, but that's a clear perception that I get. [/quote]
No. RPGs are about
reactivity. And I described that above.
[quote]
In the end though, we're arguing preferrences and I've yet to see you prove otherwise.
[/quote]
I hope that, by using your terms, I managed to explain why it is that the argument is not over preference, but over mechanics, because we have the exact same preference.
Modifié par In Exile, 08 août 2011 - 11:45 .
Retour en haut
