I'm curious about a kind of choice that occurs dozens of times in DAO. When faced with the option to enrich yourself at someone else's expense, why does the selfish option always lead to material reward, yet the selfless one never does?
Yes, yes, virtue is its own reward. Players shouldn't expect lewt for charity, as shown from the mocking crowd of beggars in Denerim. But in real life, and in other kinds of choices in DAO, the outcome isn't so certain.
In real life, blackmail sometimes backfires, as David Letterman can attest. But not in DAO. In real life, lies sometimes come back to bite you. But in DAO, while lying badly can hurt you, successful lying has no repercussions. Telling the truth can have unintended consequences in DAO (if, say, you want to save a girl from a demon-cat), but lying will not.
There's no 'real-life law' mandating that you can gain an income by killing a bartender but not by supporting a waitress, nor is there one insisting that once you blackmail a dwarf, he'll remain ever as loyal to your cause. But that's the law of DAO.
Why is that?
In a game emphasizing choice, it's oddly predictable. I've been floored by the consequences of other decisions in DAO. Lothering is... gone, before I finished there? My choice of sides in a dispute means killing a companion? I'm on my first playthrough, and I still don't know if, when, or how Morrigan is going to betray me.
But I do know the outcome of any choice to enrich myself by harming another. I may still struggle with the options - as both a player and a character, I didn't want to earn a Skill at the cost of a boy's soul - but the result is never in doubt. That demon's deal isn't going to backfire on me in-game.
In Baldur's Gate, most generous acts, like in life, saw no later reward. But some did, just as some - some - selfish acts reverberated later. One poster here noted that in BG, you could even kill Drizzt, but that has consequences far in the future.
In DAO, you can still choose whether or not it's best for you (and your character) to loose a demon on the world. You can still choose to let a repentant man continue his research, instead of slaying him for his robe. But, unlike the other kinds of choices you face, there's no mystery about the outcome.
Does that deliberately emphasize a dark and troubled world?
Or is it an unconscious reflection of designers who feel generosity is never reciprocated?
Or is the game simply meant to allow few to reach the end without dirtied hands?
A 'selfless' option (by sacrificing an item or gold) also isn't going to lead to a later reward. Yes, yes, yes: in real life, it rarely does, and generosity should be done for itself. But in real life, favors are sometimes unexpectedly reciprocated. In Baldur's Gate, some selfish
[In my original post, I opened with a link to a DAO blog using the term 'ludic,' Latin for 'play' to include in-game rewards, like Skill points, that aren't strictly 'material,' like gold. Since later replies focused less on the term and more on the heavy-handed writing style, I've moved it to the end of the post, here:]
http://www.gamasutra...o_the_Abyss.php
Modifié par CBGB, 12 décembre 2009 - 07:26 .
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