HereticDante wrote...
"That's all fine and good. LOL But as I said... there is a cost to the imports. A narrative costs."
If we're talking about a "narrative cost" then surely that arises from having the capacity to make divergent choices, rather than those choices being acknowledged in the next game via the save import? Having the potential for multiple outcomes at the end of interesting sub plot in the first act of a game is no more of an obstacle* if it occurs in the next game. I would like to quote your X vs Y argument for instance which states "If you say "you can't do X because of Y" then Y better have more value (by which i presume you mean story potential) than X." How can you guarantee that the conclusion of Y in the first act has not prevented you from enjoying a much richer plot in the form of X later in the game? Surely this is the exact same problem you take issue with and yet it arises entirely without the save import.
Having divergent choices are tied to the problem, but its not the root of it. Having lots of options that have divergent paths do not limit the outcomes of future games if the writers set a canon.
Again, I'll point to Fallout because I think they really do this the best. In the Fallout games, you can do a lot of different things. Some choices are small, some choices are big, but ultimately, there is no import because there is no file that get carried over into future games.
An example I love using is the town of Shady Sands. In Fallout 1, you have the option of getting rid of a group of Raiders terrorizing the town. However, Fallout, being the wildly divergent game that it is, let's you play an evil character that joins up with the Raiders and gives them the means to sack and destroy the town. In the ending, it says that the survivors wound up giving up and the town became dead. However, if you killed the Raiders and destroyed the town, the ending says that the town of Shady Sands began to thrive and quite soon became a confederation of towns and cities that became known as the New California Republic, or the NCR.
The NCR is featured in every Fallout game as a major military and political force. You meet soliders in their army, you have the option of assassinating their politicians. Because of one small worldstate difference (because the player didn't side with the Raiders), a whole arc across the entire Fallout series was created.
This is what I propose. GIve the player all sorts of divergent choices throughout the game. Let them be good, evil or in-between, let them kill anyone they choose and let them save anyone they try to. Let them romance who they want, let them make Big Choices any time they choose. Then, when the game is over, its OVER. Your endings would cover the consequences of all the choices available, but then when it comes time to write the next game, the writers can choose what happened.
Note that the Fallout game doesn't flaunt this in many cases. Every Fallout game has taken place in a different part of post-Apocalyptic America. Every PC has been different. Most decisions and endings don't really play into future games at all. But, at the same time, if the team WANTS to create content that incorporates a past event, they can. And when doing so, they do not fear having to juggle multiple import save states, or worry about people having their games "retconned" because there is no implied contract between gamer and developer, because there is no Import system.
You further re-enforced this with your later comment,
"But the cost of the Imports is JUST THAT... its an annoyance. Not just for the player but for (more importantly) Bioware. If the writers have a really amazing idea for a story that can be handled by the current technology and scope without much issue, but the reason why it is shot down is the Save Import, then that is a problem. If they say "some people won't have that game state, so its not worth the time to take to make it, despite how good your story idea is" then something is very broken."
Again you argue that " a really amazing idea for a story" is lost because some people's game states won't be compatible, but this could just as easily be a decryption for a plot which is lost entirely within the confines of any single game which offers a plot in which the player can impact on the outcome of the narrative. One could easily say of course, that they could simply program a different follow up quest dependent on the outcome of that decision, which is exactly what they did with the save import.
A "follow-up" quest is A) hardly a fitting tribute to a decision that could forever alter the course of a society's history and
the quests given don't tie into the greater narrative of the choice. In my earlier example, I mentioned the "follow-up" quest for choosing Bhelen being helping some random relative of Harrowmont. No information was given, other than Bhelen is trying to kill him (not a huge surprise, based on what we know about Bhelen). That's hardly a "follow-up" on how the dwarven civilization has changed due to who we chose as king, or if we preserved the Anvil or not. Choices which would have echoes for decades, if not centuries, down the road.
"Does the Save Import have more value than the freedom to reference past events at will? To connect stories from one game to the next?"
Isn't the Save Import is in itself a reference to past events and a way to create a more personal connection for stories which arise and continue from one game to the next. I am confused as to what you expect abolishing the acknowledgement of player choice's in past games will actually achieve.
You also state that " a canon choice lets the writers do anything they want. They can make any story, any quest, any choice play out in any fashion they please." Now this simply isn't true. Putting aside the fact they would still be constrained by budget and design constraints, imposing an overall canon would mean choosing certain outcomes for each decision they wished to acknowledge. This would mean any number of potentially "really amazing ideas for a story" would be lost.
True, the writers wouldn't be able to write wildly detailed stories about each choice. But its not like the Save Import really offers that as an option anyway.
Bioware can't write a deep story that hinges on any previous choice with the Save Import. Not without retconning or railroading a certain choice into existence. See - the genophage cure, the Geth Rewrite, the Rachni Queen, the Galactic Council, the Collector Base and pretty much if any companion survived or died in the Suicide Mission in ME2 as examples of this happening repeatedly in the ME series.
I'm not sure if you've played the ME games or not, but let me just talk about one of the above examples, the genophage cure. In ME2, you deal with the choice of preserving the research into a cure for a disease an entire race is dealing with, research that was obtained quite unethically and brutally into a disease that was actually genetically engineered to prevent the race in question from breeding into such huge numbers, they could overrun the galaxy.
If you preserve the research, then a few months down the line, the cure is viable in ME3. If you destroy the research... then a few months down the line, the cure is viable in ME3. Even though no one else would have had the same level of efficacy in testing as would the research in question (someone involved with the original project, someone who had used ethical shortcuts to find the quickest answers and with the research sitting in the hands, if you saved it, of the one person in the galaxy who would know best how to use it). All of those aspects are ignored and a cure is available, regardless.
This is a kick in the teeth with the Save Import active. You feel like that your decision to destroy the research into a particularly dangerous cure was for nothing. But, on the other hand, it let the writers tell an amazing story in the Tuchanka section of ME3, one of the best in the game, if not the series. It was a story that could not have been told without a cure for the genophage, so they ignored everyone' Save Imports and made the story they way they wanted anyway.
There is no difference, in the least, between having an Import system which says "the cure is going to be finished, regardless of how influential your prior game choices would have been in making that reality not happening", and having a canon. Zero. Zilch. The only difference? Players expected there to be a difference with the Save Import, and were disappointed. The only thing that the Save Import accomplished in this case is to make players feel like their previous choices were completely invalidated.
Yet I have never heard someone say "but MY Vault Dweller didn't do X,Y or Z" in the Fallout games. Because there is no import system. Its all considered to be subject to the canon that was set. You know why? Because the Import system is some type of implied contract that ties the hands of the writers, where they either can't use a plot concept in much detail if it involved player choice or they get ridiculed for making a detailed story that all choices funnel into, even if the prior choices made it seem like such a funneled outcome wouldn't have been possible.
You also stated in response to "But its impossible to be reactive to every little thing with meaningful consequences as much as I'd like to see them. " that it was "Not impossible if you have a canon." But that isn't actually true is it? You're not reacting to EVERY little thing with meaningful consequences. You're reacting to A FEW little things with meaningful consequences. Which is somewhat ironically, the whole point of the save import feature. Your example with Fallout for instance, how many interesting events went ignored? How can you know for certain that players found that quest line about the tree worshiping lunatics more interesting than the choice which wound up as cut content because they decided it wasn't canon?
You can react to every little thing. Or, more specifically, you can react to anything in the game you want.
There was not an import flag that dealt with if you gave the child whose parents were killed by Darkspawn money. But the choice was there, you could give the kid money, you could have directed him to the Chantry, you could have scared him and had him run off into Maker knows where.
What if they wanted to bring that kid back, now grown up, in a way? Say, a merchant who understands the benefits of giving, due to the kindness of strangers. Or a cruel mercernary who understands the power of fear and the concept of never showing mercy. Not really compelling story lines, but I'm not a writer.
Point being - they can't. Because they didn't recognize that choice as a flag, they have their hands tied. One player would say "well, that's not how my player did it! This game is treading on my previous playthrough!" Or, more accurately, Bioware would review the concept and toss it before it was ever taken very far because of that aspect.
Point being, Bioware can reference as many choices as they wish if they set a canon. Because each scenario only needs to be mentioned once, not two or more times. Is it economical to do that? I wouldn't assume so. But the OPTION to do so is on the table. Allowing a creative team the most options possible to continue the stories we all obviously enjoyed can only be good. Hindering them and making them do double or triple work for every time they want to bring up a piece of story that was tied to a choice is something that is a huge cost to the story-building process.
I also found it quite interesting that you chose to cite the Fallout series as a shining example of an overriding canon considering they used a save import on Fallout 3 for the Broken Steel exapnsion/follow up.
I don't consider expansions to need to set a canon, since its still the same game. Just as you can have wildly divergent stories all throughout the game, you should be able to carry that divergence on in the same game. Although, to be fair, there wasn't truly a "save import" file for the Broken Steel expansion, it simply let you continue your original character and gave. And, as per the usual with any type of import system, the references to your previous choices were slim to none.
Finally i would just like to reiterate to ensure i understand your position correctly. You're assuming that the writers WOULD choose to honor player sovereignty over the narrative at the cost of a potentially fascinating plot line. Yet they brought back Anders in DA2 as a former grey warden and merged with Justice, overriding player choices at one point in DA:A precisely because they thought it was so interesting, as with Leiliana. Given those were two major decisions, i don't know from what basis you are so certain that they will invariably sacrifice potential plot lines for the sake of past references.
So you're saying that since the writers have invalidated the playthroughs of others, but your personal choices remain intact, that you're still fine with the Import system?
Saying that the writers have the option to set a canon anytime they want as a defense of the import system seems counter-intuitive. That's like saying "we can have democracy, because anytime we want to go to war, we can just switch over to totalitarian rule if we need to." Okay, that might have been an extreme example, but the gist is there - if a perceived strength of a system is that it doesn't need to be true to its designed purpose, then that is problematic.
If your contention is that abolishing the save import and imposing an overriding canon would somehow provide more fertile grounds for narrative, then i must again ask why providing only one option for a potential background is better than providing multiple ones? Is not the whole point of player choice within the narrative to create multiple potential follow ups? You stated that you would rather "a deep answer" than a simple acknowledgement of a past decision even though the two are not necessarily mutually exclusive but have shown nothing to prove that removing the save import would result in a deeper acknowledgement? The developers could just as easily decide to only briefly acknowledge your choice because they would rather concentrate their efforts on new quest lines showing more of Thedas rather than providing a lengthy follow up to a plot which was already resolved. I fear your expectations for what the removal of acknowledgement of player decisions between games is simply too great. You also assume that imposing a canon is the only solution to this issue. Since Bioware has already stated they are looking for alternate way to acknowledge past player decisions without the difficulties of lining up plot flags, i don't know why imposing a canon is the only solution we should be considering.
You are seeing this completely wrong.
I support choice. I'm the biggest advocate of choice you'll ever meet. I want more backgrounds, more origins, more dialouge options, more references to my past actions... I want more of everything divergent.
But you have to draw the line at the game you are making. You can offer all the choice in the world in one game and then draw the line there. Set a canon and then start working on the next game, offering and stuffing as much choice (and consequence, for me) as you can into that game... then draw the line. Set a caon, and start working on the next game. Etc.
Because you see... if you don't set a canon and continue the import, it will result in one of two things. One - choices won't get recognized and be made non-existent, for the most part, which is setting a form of canon already... that your choice had no impact on the world, despite you thinking otherwise. Or, Two - Retcons are introduced that invalidate your choice anyway.
Those are the Road to Nowhere the Save Import system introduces. Your choices will be either ignored and not touched to the greatest ability possible, or your choices will be retconned. Well, maybe not YOUR choices, but SOMEONE'S choices.
Personally, I've seen no one's feelings get hurt with a game that doesn't have save imports. Having the import offers the promise to many gamers that their choices will matter from game to game and that they will have protection from being retconned in the future. This promise is already starting to fall apart for the DA games... and we've only seen up to the second game in the series.
If the best we can hope for with the Import system is either no real follow-up or to hope our choice isn't the choice that is retconned, then I think the feature is causing way more trouble than it is providing benefit.
Is writing around the save import more challenging? Perhaps, but it does not in of itself stifle narrative possibility. On the contrary, it creates more possibilities for the writers to pursue. Whether they can or not is a logistical issue only tangentially related to the save import itself.
NO. That IS the argument. If you can't deliver the goods with a feature and that feature makes writing stories and creating content harder, than what is the purpose? The answer? None.
Your argument seems to be more related to the acknowledgement of player choices potentially stifling the creativity of the writing staff. I'd like to think all intelligent people would come to that same realization if they sat down and thought about "what does an overriding canon do? Not just FOR me... but AGAINST me, as well?"
In summary: Let's keep acknowledgement of past player choices in the series!
I see what you did there. However, what does an overriding canon do for you? It allows the writers to continute (or NOT continue) any storyline they choose - in a logistically realistic way, not in a "tangentially related" non-logistical way.
What does a canon do against you? It kicks over your personal little sand castle. The same sand castle that the incoming tide was washing away anyway. The sandcastle you haven't even had a chance to play with, because you had to move to a different part of the beach anyway. You had a few backward glances at it as you walked away, sure. But its bringing you no more enjoyment. If I didn't even tell you it was happening, you may have not noticed that someone was kicking over your sandcastle, instead of the tide taking it away.
Bioware cannot realistically create 30 different worlds based on 30 different sets of choices. They never could. The best they can hope for is slight, small, indifferent changes to dialogue or cameos. Maybe a few Codex entries. Which is fine, if it didn't cost anything. But as I have outlined over and over again, there IS a cost. There's a cost in developer time and budget. There is a narrative cost to never being able to follow up on a story (or, at least, not without ticking off an entire subset of the fans, fans who WOULDN'T be ticked off if we were dealing with a canon to start with). And the cost of players' expectations. If ME3 or DA2 has taught us anything, its that player expectation for the import is higher than Bioware could ever deliver. So if you have a product that could better if it didn't have a feature that many people will never be happy with... why keep it in?
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