17 réponses à ce sujet

[David7204]

"He is the hero, he is everything."

Since the release of Mass Effect 3 about eight months ago, I've been following much of the BioWare staff wherever I can. Like many players, I was incredibly disappointed with the ending of Mass Effect 3, and was interested in the responses and opinions of the staff to see the reasons behind such a mistake and the likelihood of it happening again. I haven't played the Dragon Age games, but I've spent time on the forum since because some of the writers have been much more active on the forums and such since the announcement of Dragon Age III.

One of the things I picked up quickly is that the writers are very eager for 'bittersweet' stories. Some of the most enthusiastic reponses I've seen by the writers are how much they love 'bittersweetness.' And it makes me uneasy, because I feel as though they might well be making the same mistakes that have been made beforehand. There's a general simmering frustration amongst fans that the Mass Effect team is still unaware of why and how they messed up. I have to admit - considering the Extended Cut certainly made things better but failed to address any of the core problems, I'm not convinced myself. This does little to ease my concerns. If the writers are putting 'bittersweetness' above everything else, there's a very good chance that the quality of the story will suffer for it. The worst of that, worse than anything else, would be the writers deciding 'bittersweetness' is more important than heroism.

Heroism needs to matter.

That's one of the reasons why Mass Effect is one of the most outstanding stories ever told. Any other video game would present the situations Shepard finds him/herself in as unwinnable and the protagonist as helpless. But not Mass Effect. And not because Shepard is lucky or because of silly circumstances or nonsense science like so many other stories resort to. But because Shepard is smart. Because s/he's a hero. Because s/he's the ideal hero. And because heroism is meaningful.

It's also the primary reason why Mass Effect 3's ending was so horrible. Because heroism is meaningless. Because love, hope, unity, friendship, and every other quality a hero like Shepard embodies count for nothing. Because every friend, every ally, every ship, and every struggle encountered by Shepard in 120 hours of gameplay contribute so overwhelmingly little to the resolution of the conflict. So much less than we expected. So much less than Shepard deserves. I never want to see that happen again.

Finally, it's the reason why I've yet to play the Dragon Age games despite being blown away by Mass Effect. I spend a lot of time on TV Tropes (which is generally an excellent source for this sort of thing), and there's a fair number of examples of conflicts in the series and Dragon Age II in particular that were handled less-than-ideally. Conflicts that could have been avoided if characters had been a bit smarter. Conflicts where the protagonist is helpless to prevent a situation that the player sees a solution to.

It essentially boils down to the same problem. Heroism doesn't count for enough. Characters are cruel and selfish and foolish no matter what. Everything goes to hell no matter what. What's the point?

Now, does that mean the Dragon Age writers are sub-par? Of course not. This is an issue to at least some extent with every RPG. There's really a fairly small pool of what we would consider 'modern RPGs', but nonetheless the ones that exist are filled with supposedly heroic (or optionally heroic) protagonists whose heroism doesn't actually count for much. Not only are many of these stories eager to throw heroism under the bus, they very often sacrifice continuity, characterzation, plot coherency, and scientific accuracy. The moral that these stories seem to imply is “No matter what, you lose, because that's just so mature and hardcore and realistic!” Frankly, it disappoints me how easily many players seem to be impressed with this sort of thing.

There's been only one "lose-lose" choice that I truly feel was well done with a 'heroic' protagonist, where both sides had solid reasons for doing what they did, where it truly made sense for the protagonist to be forced to chose because there is really no other option, where the choice wasn't devalued by annoyance or even frustration on my part because there was a clear good choice or words of course of action that my character was unable to carry out . One - which is the choice made at the conclusion of The Pitt DLC for Fallout 3.

The point of all this is that creating such situations is hard. It's a hard, hard, hard, thing to do. It's hard to write plausible situations and conflicts where characters are heroic but still helpless to make an impact. The reason why is because it is a fundamental contradiction to have heroism matter and yet have heroic characters meet bad or even bittersweet conclusions no matter what. It only gets worse when the Theory of Narrative Causality is considered, as it should be for all epic stories such as Dragon Age.

Now, does this mean every story in existence needs to have meaningful heroism? Absolutely not. Since we're talking about video games, Kane and Lynch is an excellent example that comes to mind. Kane and Lynch and its sequel are mediocre games, but the story stands out for being one of the absolute bleakest you can find. Everything that could go wrong, goes wrong, and it's made worse by the complete lack of romanticism and the sheer miserable realism that pervades the story. The first game ends with a lose-lose choice (The achievements for ending the game for each choice are even called “Damned if you do.” and “Damned if you don't.”) But it's all perfectly okay, because the story never pretends for a moment that heroism exists for this setting and these characters, so there's no verdict for how powerful heroism is one way or the other.

In summery, the writers have a choice. You can have heroism mattering, or you can have bittersweet endings and consequences no matter what. One is relatively easy to create while the other is considerably more difficult. One is commonplace and the other is rare. And one will draw me into Dragon Age III while the other will almost certainly disinterest me.

Your choice.

Modifié par David7204, 27 octobre 2012 - 05:26 .

[Allan Schumacher]

David7204 wrote...

It should explain a lot.

That's what a story is. By nature, a story is about the exceptional, the unique, the uncanny, the unexpected, the unlikely.

This is simply incorrect.

[Allan Schumacher]

David7204 wrote...

What stories are there that aren't about those things?

A story is quite literally simply a sequnce of events, which may or may not be fictional.  For example:


My friend had his birthday today.  He invited me out, and I joined his family for dinner.  It was a fun time, and afterward we went back to his place where he, his sister, and I watched an anime called Black Lagoon.  I just got home from this about 30 minutes ago.


I just told you a story.  It's a non-fictional one.

[Allan Schumacher]

David7204 wrote...

What happened to you happened to nobody else in the universe. It happened once, and it will never happen again. If we lived a few thousands years ago and took and guessed that all of that happened at the exact place, and the exact time, it would be miraculous.

If we go by this reasoning, then each of the billions of people that died to the reapers is entirely unique for each of those individuals and will never happen again.  Shepard's story ending in failure would still be unique and exceptional.  It only happened to him.


While I'm flattered that you feel my day may be unique, uncanny, unexpected, and unlikely, I will personally disagree.  I tell this story to pretty much anyone, and there's a good chance they'll be under the impression it was a pretty typical get together and that it sounds like I had a good time.

Now tell us a story about Griffons

It was my friends birthday today.  So we hopped on our Griffons and flew around Edmonton for a while, and filled up some water balloons and dive bombed the people that slighted us in the past year.  It was particularly awesome because the siblings of the griffons we were riding would go out and get us resupplies of water balloons.  Afterwards, the Griffons flew us home and high fived us, because they are awesome like that.


(This story is mostly fictional.  Mostly)

[David Gaider]

The Mass Effect and Dragon Age games are written by different teams. Whether or not that's a good thing really depends on who you ask. Mainly it means that we're going to do different things with our storytelling.

Insofar as the storytelling itself, I do not and will never believe that every story must have a happy ending in order to be considered a good game. I would edge towards a preference that the player must feel like they've accomplished something, even if they had to pay a heavy price for it, but that's not required for a good story. Whether or not that's required for a good game is slightly different, if not entirely divorced from the story which is told in the context of that game.

Whether or not you feel we've made a good game, or written a good story... well, that's what opinions are for. The day that someone can state objectively what makes for a good game or a good story, we may as well shut down the Internet and send everyone home. Seeing as that's never going to happen, I'll just state that DA2 was intentionally trying to do something quite different with its story from DAO (whether or not you think it accomplished that notwithstanding), and DA3 will likely try something different from both. Well-intended advice aside, there is no way to please everyone with whatever we do, so my team will simply do our best and leave the judgment to you guys.

[Allan Schumacher]

This is mostly boiling down to the idea of escapist vs. interpretive literature. I tend to find the latter much more interesting, because I usually find them more thought provoking.

Escapism has its place, but it's something I seek less frequently.

[Allan Schumacher]

iakus wrote...

Being a hero isn't about you, true.  But playing an rpg is.  Or at least, it's about your character and your choices.  This is not a combat simulator.  The fates of Earth and Thedas are not intertwined.  This is a medium for entertainment.  Some find playing a self-sacrificing hero entertaining.  Othersthnk a live hero is better than a dead martyr.    There should be room for a wider swath of people to enjoy the game than we got in ME3.

Is choice about having the ability to simply choose different outcomes to particular events, or about driving the narrative specifically in the way that one wants?

[Allan Schumacher]

Both?

I guess if I had to pick one than the driving the narrative one would win. But I don't see how you could seperate the two.

Having choices doesn't mean that the choice that someone would prefer to make is valid.

I see the idea of "well choose the bad ending if you enjoyed it" type of commentary a lot, but the thing is I didn't consider myself to be choosing "the bad ending" but rather "the best ending available."

I'll state the unpopular opinion by stating that I don't think Shepard should be able to survive the Mass Effect trilogy. I never expected him to be able to to be perfectly honest. I'm perfectly okay with the player being put into the position of not being able to pick the ultimate optimal outcome. Virmire is another great example.


The Dark Ritual is a bit more interesting, because it lends itself a degree of uncertainty. I don't consider it necessarily an easy way out, especially if your character was at odds with Morrigan (and I think it's well executed if Morrigan loves you too).


So to that end, you make the choices based on the circumstances provided to you (and ideally, they do alter the narrative in some way), but I was referring to those that look at the outcomes and think "You know, I think this other option should be able to work too" simply because it plays out the way that they wanted.

Like the idea of refusing the Catalyst, where people often didn't just want the ability to refuse the Catalyst, but rather they wanted the ability to refuse the Catalyst and still win. In this sense, they wanted the narrative to go specifically how they wanted, which I don't feel must be necessary.

[Allan Schumacher]

iakus wrote...

It's not a matter of "choose the bad ending.  It's a matter of "choose your ending" the one that works based on how you have been playing out your character..

It is though.  I'm not going to pick a subpar ending if I have the choice right there to pick a better one.  I can rationalize making a tough choice that isn't necessarily ideal among other difficult choices.  If one of the choices is clearly better, it's sabotaging for my character to pick anything but that choice.  Especially if I'm playing a heroic character trying to save as many as I can.

[Allan Schumacher]

M25105 wrote...

You guys really don't like to be heroes in your games do you? Do you find it fun to replay a game where there's no happy ending other than "And they all died or something"?

Yes.  In many cases I find the heroism accented when sacrifice is made.

I have no problems replaying a good game knowing that my character dies (or ultimately something less than rosy) happens at the end.  Nor do I consider it "not winning" the game.

Planescape: Torment condemns me to the Blood War if I'm a good guy, and I love being a good guy in that game.

Modifié par Allan Schumacher, 28 octobre 2012 - 06:32 .

[Allan Schumacher]

The greatest example was the quest with Hawke's mother.

When I first played it - there are two events where you can either encourage or discourage your mother from getting out there and dating. I believed that because I had encouraged her - that the Kirkwall killer had grabbed her.

I believed that it was my choices - all good intentions - that led to her demise.

That's completely different. You're making the choice based on imperfect knowledge and something bad can logically happen, that's fine.

Being provided a choice that says: "Choose this choice which condemns the setting to doom" or "Choose this choice which saves everyone" is not typically an interesting choice.


I like when choices that I think are good turn out to not be good after all. By the same token, I also like when choices that seem suboptimal end up working out better than expected. As long as it logically makes sense to me, I'm okay with it.

The epilogue for Orzammar is great for this.

Who CARES about the people who would have simply reloaded. LLet them. They paid good money - they should be able to craft a craftable story.

My opinion has nothing to do with save scumming.

If my in game character is told that there's 3 choices, and one of them is clearly superior to the rest, it's not much of a choice at all. Unless the game decides to throw a curveball and have that choice somehow backfire despite it's impression of being superior, it becomes obvious.

Modifié par Allan Schumacher, 28 octobre 2012 - 06:42 .

[Allan Schumacher]

You are dead and everyone is saved.
You are alive and everyone is saved.
Which one would you choose?.. If hero's death is the only condition to achieving some peace... then it's a crappy hero if yiu ask me.

If I have the choice, of course I choose to stay alive and save everyone. It's hardly a choice at all. Why would my character ostensibly choose to suicide himself if he knows of a way to accomplish his objectives without doing so?

If the choice becomes:

Sacrifice yourself and everyone is saved
Sacrifice some others in order to save yourself

Then the choice becomes much more interesting.

[Allan Schumacher]

iakus wrote...

I keep seeing this and I keep wondering where this is coming from.  Where is this "supbar ending"?  Where is this "better one"?

It's come up several times in this thread.  One example I can think of off the top of my head is the idea that some fans had that there should have been a way to defeat the reapers without requiring the Crucible.

I'm not talking about better or worse.  I'm talking about different.  I'm talking about finding an ending you can live with.  About not having to pay the same price everyone else has to pay to fit some universal concept of "bittersweet".  Just because one person wants their protagoinist to have a viking funeral, why should mine suffer the same fate?  Maybe a different price would fit their story better.

I like choice in games.  But I'm not a fan of "the narrative goes specifically the way that I want to all the time."  Sometimes, the character is in a spot that just isn't ideal.  Putting me into a spot where I can always perfectly solve the problem at no cost aside from time (because spending time in a game you enjoy is typically not a cost...) works sometimes, but sometimes it's just not possible either and your character is going to need to persevere through that.

Again I ask:  which DAO outcome is the subpar one?

All of the outcomes at Redcliffe barring using the circle.  The only saving grace of it is that it's written in a way that players may choose something else because they believe that going to the circle will have an actual consequence.

[Allan Schumacher]

Medhia Nox wrote...

@Allen Schumacher: I'm not sure I understand how what I'm saying doesn't apply.

I thought that - by encouraging her - I had doomed her. Isn't this a choice that seems "most optimal" - which "would" have turned out bad if there was any actual choice?

If you're referring to the illusion of choice, then we're discussing different things.

Every choice in an RPG game is truly made with "too little information" - games are simply not capable of providing even the sensory input of a tabletop RPG.

I think you're taking the statement a bit too literally.

I'm not sure you're approaching this in a "learning" mentality.

It seems to be that you're telling us that we're simply incapable of understanding truly interesting choices.

Your two choices ARE interesting - but I would suggest having.

- Sacrifice yourself and everyone is saved.

- Sacrifice some other and save yourself.

- Choose to sacrifice yourself - but through a series of previously made game choices - manage to survive.

- Choose to sacrifice others to save yourself - but through a series of previusly made choices - still die.

Would be a FAR better series of choices.

And barring "too many options" - I believe my additions are superior - because in them are already contained many more potential outcomes.

It's important to note that my choices were a response to someone else giving me choices.  Of course more interesting choices are better.  As for your examples, it depends entirely on the series of previously made game choices, but I agree.

If the game choices are "do a completionist playthrough and do the obvious" like Mass Effect 2, then it's less interesting (I think that everyone being able to survive the suicide mission is boring).

If you're paying the price somewhere along the line, with genuine consequences and difficult options prior to the end of the game, and in doing so that can enable you to survive, then a price is still paid.

[Allan Schumacher]

WhiteThunder wrote...

Again, it's funny that people think that most of the outcry against the Mass Effect endings is because they're "dark" or "edgy."  They aren't.  They're just really, really poorly written with no thematic relevance to the series as a whole,

As someone that followed and talked with vast amounts of people regarding this, I'd just like to say there is nothing close to consensus over why people found the endings to ME3 disappointing.


If you were to ask me, based on my experiences interacting with the fan base, reading comments here, on other boards, twitter, etc. the most common area of disappointment was that Shepard dosen't end up with his/her love interest.  The second one I saw most frequently was that there's no way for Shepard to survive.

There's a reason why people were up in arms about the "best" ending requiring galactic readiness above 50%.  There's a reason why people would consider that the "best" ending.

[Allan Schumacher]

Sorry, I wasn't clear. I mean, where is the demand for a "best ending" for DA3? What I'm mostly seeing is a request for not forcing so much tragedy on the player, to not require the protaginist to die/wreck thier life to save the city/nation/world.

Lets just stop here for a second, since I'm not sure where you thought I was responding to any type of "demand" for the best ending for DA3.
Conversations are fluid, and this all flows back into the idea of do gamers just want choices in games, or do they want to more authoritatively direct the conversation. I actually responded to Foolsfolly (who was responding to me who was responding to you, wheee). Which is fine, that happens on forums all the time. But when you say something like this, you are insinuating that the discussion was about something else entirely so you'll have to excuse me if I was continuing on the dialogue about what level of control should the game player have on the actual narrative and not responding to any sort of demands about people wanting "ideal" endings in DA3 (though you'll find people making such demands in this very thread).

Some of the best RPGs ever (PST) don't allow the player to really direct the narrative, even though the game offers plenty of choice.


In which case, we seem to be discussing different things at this point.

Again I wasn't clear. I was referring to the endings. The Warden can live. Or the Warden can die. Which is subpar?*

*Yes, I know the Dark Ritual is considered too Disney by many.

I have no particular issue with DAO's ending. Although you recognize that there are people that do. I'm not sure why you're curious about this, however.

[Allan Schumacher]

Which is fine. Part of the reason that folks like me hate Destroy in ME3 though is that it isn't some others, but an entire species. That's way to much.

How much is way too much? How do we measure that? Why shouldn't it happen?

[Allan Schumacher]

Blastback wrote...

Allan Schumacher wrote...

Which is fine. Part of the reason that folks like me hate Destroy in ME3 though is that it isn't some others, but an entire species. That's way to much.

How much is way too much? How do we measure that? Why shouldn't it happen?

It becomes another no choice at all for me.  It's one thing to choose say, Shepard vs EDI.  Okay, you or one of your closest allies.  Shep vs several major characters, heck even the Normandy, okay.  But then to choose to willingly destroy an entire race of your allies, who have been presented as victims of circumstace,  to me that stops being sacrifice and becomes genocide.

I'd rather not turn this into a discussion regarding genocide (since I feel the term is misused anyways).

To be direct though, that you find this cost too high is what makes it interesting to me.  If everyone agreed that the cost was low and ultimately worth it, then it starts to become the obvious choice.  Obviously not everyone feels the cost is too high (I don't), but I see some that felt that the other choices were the best ones and that's what I found interesting about the discussions about the ending.