5 réponses à ce sujet

[Foolsfolly]

I'm going to just blame this on The Dark Knight Rises but I hope, I mean really hope, that at some point in DA3 the villain(s) devestate the protagonist.

I mean kills your loved ones, sacks your castle, breaks your spirit, usurp your intelligence network, and scatters your team to the four winds. Just a real real low point for the character to either get out of and become stronger for it or, since why not, remain bitter and broken from for the rest of the game.

Jade Empire gave us a similar point after arriving at the Palace and it was well done enough. But the game industry is so much more sophisticated these days. Such scenes can be so much more powerful now. (KOTOR had a smaller scale version on the Leviathan where the world was turned upside down).

I'd just personally enjoy this a lot. Far too often in RPGs you are a god. There are no real set-backs and everything can be overcome by gameplay. Throwing the PC through a ringer (especially if it's possible for the PC to be responsible for their suffering depending on your prior choices) would be a breath of fresh air.

[Allan Schumacher]

Though to be fair I really started disliking Leandra when she was a b!tch enough to try and blame Carver's death on Hawke.

Wasn't this moments after Carver died!?

[Allan Schumacher]

Yup and an utterly horrible thing to say to your child.

That's still no excuse and it didn't endear me to her at all. In fact, I disliked her more and more everytime I replayed it.

Oh my god this instantly made me dislike her. Yeah she lost a child but blaming another one of her children for it.. WHAT? That's someone being a really awful parent. She do of course apologize for it but the damage is already done and there's just no way to mend it

Just to make note, I have had the misfortune of seeing a mother learn that her 17 year old son has been unexpectedly killed.

What I like about Leandra's reaction is that it's real. I don't call my Mom a horrible parent because in the immediate aftermath of learning her son was dead she was delirious with grief and considered my Dad partially responsible because it was my Dad that encouraged my brother to learn to ride the motorbike and it was my Dad's idea to go visit my grandmother on the motorbike. Had none of that happened, they wouldn't have been caught in a bad storm while on their motorbikes which unfortunately led to an accident that took my brother's life.

If you're to ask her now (18 years later) of course she realizes it was an unfortunate accident and no one is at fault. If you ask her at the moment (18 seconds later) she's hurt and angry and irrational.

[Allan Schumacher]

For her death to have really meant something, there had to have been a way to save her.

I disagree with this concept. I won't begrudge anyone that feels that Leandra's death didn't resonate with them (I think that's perfectly fair, and I'd say that BioWare is likely not the only entity that has failed to make an emotional event click), but for there to be a get out of jail free card doesn't make it more interesting IMO.

All it does is turn Leandra's death into a failure metric for the player. You could have saved her, but since you choose poorly, you couldn't. This is somewhat mitigated if done in a way that saving Leandra requires the death of someone else (or some other entity), but ultimately that still means the player is forced to make some sort of unwanted choice.

Player agency does NOT have to mean "the player can drive the narrative in whatever way the player wishes." Even the examples you use, Virmire and Rannoch, are still situations that are forced (although Rannoch does allow a get out of jail free card. Virmire does not). One of Ashley or Kaiden are forced to die. For people like me (that preferred Ashley and Kaiden over the other party members), it's a great choice. If anyone finds one of Ashley or Kaiden annoying, it's a trivial choice with no real impact.


I don't want to indicate any spoilers, but The Walking Dead is the only game that has ever successfully made me cry, and it involves a plot point that ultimately forces the player down a particular path. No amount of metagaming or hindsight knowledge can have the player avoid it. Despite this, it's probably one of the most emotionally engaging (and I suppose overwhelmingly so) endings I have ever experienced.

As such, I think there's a different element that is important rather than simply the idea that it's forced.

Modifié par Allan Schumacher, 10 décembre 2012 - 12:16 .

[Allan Schumacher]

Wynne wrote...

The problem is, for there not to be a get out of jail free card doesn't make it more interesting either, and on top of that, it takes our choice away.

Then we agree that whether it is meaningful and interesting is less affected by whether or not there is a choice involved?


It's one thing to say you want more choice (more content is typically never considered bad) in how you respond, or things that lead up to it, or even the ability to go to people and say this is a concern. You can provide all those options and choices whether or not Leandra could be saved.

Frankly, though, I like the idea that not everything works out the way that I would like it to. For some that isn't acceptable (the type that feel if they put in the effort to prevent it, it should be preventable, or they wasted their time), but as a gamer I am perfectly okay with that.

For me, choice lies with what I intend the character to do. That the realities of the world presented in front of me don't allow that to happen is still okay for me.

[Allan Schumacher]

No, players are not *forced* to make that decision. For one thing, it's a role-playing game. Not everyone is interested in their character always winning. Much like players weren't forced to do the Dark Ritual.

Can Leandra's death be avoided? If not, had you substituted in a sequence that you could then choose Leandra or someone/something else, then yes the player is still forced to do it. If the alternative is stop playing, then the player is forced to do something in order to continue the narrative.

This isn't a pejorative. That someone happily agrees with the circumstances doesn't mean the decision isn't a requirement.

Take Virmire in ME. The player must choose between Ashley and Kaiden. They are forced to do so.