233 réponses à ce sujet

[Kidd]

Sylvius the Mad wrote...

Foolsfolly wrote...

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.

This can only work if the PC's personality is severely constrained.  Only if the writers know what will hurt the PC can they plan for him to be hurt.

It could work similar to the dialogues where you recruit people in BG2, where the character gets to input what they feel their goal is. Ultimately they'll always end up in the same spot, but you get to express why you go there. In a cinematic game, getting to input that could decide how the character will emote afterwards.

Perhaps the big bad shows up and undoes what you've spent in-game days working on. At that point in the narrative, your only real choice is to go on. But the player could be get to choose whether her character is broken, angry, re-motivated or logically concluding that nothing has changed.

If broken, a companion will try to cheer the PC up. If angry, the same scene will play but with lines that try to calm the PC down and focus instead. Re-motivated could have a companion get a pep talk from the PC and pretty much a variant of that scene could play if you choose nothing has changed - the enemy still needs to go down so let's focus on how to make that happen.

[Zobo]

Phoenix_Fyre wrote...

I agree..... I feel the PC is too godlike in some BW games..... Warden, Hawke, Shepard....

Although what happened to Hawke's mom in DAII was pretty freakin' jarring.....

On a contrary I felt Hawke was too much of a loser in DAII. Got his brother killed, his mother killed, got his sister taken away to the Gallows for years (also got her back in the end, so a major victory for Hawke here, I give him that), got tricked by Corypheus and is responsible for unleashing that horror to the world of Thedas, went herp-derp with Tallis and gave her secret documents instead of killing off a dangerous Qunary spy, lost his estate and fleed some place unknown loosing all his comrades on the way except for the LI after siding with mages instead of staying as a revolutionary leader. Hawk's life mostly sucked and his story turned up to be a story of losses, failure and misery instead of a rise to power story as it has been advertised.

Then Shepard was a joke in ME3 final. At least before EC. EC gave him some of his guts and pride back, yet still he has ultimately lost no matter the ending.

Modifié par Zobo, 09 décembre 2012 - 11:15 .

[CrazyRah]

KiwiQuiche wrote...

They tried that in DA2 with Leandra's death.
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. What an utterly horrible parent.

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

Modifié par CrazyRah, 09 décembre 2012 - 11:13 .

[Redwardz]

Easy... Give females the Cullen LI... And then kill him. Not sure how you'd destroy us males though. Maybe if Empress Celene was under your protection and you'd form a bond with her and then she'd somehow die tragically.

[DarkSpiral]

Lord Issa wrote...

-Don't make it due to 'cutscene incompetence'. Simply make the AI and skills of the foe too powerful to be outmatched. This way, the player gets a taste of what they'll be like when they get tougher and also the foe seems credible.

This, right here can't stressed enough.  In the aforementioned Kai Leng scene, I was owning his cybernetic keister on hardcore, I would like to add), and then suddenly CUTSCENE and I lost.  Bah.

All that Remians would have had more impact, I think if the conclusion was effected by player choices.  For example, if you'd gotten there under the proper circumstances, instead of dying leandra could have been paralyzed.

Man that sounded cold, even to me.  But the point of the scene, as devs have posted, was to give the player a reason to feel personally victimized by magic.  Saving Mom would actually have defeated the purpose of the scene, so...paralyzed.  In some ways, that might even be worse.

I've segued from the point.  Cutscene icompetence is bad, and destroys most of the emtional tension, replacing it with annoyance at my inability to have any effect on the situation.

[DarkSpiral]

Redwardz wrote...

Easy... Give females the Cullen LI... And then kill him. Not sure how you'd destroy us males though. Maybe if Empress Celene was under your protection and you'd form a bond with her and then she'd somehow die tragically.

Sweet Divinity, the screams of the raging fangirls would be heard in orbit!

It must happen!

[Sacred_Fantasy]

Redwardz wrote...

Easy... Give females the Cullen LI... And then kill him.

 

Now that's evil.  Why didn't I thought about it in the first place? 

Kudos to you.  

Redwardz wrote...

Not sure how you'd destroy us males though. Maybe if Empress Celene was under your protection and you'd form a bond with her and then she'd somehow die tragically.

The only way BioWare could hurt me is if they actually manage to make me feel that I'm the PC and the narrative is written from first person's POV ( which is highly unlikely within BioWare's writing skill ) . It's certainly not going to happen with preset cinematic third person character's POV, autodialogues,  vague paraphrase and limited 3 tones.  


Leandra's death? Meh. The game didn't even allow self-insert playstyle, so how am I suppose to pretend her as "mom" and felt devastate? Hell, I can't even pretend to be Hawke with all the screwed third person narrative and POV. I'm not even sure I roleplay at all.

Modifié par Sacred_Fantasy, 09 décembre 2012 - 11:51 .

[Parmida]

DarkSpiral wrote...

Redwardz wrote...

Easy... Give females the Cullen LI... And then kill him. Not sure how you'd destroy us males though. Maybe if Empress Celene was under your protection and you'd form a bond with her and then she'd somehow die tragically.

Sweet Divinity, the screams of the raging fangirls would be heard in orbit!

It must happen!

NOOOOOOOO! HOW DARE YOU SUGGEST THAT!?

[Xilizhra]

CrazyRah wrote...

KiwiQuiche wrote...

They tried that in DA2 with Leandra's death.
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. What an utterly horrible parent.

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

See, I never personally cared that she said that, because the sibling death that had just happened had the entirety of my emotional attention. And, strictly speaking, I am the one in charge of everyone's combat-related well-being.

[Xiomara]

Redwardz wrote...

Easy... Give females the Cullen LI... And then kill him. Not sure how you'd destroy us males though. Maybe if Empress Celene was under your protection and you'd form a bond with her and then she'd somehow die tragically.

As a female I have to point out that losing Cullen certainly wouldn't destroy me.

[cephasjames]

HiroVoid wrote...

I would at least like having other humans and dwarves that are just as or more powerful than the PC for a change instead of having it like the PC's some super-powered fade being that can do things that no other mortal can possibly do. I mean...just because the protagonist killed a dragon doesn't mean there aren't other people that couldn't do so.

Also, you may want to put a spoiler warning for other possible games where this happens since it'll obviously get discussed.

Wasn't that DA2?

[Shadow of Light Dragon]

Foolsfolly wrote...

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,

Hawke, Cousland, Aeducan.

sacks your castle,

Cousland. Aeducan to a lesser degree (your kingdom is taken from you).

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.

Bioware can do any number of things to our characters or the characters they associate with. It can't 100% break our characters' spirits without railroading dialogue to make us unable to play anything but a broken character. This I would not support. But I do support dialogue that allows players to RP their characters as stoic or shattered.

However...I'd prefer that for the 'minor fall' of the PC it be through our character's own actions. Let the PC make a major mistake, or give them a choice between several unhappy sacrifices. Too often the fall is something that's inflicted. Someone's killed, or raped, or kidnapped, or your home's burned, or your friend betrays you.

While the Aeducan Origin wasn't perfect, I loved the premise that you could be fooled into murdering your brother. And I loved that the fallout of that is that your father dies of grief, and your right-hand man (even lover if the PC is female) banished. That's a recipe for self recrimination right there.

[Parmida]

That blind Templar's death and the whole orphanage's atmosphere, bloodshed remains, screams and visions punched me right in the guts, I felt that I was a big failure and the poor guy had to die because of me. It made me feel really bad about myself and I loved that quest.

[Centauri2002]

I'm a big fan of twists in a story that completely turn the player's perceptions of the protagonist and the protagonist's environment upside down. I think Jade Empire and KotOR did this extremely well and they are particularly memorable for it. I'd love to see BioWare do something like this with DA3.

If that entails breaking the PC's spirit, then so be it.

[Uccio]

Foolsfolly wrote...

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.

Only if it happens because of set of choises I choose 'wrong'. Not one but several so I need to think where I did wron. No DA2 railroaded destruction.

[Milan92]

Turns out the villain is the protagonist and the protagonist is the villain.

[TheRealJayDee]

DarkSpiral wrote...

Lord Issa wrote...

-Don't make it due to 'cutscene incompetence'. Simply make the AI and skills of the foe too powerful to be outmatched. This way, the player gets a taste of what they'll be like when they get tougher and also the foe seems credible.

This, right here can't stressed enough.  In the aforementioned Kai Leng scene, I was owning his cybernetic keister on hardcore, I would like to add), and then suddenly CUTSCENE and I lost.  Bah.

All that Remians would have had more impact, I think if the conclusion was effected by player choices.  For example, if you'd gotten there under the proper circumstances, instead of dying leandra could have been paralyzed.

Man that sounded cold, even to me.  But the point of the scene, as devs have posted, was to give the player a reason to feel personally victimized by magic.  Saving Mom would actually have defeated the purpose of the scene, so...paralyzed.  In some ways, that might even be worse.

I've segued from the point.  Cutscene icompetence is bad, and destroys most of the emtional tension, replacing it with annoyance at my inability to have any effect on the situation.

This needs to be repeated. Often.

[DarkKnightHolmes]

After the mess known as ME3, no. Don't touch the PC emotions. They'll just force emotion on us and it'll kill the game for me.

[MichaelStuart]

Wouldn't work.
I can't feel sorry for stuff that happens to a fictional character.

[Felya87]

I'm ok with the "losing everything" thing, but I prefer if the NPC die because of the choise made during the game, and not only because there should be a "meaningful" death. that's just lame.
I guess a thing as ME2 final would be ok, with the castle instead of the Normandy, but maybe not at the end of the game.
with companions dieing in base of the choise made, maybe running away or fighting to reconquist the castle.
It would be cute to choose the kind of emotions of the pc, because the "imposted" emotion can be really different from what a player think his/her character should have, and destroy the illusion of create a character.

[Blackrising]

Yesssss. Punch me in the gut, Bioware. Hit me where it hurts.
(Just please not at the end.)

Tragic situations are a great opportunity for defining your character, but only if the player can decide how the PC reacts to loss. (ME3 wasn't very good in that aspect, although it worked out for me personally since every one of my Sheps had to wrestle with their guilt.)

[syllogi]

Inserting a ton of misery and angst into the game does not automatically equal good writing and/or an emotional connection with the audience.

When I'm playing a video game, I don't mind having trials and tribulations (I mean, even Harvest Moon has obstacles to overcome), but part of a trial is the ability to affect events. When your sibling and mother die, and you cannot do anything about that in DA2, it doesn't feel like the player is connected to the story. If, for instance, the way my character had completed the serial killer questline had impact upon whether Leandra lived or died, (or even how she died, or if others would die in her place) that would have made me feel invested. And it would have been one of those plot lines talked about on the forums for ages, when people wonder what other players did in that situation. Instead, the conversation about All That Remains is basically "oh, that was sad" or "I didn't care about Leandra anyway."

Ending the game with a dead or broken character with no other options is pretty dissatisfying too. It feels like the writers are thumbing their noses at the players when they pull a "Rocks Fall, Everyone Dies" on us. I'd rather not play a game if I feel like the creators are scornful of the consumers of their product.

[Mark of the Dragon]

I hope to see a similar as well. Lets shake the game up a little. I agree about the rpg God Complex. This idea would sure go far in reminding us that we are human.

[ShaggyWolf]

As long as it's not done like ME3 Thessia. I know I could've beaten Kai Leng and his stupid gunship, but instead I got to watch Shepard and friends get thrown around like ragdolls, flail around like idiots, and fight like children with garbage avenger AR's.

That ticked me off. The game took control away from me and forced me into a cutscene defeat that I could've avoided if I had been playing the game myself, all for the sake of drama. Well, that fails when I want to put my fist through the screen more than I want to watch the story unfold.

Dragon Age games have done a much better job with this. When there's some kind of disaster or crisis that happens that results in the protagonist losing, basically, it happens in a way that the protagonist could not have averted realistically. Good examples include the Human Noble, City Elf, and Dwarf Noble origin stories, Ostagar, the death of Hawke's sibling, the Viscount's son's death, Leandra's death, and Anders' attack on the Chantry.

Furthermore DA:O had that lovely situation with Ser Cauthrien, where you could actually beat the NPCs and avoid capture. Like ME3's Thessia, the writers could have made Cauthrien and her small army beat the PC in a cutscene, but they didn't. You get a really tough fight but if you're awesome enough you can win.

I think the important thing to remember is that despite the stories, these are still video games. If I am playing the game and killing dozens of darkspawn at a time, trouncing blood mages, and slaying Dragons, I would not be able to accept one or two guys defeating my character in a cutscene, because I know my character could handle those odds if I could control him. I think it's important that the protagonist suffer personal losses and even defeats throughout the story, but DO NOT take away control of my character and make him into a moron to achieve it.