80 réponses à ce sujet

[Major Crackhead]

One of the problems I had with DAII, is that while there were still some morally ambigious choices, an "Agressive" Hawke comes off as much more of an "Anti-hero" compared to the outright thuggery possible in DA: Origins.

Personally, I'm hoping for some DA: Origins style options where you can do absolutely dispicable things. Since the main character is an "Inquistor", I'm expecting options that live up to that name. A few games of torture, anyone?

[Emzamination]

The last time I suggested torturing people, I got beat with the morality stick <_<

But yeah, I'm always down for kicking in doors, thumping skulls and using a little electroshock therapy to get the job done Ethics just get in my way.

[HighMoon]

Agreed. Although there were a few opportunities to be evil in DA2 (killing Bethany comes to mind), I would like to see DA3 make return to DAO's level of assholishness. Give me plenty of chances to screw over the mages/templars.

[Fast Jimmy]

I don't want to be evil. I want a perfectly justifiable reason to act outside my usual moral compass.

"Should I save the peasants, or let them burn?" is not a good choice. It just lets the player be sadistic if they so choose, which isn't great story telling. "Should I save the peasants, or secure an asset that will help me in the way, which in turn saves more lives?" And not just a random number in the EMS or a different unit to use in the final battle like DA:O, but an actual asset that affects the story. Choosing to save the asset prevents X character from dying or Y location from being burned to the ground. Choosing to save the people means that the peasants are saved, but the worst scenario happens to X and Y.

THAT would be a choice worth making. Not just a jerk to be a jerk, but being a jerk for the greater good.

[Emzamination]

Golden-Rose wrote...

Agreed. Although there were a few opportunities to be evil in DA2 (killing Bethany comes to mind), I would like to see DA3 make return to DAO's level of assholishness. Give me plenty of chances to screw over the mages/templars.

Personally I found both killing bethany and Anders a huge let down. Bethany to me, was awful, because meredith killed her instead of hawke. I guess bioware thought fratricide was too evil. The murder knife Anders got in the back after nuking the chantry was just ridiculous. The player should've had the opprotunity to torture him for motivation, plan details, conspirators & accomplices, or simply make him scream for blowing up the grand cleric. But I suppose that was also too evil.

Modifié par Emzamination, 31 janvier 2013 - 05:12 .

[Major Crackhead]

Fast Jimmy wrote...

I don't want to be evil. I want a perfectly justifiable reason to act outside my usual moral compass.

"Should I save the peasants, or let them burn?" is not a good choice. It just lets the player be sadistic if they so choose, which isn't great story telling. "Should I save the peasants, or secure an asset that will help me in the way, which in turn saves more lives?" And not just a random number in the EMS or a different unit to use in the final battle like DA:O, but an actual asset that affects the story. Choosing to save the asset prevents X character from dying or Y location from being burned to the ground. Choosing to save the people means that the peasants are saved, but the worst scenario happens to X and Y.

THAT would be a choice worth making. Not just a jerk to be a jerk, but being a jerk for the greater good.

That would be pretty fantastic, actually. I'd prefer well made evil options as well though (mainly ones that are independant and not part of a "save the villagers or let them burn" scenario).

Modifié par Major Crackhead, 31 janvier 2013 - 05:23 .

[Emzamination]

Fast Jimmy wrote...

I don't want to be evil. I want a perfectly justifiable reason to act outside my usual moral compass.

"Should I save the peasants, or let them burn?" is not a good choice. It just lets the player be sadistic if they so choose, which isn't great story telling. "Should I save the peasants, or secure an asset that will help me in the way, which in turn saves more lives?" And not just a random number in the EMS or a different unit to use in the final battle like DA:O, but an actual asset that affects the story. Choosing to save the asset prevents X character from dying or Y location from being burned to the ground. Choosing to save the people means that the peasants are saved, but the worst scenario happens to X and Y.

THAT would be a choice worth making. Not just a jerk to be a jerk, but being a jerk for the greater good.

How is making evil decisions horrible story telling? What if the player doesn't want to save people? What if the players goal is simply power,respect and riches? What if the player just wants to watch thedas burn? Your example sounds like a subtle attempt to forcefully imposing a moral code of ethics on the players role playing.

[Knight of Dane]

Fast Jimmy wrote...

I don't want to be evil. I want a perfectly justifiable reason to act outside my usual moral compass.

This.

What I loved about the Grey Warden role in Origins is the situation you find yourself in where, at least I, were able to make perfectly valid reasons why my wardens would keep the Anvil of the Void or side with the Werewolves without being cruel people.

[Lintanis]

Bit of water boarding in the morning is a good way to start the day

It did start in the Inquisition after all

[LobselVith8]

Knight of Dane wrote...

Fast Jimmy wrote...

I don't want to be evil. I want a perfectly justifiable reason to act outside my usual moral compass. 

This.

What I loved about the Grey Warden role in Origins is the situation you find yourself in where, at least I, were able to make perfectly valid reasons why my wardens would keep the Anvil of the Void or side with the Werewolves without being cruel people. 

Yeah, I liked that. Siding with the werewolves actually had them confront Zathrian about his refusal to cure them of the curse, despite the initial dialogue about killing the elves outright, and the Anvil permitted the dwarves to have a hundred years of peace from the darkspawn, so I think it's perfectly reasonable to spare it when the dwarves have nearly lost everything to the greatest threat Thedas has ever faced.

[Emzamination]

Knight of Dane wrote...

Fast Jimmy wrote...

I don't want to be evil. I want a perfectly justifiable reason to act outside my usual moral compass.

This.

What I loved about the Grey Warden role in Origins is the situation you find yourself in where, at least I, were able to make perfectly valid reasons why my wardens would keep the Anvil of the Void or side with the Werewolves without being cruel people.

I'm not against those decisions at all but I'd like to point out there was no sense of ethics for either.

Anvil of the void: You've sentenced x number of dwarves souls to be bound eternally to the anvil to further your own goals.

Siding with the werewolves: Everyone you helped the werewolves slaughter besides zathrian was ignorant of the ritual. So you yourself in turn just commited the exact same injustice on innocent elves you sought to help the werewolves avenge.

[Cutlass Jack]

Fast Jimmy wrote...

I don't want to be evil. I want a perfectly justifiable reason to act outside my usual moral compass.

"Should I save the peasants, or let them burn?" is not a good choice. It just lets the player be sadistic if they so choose, which isn't great story telling. "Should I save the peasants, or secure an asset that will help me in the way, which in turn saves more lives?" And not just a random number in the EMS or a different unit to use in the final battle like DA:O, but an actual asset that affects the story. Choosing to save the asset prevents X character from dying or Y location from being burned to the ground. Choosing to save the people means that the peasants are saved, but the worst scenario happens to X and Y.

THAT would be a choice worth making. Not just a jerk to be a jerk, but being a jerk for the greater good.

Thats how moral choices should really be. Too often we get stuck with what I call 'Stupid Evil.'  i.e. I could either save a village....or kick puppies for no particular reason. The only value to the evil choice is to say "woo hoo I'm a @#$%"

What makes a well done 'dark' choice is if it actually has a meaningful benefit over doing it the other way.

[Grahagogilala]

I like how DA:O did it really, really much since it allowed you a little bit of different kinds of being bad, you can both do bad things for a good cause or simply leave tasks and people if you don't really care. I think DA2 lacked the latter part, and honestly I can't really think of many examples of it. DA2 did however still give us the options to kill just to be sure of that the person would not be a threat and the likes, which I really liked because you were never really sure if it would be a good idea or not to spare them. After playing the game once or twice you do however realize that sparing people is almost always preferable, so I suppose that would be good to have in DA3, some things that come back and bite you in the butt if you are too nice...but that might be slightly off topic.

Anyway, examples (so minor spoliers) of what I liked so in terms of not helping thus far are not helping the little girl with the pride demon in the Shale DLC and not helping in the siege of Redcliffe, more of that kind plsssssss.

[Knight of Dane]

Emzamination wrote...

Knight of Dane wrote...

Fast Jimmy wrote...

I don't want to be evil. I want a perfectly justifiable reason to act outside my usual moral compass.

This.

What I loved about the Grey Warden role in Origins is the situation you find yourself in where, at least I, were able to make perfectly valid reasons why my wardens would keep the Anvil of the Void or side with the Werewolves without being cruel people.

I'm not against those decisions at all but I'd like to point out there was no sense of ethics for either.

Anvil of the void: You've sentenced x number of dwarves souls to be bound eternally to the anvil to further your own goals.

Siding with the werewolves: Everyone you helped the werewolves slaughter besides zathrian was ignorant of the ritual. So you yourself in turn just commited the exact same injustice on innocent elves you sought to help the werewolves avenge.

Wel that's the issue.

In one of my.. "favorite.." characters (hate the word headcanon) Marcus Cousland I tried to roleplay a man who were very basic about the need for an army to battle the Darkspawn.

Keeping the Anvil of the Void was never a question about innocents suffering for him, Branka didn't tell him that "If you let me keep this I will use it to enslave the castless!" but just that he would have an army of steel men for his army.
That is all that mattered, extra forces to quell the blight, and he knew what Stone Golems could do, he had battled those on the way. Steel golems had to be double that.
(I'm just sad we never got a proper cinematic displaying this "tide of steel men")

For the Werewolf decition he had been taunted by the elves ever since he arrived. The welcoming one, Zathrian lying to his face and the Hahren and Lanaye blaiming "him" for their situation, so for him at that point it was either getting the elves help or the help of large beasts of nature.
He chose the beasts.
At least he knew that the beasts was a potential danger, the Dalish he could not read.

I admit he went out on a whim, but he came out on top and had Werewolves help him take care of the blight.

he was not evil for he did not "want" for innocents to die and it was ultimately Zathrian who refused to cure the werewolves, so the blame for the clan's death was on him.

[Emzamination]

krul2k wrote...

you were never"evil" in DAO dont even pretend you were, if you were evil in dao do you think you wouldve cared about mages or templars, would you have cared about elfs or werewolfs would you have even gave a flying francis for the plight of ferelden, of course you wouldnt, dont even pretend theres evil choices in any the games theres not, its either be nice or be a dick thats it nothing evil, to be "evil" the game needs to be built for it, none of the DA games are.

yes my "evil" standard is prob wrong and doubtfully will never be made because ive never played a game were i could be "evil", i can be a colossal dick which is annoying but "evil" na its never happened

You didn't have to care about anyone in Origins. You did however have to compell the support of one group or the other, and with good reason considering someone had to break that thousand man darkspawn line.

[Brodoteau]

First do you want to RP an evil character to gain a greater understanding into the nature of evil (like the writer is allowing readers to do with Dexter) or do you want to do it just because, you know, it would be fun?

I realize that information from Bioware has been scarce, but you know, these topics on this forum are getting a bit odd. It seems most posts lately have not been about gameplay or storyline but rather a wish to engage in every fantasy in the name of choice and variety. Are we so bored? We should remember that choice by itself, without reasons for making that choice, can be paralyzing (vis. Buridan's ass.)

This is why, and I think Bioware realizes, that too much choice is limiting and breaks the game. Let's remember that this is still a Role-playing game: and in a game, at some point you have to, you know, play it. If I am in a soccer game, I can refuse to score goals or stop shots or run -- but then I'm not really playing the game am I? Granted I have made a lot of choices, but really I am just existing at that point, not playing. Is this the game that people really want to play?

For example, playing a nihilistic sadistic evil Warden, who just wanted to see the world burn, in DAO didn't really make sense, because why would that character care about the Blight? So, in essence by role-playing that character you are refusing to play the game. That's a choice; but its game-breaking.

To elaborate further if I decide to use my hands, the structure of the game has limited my choice to do that. But that's not something to realize before going into the game. So before we talking about how Bioware is shoehorning us into one morality over another, let's realize that by playing their game, we are agreeing to play within their structure.

So I applaud Bioware for limiting choices to ones that are within a reasonably social conscious. That doesn't mean all the choices have to be heroic -- but at least justifiable. Sure killing Brother Gentivi was "evil", but you could justify it by saying you didn't want the information about Andraste's ashes to get out. So even their "evil" choices, have rather been difficult morally "grey" choices within an established moral framework.

Maybe I'm a prude, or maybe I want to limit the variety of choices, but I don't think Bethany (or Imoen) should have been LIs -- as have been advocated (and yes, there are mods for these two romances). I don't think the choice to let children burn, without an identifiable goal as Jimmy has outlined, is reasonable and productive. E.g. in Mass Effect: kill the terrorist on the moon or save the hostages? Or in DAO: save Redcliffe or let it be destroyed. Those are not exclusively evil vs. good decisions (though they are as well) but rather resource allocation questions.

So while I know this is futile to write all this, I implore Bioware to release something so that people have something to talk about before we get  "I want Dog for LI" or other such nonsense.

Because the more I read these forum posts, the more I think I want to see no level-scaling and more railroading because offering unlimited choice to people becomes the wild west of a la carte fetishes and fantasies.

Modifié par Brodoteau, 31 janvier 2013 - 06:15 .

[BouncyFrag]

I'd like to have ruthless decisions to fit an agenda as opposed to being a jerk just for the sake of being a jerk (which is sometimes what Bioware thinks is being 'evil').

[Xilizhra]

Maybe I'm a prude, or maybe I want to limit the variety of choices, but I don't think Bethany (or Imoen) should have been LIs -- as have been advocated (and yes, there are mods for these two romances). I don't think the choice to let children burn, without an identifiable goal as Jimmy has outlined, is reasonable and productive.

Yes, because those two things are completely equitable. I'm not an incest modder, but please, acquire perspective.

[Fast Jimmy]

Emzamination wrote...

Fast Jimmy wrote...

I don't want to be evil. I want a perfectly justifiable reason to act outside my usual moral compass.

"Should I save the peasants, or let them burn?" is not a good choice. It just lets the player be sadistic if they so choose, which isn't great story telling. "Should I save the peasants, or secure an asset that will help me in the way, which in turn saves more lives?" And not just a random number in the EMS or a different unit to use in the final battle like DA:O, but an actual asset that affects the story. Choosing to save the asset prevents X character from dying or Y location from being burned to the ground. Choosing to save the people means that the peasants are saved, but the worst scenario happens to X and Y.

THAT would be a choice worth making. Not just a jerk to be a jerk, but being a jerk for the greater good.

How is making evil decisions horrible story telling? What if the player doesn't want to save people? What if the players goal is simply power,respect and riches? What if the player just wants to watch thedas burn? Your example sounds like a subtle attempt to forcefully imposing a moral code of ethics on the players role playing.

Not at all. 

How does gold that can never be spent outside of weapons shops, respect from NPCs who don't act hardly different at all regardless of your actions or power, which boils down to having people do what you say (which happens in nearly every game, regardless) matter? If the game gave you a good avenue for using these things, then I could see the appeal. 

But if a player has no reason to make a deal with the devil (both figuratively and literally), then it becomes a flat choice. You can get an extra skill point by promising the soul of Connor to a demon? Oh, boy. A whole extra skill point. I can buy that from Bodahn for a few sovereigns.

Level gains, gold and equipment are terrible motivators to make decisions, for me. All they do, ultimately, is make combat easier, which can be done a lot easier by sliding the Diffiuclt bar down towards the Casual end. If the game didn't have difficulty settings or there wasn't level scaling, so that there was no way to defeat a particular enemy in combat without resorting to some sordid deals, then it would be a different story. As is, its just a choice to be evil, to have a character that twirls their mustache evily and say "Mwuahahahaa."


Instead, if you were presented with a choice where you are offered a choice of doing something good and doing something you find reprehensible, but the game also clearly spells out that the bad choice has a strong chance of being for the greater good and the good choice can result in catastrophe (and the game then delivers on those ideas), then THAT is a good scenario. That's a story that examines what it means to be your character. 

Being an evil, mustache twirling villain of a character is just as flat and boring as being a "Heroic, Saves-The-Day!" type that can do no wrong. They are opposite sides of the same, dull litereary coin.

Modifié par Fast Jimmy, 31 janvier 2013 - 06:40 .

[Fast Jimmy]

Xilizhra wrote...

Maybe I'm a prude, or maybe I want to limit the variety of choices, but I don't think Bethany (or Imoen) should have been LIs -- as have been advocated (and yes, there are mods for these two romances). I don't think the choice to let children burn, without an identifiable goal as Jimmy has outlined, is reasonable and productive.

Yes, because those two things are completely equitable. I'm not an incest modder, but please, acquire perspective.

Is it even incest in the case of Imoen? Your shared parentage was a deity. I'm pretty sure there isn't any exchange of genetic material that could result in any birth defects. And its not like the two of you were raised together to make it a weird scenario of dating your sister.

Not to get way off base or anything, but that particular aspect of things I found confusing.

[Brodoteau]

Xilizhra wrote...

Maybe I'm a prude, or maybe I want to limit the variety of choices, but I don't think Bethany (or Imoen) should have been LIs -- as have been advocated (and yes, there are mods for these two romances). I don't think the choice to let children burn, without an identifiable goal as Jimmy has outlined, is reasonable and productive.

Yes, because those two things are completely equitable. I'm not an incest modder, but please, acquire perspective.

I was not insuinuated that you or anybody in this thread was.  They are equitable in the sense that people find both of those things morally repugnant but have both been advocated for in the name of "greater variety and choice."  I'm not trying to create an "evilness" scale here.  Maybe you find incest to be better than the immolation of children  -- that's not the point.  My greater point is that there has to be some moral framework to limit choices, othewise all bets are off.  

[Xilizhra]

Brodoteau wrote...

Xilizhra wrote...

Maybe I'm a prude, or maybe I want to limit the variety of choices, but I don't think Bethany (or Imoen) should have been LIs -- as have been advocated (and yes, there are mods for these two romances). I don't think the choice to let children burn, without an identifiable goal as Jimmy has outlined, is reasonable and productive.

Yes, because those two things are completely equitable. I'm not an incest modder, but please, acquire perspective.

I was not insuinuated that you or anybody in this thread was.  They are equitable in the sense that people find both of those things morally repugnant but have both been advocated for in the name of "greater variety and choice."  I'm not trying to create an "evilness" scale here.  Maybe you find incest to be better than the immolation of children  -- that's not the point.  My greater point is that there has to be some moral framework to limit choices, othewise all bets are off.  

Truth be told, I consider all issues of actual morality, as opposed to cultural distaste, relating to incest come from two things: power imbalance and the risks of too little genetic variety, and the latter is more of a long-term thing than "instant mutant babies." If both parties are consenting adults with no preexisting positions of superiority, I don't see anything wrong with it. I'm not advocating for the chance for it because it's culturally futile at this point in time and would be stretched into numerous false equivalencies, but it's what I believe.

[Kaiser Arian XVII]

I'm not a psycho and don't want to use evil methods usually, but in the time of great perils and for the sake of greater good I allow some evil deeds to be done if they don't harm much and do worth it (secure victory, social stability etc).

In video games and beyond...

Modifié par Legatus Arianus, 31 janvier 2013 - 06:36 .