648 réponses à ce sujet

[David7204]

Something like this for a 'perfect' Noveria playthrough?

Impressed by Shepard's professionalism in containing the Peak 15 incident without loss of life on behalf of the Alliance and SPECTRE office, Noveria research conglomerates under Administrator Qui'in and the advisement of Agent Parasini have pledged to supply Alliance and turian fleets with proprietary technologies upgrading the weapons, defenses, and sensors of ships, free of charge. Elanis Rick Control Services has deployed soldiers to remote colonies with minimal defenses in an effort to quickly provide basic training and maximize survivability against the Reapers.

And a fat load of war assets. Simple, but effective I think. As long as war assets tied into the ending more, obviously. And of course less optimistic contributions for less effective playthroughs.

Modifié par David7204, 29 mars 2013 - 10:20 .

[chemiclord]

AlanC9 wrote...

I'm actually agreeing with you here. ME1 did what Bio typically does -- even if there are consequences, the PC leaves the area behind and the consequences don't have much, if any, effect on the rest of the game

To sum it up:

ME1 does not give the player agency or choice.  It gives the player the ILLUSION of choice... and many players fell for it to the point that they became enraged when the illusion was finally shattered.

[ScriptBabe]

Craig Ferguson said something about Dr. Who that I think really applies to what we'd all hoped for with Mass Effect 3. "It's all about the triumph of intellect and romance over brute force and cynicism."

[David7204]

Well...I'm not sure I would put 'intellect' on the top of the list, as important as it is. Shepard isn't a scientist or researcher.

[dani1138]

David7204 wrote...

A couple of missions? How long are these missions, exactly?

What about the Council Choice in ME 1? And the Collector Base choice? Would those need a couple of missions each as well?

I don't see why they'd need missions, just a consistent presentation whenever they're followed up on. But since I can see you're clearly trying to prove some kind of point and "win" something here, I'll bite. 

Why not? Some other games seem to handle that whole choice/consequence thing just fine (go on, scroll down to Chapter 2) without having to fall back on cosmetic differences and other excuses.  DA:O manages to have a quest line exclusive to Rogues. Entire areas of Deus Ex: Human Revolution and Dishonoured might never reveal themselves to a player who chooses to only play a certain way. Fallout: New Vegas is filled to the brim with content that only opens itself up to players who take certain routes. Neverwinter Nights had quite a few class-exclusive quests. And as linked to, it is impossible to see more than 60% of The Witcher 2 in any one single playthrough, all because of those pesky choices the player makes and their inconvenient habit of having consequences.

This kind of approach is more time consuming, sure, but also much more rewarding. It gives games legs. Maybe if BW wasn't up to following through with their plot branching, they shouldn't have pushed the "your choices matter" angle so hard.

Just a reminder: "[The presence of the Rachni] has huge consequences in Mass
Effect 3. Even just in the final battle with the Reapers." One week. One week before the game released.

[ScriptBabe]

Ah, but it isn't all just about Shepard. He had the scientists and researchers with him. It's about the alliance of divergent people.

[Iakus]

chemiclord wrote...

To sum it up:

ME1 does not give the player agency or choice.  It gives the player the ILLUSION of choice... and many players fell for it to the point that they became enraged when the illusion was finally shattered.

Then the lesson is:  Don't shatter the illusion.

There's a good Tolkien quote that's been floating around lately referring to that...

[David7204]

The kind of hypocrisy I'm seeing from you is unbelievable. New Vegas is not 'filled to the brim' with exclusive content. The very few quests that are exclusive to each 'questline' are fetch quests. Finding the autodoc for Caesar in a vault used for...three other quests? Or the quest for House and Yes Man that involves literally walking into a power station, taking five steps, flipping a switch, and leaving? No, New Vegas' 'branching questline' is a joke. And since you advocated it right alongside those other games, I'm betting dollars to doughnuts you're running your mouth with them as well.

You whine to me about that quote, and then you do the exact same bloody thing in your own arguments. That is absolute garbage. If you hate Walters, you ought to hate yourself right along with him.

Modifié par David7204, 30 mars 2013 - 12:16 .

[dani1138]

David7204 wrote...

The kind of hypocrisy I'm seeing from you is unbelievable. New Vegas is not 'filled to the brim' with exclusive content. The very few quests that are exclusive to each 'questline' are fetch quests. Finding the autodoc for Caesar in a vault used for...three other quests? Or the quest for House and Yes Man that involves literally walking into a power station, taking five steps, flipping a switch, and leaving? No, New Vegas' 'branching questline' is a joke. And since you advocated it right alongside those other games, I'm betting dollars to doughnuts you're running your mouth with them as well.

You whine to me about that quote, and then you do the exact same bloody thing in your own arguments. That is absolute garbage. If you hate Walters, you ought to hate yourself right along with him.

Enough with the personal attacks. They're unneccesary and do you absolutely no favours.

ME3 has a fair amount of content that you can only see with different decisions, and I'm not denying that. I'm questioning the degree to which it is implemented compared to what could have been*. I've played NV twice and
don't feel like I've scratched the surface. It's not just mutually exclusive quests I'm talking about, but exclusive *paths*. Go have a browse through the Fallout wiki. Read the walkthroughs for a bunch of NV quests. Many quests have a wide variety of ways to solve them. A wide variety of options means a greater degree of replayability. Here's just one example. It reminds me of what I loved about the Noveria section of ME1 - many different ways to progress, a lot of content that most players simply won't see if they only play the game once.

I don't hate Mac Walters, not at all. Why would I? The statement simply speaks for itself and is pretty damn relevant to the discussion at hand. If anything, I post it because I'm mystified by it, and simply can't reconcile it with the finished product.

You can feel free to disregard the examples I posted, some are more relevant than others. They're there to prove a point - adding additional content that enriches multiple playthroughs is not only a good thing, it's quite common. And in the case of ME3, we have devs outright stating that these kinds of things are right there in the game to a degree that they simply aren't. But if you're really so enraged at my holding that opinion, I guess I've got nothing more to say to you. Go and find someone else whose buttons you can push until you're frothing at the mouth with delight, because I'm not going to waste my time anymore.

*As in, a hypothetical discussion. The trilogy is over, nothing you or I talk about here will make a blind bit of difference. We don't have to agree, but I'm here because I enjoy discussing this kind of stuff. It's absolutely harmless, so you needn't be such a Mr.Cranky Pants about it.

Modifié par dani1138, 30 mars 2013 - 12:40 .

[David7204]

If you don't want to be called a hypocrite, don't be one. Simple as that.

This is completely incompatible comparison. Fallout can have such options because it features a protagonist that can become a cannibal for giggles, that can side with factions for really no reason or benefit other than to screw with people, where the protagonist is not required to have any kind of overarching goal or motive.

Mass Effect cannot do that, particularly ME 3 where pretty much every mission is expected to tie into the war effort.  Shepard is expected to smart. Expected to be a hero. The choices are restricted to choices that have at least some justification.

Also, characters in Fallout can learn everything there is to know about medicine, science, computers, weapons, hand-to-hand combat and so forth in a few days time, which is where a lot of the 'alternate' options for completing quests comes from. That would be completely unacceptable in Mass Effect.

Modifié par David7204, 30 mars 2013 - 12:52 .

[ScriptBabe]

Folks, we have been having a really lovely conversation with lots of give and take and analysis and of story and structure. There has been disagreement, but it's been polite and pleasant. Let's strive to keep it that way.

[Giantdeathrobot]

David7204 wrote...

The kind of hypocrisy I'm seeing from you is unbelievable. New Vegas is not 'filled to the brim' with exclusive content. The very few quests that are exclusive to each 'questline' are fetch quests. Finding the autodoc for Caesar in a vault used for...three other quests? Or the quest for House and Yes Man that involves literally walking into a power station, taking five steps, flipping a switch, and leaving? No, New Vegas' 'branching questline' is a joke. And since you advocated it right alongside those other games, I'm betting dollars to doughnuts you're running your mouth with them as well.

You whine to me about that quote, and then you do the exact same bloody thing in your own arguments. That is absolute garbage. If you hate Walters, you ought to hate yourself right along with him.

The latter half of the Powder Ganger quests starting at NCRCF differ whenever you support the convicts or destroy them. Incidentely, these quests close up to you if you support Goodsprings during the tutorial.

Killing Vulpes in Nipton closes off his quests (quite obviously). Also, merely having Boone as a party member closes you off from the Legion path altogether.

Being actively Legion makes it almost impossible to get Arcade's quest, and the best rewards in the game. It also mades the last two quests of the main plotline completely different from the others, and of course after a point closes you off from any interaction with NCR personnel, denying you many, many quests.

A branch of the Brotherhood of Steel questline (which differ quite a lot depending on which Elder you serve) requires you to wipe out the Silver Rush, closing off both their quests and one of the best shop in the game.

I could keep on for quite some time. Suffice to say, pissing off people and closing off quests is very easily possible in New Vegas, and Mass Effect has nothing like that as a rule of thumb.

That's even going into the fact that New Vegas often allows genuinly peaceful and/or alternate options to many quests, hell you can complete the game never killing anyone. Mass Effect has very, very, few missions that do not end up with Shepard leaving a trail of bodies behind him/her. It's justified by the plot and the whole thing about The Shep being a soldier first and foremost, but it remains that Mass Effect has much, much less player agency and real consequences than several other RPGs, notably those from Obsidian and CD Projeckt RED. And I'm not even getting into the fact these developpers usually do actual endings with closure, not pseudo-philosophical BS that raise more questions that it answers.

A bit off-topic, yes, but I wanted to set things straight. New Vegas and Mass Effect aren't even in the same dimension when it comes to player agency.

[dani1138]

David7204 wrote...

Completely incompatible. Fallout can have such options because it features a protagonist that can become a cannibal for giggles, that can side with factions for really no reason or benefit other than to screw with people, where the protagonist is not required to have any kind of overarching goal or motive.

Mass Effect cannot do that, particularly ME 3 where pretty much every mission is expected to tie into the war effort.  Shepard is expected to smart. Expected to be a hero. The choices are restricted to choices that make at least some justification.

Also, characters in Fallout can learn everything there is to know about medicine, science, computers, weapons, hand-to-hand combat and so forth in a few days time, which is where a lot of the 'alternate' options for completing quests comes from. That would be completely unacceptable in Mass Effect.

I guess I'm not seeing the problem. The skills that you point out in Fallout are that game's way of offering you different options, but they don't have to be the only way. Mass Effect has it's own way of offering you different paths through the game - not skill based, but decision based. They're just two sets of different mechanics for implementing diverse actions in gameplay. The difference is that one uses them a lot, whereas the other one glosses over them.

Which was the entire point of this conversation, wasn't it? That the Rachni queen decision had lots of potential for offering two distinct, different options, and then ran away from the implications of that choice at the last minute. Once again, I never suggested we should have some massive, earth-shattering divergence in the plot, but that the player's choice should have at the minimum been honoured with at least some kind of reasonable consequence. And once again, I fail to see why what I'm suggesting is so unreasonable.

[David7204]

And New Vegas and Mass Effect aren't even in the same dimension when it comes to meaningful storytelling. You think the Courier dying in New Vegas would stir anything remotely close to the outrage over Shepard? Of course not.

So they have more player agency. Fine, I can admit that. But they do it by not even dipping their toes into water that Mass Effect dives headfirst into.

For example, the Powder Gang quest you just mentioned is a great example. Sure, you have player agency. Player agency to decide to side with a generic gangster or a generic soldier to complete a few fetch quests and take part in a yawn-inducing assault for paltry rewards and zero meaningful themes or character interaction. They have more player agency because they sacrifice other content to do it.

Modifié par David7204, 30 mars 2013 - 01:02 .

[David7204]

dani1138 wrote...

David7204 wrote...

Completely incompatible. Fallout can have such options because it features a protagonist that can become a cannibal for giggles, that can side with factions for really no reason or benefit other than to screw with people, where the protagonist is not required to have any kind of overarching goal or motive.

Mass Effect cannot do that, particularly ME 3 where pretty much every mission is expected to tie into the war effort.  Shepard is expected to smart. Expected to be a hero. The choices are restricted to choices that make at least some justification.

Also, characters in Fallout can learn everything there is to know about medicine, science, computers, weapons, hand-to-hand combat and so forth in a few days time, which is where a lot of the 'alternate' options for completing quests comes from. That would be completely unacceptable in Mass Effect.

I guess I'm not seeing the problem. The skills that you point out in Fallout are that game's way of offering you different options, but they don't have to be the only way. Mass Effect has it's own way of offering you different paths through the game - not skill based, but decision based. They're just two sets of different mechanics for implementing diverse actions in gameplay. The difference is that one uses them a lot, whereas the other one glosses over them.

Which was the entire point of this conversation, wasn't it? That the Rachni queen decision had lots of potential for offering two distinct, different options, and then ran away from the implications of that choice at the last minute. Once again, I never suggested we should have some massive, earth-shattering divergence in the plot, but that the player's choice should have at the minimum been honoured with at least some kind of reasonable consequence. And once again, I fail to see why what I'm suggesting is so unreasonable.

The point I'm making is that there's no such thing as a free lunch. Yes, it would have been nice to have such choices have more of an impact. But shilling the choices in other games as nothing but win-win when they clearly sacrifice quality in other areas is ridiculous.

[dani1138]

Then perhaps The Witcher 2 makes the parallel better. I'm hesitant to focus on it because it seems to get dragged out on these boards whenever someone wants to make an unpleasant comparison. But it fits pretty well here, as the kind of meaningful storytelling you're talking about is very close in the two games. To be honest, I still can't quite believe the level of branching story that CDPR managed to implement in that game, it's pretty mind-blowing, and doesn't feature the kinds of sacrifices in other areas that you mention.

[David7204]

Is that right? You think players are as emotionally invested in the Witcher as they are in Mass Effect? As I recall, the original ending of the Witcher 2 was considered pretty terrible as well. And it didn't make so much as a blip as far as I could tell.

[drayfish]

chemiclord wrote...

To sum it up:

ME1 does not give the player agency or choice.  It gives the player the ILLUSION of choice... and many players fell for it to the point that they became enraged when the illusion was finally shattered.

So when you say 'illusion', do you include all the magician patter that consumers were subjected to pre-release?

Things like:

“Every decision you've made will impact how things go. The player's also the architect of what happens."

“You'll get answers to everything. That was one of the key things. Regardless of how we did everything, we had to say, yes, we're going to provide some answers to these people.”

“Because a lot of these plot threads are concluding and because it's being brought to a finale, since you were a part of architecting how they got to how they were, you will definitely sense how they close was because of the decisions you made and because of the decisions you didn't make”

- from Interview with Casey Hudson (Director of Mass Effect series)
http://www.gameinfor...s-effect-3.aspx

Instead of picturing all that (amongst innumerable other examples) being said by this guy:



we should imagine this?:



Also:

David7204 wrote...

The kind of hypocrisy I'm seeing from you is unbelievable. New Vegas is not 'filled to the brim' with exclusive content. The very few quests that are exclusive to each 'questline' are fetch quests. Finding the autodoc for Caesar in a vault used for...three other quests? Or the quest for House and Yes Man that involves literally walking into a power station, taking five steps, flipping a switch, and leaving? No, New Vegas' 'branching questline' is a joke. And since you advocated it right alongside those other games, I'm betting dollars to doughnuts you're running your mouth with them as well.

You whine to me about that quote, and then you do the exact same bloody thing in your own arguments. That is absolute garbage. If you hate Walters, you ought to hate yourself right along with him.

Blind aggression and insult is just about the worst possible way to make a point.  Aside from the fact that I disagree with the subjective distinction you are drawing between content and player agency (both of which I think rather sway in New Vegas' favour given the context of this discussion), trying to belittle someone as a hypocrite, accusing them of spewing garbage and 'running [their] mouth' is just shameful.

It's a pity, because you probably had a valid point somewhere amongst the bile.

Modifié par drayfish, 30 mars 2013 - 01:23 .

[dani1138]

Okay. So now we're not talking about player choice and consequence, but how emotionally invested people are. Goalposts moved, gotcha.

[David7204]

The goalposts haven't been moved at all. That's what this all boils down to. Good stories. And emotional investment is indicative of good storytelling. You claim the Witcher makes no sacrifices, that it's as good as Mass Effect in telling a meaningful and satisfying story. So why has Mass Effect made a bigger impact on players than the Witcher?

[chemiclord]

dani1138 wrote...

Then perhaps The Witcher 2 makes the parallel better. I'm hesitant to focus on it because it seems to get dragged out on these boards whenever someone wants to make an unpleasant comparison. But it fits pretty well here, as the kind of meaningful storytelling you're talking about is very close in the two games. To be honest, I still can't quite believe the level of branching story that CDPR managed to implement in that game, it's pretty mind-blowing, and doesn't feature the kinds of sacrifices in other areas that you mention.

The Witcher series is LOADED with the auto-dialogue that fans here decry as the work of Satan... and it has a clearly defined protagonist that gives you little in the way of customization.  If you want to give up "your Shepard" and toss FemShep out the airlock, then sure... but I doubt a lot of fans here would accept that trade-off.

You simply can't have it all.  You have to decide what is most important to you, and turn to games that mirror that as much as possible.

For what it's worth... I'd prefer a well-written character with a defined backstory and autodialogue over a soulless player avatar that gives nothing but the bare essentials and has the player try and connect the dots, but I KNOW I'm in the minority opinion on that here.

Modifié par chemiclord, 30 mars 2013 - 01:30 .

[drayfish]

chemiclord wrote...

dani1138 wrote...

Then perhaps The Witcher 2 makes the parallel better. I'm hesitant to focus on it because it seems to get dragged out on these boards whenever someone wants to make an unpleasant comparison. But it fits pretty well here, as the kind of meaningful storytelling you're talking about is very close in the two games. To be honest, I still can't quite believe the level of branching story that CDPR managed to implement in that game, it's pretty mind-blowing, and doesn't feature the kinds of sacrifices in other areas that you mention.

The Witcher series is LOADED with the auto-dialogue that fans here decry as the work of Satan... and it has a clearly defined protagonist that gives you little in the way of customization.  If you want to give up "your Shepard" and toss FemShep out the airlock, then sure... but I doubt a lot of fans here would accept that trade-off.

You simply can't have it all.  You have to decide what is most important to you, and turn to games that mirror that as much as possible.

For what it's worth... I'd prefer a well-written character with a defined backstory and autodialogue over a soulless player avatar that gives nothing but the bare essentials and has the player try and connect the dots, but I KNOW I'm in the minority opinion on that here.

So, genuine question:

Did you feel that Shepard was somehow deficient in Mass Effect 1 and 2 when you were actually afforded the opportunity to (relatively) control her responses and actions?

[David7204]

Shepard is not a 'soulless player avatar' that gives nothing but the bare essential in any of the three games.

[Giantdeathrobot]

David7204 wrote...

The goalposts haven't been moved at all. That's what this all boils down to. Good stories. And emotional investment is indicative of good storytelling. You claim the Witcher makes no sacrifices, that it's as good as Mass Effect in telling a meaningful and satisfying story. So why has Mass Effect made a bigger impact on players than the Witcher?

And exactly how do you measure said bigger impact? The fact that the ending was a nonsensical trainwreck doesn't really count. Witcher 2's ending was merely incomplete (and they patched that up later too, better than the EC did IMO). ME3's was unbelievably stupid. The characters in TW2 might not be as memorable as those in Mass Effect, for example, but that's no reason for the supposed ''big choices'' to have so little impact.

And yes you moved the goalposts. Would Mass Effect have less emotionnal impact if saving the Rachni Queen in ME1 gave you a unique mission in ME3? Would the fact that destroying the Collector Base would (say) weaken Cerberus gameplay-wise cheapen Mass Effect's narrative? Does receiving nothing more than karma points and damn e-mails as ''consequences'' for 90% of the choices in the series add anything to the story's drama? No it doesn't. This isin,t an issue with the story Bioware is telling, but with how they're telling. Of course a story with a fixed, linear plot will have less player agency than a sandbox, but the difference should not be so vast. For the record, New Vegas was also very good at telling great stories. Boone's quests were really good, as were Veronica's. The DLCs in general had amazing stories, especially the Survivor in Honest Hearts. It's not a dichotomy. You can have a great story with ample player agency.

Want an even better example, perhaps? Alpha Protocol. The game has a similar story structure to Mass Effect, with a linear level and usually a choice at the course or the end of it. Difference? Those choices matter. A lot. Unexpected story turns. Straight gameplay rewards. Better relations with key NPCs. Hints that make future missions easier. Each of them gives you something beyond a few words on the screen, and it all comes to a close in a finale that differs radically based on your previous choices and alliances. The gameplay is so-so, but as an RPG story Alpha Protocol has a lot of things that Bioware should take heed of.

The problem here is also story/gameplay segregation, something Bioware has been getting steadily worse at over time while Obsidian (and CD Projeckt to a lesser extent) are masters at it. They tell us things change, and OK maybe some NPCs switch place and Shepard's tone/words changes. But the events and the gameplay remain the exact same whatever you do. A series that prides itself on big, meaningful choices should not relegate the choice made at the climax of ME2 into 100 whole War Assets, for frack's sake.

Modifié par Giantdeathrobot, 30 mars 2013 - 01:59 .

[FlamingBoy]

David7204 wrote...

The goalposts haven't been moved at all. That's what this all boils down to. Good stories. And emotional investment is indicative of good storytelling. You claim the Witcher makes no sacrifices, that it's as good as Mass Effect in telling a meaningful and satisfying story. So why has Mass Effect made a bigger impact on players than the Witcher?

nothing about mass effect or the endings issue is that simple. Nothing about the entire controversy has been simple.

So lets stop pretending that its bloody simple.