416 réponses à ce sujet

[Ieldra]

Megaton_Hope wrote...
As far as how the actions work...doing the "good" thing should lead to more difficult situations that take careful management to resolve, but have a better outcome, while doing the "bad" thing should give you an easier time getting through but have a worse outcome. It's how I'd split things out, anyway.

I disagree.

Many so-called "bad" things are also pragmatic. People do pragmatic things because they work more often than not. I hate it if a story just denies that simple truth, and instead panders to the mindset that "there's always another way". No, you damned moron who says that, sometimes (note that I'm not saying always) there isn't if you want the best outcome.

Most notably, if I make a rational, plausible decision which nonetheless feels bad, it should work out well more often than not despite feeling bad. If I deny my heart and follow my mind, the result should usually be better than if I act the other way round. Anything else may be comfortable, but in the end it's just delusional.

Sometimes things work out in mysterious ways in spite of not doing the plausible thing. That's ok. But if it becomes the dominating pattern of decision-making in a story, I just stop believing in it.

[DeinonSlayer]

Cthulhu42 wrote...

DeinonSlayer wrote...

He's generally short-sighted. Sold Legion and accepted Anoleis' bribe for the same reason. Made sure to shoot Balak in ME3, though.

Selling Legion isn't shortsighted; like keeping David in Overlord or letting the Alliance keep that soldier's body instead of turning it over to her husband, it advances scientific research and could theoretically have initiated a technological breakthrough that could have been invaluable in fighting the geth or Reapers.

Of course, the choice ended up just resulting in Cerberus trolling you with a reprogrammed geth platform on Cronos, but that's ME choice and consequence for you.

It all depends on the character's motive. FailShep just wanted the money.

But yeah, if I recall, Jack, Legion, and Morinth simply replace a normal phantom, nemesis, and banshee which show up in those exact same places anyway.

[AlanC9]

Cthulhu42 wrote...
Selling Legion isn't shortsighted; like keeping David in Overlord or letting the Alliance keep that soldier's body instead of turning it over to her husband, it advances scientific research and could theoretically have initiated a technological breakthrough that could have been invaluable in fighting the geth or Reapers.

Of course, the choice ended up just resulting in Cerberus trolling you with a reprogrammed geth platform on Cronos, but that's ME choice and consequence for you.

Can we list Legion and David (Grunt in the tank too) as more examples of Renegade choices turning out to just be wrong?

[Cainhurst Crow]

On the fence about this, but I feel making the game use dragon ages system would be a really bad idea.

Dragon age is guilty of having a "I win" button in the form of it's coercion ranking system which the player can actively put points into to level it to max. By making it in the players control, you allow them to rig the game so that any conflict can be solved by finding the special (persuade) or (intimidate) option and clicking it. No thought required, just "click the magic dialouge choice and bypass any conflict whatsoever." that is my experience with it at least.

Would you people be against having interupts in future titles as well? With no symbol of paragon or renegade to determine what the interupt would be, you'd need just blind faith to decide whether to click it or not, and have absolutely no clue what would happen.

[CronoDragoon]

Darth Brotarian wrote...

On the fence about this, but I feel making the game use dragon ages system would be a really bad idea.
 

Do we need any (visible) system? I want numbers gone entirely, to be honest. They ruin immersion and can turn character interaction into min/maxing. It's worse in Dragon Age than ME in this respect. It's also ruining Catherine's story for me right now.

Darth Brotarian wrote...

Would you people be against
having interupts in future titles as well? With no symbol of paragon or renegade to determine what the interupt would be, you'd need just blind faith to decide whether to click it or not, and have absolutely no clue what would happen.

I'm not sure whether this would actually work well in game, but you could always adopt the Dragon Age method of categorizing interrupts in broad terms and assign them buttons. Like, L1 for angry interrupt, R1 for placating interrupt, etc. The difference between that and the current P/R system is that it doesn't contribute towards any point total. It's just your organic response for that particular situation.

Modifié par CronoDragoon, 04 juin 2013 - 05:59 .

[Bill Casey]

Ieldra2 wrote...

Many so-called "bad" things are also pragmatic. People do pragmatic things because they work more often than not. I hate it if a story just denies that simple truth, and instead panders to the mindset that "there's always another way". No, you damned moron who says that, sometimes (note that I'm not saying always) there isn't if you want the best outcome.

Most notably, if I make a rational, plausible decision which nonetheless feels bad, it should work out well more often than not despite feeling bad. If I deny my heart and follow my mind, the result should usually be better than if I act the other way round. Anything else may be comfortable, but in the end it's just delusional.

That's a bunch of crap...

[Zekka]

Khelish wrote...

Yes. Kotor had it right, Dragon Age had it right, Mass Effect has too many people mindlessly adhering to one side or the other.

Yes and you can also add Witcher to that list. I am playing Kotor 1 & 2 for the first time and the light side/dark side in the Kotor series is much much better than Paragon and renegade and it actually matters in gameplay and story.

Personally I believe that bioware should just remove it altogether, they shouldn't try to fix it or add in a new system they should just remove Paragon and Renegade.

It is one of the weakest part about mass effect because we already know people will always pick Paragon over renegade.

Bioware should focus more on choices and consequences because their most recent games having done C&C right.

The next mass effect game should have like a fusion of the dragon age approval rating and the influence system from kotor 2. Your squadmates can have things they like or dislike and if your squadmates rating is high enough then they will be more likely to listen to the main character and they can also be taught some new techniques ( and also become a jedi).

Modifié par leslie2233, 04 juin 2013 - 09:56 .

[Arcian]

David7204 wrote...

For choices to be meaningful, 'good' choices overwhelmingly need to lead to 'good' outcomes and vice-versa.

That is really just the end of it.

Having 'good' choices lead to crappy outcomes is the exact same kind of thematic betrayal that's behind the hatred of the endings.

You confuse "good" for "right". Being a goody-two-shoes blind to practicality and necessity should not be rewarded. Sometimes you need to commit necessary evils to get a positive result.

[Jorji Costava]

Generally, ME has tried to strike a balance between paragon and renegade decisions (with mixed success), which is exactly right for what ME is: A power fantasy. Perhaps that's not how we want to think of ME, but it seems pretty hard to deny. Observe that there's nothing realistic whatsoever about ME's approach to choice throughout all three games, and here I'm not strictly speaking about how paragon/renegade decisions play out, but pretty much the whole structure of the game. The idea that one human spectre is going to have final say over who wins Geth/Quarian conflict, whether or not the genophage gets cured, the fate of several species, etc. is completely ridiculous. It would be the equivalent of a highly decorated Navy SEAL getting to decide the outcome of Israel/Palestine, Chechnya, Syria, etc.

The reason things are set up this way is precisely because ME isn't a gritty, realistic story; it's more a matter of mythmaking, the Hero's Journey, and yes, power fantasy, whether we like it or not. It gives paragons the opportunity to be the great hero they want to be, and renegades the opportunity to be the sociopathic anti-hero they want to be. Hell, the messages during the ME2 load screens ("Be the ultimate hero!" "Be the ultimate badass!") should have made that much evident.

So I guess my question is this: Do we want ME and games like it to have a generally more realistic picture of how choices and consequences would work in a fictional setting? If so, the resulting game would be absolutely nothing like ME. Individuals generally do not have the power to single-handedly shape institutions, settle generations-old conflicts, etc. A more realistic game would recognize these obvious facts. It'd be a much smaller-scale story. That's fine; in fact, it's great. I'd love for there to be more games like this, but I knew from the beginning that ME was not the place to go for that sort of thing.

On the other hand, perhaps you want ME to retain much of its power-fantasy elements, with Shepard having the final say over the most important galactic issues there are, but you still want things to work out better for renegades than paragons. My question is, why want this? The concern can't be with realism, since if you wanted that, you'd go for the kind of game I just described above. Maybe you just have a preference for grimdark for grimdark's sake, or you think that Good is Boring and Evil is Cool. I guess I'm just not sure what strong thematic reason there is for ME to privilege these preferences.

[Kataphrut94]

The biggest problem for me was how they took what was a fairly unique and interesting idea for a morality system - you are always the hero, but you can either be a generic hero or an anti-hero - and completely bastardized it by tying it into arbitrary faction choices that didn't make sense. Paragon and Renegade didn't mean idealist vs cynic in Mass Effect 1; it meant tolerant vs racist. In Mass Effect 2, it meant pro-Alliance vs pro-Cerberus. In both cases, it made the Renegade look like a moron because they were arguing things that were completely irrational.

Mass Effect 3 was the first game to do it right because it made the sensible decision that you were always tolerant pro-Alliance (as you should be) and could make the choices actually be about what they were always supposed to be. The genophage cure decision is still to my mind the best example of an ideal Renegade decision; ethically dubious, uncomfortable to execute, but ultimately done for the greater good and having the capacity to provide a good (or even best) outcome.

[chemiclord]

osbornep wrote...

Generally, ME has tried to strike a balance between paragon and renegade decisions (with mixed success), which is exactly right for what ME is: A power fantasy. Perhaps that's not how we want to think of ME, but it seems pretty hard to deny. Observe that there's nothing realistic whatsoever about ME's approach to choice throughout all three games, and here I'm not strictly speaking about how paragon/renegade decisions play out, but pretty much the whole structure of the game. The idea that one human spectre is going to have final say over who wins Geth/Quarian conflict, whether or not the genophage gets cured, the fate of several species, etc. is completely ridiculous. It would be the equivalent of a highly decorated Navy SEAL getting to decide the outcome of Israel/Palestine, Chechnya, Syria, etc.

The reason things are set up this way is precisely because ME isn't a gritty, realistic story; it's more a matter of mythmaking, the Hero's Journey, and yes, power fantasy, whether we like it or not. It gives paragons the opportunity to be the great hero they want to be, and renegades the opportunity to be the sociopathic anti-hero they want to be. Hell, the messages during the ME2 load screens ("Be the ultimate hero!" "Be the ultimate badass!") should have made that much evident.

So I guess my question is this: Do we want ME and games like it to have a generally more realistic picture of how choices and consequences would work in a fictional setting? If so, the resulting game would be absolutely nothing like ME. Individuals generally do not have the power to single-handedly shape institutions, settle generations-old conflicts, etc. A more realistic game would recognize these obvious facts. It'd be a much smaller-scale story. That's fine; in fact, it's great. I'd love for there to be more games like this, but I knew from the beginning that ME was not the place to go for that sort of thing.

On the other hand, perhaps you want ME to retain much of its power-fantasy elements, with Shepard having the final say over the most important galactic issues there are, but you still want things to work out better for renegades than paragons. My question is, why want this? The concern can't be with realism, since if you wanted that, you'd go for the kind of game I just described above. Maybe you just have a preference for grimdark for grimdark's sake, or you think that Good is Boring and Evil is Cool. I guess I'm just not sure what strong thematic reason there is for ME to privilege these preferences.

The issue I have is that while yes Shepard has the ability to shape the world around him more than one person realistically could, there can (and should) still be some things outside of his control.  One thing I actually LIKED about the Grissom Academy mission was that Jack still wound up helping at the academy no matter how Shepard "shaped" her in ME2.  It gave Jack an element of her own free will, outside of Shepard's influence, that I appreciated.  That these characters weren't just sitting waiting for Shepard input and instead doing their own thing was a bit refreshing.

Even though in reality it was probably because they didn't have the time or resources to make two separate Jack missions.

[David7204]

Kataphrut94 wrote...

The biggest problem for me was how they took what was a fairly unique and interesting idea for a morality system - you are always the hero, but you can either be a generic hero or an anti-hero - and completely bastardized it by tying it into arbitrary faction choices that didn't make sense. Paragon and Renegade didn't mean idealist vs cynic in Mass Effect 1; it meant tolerant vs racist. In Mass Effect 2, it meant pro-Alliance vs pro-Cerberus. In both cases, it made the Renegade look like a moron because they were arguing things that were completely irrational.

Mass Effect 3 was the first game to do it right because it made the sensible decision that you were always tolerant pro-Alliance (as you should be) and could make the choices actually be about what they were always supposed to be. The genophage cure decision is still to my mind the best example of an ideal Renegade decision; ethically dubious, uncomfortable to execute, but ultimately done for the greater good and having the capacity to provide a good (or even best) outcome.

I don't really think you're going to have be able to have a game full of opposite choices and have them both be smart. That sounds like a pretty blatant contradiction. 

Modifié par David7204, 05 juin 2013 - 12:10 .

[Jorji Costava]

chemiclord wrote...

The issue I have is that while yes Shepard has the ability to shape the world around him more than one person realistically could, there can (and should) still be some things outside of his control.  One thing I actually LIKED about the Grissom Academy mission was that Jack still wound up helping at the academy no matter how Shepard "shaped" her in ME2.  It gave Jack an element of her own free will, outside of Shepard's influence, that I appreciated.  That these characters weren't just sitting waiting for Shepard input and instead doing their own thing was a bit refreshing.

Even though in reality it was probably because they didn't have the time or resources to make two separate Jack missions.

That's fair enough. What you describe is exactly why I wasn't as bothered by Mordin's desire to cure the genophage in ME3, which exists no matter what you did in ME2. Characters can have experiences which shape their lives and which don't have anything to do with the PC. But I'm not sure how that links up with the view I was attempting to address, which is that decisions need to be imbalanced in favor of renegade-type playstyles on the grounds that it's more realistic to set things up this way.

EDIT: Chopped out the quote from my own previous post.

Modifié par osbornep, 05 juin 2013 - 12:27 .

[DeinonSlayer]

David7204 wrote...

Kataphrut94 wrote...

The biggest problem for me was how they took what was a fairly unique and interesting idea for a morality system - you are always the hero, but you can either be a generic hero or an anti-hero - and completely bastardized it by tying it into arbitrary faction choices that didn't make sense. Paragon and Renegade didn't mean idealist vs cynic in Mass Effect 1; it meant tolerant vs racist. In Mass Effect 2, it meant pro-Alliance vs pro-Cerberus. In both cases, it made the Renegade look like a moron because they were arguing things that were completely irrational.

Mass Effect 3 was the first game to do it right because it made the sensible decision that you were always tolerant pro-Alliance (as you should be) and could make the choices actually be about what they were always supposed to be. The genophage cure decision is still to my mind the best example of an ideal Renegade decision; ethically dubious, uncomfortable to execute, but ultimately done for the greater good and having the capacity to provide a good (or even best) outcome.

I don't really think you're going to have be able to have a game full of opposite choices and have them both be smart. That sounds like a pretty blatant contradiction.

Use a little imagination. It depends in part on what ends the player is hoping to achieve. For example, two desirable but mutually exclusive goals.

Say, for instance, you could intercept the Quarians before they went to war with the Geth, reducing casualties on both sides, but the bomb on Tuchanka was doomed to go off in the meantime. Go to Tuchanka first and it's possible to defuse the bomb, but the battle for Rannoch proceeds as seen in-game without outside intervention. Which goal would the player choose to pursue? Neither is more "right" than the other - players would choose according to the dictates of their conscience. I actually posted a poll for this a while back and it came back almost 50/50.

Modifié par DeinonSlayer, 05 juin 2013 - 12:25 .

[David7204]

And that would immediately be shrieked at as a huge plothole. Is the Normandy the only ship in the galaxy able to handle those two situations?

Besides, what exactly would implementing such a choice accomplish aside from making Shepard a little more helpless?

Also, not at all choices can be set up that way. Not even most choices. It would require basically sucking out all heroic themes from the game. Everything has to be 'equal,' so heroism is not allowed.

Modifié par David7204, 05 juin 2013 - 12:31 .

[DeinonSlayer]

David7204 wrote...

And that would immediately be shrieked at as a huge plothole. Is the Normandy the only ship in the galaxy able to handle those two situations?

It's treated as such throughout the entire trilogy. Ashley/Kaidan, writ large. That's just an example, though.

If you could save ANYone, but you couldn't save EVERYone, who would you choose and why?

The whole idea is that you shouldn't be able to sleepwalk through what are meant to be moral quandaries. ME3 went further than its predecessor at painting Shepard as "helpless," only this structure would leave choice intact instead of pulling a Kai Leng "victory" on us. You're still in control - you're simply choosing your own priorities.

Modifié par DeinonSlayer, 05 juin 2013 - 12:31 .

[David7204]

This is not a story about 'moral quandaries.' This is a story about heroism. The ending betrayed that, and it's despised for it.

Modifié par David7204, 05 juin 2013 - 12:34 .

[IntelligentME3Fanboy]

David7204 wrote...

This is not a story about 'moral quandaries.' This is a story about heroism.

wrong

[AresKeith]

David7204 wrote...

This is not a story about 'moral quandaries.' This is a story about heroism. The ending betrayed that, and it's despised for it.

You are literally the only person who argues that

[Megaton_Hope]

Ieldra2 wrote...

Megaton_Hope wrote...
As far as how the actions work...doing the "good" thing should lead to more difficult situations that take careful management to resolve, but have a better outcome, while doing the "bad" thing should give you an easier time getting through but have a worse outcome. It's how I'd split things out, anyway.

I disagree.

Many so-called "bad" things are also pragmatic. People do pragmatic things because they work more often than not. I hate it if a story just denies that simple truth, and instead panders to the mindset that "there's always another way". No, you damned moron who says that, sometimes (note that I'm not saying always) there isn't if you want the best outcome.

Most notably, if I make a rational, plausible decision which nonetheless feels bad, it should work out well more often than not despite feeling bad. If I deny my heart and follow my mind, the result should usually be better than if I act the other way round. Anything else may be comfortable, but in the end it's just delusional.

Sometimes things work out in mysterious ways in spite of not doing the plausible thing. That's ok. But if it becomes the dominating pattern of decision-making in a story, I just stop believing in it.

Sometimes, what seems like a pragmatic, calculated action causes blowback. There's Iran-Contra, for example, where we armed both sides in the Iran-Iraq War to acquire funds to support the Contras in Nicaragua, whom we supported because the Sandinistas were against us, which they were because we occupied Nicaragua, which we did because we wanted to be sure we'd control the Panama Canal...

Or, another recent example. During Vietnam there was this advisor named Henry Kissinger, believed in something he called "realpolitik," which is to say the by-the-numbers approach to governance. On his urging, we bombed Cambodia as part of a pressure tactic to bring North Vietnam to the bargaining table. Ultimately, we got a peace treaty and withdrawal out of it, followed by the immediate conquest of South Vietnam by the North, and the rise of the genocidal Khmer Rouge regime.

I do agree that sometimes the expedient approach should pay off, depending on the situation. There are times when it simply works out better to do something that's a sure thing. But as the overall "message" of the game, no, I wouldn't get behind that. In particular, we're talking about the investment of player effort; it should be hard but rewarding to do the thing that makes Shepard look the best.

[David7204]

I know.

Does that say more about me or about you?

[DeinonSlayer]

David7204 wrote...

This is not a story about 'moral quandaries.' This is a story about heroism.

I disagree. See countless discussions about BDTS, Quarian/Geth, Genophage, past Council/Alliance/Cerberus actions, and the morality thereof. The definition of a hero is an element of the plot; but it is not, IMO, the central one.

I think we'd see more informed discussion of such things if people had to pay attention and make up their own minds about what was right or wrong on these points instead of sleepwalking through it, clicking the same spot on the wheel and idly absorbing whatever stance Shepard spouts without thought. As was said earlier in this thread, a lot of discussion like that was spurred by DA:O, which lacked the simplistic paragon/renegade karma system.

The ending is despised for throwing logic and consequence out the window in favor of pseudointellectual claptrap.

Modifié par DeinonSlayer, 05 juin 2013 - 12:43 .

[David7204]

You know, I'd be a lot more willing to hear you out if you weren't continually making a very ridiculous implication that players are somehow doing something wrong for wanting to be 'good' and trusting that the ethics of the narrative will agree with their own.

I play nearly fully Paragon. I play as a 'good' character for pretty much any game I play.

That is not "sleepwalking through it"

That is not "idly absorbing whatever stance Shepard spouts without thought."

Modifié par David7204, 05 juin 2013 - 12:45 .

[AresKeith]

David7204 wrote...

You know, I'd be a lot more willing to hear you out if you weren't continually making a very ridiculous implication that players are somehow doing something wrong for wanting to be 'good' and trusting that the ethics of the narrative will agree with their own.

Maybe because not every "good" decision leads to a good outcome