155 réponses à ce sujet

[Keeper of Light]

Modifié par Darksiders2, 26 juin 2013 - 08:48 .

[Keeper of Light]

TW1 and TW2, nuff said. I hope that DA:I will contain a lot of these grey choices.

Modifié par Darksiders2, 26 juin 2013 - 08:47 .

[Medhia Nox]

@Wulfram: You're saying you need all the information so you can better tell the NPCs what to do so that the story turns out how you want.

Do you think having all the information and then simply picking the option who's outcome you prefer to be the best form of character design/development and storytelling?

[Realmzmaster]

Actually the warden should not care one way or the other who gets to be king. The warden needs are ally and an army either can provide that. We the gamers are the ones getting caught up in picking a choice. My wardens looked at it from the point of getting an army. I frankly did not care which one it was.

I also like to make an informed decision. I want to be able to gather as much information as possible and proceed from a logical point of view. The consequences of the choice should not simply come out of the blue. The information should be provided in game. If the player or my PC misses that information that is fine, but it should be present in the game.

[wowness8787]

all right i like the ideas of the decisions like if you made a pro chantry character and you decided to have a chantry in Orzammar then it causes riots in thedas and almost starts another exalted march

[Taleroth]

I  have a few personal rules for choices.
1) The outcomes of any given choice should be equivalent to one another for the type of person they're intended for. That is, all rewards should be equal even if different.
2) The player should never be punished for information he was never given or choices he wasn't allowed to take.

The golden rule though is that 3) Player choice MUST be respected. In all these regards, I'm against unexpected consequences to choices. Though I'm open to the idea of someone managing to fulfill all three rules while doing it.

Such as:
If a choice has an unexpected consequence, then all of the choices for that node should have an unexpected consequence. (Two rivals try to get you to do a job, but both rivals turn out to misrepresent themselves) This fulfills rule number 1. The consequence does not berate or take anything from the player. (Characters acknowledge that you did the best you could) This fulfills rule number 2. The player is given a chance to overcome the unexpected consequences and fix them for an even greater reward. (You get a chance to undo the work done for the rival you chose, plus set them back for messing with you) This fulfills the golden rule.

Modifié par Taleroth, 26 juin 2013 - 09:39 .

[Wulfram]

Medhia Nox wrote...

@Wulfram: You're saying you need all the information so you can better tell the NPCs what to do so that the story turns out how you want.

Do you think having all the information and then simply picking the option who's outcome you prefer to be the best form of character design/development and storytelling?

I am not so absolutist, I don't think.

I'm saying an outcome should not come wholly out of the blue - if the PC could at least have reasonably have foreseen the risk, then that is OK.

And if an outcome is unknown it should ideally not be a case of one choice being right and one choice being wrong, but more balanced and complex.

Generally it is more interesting if a choice asks "what does your character value?" rather than requiring the player to attempt to second guess the writers - or on replays, for the player to make a decision as to whether they will metagame or roleplay - as to what is the correct answer

Modifié par Wulfram, 26 juin 2013 - 09:40 .

[Jorji Costava]

Medhia Nox wrote...

@Wulfram: You're saying you need all the information so you can better tell the NPCs what to do so that the story turns out how you want.

Do you think having all the information and then simply picking the option who's outcome you prefer to be the best form of character design/development and storytelling?

I think that there's a substantial middle ground between foreshadowing the possible consequences of a decision and making those consequences 100% obvious. The Orzammar decision between Harrowmont and Bhelen didn't do either; even the people who made the 'best' choice probably did so more or less by luck. Prior to the key decisions, there's desperately little evidence to indicate that Bhelen is anything but a proto-fascist.

One of the best examples of a real-life moral dilemma comes from the case of Navy SEAL Marcus Luttrell. During a recon operation in Afghanistan, Luttrell and three other SEALs encountered a few Afghan goatherds who were unarmed. On the one hand, killing civilians seems downright immoral, but on the other, some of the SEALs were concerned that releasing them might allow the goatherds to give away the SEALs' position to the Taliban. Luttrell gave the order to release them. About an hour and a half later, the men were surrounded by nearly 100 Taliban soldiers armed with rifles and RPGs. All three of Luttrell's fellow soldiers were killed, along with a helicopter containing sixteen soldiers sent to rescue them.

Here, the consequences of releasing the goatherds were reasonably foreseeable but still uncertain, and even knowing that things turned out as tragically as they did for Luttrell and his comrades, it doesn't make for a slam-dunk case that killing the goatherds was the right thing to do. After all, killing unarmed men is a hard thing to justify for all but the most hard-core utilitarians. The sad case of Marcus Luttrell seems to me a better inspiration for constructing interesting moral dilemmas within games (or any other medium) than does the Orzammar situation.

[esper]

The other thing with Bhelen-Harrowmont was also that Harromont wasn't really good. I don't mind unexpected consequences as long as you can in hinsight understand why it panned out that way.

I don't like being forced into an unexpected consequence when the two most compelling argument is 'Bhelen is a jerk' and 'Harrow is an usurper'. Honestly that was not choice, that was tossing a coin and seeing where it landed.

[Dabrikishaw]

Fine

[Sable Rhapsody]

I would just like the consequences to make sense. I wouldn't say the Bhelen vs. Harrowmont thing came out of left field or anything; if you read between the lines, it's pretty clear that the dwarves are dying a slow death of tradition and stagnation, and Harrowmont isn't going to make that any better. The consequences for Orzammar followed directly from the personalities and ideals of those two men. They made sense, even if the Warden or player couldn't see it at the time.

Contrast this to the rachni queen in ME3. That ME1 choice would've been the perfect opportunity for wildly different consequences based on Shep's actions. Instead, we get shoehorned into one plot thread that makes sense for neither choice.

[iOnlySignIn]

I followed my heart in the Bhelen vs. Harrowmont decision and chose Bhelen. And things turned out OK.

[Urazz]

Sable Rhapsody wrote...

I would just like the consequences to make sense. I wouldn't say the Bhelen vs. Harrowmont thing came out of left field or anything; if you read between the lines, it's pretty clear that the dwarves are dying a slow death of tradition and stagnation, and Harrowmont isn't going to make that any better. The consequences for Orzammar followed directly from the personalities and ideals of those two men. They made sense, even if the Warden or player couldn't see it at the time.

Contrast this to the rachni queen in ME3. That ME1 choice would've been the perfect opportunity for wildly different consequences based on Shep's actions. Instead, we get shoehorned into one plot thread that makes sense for neither choice.

Errr....You do get wildly different consequences on the rachni choice in ME3 based on what you chose in ME1 with the rachni there.  If you didn't save the rachni queen in ME1 and saved the cloned rachni queen in ME3, then she ends up betraying you and hurting the effort on the crucible.  While if you did save the rachni queen in ME1 and save her again in ME3, then she ends up helping the effort on the crucible.

[David7204]

Is this a story about how life sucks and people sucks and society sucks and doing the right thing sucks because that's just so mature and deep?

Or is this a story about choices that matter and heroism?

The consequences of choices need to validate the themes of the story. Not betray them. If the theme of the story is "You're a stupid weak helpless nobody, and trying to do the right thing will get everyone you love killed," then it would be perfectly okay to have choices end up the way.

However, if the story even presents the option of supposedly meaningful, competent, heroism, it's a betrayal to not validate those themes. To not have heroism count for something.

Dragon Age Inquisition certainly looks to belong to the latter group. So no.

Also, it's not an 'implausible concept,' because you've failed to consider narrative casuality.

Modifié par David7204, 26 juin 2013 - 10:50 .

[Sable Rhapsody]

Urazz wrote...
Errr....You do get wildly different consequences on the rachni choice in ME3 based on what you chose in ME1 with the rachni there.  If you didn't save the rachni queen in ME1 and saved the cloned rachni queen in ME3, then she ends up betraying you and hurting the effort on the crucible.  While if you did save the rachni queen in ME1 and save her again in ME3, then she ends up helping the effort on the crucible.

I wouldn't say "the rachni queen turns up no matter what" is an example of wildly differing conquences.  And par for the course with ME3, regardless of what you do with the queen in either game, it's a difference of a hundred-odd EMS points, and you never hear about it again.  There's no discernable long-term consequence for genocide or potentially dangerous mercy.  None.

David7204 wrote...

Is this a story about how life sucks and people sucks and society sucks and doing the right thing sucks because that's just so mature and deep?

Let's hope not 

A Song of Ice and Fire is the example that gets bandied about for "life sucks and everyone sucks," but that IMO is a bit simplistic.  It's often grim and depressing, but heroism can be rewarded, and very few things are arbitrary.  The story arcs play out the way they do as a direct consequence of choices made by the characters.

Modifié par Sable Rhapsody, 26 juin 2013 - 10:51 .

[xAmilli0n]

Sable Rhapsody wrote...

I would just like the consequences to make sense. I wouldn't say the Bhelen vs. Harrowmont thing came out of left field or anything; if you read between the lines, it's pretty clear that the dwarves are dying a slow death of tradition and stagnation, and Harrowmont isn't going to make that any better. The consequences for Orzammar followed directly from the personalities and ideals of those two men. They made sense, even if the Warden or player couldn't see it at the time.

I agree with this.  Even if at the moment you weren't sure exactly how things would turn out, it did give you enough information for the player to know the general direction each decision would have.  I wouldn't call the consequences unexpected, but it definitely was a more complicated decision because of all the potential factors.

[AresKeith]

David you never even played the games, unexpected consequences would not betray the theme of the story

And stop with the heroism defense

[Steelcan]

David would you shut up about heroism. Neither ME or DA are games entirely focused around the highly subjective view of what a hero is.

[David7204]

Why don't you two cheerleaders go find someone else to shill? Whether you admit it or not, both Mass Effect and Dragon Age purposely include very strong themes of heroism.

[David7204]

Sable Rhapsody wrote...

Let's hope not 

A Song of Ice and Fire is the example that gets bandied about for "life sucks and everyone sucks," but that IMO is a bit simplistic.  It's often grim and depressing, but heroism can be rewarded, and very few things are arbitrary.  The story arcs play out the way they do as a direct consequence of choices made by the characters.

I dunno. I've heard some very unflattering things about it. Accusations that some of the conflicts are very contrived.

Which is practically a necessity in stories like these. The idea of a smart, competent, powerful character with meaningful choices who is yet helpless is a complete contradiction, and yet countless video games have attempted to do just that and been all the worse for it.

Modifié par David7204, 26 juin 2013 - 10:57 .

[Steelcan]

David7204 wrote...

Why don't you two cheerleaders go find someone else to shill? Whether you admit it or not, both Mass Effect and Dragon Age purposely include very strong themes of heroism.

. Yet they also offer alternatives to traditional heroism on the form of pragmatism and reward these choices as well.  Not as much as they should, but they are not treated as less valid.

And just because a story has some themes of a specific idea, that does not make the whole purpose of the story a vehicle to espouse heroism.  LotR has heroic qualities to it, yet Tolkien would probably reject the idea that it was the central focus.

[David7204]

That implies that heroism and pragmatism are somehow opposed. I see no basis for that.

[xAmilli0n]

Sable Rhapsody wrote...

Is this a story about how life sucks and people sucks and society sucks and doing the right thing sucks because that's just so mature and deep?

Let's hope not 

A Song of Ice and Fire is the example that gets bandied about for "life sucks and everyone sucks," but that IMO is a bit simplistic.  It's often grim and depressing, but heroism can be rewarded, and very few things are arbitrary.  The story arcs play out the way they do as a direct consequence of choices made by the characters.

I think this is the key.  The consequences really shouldn't be arbitrary.  They need to make sense regarding the choice made and the characters involved.

Modifié par xAmilli0n, 26 juin 2013 - 10:59 .

[AresKeith]

David what do know about the Bhelen vs Harrowmont choice in DA:O?

Someone already post a small summary about them in the thread

[xAmilli0n]

David7204 wrote...

The idea of a smart, competent, powerful character with meaningful choices who is yet helpless is a complete contradiction, and yet countless video games have attempted to do just that and been all the worse for it.

I don't think its that hard to imagine a situation where even the best prepared and capable person is helpless or unable to change an outcome, but it is very true that too many games execute this very poorly.

David7204 wrote...

That implies that heroism and pragmatism are somehow opposed. I see no basis for that.

True enough.  But they can be.  Nothing wrong with putting the player in a situation where they have to choose.

Modifié par xAmilli0n, 26 juin 2013 - 11:04 .