95 réponses à ce sujet

[Chashan]

AlanC9 wrote...

Missed this the other day.

I suppose the super-short version is that Bio'd be better off without fans who demand always having a happy ending available, and without fans who demand that following deontological ("Paragon") morality always works. It's a constricting vision of what games can be, and an unnecessary limitation. (It's not like The Last of Us failed or anything, so I don't see the sales impact of writing you guys off as being too large)

Of course, this is not much of an answer to KLGChaos' point about previous choices in the series always having happy endings available. To some extent this was a fault of the P/R system; or rather, molding the game world so that being a Paragon always works. Letting the player do all LMs for free before the SM was also a problem. So I agree there's a problem, but I think the problem is with ME2, and to a lesser extent with ME1. I've always suspected that Bio simply didn't realize how thoroughly they'd deviated from the vision expressed in the "distress call" trailer. They thought ME was about making hard choices when it was actually about avoiding them.

Limiting it to the other side of the spectrum is just as unnecessary. So why not try and keep both?

BW managed to do this in the past, offer two full-fledged alignments quite different from another. In those cases, I have come to prefer the anti-Paragon alignment even though I know I could just as easily go for the "moral" option. Or maybe because of it.

How'd someone else put it as to why Renegade in ME can feel so unrewarding?

BaladasDemnevanni wrote...

At least there, dark side characters were purposely trying to  make the
world a miserable place, instead of pretending that they want to save it
but doing a weak job (as per Renegades).

And I find myself agreeing with that, the more I think about it.

Modifié par Chashan, 25 janvier 2014 - 11:08 .

[Dean_the_Young]

Chashan wrote...

AlanC9 wrote...

Missed this the other day.

I suppose the super-short version is that Bio'd be better off without fans who demand always having a happy ending available, and without fans who demand that following deontological ("Paragon") morality always works. It's a constricting vision of what games can be, and an unnecessary limitation. (It's not like The Last of Us failed or anything, so I don't see the sales impact of writing you guys off as being too large)

Of course, this is not much of an answer to KLGChaos' point about previous choices in the series always having happy endings available. To some extent this was a fault of the P/R system; or rather, molding the game world so that being a Paragon always works. Letting the player do all LMs for free before the SM was also a problem. So I agree there's a problem, but I think the problem is with ME2, and to a lesser extent with ME1. I've always suspected that Bio simply didn't realize how thoroughly they'd deviated from the vision expressed in the "distress call" trailer. They thought ME was about making hard choices when it was actually about avoiding them.

Limiting it to the other side of the spectrum is just as unnecessary. So why not try and keep both?

BW managed to do this in the past, offer two full-fledged alignments quite different from another. In those cases, I have come to prefer the anti-Paragon alignment even though I know I could just as easily go for the "moral" option. Or maybe because of it.

How'd someone else put it as to why Renegade in ME can feel so unrewarding?

BaladasDemnevanni wrote...

At least there, dark side characters were purposely trying to  make the
world a miserable place, instead of pretending that they want to save it
but doing a weak job (as per Renegades).

And I find myself agreeing with that, the more I think about it.

Doesn't that answer your question about keeping both, then? So long as keeping to deontological ethics never suffers the significant downsides of deontology, consequentialism ethics fail on their premise of being, well, consequence-minded.

This is the same sort of general issue that runs against Golden Endings in games which claim to offer tough choices but offer the path to the golden ending through purely nice/good actions. When outcomes like the Perfect Suicide Mission can be achieved without compromise, there's no real reason or basis to compromise, and anything less than the Best Ending becomes deliberate self-sabatoge on the metalevel.

[sH0tgUn jUliA]

iakus wrote...

Nightdragon8 wrote...

You haven't watched that many movies have you? its a cenimatic thing where the person who is closest to ther person in question "Just knows" that they are alive. Its used in movies ALL THE TIME. So get off it.

Yeah, I mean, in Return of the Jedi, I loved how the final scene with Luke Skywalker was a faceless torso in the shuttle wreckage taking a breath.

And how Ripley's belief that Newt was alive was never explicitly confirmed in Aliens

But that was thet 1980s. We're in the 201X's now. 

[Dean_the_Young]

iakus wrote...

Then what is the pont of being given choices if you have only consequences and no benefits?  What's the point of choosing between various colors degrees of suckage?

 If I want to  that, I just have to wait until Election Day <_<

You could also be save the dishonesty for the Election Day as well. The benefit of any usage of the Crucible, besides the color show, is the end to the galactic genocide and Reaper war. That's the benefit the entire game is based around.

There's also others that apply to different people- the prospect of Shepard's survival and the certain destruction of the Reapers in Destroy, the prospect of controlling the Reaper Armada for their own purposes in Control, and embracing trans-humanism and (if they believe it a concern) rendering the Catalyst's Synthetic vs. Organic fears moot.

The "cruel and unfortunate truth" is that in general people actually like happy endings.  Not guaranteed as such, but the knowledge that putting enough effort into a project will see the player rewarded.  That's part of the game aspect of a Role Playing Game.

Which still exists in ME3. There's more reactivity and potential differences in the endstate of ME3 than in both of the previous games combined.

Nor am I talking about a "golden ending" one which is clearly superior to the others.  Different "good" endings can and should have different rewards (See Dragon Age Origins).  Paragon and Renegade could, indeed should have differences in what is a good outcome.  

Has anyone here claimed otherwise?

And fyi, The Last of Us is not an rpg that promised choices or agency.  It's just an action game where you play a character not your own.  There are no chocies or consequences.  The stroy is completely on rails.

Sounds more and more like Mass Effect 1, 2, and 3 then. The series has, from the start, been on rails despite superficial RPG mechanics, and it wasn't until ME3 that choices began to reflect notable subplot deviations. Heck, in ME1 and ME2 most conversations continued forward with the same NPC dialogue despite Shepard's choices- as much as people hate autodialogue, there's more difference in the two tracks of autodialogue than in most ME1 dialogue from NPCs.

[GimmeDaGun]

iakus wrote...

AlanC9 wrote...

Missed this the other day.

I suppose the super-short version is that Bio'd be better off without fans who demand always having a happy ending available, and without fans who demand that following deontological ("Paragon") morality always works. It's a constricting vision of what games can be, and an unnecessary limitation. (It's not like The Last of Us failed or anything, so I don't see the sales impact of writing you guys off as being too large)

Of course, this is not much of an answer to KLGChaos' point about previous choices in the series always having happy endings available. To some extent this was a fault of the P/R system; or rather, molding the game world so that being a Paragon always works. Letting the player do all LMs for free before the SM was also a problem. So I agree there's a problem, but I think the problem is with ME2, and to a lesser extent with ME1. I've always suspected that Bio simply didn't realize how thoroughly they'd deviated from the vision expressed in the "distress call" trailer. They thought ME was about making hard choices when it was actually about avoiding them.

Then what is the pont of being given choices if you have only consequences and no benefits?  What's the point of choosing between various colors degrees of suckage?
 If I want to  that, I just have to wait until Election Day <_<

The "cruel and unfortunate truth" is that in general people actually like happy endings.  Not guaranteed as such, but the knowledge that putting enough effort into a project will see the player rewarded.  That's part of the game aspect of a Role Playing Game. 

Nor am I talking about a "golden ending" one which is clearly superior to the others.  Different "good" endings can and should have different rewards (See Dragon Age Origins).  Paragon and Renegade could, indeed should have differences in what is a good outcome.  

And fyi, The Last of Us is not an rpg that promised choices or agency.  It's just an action game where you play a character not your own.  There are no chocies or consequences.  The stroy is completely on rails.

I think you miss the point in this case (not concerning the ending... I'm not talking abou that right now). Paragon is basically a "you can't go wrong" free card for everything in the trilogy. Basically if you play the good guy (the stereotypical or more like archiotypical hero) you always get rewarded, but if you play a renegade (morally grey, pragmatic or plain mean - an unorthodox or anti-hero) character you always get punished for your "renegade", morally ambiguous or questionable decisions. While it is very educational and I agree that no game, movie or book should propagate evil or mean behaviour, this game-trilogy is supposed to be an 18+ title and a story about hard decisions and the meaning of sacrafice: cutting of one leg, saving the person... you know the old cliche: "would you kill a child if you knew that it would save the life of millions?" 

I'm not saying that the game should always reward the pragmatic, heartless, immoral decisions, but I say - since it is not a very happy sci-fi and a war story - it should be more realistic concerning the choices and consequences. Sometimes a good, tender, kind or heroic decision would work, but sometimes it would cause suffering or even death or come of as a selfish or plain stupid act both on a general and on a personal level. The same goes with renegade. Sometimes dire or critical situations need harsh, more practical and sometimes even merciless means. So in certain situations the renegade option would be rewarded and the paragon would lead to negative outcomes, hence the game would punish you for that. Other times you would have to choose from two "evils" and would have to decide which is the lesser one. I know that it would make a really complicated game both on a technical and practical level, but it would be hell a lot more interesting than it is right now. Plus it is not impossible to create such a game. Just look at The Witcher. 
If it was up to me, you wouldn't be able to play this game without taking the hard decisions and swallow the bitter pills sometimes. There would be no perfect, flawless, heroic way to play the game nor a flawless, heroic or classic happy ending. Heroism does not come from being perfect and good hearted all the time anyway. 

I would have implemented the same system with the character interactions and the relationship monitoring system too. Plus I still think that the characters in ME have mostly two-dimensional personalities and they are too submissive to the protagonist (with a few exceptions like Wrex, Ashley or Mordin). There should be more character to them. They should have more fleshed out personalities of their own, they should have agendas of their own and they should not agree with or kiss up to Shepard no matter what he does or sais. There should be more drama. And "charm" and "intimidate" should not be alwasy there for you as jail free card.

I hope you get my point.

Modifié par GimmeDaGun, 26 janvier 2014 - 12:07 .

[AlanC9]

Chashan, I think you're missing the point. What BaladasDemnevanni was getting at was that being a Renegade works just  fine as an alignment in theory, but not in practice. The problem is that most of the Renegade options are wrong on the Renegade's own terms, because they inflict more destruction, etc., but doing that doesn't actually gain anything.

Like the manual says, "Renegades achieve their goals by any means necessary." But if the Paragons really can "achieve their goals by doing the right thing in the right way," then the Renegade option was not necessary.

Put another way, what does the Paragon do if the Renegade option really is necessary? But of course, Bio protected the Paragons by not letting this happen except in minor cases like Rana Thanoptis.

Modifié par AlanC9, 25 janvier 2014 - 11:43 .

[AlanC9]

Dean and GimmeDaGun have hit the most important parts of this, so I'll just drop in a couple of thoughts

iakus wrote...
Then what is the pont of being given choices if you have only consequences and no benefits?  What's the point of choosing between various colors degrees of suckage?

No benefits? Nobody's talking about no benefits; more overblown rhetoric? Though I'm perfectly OK with the PC failing to achieve major objectives from time to time.

The "cruel and unfortunate truth" is that in general people actually like happy endings.  Not guaranteed as such, but the knowledge that putting enough effort into a project will see the player rewarded.  That's part of the game aspect of a Role Playing Game.

So RPGs as a genre are inherently limited; some plots aren't accepted by the audience. I actually don't have much of a problem with this, since  I'm starting to suspect that the CRPG genre itself is fatally flawed and should die. In which case Bio should stop making RPGs and make games with choices and consequences that aren't RPGs.

Nor am I talking about a "golden ending" one which is clearly superior to the others.  Different "good" endings can and should have different rewards (See Dragon Age Origins).  Paragon and Renegade could, indeed should have differences in what is a good outcome.  

I remember. But not having a golden ending means you have to raise the happiness ending level of all the endings; you can't just happify one of them or it becomes the golden ending. How much happiness would Bio have needed to pump in?

You're also asking for an ending with less compromised morality in the final choice, which isn't really the same topic. But that's being discussed in the other posts.

And fyi, The Last of Us is not an rpg that promised choices or agency.  It's just an action game where you play a character not your own.  There are no chocies or consequences.  The stroy is completely on rails.

Sure. My point was that unhappy and morally conflicted endings in themselves are not a big deal. 

Modifié par AlanC9, 26 janvier 2014 - 12:02 .

[Chashan]

AlanC9 wrote...

Chashan, I think you're missing the point. What BaladasDemnevanni was getting at was that being a Renegade works just  fine as an alignment in theory, but not in practice. The problem is that most of the Renegade options are wrong on the Renegade's own terms, because they inflict more destruction, etc., but doing that doesn't actually gain anything.

Like the manual says, "Renegades achieve their goals by any means necessary." But if the Paragons really can "achieve their goals by doing the right thing in the right way," then the Renegade option was not necessary.

Put another way, what does the Paragon do if the Renegade option really is necessary? But of course, Bio protected the Paragons by not letting this happen except in minor cases like Rana Thanoptis.

Fair enough point, and you needn't even mention Thanoptis, seeing how that's merely a text-only part in ME3. You won't hear any objection from me when it comes to hoping that BW vary this a good deal more come the next game, should they decide to implement an alignment-system again.

I quoted the good Baladas because of one thing: prior BW-titles didn't make it a secret what the "dark" approach was about. And I was more than fine with that. You don't hear me complaining about the collateral involved with either KotOR's nor JE's Dark Side-/Closed Fist choices nor finales, at any rate. Nor do I demand that these outcomes are as morally air-tight as their direct opposites.
It's what adds to their flavour, after all.

[Iakus]

AlanC9 wrote...

No benefits? Nobody's talking about no benefits; more overblown rhetoric? Though I'm perfectly OK with the PC failing to achieve major objectives from time to time.

You are talking about "at least the Reapers aren't reaping anymore" I assume?

As I said before, that's a minimum expectation for these endings.  We were told even before release that there would be no "Reapers win" scenerio.

 Accomplishing what the game won't let you fail at is hardly a "benefit"

So RPGs as a genre are inherently limited; some plots aren't accepted by the audience. I actually don't have much of a problem with this, since  I'm starting to suspect that the CRPG genre itself is fatally flawed and should die. In which case Bio should stop making RPGs and make games with choices and consequences that aren't RPGs.

Plenty of games have plots that players may not accept.  But what rpgs (at least, those that allow choices and consequences) are uniquely capable of is broadening itself by allowing the player to shape the story to some degree.

But with that comes a sense of ownership in the character.  This is why you hear "My Shepard cured the genophage" or even "I cured the genophage"

I remember. But not having a golden ending means you have to raise the happiness ending level of all the endings; you can't just happify one of them or it becomes the golden ending. How much happiness would Bio have needed to pump in?

Is the Ultimate Sarifice ending in DAO any less happy than any of the other endings?  There are people who favor it even if they know they can save their Warden.

Sure. My point was that unhappy and morally conflicted endings in themselves are not a big deal. 

And my point is, given a choice, people will generally gravitate towards happiness.  Especially if they feel a sense of ownership in the character.

[Iakus]

GimmeDaGun wrote...

I think you miss the point in this case (not concerning the ending... I'm not talking abou that right now). Paragon is basically a "you can't go wrong" free card for everything in the trilogy. Basically if you play the good guy (the stereotypical or more like archiotypical hero) you always get rewarded, but if you play a renegade (morally grey, pragmatic or plain mean - an unorthodox or anti-hero) character you always get punished for your "renegade", morally ambiguous or questionable decisions. While it is very educational and I agree that no game, movie or book should propagate evil or mean behaviour, this game-trilogy is supposed to be an 18+ title and a story about hard decisions and the meaning of sacrafice: cutting of one leg, saving the person... you know the old cliche: "would you kill a child if you knew that it would save the life of millions?"

Funny thing.  Apparantly the telemetry data fro Telltale's The Walking Dead showed that even in a morally grey environment people generally try to do the right thing

And yes, I think Renegade stopped being the "strong and independant" type and drifted into Evil for the Lulz" pretty early on (one reason I could never do a renegade playthrough) I would say that Paragon and Renegade Shepards would have had different goals to work towards and should thus have had different "good endings"

I'm not saying that the game should always reward the pragmatic, heartless, immoral decisions, but I say - since it is not a very happy sci-fi and a war story - it should be more realistic concerning the choices and consequences. Sometimes a good, tender, kind or heroic decision would work, but sometimes it would cause suffering or even death or come of as a selfish or plain stupid act both on a general and on a personal level. The same goes with renegade. Sometimes dire or critical situations need harsh, more practical and sometimes even merciless means. So in certain situations the renegade option would be rewarded and the paragon would lead to negative outcomes, hence the game would punish you for that. Other times you would have to choose from two "evils" and would have to decide which is the lesser one. I know that it would make a really complicated game both on a technical and practical level, but it would be hell a lot more interesting than it is right now. Plus it is not impossible to create such a game. Just look at The Witcher.

The problem here though is the ending options were not, to me, simply difficult.  The Dark Ritual in Dragon Age was a "difficult" choice.  Whether to hand Cerberus information over to the Shadow Broker in ME1 was a "difficult" choice (which sadly, came to nothing)  I found the options at the end of ME3 to be impossible.   Psychotically stupid even.  It was three "Evil for the Lulz" renegade choices by my perspective

If it was up to me, you wouldn't be able to play this game without taking the hard decisions and swallow the bitter pills sometimes. There would be no perfect, flawless, heroic way to play the game nor a flawless, heroic or classic happy ending. Heroism does not come from being perfect and good hearted all the time anyway.

I have no problem with Earn Your Happy Ending

I do have a problem with No Good Deed Goes Unpunished

I would have implemented the same system with the character interactions and the relationship monitoring system too. Plus I still think that the characters in ME have mostly two-dimensional personalities and they are too submissive to the protagonist (with a few exceptions like Wrex, Ashley or Mordin). There should be more character to them. They should have more fleshed out personalities of their own, they should have agendas of their own and they should not agree with or kiss up to Shepard no matter what he does or sais. There should be more drama. And "charm" and "intimidate" should not be alwasy there for you as jail free card.

I hope you get my point.

On this I generally agree with.  And Ashley (the ME1 version at least) was one of my favorite characters of the trilogy.

Modifié par iakus, 26 janvier 2014 - 01:37 .

[dreamgazer]

Neither of my ReneSheps were "evil for the lulz". That's a pretty unfortunate and inaccurate generalization.

[Iakus]

dreamgazer wrote...

Neither of my ReneSheps were "evil for the lulz". That's a pretty unfortunate and inaccurate generalization.

Commander Shepard is such a jerk

Commander Shepard is still a jerk

Commander Shepard will always be a jerk

Modifié par iakus, 26 janvier 2014 - 01:52 .

[dreamgazer]

iakus wrote...

dreamgazer wrote...

Neither of my ReneSheps were "evil for the lulz". That's a pretty unfortunate and inaccurate generalization.

Commander Shepard is such a jerk

Commander Shepard is still a jerk

Commander Shepard will always be a jerk

Jerk =/= Evil for the Lulz.   Just like every Paragon isn't a naive boy/girl scout. 

And, y'know, every Renegade doesn't have to take every renegade dialogue option or choice, such as my pragmatic and tempered 45/55 renegon Cid Shepard.

[von uber]

Renegade with paragon outcomes is how I play it. Perfectly possible to do.

[AlanC9]

iakus wrote...
 I found the options at the end of ME3 to be impossible.   Psychotically stupid even.  It was three "Evil for the Lulz" renegade choices by my perspective

Huh? Whose lulz? Shepard didn't create the situation. Sure, a conscienceless Shepard would have less problems with the choices, but that's just the way decision-making works.

I have no problem with Earn Your Happy Ending

I do have a problem with No Good Deed Goes Unpunished

There's nothing wrong with either of these. Games should be able to do either, at the designer's option.

Modifié par AlanC9, 26 janvier 2014 - 04:58 .

[AlanC9]

iakus wrote...
You are talking about "at least the Reapers aren't reaping anymore" I assume?

As I said before, that's a minimum expectation for these endings.  We were told even before release that there would be no "Reapers win" scenerio.

Accomplishing what the game won't let you fail at is hardly a "benefit"

So "benefit" meant a choice should give you a better situation relative to other possible endings? That's what the EMS conditions do.

Plenty of games have plots that players may not accept.  But what rpgs (at least, those that allow choices and consequences) are uniquely capable of is broadening itself by allowing the player to shape the story to some degree.

But with that comes a sense of ownership in the character.  This is why you hear "My Shepard cured the genophage" or even "I cured the genophage"

Sure. You own what the character can do. And also what he can't do.

[CronoDragoon]

iakus wrote...

"Just because" is hardly an answer.  Look at  Dragon Age: Origins 

Dragon Age Origins does not do this. I want you to show me a set of endings that appeals to players who like tough choices and players who like happy endings all the way to players who like depressing endings.

[Iakus]

AlanC9 wrote...

So "benefit" meant a choice should give you a better situation relative to other possible endings? That's what the EMS conditions do.

In theory, yeah.  But it still leaves a lot to be desired.  Even the highest EMS outcomes leave a lot to be desired.  There's a point beyond which the game simply won't let you get a better outcome. "Just because"

Sure. You own what the character can do. And also what he can't do.

No, you own what you choose to do or don't do.

If a fire burns, I do not own it because the writers declard the extinguisher can never be more than half-full, no matter what I do.

[Iakus]

CronoDragoon wrote...

iakus wrote...

"Just because" is hardly an answer.  Look at  Dragon Age: Origins 

Dragon Age Origins does not do this. I want you to show me a set of endings that appeals to players who like tough choices and players who like happy endings all the way to players who like depressing endings.

Easier to show you

[CronoDragoon]

iakus wrote...

Easier to show you

I platinum'd Origins and have seen all the endings. They do not appeal to everyone. They appeal to you, and that is the only reason you are trying to draw the parallel: to get endings you want. I didn't see you on the Mass Effect boards whining about how ME1 and 2's endings didn't appeal to the grimdark people. Why? Because you don't care about the grimdark people. You want to play the games you want to play, with the endings you like. Just be honest about it.

Modifié par CronoDragoon, 26 janvier 2014 - 10:56 .

[Iakus]

CronoDragoon wrote...

iakus wrote...

Easier to show you

I platinum'd Origins and have seen all the endings. They do not appeal to everyone. They appeal to you, and that is the only reason you are trying to draw the parallel: to get endings you want. I didn't see you on the Mass Effect boards whining about how ME1 and 2's endings didn't appeal to the grimdark people. Why? Because you don't care about the grimdark people. You want to play the games you want to play, with the endings you like. Just be honest about it.

You're acting like I'm the only person here who didn't like the endings.

Yes, DAO gave me endings I wanted.  Yes endings plural.  I actually played out several of them.  I can see merit in many of them.  And those I don't, well, I have several other options that do.

Options.  Such a beautiful thing.  Even if DAO's endings don't appeal to 100% entire audience (a statistic I'll have to take your word on) It certainly pleased enough of the audience that it didn't experience an unprecedented level of backlash that even a free DLC to "explain" the endings failed to extinguish.