642 réponses à ce sujet

[Iakus]

MadCat221 wrote...

iakus wrote...

DAO managed to to do this.  Though clearly some seem to think the DR undermines this

Errr... I'm apparently not around here enough to know this... What is "DR"?

DR="Dark Ritual"  Morrigan's alternative to sacrificing a Warden

[Iakus]

CELL55 wrote...

The important thing here, as Sylvius points out, is choice.
If the story must necesarily be tragic, then it can not also be a choice-and-consequences driven RPG. Tragedy can be an option, but it must never be the only one.

Sums it up very well.

[Iakus]

Il Divo wrote...

Out of curiosity, how's the Shepard's breath scene working out as uncertain endings? I still see plenty of people griping over that. Likewise with the Rachni, where I doubt people would've been content if neither ME2 or 3 brought them back.

The problem with the breath scene is less the breath scene and more that it's the only ending that doesn't explicitly show that Shepard is in fact dead.  Therefore the only options for the player are tragic or uncertain.  Nothing definitively happy (unless you mod the game)

 That said, such a scene would not have been enough to make me enjoy the endings.  As I said, I have deeper problems with them than that.

And if that floats your boat, by all means. Me? I think such endings create cop-outs. I prefer Kaidan vs. Ashley to the suicide mission.

And as I said, the Dark Ritual is not my preferred ending.  I simply don't see it as a bad ending.  

[KaiserShep]

Get Magna Carter wrote...

My opinion is that a game should on successful completion end with a victory ...an accomplishment.
If this has a price (possibly including self-sacrifice) that is okay as long as we can see our achievement.
The ultimate sacrifice in Origins was fine for me - I was more bothered by the side with mages consequences of Dragon Age 2 as Hawke gets run out of the city as a "reward" for dealing with the out-of-control maniac Meredith and we don't see how Kirkwall is afterwards.

I actually like the mages alignment result more, because the idea of running off with the LI, like running off with Isabela on her ship in my case,  sounds like a better ending than [temporarily] becoming viscount of that dump. I can't say I ever felt any kind of connection to Kirkwall. The companions mattered a great deal more, because Kirkwall itself was just a cesspool of a harbor city still marred by the leftovers of Tevinter slavers. That said, I'm kind of hoping that Hawke's fate is never brought up again so I can just leave that piece of headcanon where it is and move on to the next PC.

Modifié par KaiserShep, 02 février 2014 - 05:36 .

[AlanC9]

Sylvius the Mad wrote...

AlanC9 wrote...

This is tantamount to ruling out tragedy, isn't it? ( I'm not sure if we're still on topic here or not.)

Is it?

Players can still tell a tragic story, but they have to choose to do so.

And sometimes we will.

And then the character experiences tragedy, but the player doesn't; the player watches his character have the experience.

I'm thinking of what Blackrising had to say a couple of pages back. Putting the narrative in the player's hands means that you're ruling out the experience of being "hit hard" in the way Blackrising mentions. Which is fine if you don't want to ever have that experience, of course.  I'm just pointing out that some of you are proposing a limitation here. I don't think that limitation is a necessary one, but are we talking about Principles of RPG Design, or merely personal tastes? My impression is that you and iakus are talking the former, which means that we do have an issue to discuss. Perhaps it's a subset of a broader issue; who is responsible for the narrative?

(And possibly marketability is in play, as bEVEthesda mentions upthread, but I don't think that case has been made.)

Modifié par AlanC9, 02 février 2014 - 05:43 .

[bEVEsthda]

AlanC9 wrote...

Sylvius the Mad wrote...

AlanC9 wrote...

This is tantamount to ruling out tragedy, isn't it? ( I'm not sure if we're still on topic here or not.)

Is it?

Players can still tell a tragic story, but they have to choose to do so.

And sometimes we will.

And then the character experiences tragedy, but the player doesn't; the player watches his character have the experience.

I'm thinking of what Blackrising had to say a couple of pages back. Putting the narrative in the player's hands means that you're ruling out the experience of being "hit hard" in the way Blackrising mentions. Which is fine if you don't want to ever have that experience, of course.  I'm just pointing out that some of you are proposing a limitation here. I don't think that limitation is a necessary one, but are we talking about Principles of RPG Design, or merely personal tastes? My impression is that you and iakus are talking the former, which means that we do have an issue to discuss. Perhaps it's a subset of a broader issue; who is responsible for the narrative?

(And possibly marketability is in play, as bEVEthesda mentions upthread, but I don't think that case has been made.)

I'm sure Sylvius is considering RPG design. As I would be if my point wasn't different..
I have no interest in playing these games just for killing a lot and being fed a story on the side. I much prefer FPS games for that. It seems incredibly biased to call a proper RPG-design "limitation". I always think of it as the total opposite.

I don't think we create and play our RPG-characters and then don't engage in them, as you suggest. What would be the point?

If you read Blackrising carefully, it's obvious that being "hit hard" was neither desired nor appreciated.
A sane person who actually want that, to have some "profound" masochistic experience, goes reading a story by Ian McEwan or Brian Callison.
I've said it many times before, and I'll say it again. A videogame should not aspire to be a movie or novel, to be passively "experienced". It should aspire to be a toy.

Modifié par bEVEsthda, 02 février 2014 - 06:23 .

[Sylvius the Mad]

AlanC9 wrote...

And then the character experiences tragedy, but the player doesn't; the player watches his character have the experience.

Welcome to roleplaying.

Though it would be better said that the player experiences tragedy on behalf of his character, rather than on his own behalf.

Perhaps it's a subset of a broader issue; who is responsible for the narrative?

I think it's collaborative.  The player has an important part in crafting the narrative.

[Jorji Costava]

Been running this topic through my head again, and I guess I'll throw in my two cents on this. The problem with tragic endings in games, as I see it, is that games are, well, games. That is, they have fail states, they have win states, and whether or not you achieve the former or the latter largely depends upon player skill.

Because games are structured around this challenge-reward loop, there's an inevitable tendency to see darker narrative outcomes (especially if they are avoidable) as being a kind of fail state, which means that getting this ending can't help but come across as a tacit judgment by the game that we didn't do a very good job playing it. That association makes it hard to get out of tragedy the things you would want to get out of tragedy, whether it's catharsis or whatever the case may be, because it becomes hard to see the darker ending as anything other than a glorified "Game over" screen. This doens't happen in other media. No one reads Othello and thinks, "Wow, that was dark. I guess that means I really suck at reading Shakespeare."

Not sure there's any reliable way out of this problem. The best I can think of would be imbalancing story content in favor of the more tragic ending, such that there's more content you miss out on if you get the happier outcome. Since story content itself is often used as a reward mechanism, having more story content for the darker ending might alleviate the sense that the game is somehow "punishing" the player for making certain decisions, etc.

[SetGround]

No red, blue or green endings

[In Exile]

ElitePinecone wrote...
That might speak to a disconnect between how bad the game says Blights are, and how bad the one we actually experience is.  I mean, the fact that we're steamrolling over everything as the Warden, who is predestined to triumph by virtue of this being a story, doesn't mean that next time an Archdemon rises Thedas won't be wiped out for good. Blights are almost always apocalyptic - and the history of Thedas says every single one is immensely destructive. It seems monstrously irresponsible to say that there are three Wardens left, so the next Blight will be a walk in the park.

I agree with you (especially re: the bolded portion) but this creates an even more serious problem for the DA:O plot: assaulting Denerim is completely and utterly insane on every single level when you accept how bad a blight really is and (also) accept that the protagonists are fragile. 

There are three living GWs at that point: Alistiar, the Warden and Riordan. If they die, Ferelden ceases to exist as a country, and every single soldier there is slaughtered and cannot contribute to the war anymore. Staying in Ferelden - or at least not reaching out to Orlais for more GWs - is completely insane. 

A forced march to save Denerim is particularly insane, because you're taking an exhausting army that's actually just a bunch of meat shields in the hope of shooting a flying dragon out of the sky. 

If someone is cautious enough to think: our chance for success is astromonically low and all we can do is beeline to kill the archdemon at all costs, then by the DA:O endgame there's a big disconnect between what the game asks and what so-called reality would be like.

(In a sense, I don't think this kind of Warden in that situation would even be thinking rationally. The first and only instinct - I think - would be to kill the Archdemon for good and damn the consequences, no matter the possible gains from doing the Dark Ritual. Being ultra-cautious, in the middle of a Blight, is hardly a strange thing.)

If you're taking the hardline "damn the consequences", then "saving Ferelden" itself becomes a problem. That's the issue with the DR rationales - IMO, no one who would be willing to assault Denerim would be able to have the mindset of "this might turn out badly enough that I can't stop it". 

[In Exile]

AlanC9 wrote...
I'm thinking of what Blackrising had to say a couple of pages back. Putting the narrative in the player's hands means that you're ruling out the experience of being "hit hard" in the way Blackrising mentions. Which is fine if you don't want to ever have that experience, of course.  I'm just pointing out that some of you are proposing a limitation here. I don't think that limitation is a necessary one, but are we talking about Principles of RPG Design, or merely personal tastes? My impression is that you and iakus are talking the former, which means that we do have an issue to discuss. Perhaps it's a subset of a broader issue; who is responsible for the narrative? 

But parsing Blackrising's post (especially re: ME3), there's reference to personal factors as part of what made ME3 feel tragic, and that's something that can't be discounted. As much as games try and force a "this is tragic" theme on me (whether RPG or otherwise), it's very much up to me as the player to determine whether I feel this way.

Fire Emblem: Awakening is an interesting parallel here, because in a lot of ways the ending choices comes down to pretty much the US option from DA:O, with a twist: (i) either one character sacarifices his/her soul to end the threat forever or ( another character defeats the Big Bad ™ temporarily (e.g. for a few centuries), but no one is sacrificed. I never found option (i) to be tragic, because the game does a great job of getting across the absolute horror that is this big bad and the extent to which the world is changed for th better if the one character makes the equivalent of the US.

Another big problem is how empowered the character is. Take Walking Dead: you're not an undefeated engine of death and destruction in that game. That vulnerability changes what the narrative can do. In ME3, getting vaporized with a sky laser is a really big LOLWUT? moment, because despite it being technically realistic it's a direct attack on the invincible protagonist shield that the game had up the entire time - it's totally contrary to how empowered the player was made to feel up to that point. 

[AlanC9]

In Exile wrote...
But parsing Blackrising's post (especially re: ME3), there's reference to personal factors as part of what made ME3 feel tragic, and that's something that can't be discounted. As much as games try and force a "this is tragic" theme on me (whether RPG or otherwise), it's very much up to me as the player to determine whether I feel this way.

Oh, absolutely. But what does the designer do about that? The audience is going to take things in various ways whatever you do.

Fire Emblem sounds like ME3's Dark Energy plot writ small.

Another big problem is how empowered the character is. Take Walking Dead: you're not an undefeated engine of death and destruction in that game. That vulnerability changes what the narrative can do. In ME3, getting vaporized with a sky laser is a really big LOLWUT? moment, because despite it being technically realistic it's a direct attack on the invincible protagonist shield that the game had up the entire time - it's totally contrary to how empowered the player was made to feel up to that point. 

Hmm.  I'm personally a big fan of destabilizing narratives in that way. But I can see a case for Bio not having the chops of, e.g., Gene Wolfe, and maybe they should stay away from that sort of thing. 

[wright1978]

iakus wrote...

Il Divo wrote...

Out of curiosity, how's the Shepard's breath scene working out as uncertain endings? I still see plenty of people griping over that. Likewise with the Rachni, where I doubt people would've been content if neither ME2 or 3 brought them back.

The problem with the breath scene is less the breath scene and more that it's the only ending that doesn't explicitly show that Shepard is in fact dead.  Therefore the only options for the player are tragic or uncertain.  Nothing definitively happy (unless you mod the game)

 That said, such a scene would not have been enough to make me enjoy the endings.  As I said, I have deeper problems with them than that.

And if that floats your boat, by all means. Me? I think such endings create cop-outs. I prefer Kaidan vs. Ashley to the suicide mission.

And as I said, the Dark Ritual is not my preferred ending.  I simply don't see it as a bad ending.  

Yeah my issues with ME3 ending are legion. EC closureand clarification for all other endings and no real element for high EMS destroy(breath scene) was just the final kick in the teeth. Thankfully modders rescued that game to a degree.

I like dark ritual but then i like all DAO origins options for different characters which is how it should be in a choice based game, not bleak forced suicide for everyone.

[Blackrising]

AlanC9 wrote...

Blackrising wrote...

But characters I help shape myself aren't 'someone else'. They feel like they're mine, because I created them, I decide what they do and what they think. Sometimes they feel like my children, sometimes they feel like myself, sometimes they simply feel like a beloved fictional character. But the point remains: I want them to be happy. I have a deep, personal desire to give them a happy ending, to see them succeed, to feel like what they had to go through ultimately paid off. Which is why the ME3 ending hit me so hard. It was a mixture of seeing my little person never achieve her own happiness and the tragedies of her personal life hitting a bit too close to home. It wasn't just sad, it was deeply depressing and I would like to never have to repeat that experience.

This actually sounds like an argument in favor of tragic endings. 

Edit: that's unclear. What I meant was that this sounds like a big advantage of the RPG format is its ability to connect the player to the tragedy in a way that other media can't, and it's a shame to forgo that.

And why "little person"?

It's a matter of how that emotional connection makes you feel. I felt emotionally connected to Lee and Clementine and the ending made me incredibly sad, but it was a good kind of sad. It was an emotional kind of sad that makes me remember the game fondly.

ME3 was a punch in the gut and made me feel sad in a very bad way. Kind of angry sad. The kind of sad that makes me grimace when thinking back on Mass Effect and prevents me from replaying any of the games. DA:O's Ultimate Sacrifice ending would have made me feel the same (though not quite as bad) if it had been the only ending. But since it wasn't and I managed to craft an (almost) perfectly happy ending in my second playthrough, everything was a-okay.

I mean, don't get me wrong, tragic endings are absolutely fine. If they're not the only possibility there is.

And I say 'little person', because my TV is, unfortunately, not large enough to display the characters life-sized. So they, you know, appear smaller than they would be in reality.

[Mistic]

In Exile wrote...

Fire Emblem: Awakening is an interesting parallel here, because in a lot of ways the ending choices comes down to pretty much the US option from DA:O, with a twist: (i) either one character sacarifices his/her soul to end the threat forever or ( another character defeats the Big Bad ™ temporarily (e.g. for a few centuries), but no one is sacrificed. I never found option (i) to be tragic, because the game does a great job of getting across the absolute horror that is this big bad and the extent to which the world is changed for th better if the one character makes the equivalent of the US.

Another big problem is how empowered the character is. Take Walking Dead: you're not an undefeated engine of death and destruction in that game. That vulnerability changes what the narrative can do. In ME3, getting vaporized with a sky laser is a really big LOLWUT? moment, because despite it being technically realistic it's a direct attack on the invincible protagonist shield that the game had up the entire time - it's totally contrary to how empowered the player was made to feel up to that point. 

Agreed. The choice in Fire Emblem: Awakening works well after the game stressing the importance of the Big Bad (the Archdemon is a harmless pigeon in comparison). The tragic ending in The Walking Dead felt right because you were never supposed to be a killing-machine hero who was going to save the world, just a normal man trying to survive.

Delivery is very important, yes. Ancient Greek tragedies were based on mythology or history. The educated audience knew from the beginning they weren't going to end well. It was a really "chronicle of a death foretold". But Bioware games, so full of epic, have problems to deliver the same feeling.

[die-yng]

I have a hard time thinking that not being able to change nearly all tragedies happening to Hawke, wasn't part of what many people didn't like about DA2.
Why play a game, where you don't have the option to change the outcome to what you desire it to be.
That involves of course good and bad choices, but also being able to save people if you want to.
Not saying all of the time, there can be scripted tragedies, they should just not be overabundant.

Honestly, I kind of don't get the discussion about this topic all the time.
DAO was practically perfect in it's endings, from noble sacrifice to using the dark ritual to save both you and Alistaire. From choosing live with your companion to choosing a marriage for the good of the country with Anora.

If so many different endings (both tragic and not) were possible in DAO, surely we can have them in DAI as well?

And IMO we should have them in all RPG's.
I hate nothing more than spending dozens of hours on a game, just to be pissed in the end, because the ending ruined it all for me.

Modifié par die-yng, 03 février 2014 - 02:48 .

[CELL55]

die-yng wrote...

I have a hard time thinking that not being able to change nearly all tragedies happening to Hawke, wasn't part of what many people didn't like about DA2.
Why play a game, where you don't have the option to change the outcome to what you desire it to be.
That involves of course good and bad choices, but also being able to save people if you want to.
Not saying all of the time, there can be scripted tragedies, they should just not be overabundant.

Honestly, I kind of don't get the discussion about this topic all the time.
DAO was practically perfect in it's endings, from noble sacrifice to using the dark ritual to save both you and Alistaire. From choosing live with your companion to choosing a marriage for the good of the country with Anora.

If so many different endings (both tragic and not) were possible in DAO, surely we can have them in DAI as well?

And IMO we should have them in all RPG's.
I hate nothing more than spending dozens of hours on a game, just to be pissed in the end, because the ending ruined it all for me.

Hopefully DA2's railroading was a result of its rushed development, and therefore that DAI with its extended development will not suffer the same fate.

[Dean_the_Young]

Il Divo wrote...

iakus wrote...

Actually I am not relying on the import system at all.  I have little interest in it anymore, save in cosmetic details for Thedas.  Whether the DR ever gets fleshed out matters very little to me personally.  The Dark Ritual is not to me a happy ending, nor a sad one.  It is an uncertain one, and I accept it as such.

Out of curiosity, how's the Shepard's breath scene working out as uncertain endings? I still see plenty of people griping over that. Likewise with the Rachni, where I doubt people would've been content if neither ME2 or 3 brought them back.

Man, you couldn't pick a better person to ask. Iakus is publicly insistent that Shepard is irrevocably dead, except when he concedes he understands Shepard is possibly alive and up to player interpretation but the uncertainty demands that Shepard be dead because it isn't certain (s)he's alive.

Or something like that. The reasoning changes on whether metagaming is involved or not, which differs between when Iakus does or does not realize he's engaging in metagaming.

But the important thing is:  happy, sad, or uncertain, these endings were all different for the different stories being told.  I could choose to tell a story with a happy or sad ending.

And if that floats your boat, by all means. Me? I think such endings create cop-outs. I prefer Kaidan vs. Ashley to the suicide mission.

Plus, it goes back to how choosing a bitter-sweet ending of necessary sacrifice fataly undermines the premise.

Modifié par Dean_the_Young, 03 février 2014 - 06:01 .

[Hiemoth]

Dean_the_Young wrote...

But the important thing is:  happy, sad, or uncertain, these endings were all different for the different stories being told.  I could choose to tell a story with a happy or sad ending.

And if that floats your boat, by all means. Me? I think such endings create cop-outs. I prefer Kaidan vs. Ashley to the suicide mission.

Plus, it goes back to how choosing a bitter-sweet ending of necessary sacrifice fataly undermines the premise.

You know, it is always humbling spending so much time trying to explain a concept or an argument and then read someone else perfectly encapsulate it in one sentence.

I do not know whetever to feel respectful admiration or envious bitterness towards you at the moment.

Modifié par Hiemoth, 03 février 2014 - 06:02 .

[KaiserShep]

Dean_the_Young wrote...

And if that floats your boat, by all means. Me? I think such endings create cop-outs. I prefer Kaidan vs. Ashley to the suicide mission.

The suicide mission probably would have been a bit better if it was impossible to save absolutely everyone, though I would not really consider its completion a tragic ending. Poor Jacob. He'd never make it out alive.

Modifié par KaiserShep, 03 février 2014 - 06:05 .

[Dean_the_Young]

In Exile wrote...

Fire Emblem: Awakening is an interesting parallel here, because in a lot of ways the ending choices comes down to pretty much the US option from DA:O, with a twist: (i) either one character sacarifices his/her soul to end the threat forever or ( another character defeats the Big Bad ™ temporarily (e.g. for a few centuries), but no one is sacrificed. I never found option (i) to be tragic, because the game does a great job of getting across the absolute horror that is this big bad and the extent to which the world is changed for th better if the one character makes the equivalent of the US.

More to the point, the blatant subversion of the sacrifice in the epilogue scene pretty much negates the implicit cost: if you choose not to sacrifice your soul you go on with your life with your friends, whereas if you sacrifice your soul... you wake up to the faces of your friends in a echoe of the start of the game. Only without the mark of the evil soul bond on your hand.

Sure, you can imagine some consequences for your character: amnesia, time loop, whatever, but they're completely made up. The explicit cost, death, is effectively thrown away.

[Dean_the_Young]

Hiemoth wrote...

Dean_the_Young wrote...

But the important thing is:  happy, sad, or uncertain, these endings were all different for the different stories being told.  I could choose to tell a story with a happy or sad ending.

And if that floats your boat, by all means. Me? I think such endings create cop-outs. I prefer Kaidan vs. Ashley to the suicide mission.

Plus, it goes back to how choosing a bitter-sweet ending of necessary sacrifice fataly undermines the premise.

You know, it is always humbling spending so much time trying to explain a concept or an argument and then read someone else perfectly encapsulate it in one sentence.

I do not know whetever to feel respectful admiration or envious bitterness towards you at the moment.

Yes.

[Dave of Canada]

KaiserShep wrote...

The suicide mission probably would have been a bit better if it was impossible to save absolutely everyone, though I would not really consider its completion a tragic ending. Poor Jacob. He'd never make it out alive.

2-3 deaths even if you've got a "perfect" playthrough with the companion having a final conversation with you, saying you have to go on and fight the Collectors without them and "make them pay", etc with different conversations per companion.

Would've loved every minute of it.

[KaiserShep]

I could get on board with that. Thane, Garrus and Tali's final dialogues would probably hit me the hardest.